There’s a post on the CMS Watch Blog about the challenges of achieving a metadata-driven publishing model:
“The content needs metadata for this to work. Many will tell you that “people won’t tag.” No, seriously, they won’t tag content with the right labels, add the right metadata, or correctly categorize, “even if threatened with being fired.” And even if they do tag, it will be haphazard and inconsistent.
This is a very real problem. But at the same time it’s complete nonsense. Because if this were the case, why would people meticulously tag and file their holiday snapshots on Flickr and Facebook? Somehow, in their spare time, they do identify the people in a picture, add keywords to a shot, give it a meaningful title, and actually describe it. Without having to be threatened with being fired, or even having to be beaten with a stick.
Partly this is because they get the feedback that makes it worth their while to do so. If you identify your friends in a picture on Facebook, they (and then their friends) will immediately find it and start commenting, which creates a positive feedback loop to tag some more. More importantly though, it’s really easy.”