Data First vs. Structure First

The title is from this blog entry. First, consider this blog entry, where Jon Udell walks us through a day in the life of a tagger at del.icio.us, followed by a short sprint on how language grows. There's a link between the two blogs. Consider this quote from the first blog:

Some believe that the semantic web is an example of 'structure first' but it's really not the case.... yet, many and many people truly believe that in order to be successful a 'Structure First' design (well "ontology first" in this case) is the way you build interoperability.

As you might have guessed, I disagree.

Stefano Mazzocchi argues, first, that:

Data First strategies have higher usability efficiency (all rest being equal) than Structure First strategies.

followed by:

On a local time-scale and once established, "Structure First" systems are more efficient.

That reminds me of the old scruffies vs. neats arguments that ran rampant in AI circles for so many years.

My take: the jury's still out on this one.