50books_poc | More on tagging

Hi all!

After mod discussion and comments here and here, we've decided on the following:

We will be moving author tags completely off of LJ and onto our Delicious. We will also be creating poster tags and keeping those solely on Delicious as well. All other tags will be on both LJ and Delicious, and we apologize for the inconvenience of having some tags only on Delicious. Our rationale behind it was that the number of author tags is the largest (630 out of 1000, which does not include white author/illustrator/editor tags, the editor tags, or the illustrator tags) and is the category likely to grow the most. We also anticipate poster tags taking up a fair amount of space, ergo, they are Delicious-only as well.

I'll be redoing the tag system on both LJ and Delicious so we have more consistent tags, as opposed to "sff," "fantasy," sci-fi/fantasy" and etc. Going forward, only mods will be able to create new tags on LJ (everyone can still decide what tags to put on their own posts). We'll have a "needs new tag" tag (exact wording TBD) for posts that need new tags.

The new tag system will be documented to make volunteer work easier! Thank you to the people who volunteered to help; I'll probably be getting in touch with people once there's a system in place.

ETA: Apologies for the confusion! No one needs to know Delicious for this; the mods will be tagging all posts for Delicious. So all posters here will need to do is tag their posts as normal (albeit without author or poster tags), and the mods will import the posts into Delicious.

I have not yet decided (suggestions very welcome!):

What categories to use for tags. Right now, the categories I have in mind are author/illustrator/editor (Delicious only), poster (Delicious only), country, race, ethnicity, tribal affiliation, religion, topic, genre, original language. None of the tags are mandatory, so as to avoid situations in which we are policing identity.

What to do with overlapping categories, such as "Chinese American" or overlaps within categories, such as "Chinese/Japanese." For Delicious, you can narrow down searches within tags, so if you're specifically looking for Black Caribbean writers, you can first click "Black" then add "Caribbean" to narrow down results. LJ doesn't allow this functionality, so we can either a) not include it or b) create tags for it.

If it matters if author info and book info don't match. For example, if I am looking for books set in China vs. books by people from China. Currently we have tags like "women writers" or "Black writers" on LJ; do people find this useful?

More that will undoubtedly come up as I try to figure things out!

I also wanted to say that I know the act of categorizing in and of itself is political, and that hopefully the tradeoffs being made for ease of use are worth putting things in buckets. But I am not certain it is overall or in specific cases, so comments re: that are particularly welcome.

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Thanks for going to so much trouble

"needs new tag" does not seem likely to work unless there is some mechanism for suggesting what new tag you had in mind. Is there a way that posters can suggest new tags which are subject to mod approval?

I do not know how to use Delicious and am unlikely to spend my limited computer sitting time on learning -- will I still be allowed to post here if my posts are not author tagged?

Re: "needs new tag" Yes, that would be a great idea! Maybe having them write out what tags need to be used in the entry? It'd also make things much easier for the mods.

Re: Delicious. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding! All the posts on Delicious will be tagged by the mods, so you wouldn't have to know Delicious at all. And people can definitely still post here without knowing the tagging system (either Delicious OR LJ) at all.

Cool thanks.

If I'm only using LJ, should I just not tag my posts here?

Sorry for the confusion! The mods will be tagging everything on Delicious, not the posters. So if you do keep tagging your posts on LJ, that would actually be very helpful, because then we'd know better what to tag on Delicious.

I am impressed by your effort to move the tags over/do them yourselves. I like the 'needs tag' idea, too.

I can't seem to tag my own posts any more. I thought maybe the mods were tagging everyone's posts, but other posts added after mine on Phantoms of the Brain were tagged, and that one wasn't.

Also, links to the delicious page on the front page and also user info would be good.

Tags are full up at the moment, and I haven't had time to clear them out. Which means that you can tag with existing tags (or did someone else apply the "young adult" tag to your latest post?), but that you can't create any new tags.

I just wanted to say that I use the tag system all the time to find books, both ones that are new to me, and ones where I half-remember reading a review, but of course can't recall author or title. So! I really appreciate the effort you're devoting to the system.

