Taxonomies: Connecting Data with Duct Tape | Mike Dillinger

Taxonomies are the duct tape of connected data. They seem simple, flexible, and familiar. They are widely used. And they seem to work across many use cases and many domains. 

But when looked at in more detail, taxonomies turn out to be crude tools for knowledge organization that are very difficult to create, to scale, to adapt, to align, and to build on.

They don't work well for larger or more complex domains and use cases. Experienced talent and flexible tools for creating them are hard to find and to develop. Often taxonomies are built then abandoned for other, more robust approaches to knowledge organization.

It is essential to re-evaluate your connected data strategies in the context of alternative approaches to knowledge organization.

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Mike Dillinger. Technical Lead for Taxonomies and Ontologies, AI Division, LinkedIn

Mike Dillinger, PhD, focuses on teaching machine learning algorithms about the world of work at LinkedIn. Before that, he was Technical Lead for LinkedIn’s and eBay’s first machine translation systems, and an independent consultant specialized in deploying translation technologies for Fortune 500 companies.

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