When is metadata too much metadata? (aka why I left delicious)

Lazy Tuesday morning; just read a post on the Value of Social Metadata on the Oracle Social CRM blog. Interesting read, but it's made me put to paper (no jokes please) a thought... when is data enough?

Quoting Marta from the blog:

For example, I can tag a presentation that is relevant to me and choose the tags I believe best describe that presentation. The keywords I choose help organize and categorize the content in a way that’s meaningful to me.

This brings two thoughts to mind. Firstly if everybody starts deciding what is 'relevant for them' imagine how messy the world will get (not that it isn't!). Lets pick an example. How would I categorise Friends, the sitcom that is, oh wait the tv show, no no the serial, rubbish its all of this. You see where I'm going? There would be a dozen words to describe content depending on who you ask. And I'm not even going remotely how to categorise music!

Secondly, on the social front what you categorise would not be just for you - it'll be for everyone out there. So when you categorise do you think of all the possibilities? We might end up categorising the categories!

I love the concept of sharing information, but it certainly is getting overwhelming and the SEO jobs has never been so popular. Take the social bookmarking site Delicious . I gave up on the concept of me contributing quite a while back. The reason, it'll throw me 10 similar categories to post a link under, not forgetting the option tocreate my own. What happens if I've a typo? Hmm maybe someone's already bookmarked it.

With the myriad sources to source and funnel information, how do you decide what's relevant? Metadata or metacrap? The Semantic web? The more I think about it, I think not. Anyway thats for another rainy day.