Why I voted "no"? (Tag separation/combination) #11

Hello. Welcome to "Why I Voted No" #11.

"Philosophy of Education: Christian" to me would mean a Christian view on education whereas, "Philosophy of Christian Education" to me means views of an education that itself is distinctly Christian.

Example: If I were using those tags, I would put Augstine's De Magistro in the former and a catechetical theory book in the latter.

https://www.librarything.com/tag/Philosophy+of+Education%3A+Christian#combine

"Hogan family" is used for a book by a couple of people named Hogan. "family hogan" is used for a book about initiation rituals and is therefore likely to be referring to the Navajo dwelling.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/family+hogan#combine

"Lesbian and gay" things are different from "Gay and lesbian" things.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/gay+and+lesbian+culture#combine

>4 karenb: How so?

>5 jjwilson61: The same way that LGBT is not the same as GLBT

>6 gilroy: That's very helpful.

>7 jjwilson61: It should be, as that's one of Tim's PRIMARY examples of what Not to combine.

Which reminds me, I have to recommend some separations based on that...

>5 jjwilson61: Hi, yeah, I could've said more about that, sorry. There are decades of conversations in the QUILTBAG communities about which word goes first. To counter sexism, some people deliberately put L/Lesbian first; putting the G/Gay first was more frequent earlier on.

While these conversations heated up in the 1970s, they continue. These days, the conversations center more around how to make sure that the B & T don't get lost or forgotten, but which letter/group is named first still matters.

>9 karenb: I was unfamiliar with QUILTBAG, so thanks for that. :)

I would like to suggest that the difference between 'timetables' and 'timetables' is not a careful distinction made who actaully pbulish a timetable or timetables. A statement that many of us in the industry might say is: the New York Central Railway Timetable has 32 pages of timetables. Each route and even each direction of a bus or rail route can be said to have a timetable. The publication these are gathered in can be in the plural or slightly more commonly in the singular. So, I would suggest voting No on separating the singular and plural as you are diminishing the clarity: http://www.librarything.com/tag/Timetables .
I have published 3-4,000 timetables in my career, so this is how I see this usage.

A "journalist" is not necessarily a "newspaper reporter": http://www.librarything.com/tag/journalist#combine

"Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -" and "Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago" do not have the same meaning.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Alexander+Solzhenitsyn%27s+Gulag+Archipelago#com...

There are many varieties of "year's best science fiction" collections. Gardner Dozois is responsible for only one of them.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Dozois+Year%27s+Best+SF

"New York" often refers to the city, not the state: http://www.librarything.com/tag/New+York#combine
"Nebraska" can refer to a town, a film, and a variety of things other than the state: http://www.librarything.com/tag/Nebraska#combine
Same with "Utah": http://www.librarything.com/tag/Utah#combine
and "Illinois": http://www.librarything.com/tag/Illinois#combine

And, oh, heck, all the other similar proposals.

>15 lilithcat: Yes, this absolutely.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/japanische+Klassiker

Japanische Klassiker is German for Japanese Classics, NOT classical Japanese.

https://www.librarything.com/tag/State+of+North+Carolina

North Carolina could refer to the time of the colony, before the state existed. It could refer to the college. It could refer to a variety of things beyond just the state.

Off the top of my head, before caffeine:

https://www.librarything.com/tag/U.S.+State%3A+Wisconsin
https://www.librarything.com/tag/U.S.+State%3A+Missouri
https://www.librarything.com/tag/u.s.+state%3A+mississippi

Three states also share names with rivers and tribes, and no doubt more stuff that I don't know, myself.

>19 karenb: I'm not really convinced about Wisconsin; what other things share the name? I can't find Native American tribes with those names--Mississippi is named after the river, which is Great River in Ojibwe--but the rivers seem clear enough; Huckleberry Finn is at the top of the Mississippi tag, and I'm not sure where the part where he runs into Tom Sawyer is set, after looking it up and skimming through that part of the book--it could be Mississippi--but I think that's pretty clear evidence a large chunk of the Mississippi tag is about the river, not the state. I'm not as confident about Missouri, but it certainly seems plausible that it could mean the Missouri River.

>20 prosfilaes:

There's a Wisconsin River, and, like many state names, it also refers to a battleship. And, as in the song, "On, Wisconsin", it can mean the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Historically, it could mean the territory.

