Developing and Creatively Leveraging Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy

I have been struggling with controlled vocabulary and information architecture issues for the past week or two. I always find that taxonomy issues are the most difficult problems to solve in organizations where groups have very strong attachments to the way that they describe their activities, products, or processes.

This long post by Christian Ricci is a good intorduction to the problems associated with creating and governing a taxonomy and applying it correctly to content.