There’s been some great conversation on social classification among myself, Jess, Stewart, Gene and Alex.
I just realized that James already built a system that combines the best of social and constructed categories, for example by creating equivalent associations on the backend to correct for too many, similar categories. His design has the virtue of having extremely nifty interaction design that let’s users type what they’re thinking while showing them what’s already there. Less cognitive load for the users, more yummy findability in the end.