Because no one is using the tag "U.S. State: Wisconsin", there doesn't seem to be any reason to combine it with plain ol' "Wisconsin".

Tim’s principle that tags should be combined only if they’re equivalent in both meaning and usage surely implies that unused tags should never be combined.

>20 prosfilaes: Not to mention the many US naval vessels with states' names.

>22 AndreasJ: I see this regularly. I don't know if people are bored or they want to boost their helper stats or what. But there should be a rule, at least among us here, that unused tags shouldn't be combined.

I think that if someone was talking about a river or a battleship they would use river or battleship in the tag, at least in the vast majority of the cases.

>25 jjwilson61: I agree with battleships, but what about Huckleberry Finn which people have tagged Mississippi? It's possible it takes place in Mississippi, but a quick search leaves me unsure, so I'm guessing when people tagged it Mississippi, they were talking about the river (which dominates the book) and not the state. The Library of America titled one of their volumes of Twain's works Mississippi Writings, and I know that at least one volume in that book, Tom Sawyer, has no part take place in the state of Mississippi. To leave Twain, Old Glory : A Voyage Down the Mississippi is another book that is tagged Mississippi heavily, for a book that starts in Minnesota and ends in Louisiana; if people were tagging it for the state instead of the river, we'd also see large Minnesota, Missouri, Louisiana, etc. tags, not just a small Minnesota and the rest hidden unless you request all tags.

>26 prosfilaes: It occurs on the Mississippi River. A lot of Twain's writings deal with the Mississippi River, not the state.

https://www.librarything.com/tag/Pennsylvania+Dutch

For some reason, I tried to recommend "Pennsylvania Dutch with Pennsylvania Dutch and it gave me blank instead. When I reversed how I was doing it, it worked correct. So please vote no on the blank combo.

Thanks!

>28 gilroy:

That's due to weirdness when one tag has quotation marks around it. You can combine in one direction but not the other. I have no idea why this is, but it's a known issue.

>29 lilithcat: Guess I just showed how infrequently I recommend combos. :)

ETA: And I see our no pay attention voter strikes again, even with a blank and a tag they voted yes...

>27 gilroy: Yes, Huckleberry Finn occurs on the Mississippi River, but the Wikipedia article headings are

2.1 In Missouri
2.2 In Illinois and on Jackson's Island
2.3 In Kentucky: the Grangerfords and Shepherdsons
2.4 In Arkansas: the Duke and the King
2.5 On the Phelps' farm

If the Phelps' farm is in Mississippi, then it's at least a possibility people tagged because a major part of the book takes place in Mississippi. If not, then we can safely say that people tagged Huckleberry Finn as Mississippi despite no part of the book taking part there.

>31 prosfilaes: Uh, no. People tagged it because many in the south do not refer to the river as the Mississippi River. They refer to it as the Mississippi. Just like the Missouri River is sometimes called the Missouri. The Ohio River is sometimes just the Ohio.

The Potomac River is referred to as the Potomac.
The Patuxent River is referred to as the Patuxent.

Rivers don't always have that modifier attached to their name.

Alright, I'll vote no for those combinations where a state name by itself is also the name of a major river. I draw the line at battleships though.

In 1814 we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British in a town in New Orleans

We fired our guns and the British kept a-comin'
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they begin to runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you
Look away, you rollin' river
Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you
Look away, we're bound away
Across the wide Missouri.

>32 gilroy: Again, does the book take place in the state of Mississippi? If the answer is no, then we can quite clearly hold it up as an example of "it had to be tagged for the river, because it didn't take place in the state". If the answer is yes, then it doesn't make a completely clear example. You can claim that people tagged it because ..., but, as always, it's nice to have an example that doesn't involve mind-reading.

>36 prosfilaes: I googled it and doesn't look like Twain explicitly says what state Phelps' farm is located in but it's probably Arkansas.

>33 jjwilson61:

I agree about the battleships, but then there's those state universities too. And pre-state entities. (Now stuck with mental image of how to draw a line on a battleship: where does one start?!)

>37 jjwilson61: et al.

I love that this discussion of tags lets us focus on the important stuff: what's IN the books. Like the Phelps' farm in Huck Finn.

