Tag clumps: DDR / East Germany

The tags in question are http://www.librarything.com/tag/East+Germany and http://www.librarything.com/tag/DDR .

Tag East Germany Includes: east germany, germany (east), deutsche demokratische republik, german democratic republic (gdr), east germany ddr, germany east, Germany (East), EAST GERMANY, east Germany, Germany East, East Germany, east_germany, Deutsche Demokratische Republik, East germany, Deutsche Demokratische republik, German Democratic Republic (GDR)

Tag DDR Includes: ddr, Östtyskland, germana demokratia respubliko, östtyskland, ; DDR, Germana Demokratia Respubliko, Ddr, . DDR, DDR, German Democratic Republic, german democratic republic, DDr, dDR

And "starbox has proposed combining the tags DDR and German Democratic Republik." and starbox has proposed combining the tags DDR and Democratic Republic of Germany.", neither of which is on a course to pass or fail.

Is there any way we can work together to clear this up? There's three tag groups here IMO: "DDR" and variants, "Deutsche Demokratische Republik" (German Democratic Republic, etc.), and East Germany (Östtyskland, etc.) I'm not thrilled dumping them all on DDR, since it has other meanings, but they don't seem to be in use. In any case, anything would be better than the mess we have right now.

I would agree with your grouping, generally.

I would not combine Democratic Republic of Germany with any of the others because it is not and was not the official name of the country, but that combination looks about to go through. It seems about halfway between German Democratic Republic and Federal Republic of Germany to me.

East Germany ddr is a funny one. That would almost have to belong with Deutsche Demokratische Republik.

Wasn't one rule we don't combine abbreviations with full names? So no, DDR shouldn't be combined with any of them.

Besides, DDR could also stand for Dance Dance Revolution, a very popular game. (I also said it could mean dumb dumb read, but that I realized is a stretch.)

This would be like combining SF and Science Fiction - SF is also San Francisco...

I use the tag DDR meaning the country that existed from 1949 to 1990 and all literature discussing it.
I'm pretty sure that all Germans will tag with DDR, never Deutsche Demokratische Republik etc. because no one used that moniker unless officially.

I also doubt Germans would use East Germany (or Ostdeutschland) denoting DDR, so imagine my surprise when I changed language in Wikipedia to find the corresponding article about the GDR labelled as East Germany. Ostdeutschland - for Germans - has different connotations. I would tag with Ostdeutschland books about or taking place in the the new German states after 1990 (because not all of them deal with the GDR; they have many topics unique to their situation).

For me (and other Germans), it's inconvenient to not have DDR, GDR, Deutsche Demokratische Republik and German Democratic Republic together, but I would be more than okay not to have East Germany included, while Non-Germans would probably prefer to have East Germany / Ostdeutschland in the mix.

>5 leselotte: But it is not just about how German speakers tag. DDR is an acronym for many other things, and many English-speakers will not have the idea DDR = German Democratic Republic. In fact, younger members may look at that name and draw a blank.

The current page is not as useful as you might think, as a fair number of books seem to have tagged DDR because people own editions that were published there. Jungle Book, as just one example. At least that is the best explanation I can come up with. In fact, if you want to find as many books as possible, splitting may even help, as currently DDR has over 1000 uses, and therefore many don't show on the tag page.

DDR and GDR should not be combined. Both have other meanings.

>6 MarthaJeanne: Oh, maybe I didn't explain myself well (I sometimes have problems doing that!) Of course you're right! Just stating my personal opinion :)

I've submitted the first few separations.

Submitted the rest.

>3 gilroy: Wasn't one rule we don't combine abbreviations with full names? Why then is USA linked with United States of America and not with University of South Alabama or Union of South Africa/Unie van Suid-Afrika or other such possibilities?
>10 MarthaJeanne: But it is not just about how German speakers tag. But DDR is a German abbreviation, and it was the officially used abbreviation of the Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. BRD for Bundesrepublik Deutschland was a well used abbreviation but was not officially used.

I think one problem here is the combination of terms used in different languages. German tags should only be combined when the sense is the same. For example all my books about poison (Gift in German) are put together with Geschenke (gift in English). DDR was the official name of the state and should therefore be treated as in the case of USA.

I have suggested that geschenk be separated from gift.

>11 paulstalder: Why would be two reasons: 1) People propose combinations because they assume and don't do research into all rules or possibilities and 2) We have enough people who just vote YES for every proposal that things get approved when they shouldn't.

I've started posting separations for the United States combos from USA now. And I started going the wrong direction, so there's lots to separate.

>13 gilroy: Thanks for taking up that huge task. But I am not sure how useful it will prove to be. I am very much aware that most books with USA as a tag are about the United States of America. I think officially used abbreviations like USA, DDR, AIDS, NATO etc. should not be separated from their spelled out names.

>14 paulstalder: I agree. Just like Shakespeare, if something potentially ambiguous is overwhelmingly used for one meaning, it should be combined with that meaning.

