Dan Gillmor's Grassroots Media has launched a tagging system called HonorTags that allows any content creator - be they journalists, bloggers, PR folks, enthusiasts, etc. - to label/control over how their content is identified. Gillmor's hope is that the tag system will make it easier for readers to gauge intent, while at the same time helping "birds of a feather flock together."
For starters, Grassroots Media is launching six tags - journalism, professional, advocate/enthusiast/fan, personal, fiction and one called "untag." All tagged posts will show up in Technorati. Here's the page of posts tagged to date as works of journalism.
I am throwing my support behind the HonorTag system. I believe that as
the majority of Web pages are created by consumers, rather than
corporations, it will be harder particularly for those who do not
create content to read the intent of its source. This system - while
far from foolproof - will make it easier for people to seek out the
content from sources they deem credible.
What HonorTags really lacks right now is some sort of
editing/policing system. This way, the community can weed out tag
offenders who are inappropriately spam tags. In other words, if
Grassroots Media can somehow recreate the same kind of self-policing
community that watches over Wikipedia, HonorTags will become a more reliable system. Perhaps some merging with social networks will help facilitate this.