>38 karenb:

Now stuck with mental image of how to draw a line on a battleship: where does one start?!

At the waterline, of course. And with waterproof paint. While drinking this.

>39 lilithcat: That's a Plimsoll line and IIRC all ships have them, including battleships.

I don't recall seeing so many controversial proposals at the same time...

The states stuff, though, there's all sorts of reasons why we shouldn't combine the {name of state} with "US State: {name of state}." Colleges, Indian tribes, rivers, pre-state history, civil war history (should a history of the confederacy be tagged under US State? That certainly sounds debatable), and, without looking, I'm sure there's a Hannah Montana book somewhere tagged with "Montana."

Once again, someone wants to combine "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr" with "Martin Luther King": http://www.librarything.com/tag/Dr.+Martin+Luther+King+Jr.#combine

https://www.librarything.com/tag/Underworlds+USA+Trilogy+%233

Underworlds USA trilogy does not mean all things tagged underworld #3 should be merged. It could also refer to the third (horrid) underworld movie.

>43 gilroy: In general, I don't make these kinds of combinations. Even if a movie hasn't been made yet, that doesn't mean one won't be made in the future.

Lloyd Hopkins is an author as well as a fictional character: http://www.librarything.com/tag/Lloyd+Hopkins#combine

"L.A Quartet" could refer to any one of several music groups as well as a book series: http://www.librarything.com/tag/L.A.+Quartet#combine

Design and art are two overlapping topics. Design is about planning and organization, and can apply to computery topics (such as systems analysis, technical writing, or user interfaces) and other things that aren't art.

"Art/design" is either about the part where they overlap or maybe a combining of topics.

"Art: Design" is only about design that is involves art.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Art%3A+Design

"Casa de Campo" is the title of a work by the author José Donoso, and is used to refer to a book about Donoso. It is not the same as the tag "country houses" which refers to, well, country houses: http://www.librarything.com/tag/Casa+de+Campo#combine

And "Saint Francis" and "San Francisco" aren't identical, either: http://www.librarything.com/tag/San+Francisco#combine

The tag playhouses is mostly used for theatres, whereas play houses is used for structures for children to play in.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/NF+Bio

Bio can be short for Biology as well as Biography.

Maybe I'm a little sheepish with tags, but I would assume that, as a general rule, anything that might be used to mean more than one thing (Eg. Mississippi) shouldn't be combined with something that is specifically one thing (US State: Mississippi), even if the chance for one options being used is much less than the other.

"...has proposed combining the tag taos artists and artists in taos."

This was a "no" for me because one could be artists who are from Taos while the other could refer to artists that just happen to be visiting the area.

"...has proposed combining the tag musical soundtrack and music soundtrack."

Also a "no" because "musical" has different meanings than just "music." Eg. musical: film, musical: tone, etc.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/leidos

Leidos is the name of an American defense company.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/the+right+one is primarily used on relationship books
http://www.librarything.com/tag/right+one is used on a children's book about a dog (?)

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Jerome+Taylor is an apparent reference to a fictional character
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Taylor+Jerome is used on books related to the Chaucer scholar, b. 1918. I don't see any reason to combine these at the moment.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Jeremie is used by a single tagger on 400+ books to refer to the owner of the book in that library
http://www.librarything.com/tag/J%C3%A9r%C3%A9mie is used by a few taggers, mostly on Bible-related books, presumably a reference to Jeremiah

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Fiction+-+NJ is used by a tagger who has different things tagged in their library as J or NJ. I'm guessing this is something like juvenile vs. non-juvenile, since neither of the books there has anything to do with New Jersey, unlike it's proposed combination with
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Fiction+NJ and
http://www.librarything.com/tag/NJ+fiction

http://www.librarything.com/tag/History+-+NJ same with this tag proposed for combination with
http://www.librarything.com/tag/NJ+History and
http://www.librarything.com/tag/n.j.+-history (which isn't even used on any books)