>14 paulstalder: See, I disagree. Abbreviations could mean many different things. DDR as a for instance, is not overwhelmingly for East Germany. For some, it is overwhelmingly Dance Dance Revolution. Both are very valid. How do you determine which is correct?

>16 gilroy: DDR does not basicaly mean East Germany but only the German Democratic Republic. And the overwhelming use in European countries is that DDR refers to that former country.
We need a separatipn of the languages with the tags and not the priority of usamerican usage.

>11 paulstalder: There are still a lot of old combinations around from the time when you could just combine tags without there being a vote.

There is also no way to tell what language a person means when they tag a book. We have a lot of multi-lingual people on LT who may use different languages for different tags.

>17 paulstalder: Um, DDR is not strictly American. Sorry to burst your bubble but that's also an Asian designation for that game.

>16 gilroy: DDR as a for instance, is not overwhelmingly for East Germany. For some, it is overwhelmingly Dance Dance Revolution. Both are very valid. How do you determine which is correct?
>19 gilroy: DDR is not strictly American. Sorry to burst your bubble but that's also an Asian designation for that game.

This is why I normally stay out of tag combination voting. So many trivial arguments over what appear to me to be irrelevant possibilities. Just look at http://www.librarything.com/tag/ddr&norefer=1 - here on LibraryThing it's overwhelmingly, globally, German Democratic Republic.

I don't doubt that it's also used in some contexts, in the USA and Asia, for Dance Dance Revolution, but it's certainly not "overwhelmingly Dance Dance Revolution" here.

If I could find a single book in the first five pages of books on that list that looked like it was referring to Dance Dance Revolution, I'd vote for separation.

>19 gilroy: bubble: I was talking about European countries when referring to DDR. But I also looked with Tor Browser and Naver (a Korean search engine) and found that DDR there stands for Double Data Rate basically, and not the country nor the game. But when talking with Koreans (I've been there several times) they do know about the country. If you check with google.co.kr there you get also the Double Data Rate first, then the country and then the game (depending on your browser and the country your computer says it is in). It's clear that Dance Dance Revolution is known but not overwhelmingly.

Apart from that, I noticed that WOW and GOT tags in Librarything (LT stands for Lithuania :) ) are all not combined with the spelled out names. That only means that people who tag WOW won't find the World of Warcraft titles when searching tags. Fine if that is what we want. So it should also apply especially to UK and USA, USAF, WWI, WWII, NATO and others.

The USAmerican usage refers to these strange situations when UK is combined with United Kingdom, but GB is not combined with Great Britain. USA is combined with 'the united states'. Both abbreviations are used for other things. But as soon as other languages are involved, the rule not to combine applies. That's why I'd prefer separate tag management for the languages. But as >18 MarthaJeanne: pointed out, we have a problem here.

WOW is a clear case. There are lots of books in there that are not World of Warcraft.

GOT also has multiple meanings which are obviously being used by various members.

If you come across an acronym that is combined with one of its meanings, you are welcome to suggest the separations.

>21 paulstalder: Again, that goes back to my explanation of reasons why. I'd be more inclined to separate, should I ever come across these faulty combos. But as seen with USA, it's a huge task, because people keep putting more in, rather than taking out.

ETA: and I can now go back and point out the tag combining guidelines everyone ignores, anyway:
"Combining acronyms with non-acronyms should be avoided in general. For instance, combining "science fiction" with "SF" is not good, since other people use SF to mean "San Francisco" (or something else entirely). "

So we shouldn't be combining acronyms with actual phrases per our already written rules.

Isn't the idea that you look at the usage on lt as well, because that's what it's used for.

>23 gilroy: Thanks for quoting the rule. I didn't know about that. I just felt uneasy whenever I came across an English acronym, the combinations were all done, whenever another language was used, the things were separated - that is disturbing.

Come back to >1 prosfilaes: I would put all of them together, because the books in there have all the same theme. Like that there would be some order there. No mess there anymore and we could concentrate on the FBI mess and others.

First of all, the "rule" in >23 gilroy: comes from the LT wiki which is written by users so it isn't authoritative. And note that even that "rule" says "in general" implying that there are cases where the it doesn't apply.

Second, you need to look at the context which is a book cataloging site. How many books have been written on Dance Dance Revolution vs. those written about the German Democratic Republic?

Third, look at the flip side. What do you lose by separating the tags. If DDR and the German Democratic Republic were separated then many users who like to use short tags and used the abbreviation will be separated from those users who used the long version. If they go to the tag page for their version of the tag they won't see the works that are only tagged with the long version. They won't receive recommendations for works that are only tagged with the long version.

>26 jjwilson61: If DDR and the German Democratic Republic were separated then many users who like to use short tags and used the abbreviation will be separated from those users who used the long version. If they go to the tag page for their version of the tag they won't see the works that are only tagged with the long version. They won't receive recommendations for works that are only tagged with the long version.

That's not entirely true either.

There will be people who tag the books with both.
Also, through book combination (another contested idea here), you'll have the differing tags on the books.

So now the Related Tags box in the upper right of the screen will have either the long or the short, whichever they didn't search for, for them to follow the internet rabbit hole like normal.