As someone who uses lots of tags herself, yay!

can i suggest a set of "meta" tags -
your example is a great one: you want to read a book SET in China. but currently, "Chinese" is all there (i think that is the name of the tag) and that can mean "written by an Chinese Writer set in China, Written by Chinese Writer set in US/France/Saudi/wherever, written by a not-Chines writer but set in China, etcetcetc.

so, i think Meta tags along the lines of "Set IN". so if the main tag is "China", and this could mean lots of things, you would add the meta tag that "Set in" or "Written by" or both. i can't imagine there being all that many meta-tags, but i do think it will cut down the total number of tags - now you will (continuing the same example) only need one tag for anything involving China or a Chinese person, instead of at least two (maybe more? i know authors are tagged, and locals are tagged, and cultures are tagged... if it is, say, a Japanese professor writing a book on China and the period leading up to the Boxer rebellion, that would be a "Japanese" tag, meta tag writer; "China" and a meta-tag culture.)

i have no clue if this makes sense, and i don't know that it will *actually* work. it is merely a suggestion - if no one likes (or understands, because i am more confusing than i want to be) i promise i am only trying to help, and will create zero drama :)

I'm confused. Are you suggesting tagging the tag somehow? If so, how do you know which meta-tag goes with which tag?

yes?

i envision it something like:
[tag]Chinese; [meta-tag]Setting: [tag]Korean;[meta-tag]Writer

i don't know if such a thing would work - but i think it might eliminate some redunacy - instead of having "Chinese, writer", "Chinese, setting", "Chinese, history", you have "Chinese" and then *Meta-Tag*. so that the tags are just the country or culture type (Chinese, Korean, Laosian, Japanese, India, Pakistan, Saudi, etc) with 5 or 10 meta tags that affect the main tag.

it may not work. it's how I tag things IRL - but i write it out, on folders and etc - i have no clue if it something that can be used here.
i am guessing you would have to either A) make LJ (or something) allow "meta-tag", or actually CALL them "Meta Tag (thing)" - like "Meta Tag; Culture" and then make the tag attachable to the tag it is modifying. and again, i am not sure that is do-able.

i'm thinking i should have probably not even suggested it - i ran it by my programmer-dad, and he said he could make it work... and it would probably take him a month or so to modify the code - if it were his *job*; doing it in his free time would take longer. (i was hoping it would be a quick little add-on program i could offer the Comm, here... but no :( )

i don't know... like i said, it's how i work in real life - but LJ is not so much with the real-life adaptations. it would almost definately allow for a wider range of tags (because you wouldn't need to write different ones for "writer" "setting" "language" for each culture of country, just the name of the culture or country and a meta tag) but it might be impossible to impliment. does LJ forcebly alphabetize tags? (i don't use tags on LJ, at all, because i am too lazy) or might make everything more confusing.

like i said - i promise if no one wants to do this, i will *not* be upset or anything. i am just offering something that works for me - no one else has to try it. when i first proposed it, it seemed a *lot* simpler to do than now.

LJ does forcibly alphabetize tags. Neither one lets you modify one tag with another tag; the tags are independent of one another.

ah. it won't work at all, then :(

sorry for wasting time - i was *trying* to be helpful. sigh.

on the other hand, it sounds as if migrating author tags to that other site will free up room, which is what i was trying to do - so it seems to be covered, anyway :)

Oyce (and others) - I've been tagging my bookposts on Delicious primarily so that I could easily locate them and also keep track of which reviews I had posted to the comm and which I hadn't (I only save reviews posted to the comm). If you'd like to take a look at the way I've done my particular tagging, they're all here. (http://delicious.com/sweet_adelheid/bundle:50books_poc)

I'm certainly not saying this is the only way (or even a great way) of tagging: it mostly suits my purposes, particuarly the genre and continent tags, for example.

One thing I can see as potentially helpful in the whole massive tagging process might be if I and anyone else who has reviews saved on Delicious send the links through (at some point, when you tell us you're ready) via a for:50books_poc tag.

Awesome, thanks, I'll check those out!

Also, good point re: having people send links.

More on tagging

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Tagging on Delicious

Re: Tagging on Delicious