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Morris+M. is used on a book about physics/astronomy, perhaps a reference to Michael S. Morris
http://www.librarything.com/tag/M+MORRIS is used on a books about civil right, probably not the same M. Morris.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/david+morrison is tagging books related to the poet David R. Morrison and another David Morrison, while
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Morrison+David is tagging books related to the rabbi Morrison David Bial. I see no reason to combine these tags.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/W+Morris is use for books related to the Arts and Crafts movement designer
http://www.librarything.com/tag/W.+Morris is used on a book that may or may not be related to the same guy, but I doubt any investigation was done.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/musical+soundtrack is mostly used on Broadway-style musicals, unlike
http://www.librarything.com/tag/music+soundtrack mostly used on movie soundtracks

http://www.librarything.com/tag/W+Morris is use for books related to the Arts and Crafts movement designer
http://www.librarything.com/tag/W.+Morris is used on a book that may or may not be related to the same guy, but I doubt any investigation was done.

In both cases, it's used for tagging books related to people called W. Morris. I personally draw the line at separating two tags that are virtually the same and have no rational distinguishing characteristics besides random chance about who used what.

"The Marriage of Figaro" is used solely for the opera by Mozart and da Ponte. "Figaro's Marriage" is used only for the play upon which the opera is based.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/The+Marriage+of+Figaro#combine

http://www.librarything.com/tag/P.M.+Magazin is used for copies of P.M. Magazin (short for Peter Moosleitners Magazin). It's not a misspelling of
http://www.librarything.com/tag/PM+Magazine which is used on a book referring to the 1940s NY daily.

Not all Flavia de Luce mysteries are Flavia de Luce novels. There are short stories as well.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/A+FLAVIA+de+LUCE+MYSTERY#combine

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Homer+Thompson is used on a book to refer to the classical archaeologist, whereas
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Thomson+homer is used on a book that has a passage about the Bobby Thomson home run. Srsly.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Joseph+Strauss is used on books about Joseph Strauss 1870–1938, the structural engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge, whereas
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Strau%C3%9F+Josef is used on a book about Johann Strauss II, so presumably refers to his brother Josef Strauss (1827–1870)

http://www.librarything.com/tag/E+Sommer is used on a children's book by Carl Sommer. The library tagging it has many tags starting with E followed by a surname, F followed by a surname, J followed by a surname, JF followed by a surname, or KC followed a surname, but not other letter combos (and those letters or combos don't appear related to first names), so it seems to be some internal cataloging convention.
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Sommer+E. seems to be a reference to one Ernst Sommer (who has a story in the tagged book).

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Levi-Strauss has some books about the jeans manufacturer, but mostly about the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, whereas
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Strauss+Levi is just about the jeans manufacturer and its form is unlikely to ever refer to the anthropologist, and
http://www.librarything.com/tag/strauss+levi+1829-1902 is of course about the jeans manufacturer.

Perhaps "Levi Strauss" should be separated from http://www.librarything.com/tag/Levi-Strauss , then?

>59 prosfilaes: Suggested.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Nick+and+Nora are on books referencing Nick and Nora Charles, whereas
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Nick+and+Norah is used on Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

>60 MarthaJeanne: Threshold met

http://www.librarything.com/tag/œuvre+du+xxe+siècle

Wouldn't that be 20th century, not 21st? Several of the authors doed before 2000.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Brown+Jack
Brown Jack was a horse. The other book tagged there referring to author Jack Brown I don't think is the same Jack Brown as on the Jack Brown tag page anyway.

Surely a "subseries" is not the same as a "series"?

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Rincewind+subseries#combine

>65 lilithcat:

In that particular case I struggle to imagine what difference there could be - both would presumably refer to the subset of the larger Discworld series that feature the character Rincewind - but something (private books?) prevents me from seeing what the "Series - Rincewind" tag is actually applied to.

I'd combine them too. In meaning and use its basically the same.

>66 AndreasJ:

I'm not familiar enough with those books to say, but it does seem to me that "subseries" in general has a different meaning.*

I don't know why these aren't showing on the tag page, but these are the books in that person's library with the "Series - Rincewind" tag: http://www.librarything.com/catalog/ariaflame&tag=Series%2B-%2BRincewind Maybe this will help.

* For example, I might call Dorothy L. Sayers' Wimsey-Vane novels a "subseries" of her Lord Peter Wimsey novels.

The rincewind series is a sub-series of the discworld series. So the tags apply to the same works.

>69 JerryMmm:

So the tags apply to the same works.

