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Ever since I learned about XFML (which never set off), I am fascinated by faceted classification (example). It avoids the limitations of hierarchical categorization, the madness of Topic Maps and the unmanageability of freeform tagging. It can profit from tagging ideas like the simple addition of new metadata values (e.g. tags) and look roughly like shown in my semantic tagging example.

While thinking about the architecture of my upcoming gallery system it became clear to me that many users probably do not want to search (as they had to know what to search for, thus to know what's inside) or to browse (which is normally limited to one parameter like time, thing of blog archives) but to explore - to find their own way through the collection from a given starting point and to discover stuff they like. This requires an application that shows them directions but does not force them to go along a specific predefined path, and that's where faceted classification comes in:

Faceted systems are designed to allow the user to construct their own storyline

Tricky points are to prevent the faceted system from overloading with too many facets (which would become as unusable as huge tags systems), to supply the user with hints where to go, i.e. with example storylines (nothing more frustrating than following paths that don't lead somewhere interesting) and to come up with a good backend UI to edit facets and mass-categorize content items.

Author Mimi Yin of OSAF's UI Design Journal excellently sums up the pros and cons of the various classification techniques in Hierarchy Versus Facets Versus Tags →