The reason is this: The most time-consuming aspect of information storage-retrieval is in the retrieval half. How often do you say, “Oh, where did I put that?” or “What did I name that again?” It doesn’t take much time to just throw something somewhere (storage).

So, we need a good system for storage that makes retrieval easy. That system needs be quick, though. Otherwise you’ll just put all the weight in the front-end (storage) trying to figure out what to label it or how many levels deep to put it – and then wind up forgetting it in a week anyway.

My suggestion, for tagging personal assets, one to three labels should suffice. Tagging public assets (for folksonomy), go hog-wild. :-)

update: Just realized i made myself look like a liar if you look at that second graphic. I’ve got *5* tags! I took that screenshot early on when I began experimenting with tagging personal assets and todos for information storage. I only learned that a shallow system is better after toying with a very deep system as shown above. :-P