But that does not mean they should be combined.

Subseries is a bit nebulous - I'd define it as a part of a series with a common thematic link - so in the case of Discworld, the Granny Weatherwax, the Sam Vimes or the Rincewind books. All are Discworld novels, but they aren't the same. Katherine Kurtz's Deyni books are a similar series - all set in the same world, all dealing with the interaction between Deryni and human, but effectively written as linked trilogies and stand-alones.

So yeah, if someone has used tags to define a subseries, then the tags shouldn't be combined with tags defining a series.

>68 lilithcat:

I can't see any books on that page either.

FWIW, the user of "Rincewind subseries" has applied that tag to all books they own that feature Rincewind. They only own two, tho, that happen to form a duology, so that might not mean much.

>71 Maddz:

Even if the "series" consists of the same subset of a larger series?

There are a lot of Bonaparte suggestions. Most of the names can belong to several people.

Look, there is a discworld series, set on the discworld. A subseries from that features certain characters as their main protagonist. The works having Rincewind as their protagonist are a subseries but also a series. Series is contained. I’d also combine for example a tag like Series-Discworld-Rincewind if it existed. One is contained in the other, so both apply. Not the other way round of course.

Like combining Horses with Mammals-Horses.

>72 AndreasJ:

I can't see any books on that page either.

That's weird. I see six. Be sure it's set to "All Collections".

>75 lilithcat:

It works now, for whatever reason. I don't recall touching anything to do with which collections are shown in the interrim.

Anyway, having seen both, I see no reason to assume otherwise than that both tags are being used to mean "that subset of the Discworld books that feature Rincewind".

OK, this is more "Why you voted no?", but this seems like the right thread for it:

The combination of "Geographical myths" and "geographical mythology" is currently looking to fail:

https://www.librarything.com/tag/Geographical+myths

As the one who proposed the combination and the only user of the longer tag, I'm curious what difference those who are voting "no" see between them?

Probably that myths is different from mythology.

https://www.librarything.com/tag/balneario

Haven't we said no to balneario and spa before?

>79 gilroy:

Yes, more than once, I think!

>79 gilroy: Yes, I think so, too. It would help to have disambiguation notices on certain tag pages.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/hofstader

Hofstader and Hofstadter are different family names, even if sometimes one is misspelled as the other. We wouldn't combine Smith, Smyth, and Smithe.

"Short" fiction could be a novella or a shorter novel, as well as a short story:

http://www.librarything.com/tag/short+fly+fishing+fiction#combine

There is a desert in Baja California. (Not in USA)
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Deserts+%28%5BCalifornia%5D+USA%29

Nor are all american deserts in the USA http://www.librarything.com/tag/deserts+%28US%29

>84 MarthaJeanne: Aren't Baja California and California separate places? It seems like refusing to combine Deserts Mexico (MX) with Deserts Mexico because there are deserts in New Mexico.

I voted "no" for combining Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003) and Katharine Hepburn as the actress's mother was also named Katharine Hepburn and was a prominent progressive activist in her own right in the early 20th century.

>86 Marissa_Doyle: Link?

>87 neverstopreading: Sorry--http://www.librarything.com/tag/Katharine+Hepburn+%281907-2003%29#combine

Better: http://www.librarything.com/tag/Katharine+Hepburn+%281907-2003%29#combine

There are several "Katherine Hepburn {dates}" combined in with the "Katherine Hepburn" tag, so I'll propose some separations

MarthaJeanne @84:

Nobody calls Baja California "California".

>90 norabelle414: This is why I don't like combining names and dates. There are often multiple people with the same name I'm unaware of. It's difficult to research them all. As far as I'm concerned, the birth/death dates are a convenient way of identifying and separating people with the same (or even similar) names.

Further, even if there is one Mortimero A. Barfenslagisky (a name I just made up) today, there might be another one tomorrow. Who will be the next sensation?

I don't see a good reason to ever vote to combine these.

I don't know about Barfenslagisky, but if someone wants to combine the Shakespeare tag with the Shakespeare (whatever the dates should be) tag then I would have absolutely no problem with it. My rule of thumb is that if a vast majority of users are likely to use a general tag in a specific way (like Katherine Hepburn) then I think that it would be a useful thing to combine that general tag with a more specific tag that represents what that vast majority of users really mean (like Katharine Hepburn (1907-2003)).

