The original appeal of "tags" was that they were free-form
character strings which users would enter spontaneously and with a
minimum of cognitive effort. If we need more structured metadata,
faceted classification, or executable operations which do more
than associate string X with object Y, then perhaps we should stop
calling these features "tags" and move them into their own namespace.
This highlights a practical dimension to this: Whereas a tag is a tag, plain and simple, "for:x" requires knowledge of a(n albeit simple, but nonetheless) "higher order" syntax.
This came up for me recently: Someone first of all not knowing about "for:x," and second of all, not knowing how to use it.
The point: Breaking the "for:x" functionality out into its "own namespace" not only makes sense, (ahem) "ontologically," but would probably "work better" too.
Matthew
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