Foglio's Field Notes

Potential presidential contenders Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Russ Feingold have all been slapped recently with the tag “p2008.” And no, we don’t mean graffiti artists spraypainting their campaign buses.

“Tagging” refers to the growing practice on websites like Flickr, del.icio.us, and thousands of blogs of letting users attach their own descriptive keywords to images, videos, links, books, blog posts, and articles. Tagging harnesses the wisdom of the crowd to classify and organize information. The practice has even given rise to tagging campaigns, where groups encourage web users to tag certain kinds of content with specific keywords.

For example, the folks at E-Democracy.org, a clearinghouse of online political information, are urging bloggers, linkers, and other netizens to apply the tag “p2008” to anything related to the presidential race — campaign sites, political blogs, news sites, etc. — thereby making such content much easier to find with search engines.