>93 jjwilson61: I agree.

>92 neverstopreading: I follow your rule of thumb usually. Date means no.

I don't mind either way, honestly. What I don't like is the limbo that Katharine Hepburn is currently in, where all the separations are leaning toward "no" but the combination is also leaning toward "no"

I'm really hoping this was just a slip of the finger.

Someone proposed combining Young Adult and Slavery.
https://www.librarything.com/tag/slavery

>97 gilroy: Yikes, and also why does it have two yeses and an undecided??? I know we have one always-yesser but are there two?

I note that the person joined yesterday so it could be they didn't know what they were doing or it could be some kind of trolling thing?

>97 gilroy: maybe some disgruntled teen who can't wait to move away from home?

Seriously, though, that's a strange one.

EDIT: Profile was created July 16, 2018. Probably someone being a troll who has too much time on their hands.

>99 neverstopreading:

More likely someone who doesn't understand the function of tag combination. We see these odd ones from time to time, and it generally appears as though the person has a book to which both tags are applicable, and thinks, "well, I should combine them".

http://www.librarything.com/tag/The+Towers+of+Silence both refer to the book by Paul Scott.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Towers+of+Silence The other three books refer to the way Parsis deal with their dead.

Maite http://www.librarything.com/tag/Maite not only is not used on any books, but it is also a name, both of people and of a village.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Geld
Sorry, Tim, but 1) Geld is a valid word in English that does not mean either money or wealth. 2) These combinations would also combine money and wealth which are really not the same thing.

>102 MarthaJeanne: I knew geld was throwing me off...

To Geld: as related to horses...

>103 gilroy:

Or castrati.

>102 MarthaJeanne: (et al) This is really making me laugh, and thank you for this. We owned some fine geldings in my youth, including a buckskin that was one of the best horses I've ever known. I *still* miss him (and it's been 50 years ago). Luckily for all those with delicate constitutions, I just deleted the two paragraphs on gelding that I was about to contribute.

I was an adult before I learned the word "gelt" (from friends who informed me that the coins I loved at Christmas were actually part of Hanukkah).

I relate it to cattle, at least since my sister-in-law and her husband took us and her parents to eat Rocky Mountain oysters. We had wanted to try them, but my mother-in-law only found out what sort of meat it was after the meal.

>106 MarthaJeanne: Too funny. Most steak comes from steers. Heifers are usually kept back to breed, and you only need a bull or two. I'm trying to remember the ratio of number of bulls to a herd; I think it was 1 per 500, but it could have been 1 per 1000. Bulls were usually kept segregated, so as not to have them bothering young mothers, or calves. I think one of the neighbors had three, one older, two younger. First time I ever heard my daddy say "City People" as a curse word.

"constitutional and legal history" is broader than "constitutional history": http://www.librarything.com/tag/constitutional+history#combine

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Adam+Sinclair

The Scottish actor is not a 'sir'. Nor is the character in the Cassidy novel.

The Belgariad #2 is mostly tagged on book 2, but it's also used on vol. 2 of a Belgariad omnibus, whereas
The Belgariad book 2 is unlikely to ever be used to mean the omnibus vol. 2 (which is books 4 & 5).

Bulgaria - art could plausibly mean "art depicting Bulgaria" or "art located in Bulgaria" as well as Bulgarian art. The meaning of "art located in Bulgaria" may actually be intended, as the tag is only used for a book about archaeological finds held in Bulgarian museums.

>110 omargosh: Why is The Belgariad book 2 not likely to be used to mean the second book of a multi book omnibus? Seems equally careless in either case.

I would think because the 2nd volume actually contains book 4 and book 5, but I could be wrong and I guess people might not even realize they are reading (and adding tags to) what were originally published as separate books? I don't think I understand what you think is careless.

>113 omargosh: Alternately, the 2nd book actually contains #4 and #5. Book usually means one physical bound volume, even if it can as well mean one literary item, originally printed or intended to be printed as a volume, even bound with other such items.

There are proposals to combine "Christmas" with "joulu" and "jul".

"Christmas" can be the name of a person as well as a holiday.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Christmas#combine

Probably best if other languages were separated as well. Translation combinations are tricky.

>116 TAir:

I proposed a lot of separations, but I might have missed a few.

Translation combinations are tricky.

Truer words were never spoken!

>117 lilithcat: The separations are all in the no range right now...

>118 gilroy:

I'm not terribly surprised. People rarely consider alternate meanings, and most don't check these threads, which is why it would be nice to have the ability to explain proposed separations and combinations, just as we can leave a comment explaining why a picture is flagged.

Expecting something similar with separating English plants from other languages, where plant is merely flora and does not refer to power plant (e.g. german Pflantze and Kraftwerk)...

Do you have proof that anyone is using the plants tag to mean power plants? I don't see that usage on the first page for the Plants tag and that usage just doesn't seem likely to me.

lilithcat (#15):

There are proposals to combine "Christmas" with "joulu" and "jul".

"Christmas" can be the name of a person as well as a holiday.


Perhaps more relevantly, "jul" is frequently used as the abbreviation for "July". In fact, the most frequent user appears to be using it with that sense - all their tags are in English, and they also use "aug", "sep", "mar", "jun", etc.

http://www.librarything.com/tags/mumfie

So are you suggesting that the most frequent users have the power to exclude other (actual or potential) uses?

Perhaps there has been this kind of philosophical discussion before, please let me know is there consensus on this so I know better what to combine/separate. (Here this concerns at least both 'plant' and 'jul'.)

TAir (#123):

So are you suggesting that the most frequent users have the power to exclude other (actual or potential) uses?


No. It doesn't matter that mumfie is the most frequent user of "jul"; the fact that "jul" and "christmas" are not the same in both usage and meaning is what matters. "jul" means both "The month of July" and "the major Christian holiday on December 25", while "Christmas" means only the latter; "jul" is used to in both senses, while "Christmas" is used only in the latter. This is not a matter of philosophical discussion, this is the very basic of what tag combination is used for. It's the single most basic rule, in boldface at the top of the tag-combination guidelines, not some bit of esoterica.

See https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Tag_combining

Bah. That's really more of a guideline than a rule. The most basic rule for tag combining is to make tags more useful. And having a usage that is never used keep two otherwise related tags from being combined would actually decrease the usefulness of the tag system rather than increase it.

jjwilson61 (#125)

Fair enough, but "jul" means not-Christmas on LT more often than it means "Christmas", so I think combining them would decrease usefulness, no? My point was that "Tag X is a translation of Tag Y, but it also has a separate meaning and a non-negligible usage with that meaning and thus should not be combined with Tag Y" is hardly an obscure philosophical point. Probably half the posts here are pointing that sort of thing out, it should not have come as a surprise to TAir.

I was responding to the issue that TAir raised that plants shouldn't be combined with some translation because the word in the other language can't also mean power plants. I agree about jul.

http://www.librarything.com/work/11699253
http://www.librarything.com/work/11706865
http://www.librarything.com/work/10088260
http://www.librarything.com/work/5401778
http://www.librarything.com/work/3622672
http://www.librarything.com/work/2447409

These are a few books with the tag plant where it seems questionable that it is used to mean vegetation. Some seem to refer to a factory. One to a church plant, ie. a new church created by a group from an old one. Two refer to the Plant brothers who ran a porcelain company around 1900.

6 out of what, 40,000 tags?

There are more, and you can only check the top thousand books. This is the plant tag, not plants. Fewer books, so easier to see other usages. But it is proof that at least the singular not only has other meanings, but that they are being used in tagging on LT.

I said above: And having a usage that is never used keep two otherwise related tags from being combined would actually decrease the usefulness of the tag system rather than increase it.

I should have said "rarely used" instead of "never used".

>123 TAir: So are you suggesting that the most frequent users have the power to exclude other (actual or potential) uses?

Perhaps there has been this kind of philosophical discussion before, please let me know is there consensus on this so I know better what to combine/separate. (Here this concerns at least both 'plant' and 'jul'.)

I don't know to what extent it is relevant, but I recently proposed combining the tags 'history' and 'hanes' (the Welsh word for history), and had it voted down on the grounds that Hanes is probably better known as a brand of United States underwear, even though the tag has yet to be used in that sense.
https://cym.librarything.com/topic/193481#5249041

On the subject of plant, 'plant' happens to be the Welsh for 'children' (plentyn = child, pl. plant). Many of the books most frequently tagged 'plant' certainly look childish, but if anyone has tagged their books 'plant' (Welsh 'children') they will just have to grin and bear the fact that they are drowned in a sea of books tagged 'plant' (English 'plant'). Much, I would suggest, as someone tagging books on machinery as 'plant' will have to grin and bear it. And much as someone tagging their 'Hanes' underwear will have to grin and bear 'hanes' (Welsh 'history').

Interesting P/plant(s) findings. And also intetesting these translation examples which I've been following.
I was thinking of adding voimala(t) = plant(s) to my tags but had a hunch most think of flora, not factories. There's nothing we can do about homonyms but translation combining is tricky.

>129 jjwilson61: 6 out of what, 40,000 tags?

Of course, these are just 4 more drops in an overwhelmingly vegetative tag, but I was still able to pretty quickly find some works that were more likely tagged plants to refer to the building sense:

https://www.librarything.com/work/17188610
https://www.librarything.com/work/18643672
https://www.librarything.com/work/230173
https://www.librarything.com/work/16833925

I didn't have to scroll through fiery depths to find them though. I just did some simple tagmashes. There's more to these tag usages than just what's popular on the first page of results (which itself differs between us users, depending on whether we're sorting on raw usage, weighted view, etc.). I think I find tagmashes a much more handy use of global tags than just browsing the top of a tag page by itself, and of course by their nature tagmashes end up surfacing things that were usually buried deeper.

Though I do wish we had more options around dealing with these sticky situations. I'm thinking of things like disambiguation or aliasing like we can currently do with authors. Or sometimes, in the lumper vein, I'd like to do a union of, say, lgbt/glbt/lgbtq/gay/queer/allthequiltbags and then mash all of that with some other tag like memoir for the intersection. But I probably shouldn't hold my breath for Tim to develop such features, huh?

I voted against combining "solidarity" with "Solidarnosc", as the latter is used solely for the Polish workers movement, and the former is used for lots of other things.

(Sorry, I can't figure out how to link to the proposal. It's no longer on the tag page. Oh, wait, here it is: http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/solidarity#combinations)

And YAY for a "warnings and disambiguations" field!

Can we talk about some of the recent "no" votes. I see major disagreement about:

Combining "tulevaisuus with "future."
Combining "joulu" with "Christmas"

In all cases, all the evidence I've seen says the Finnish word is the ordinary, unmarked word for the other. Google the one and you get the other. Wikipedia links them.

Turning to the contents, the "tulevaisuus" tags is a list of "future" books, and the "joulu" books are Christmas books.

Similarly: Combining "WO II" with "WWII"

WO II is a standard Dutch abbreviation for WWII. This is easily confirmed.

Are people reacting against these because a Finnish tag or a Dutch tag is likely to have a higher percent of Dutch or Finnish books?! Because somebody somewhere is using WO to mean "Weird Onion II," or whatever?

Sorry, but I don't get this at all. A certain degree of ambiguity is going to happen. Will someone please explain?

Note: lilithcat's objection to "Solidarnosc" is the sort of thing I'd expect to see. There's a good rationale there, because lots of non-Polish people use "Solidarnosc" to mean the movement, not the concept of "solidarity." I don't see it for the others.

There is common disagreement between lumpers and splitters.

Sometimes even when a tag could potentially be used the other way even when it is not yet on lt, they vote no.

Someone needs to come up with a coherent defense of those, or we are changing the rules to make it clear a mere propensity to refuse combination is not a reason to refuse.

>136 timspalding:

Combining "WO II" with "WWII"

WO II is a standard Dutch abbreviation for WWII. This is easily confirmed.

Well, I voted "undecided" on that one.

As to "Christmas" and "joulu", Christmas can also be the name of a person. (Think of all those poor people going through life with the name "Mary Christmas" because their parents thought it was cute.)

>136 timspalding:
I don't know why tulevaisuus, but votes against joulu are most likely in response to >115 lilithcat:.

I agree that WO II should be probably combined with WWII and I don't think it's people reacting to higher percentage of Dutch books, since other combos with WWII like, say, segunda guerra mundial, have historically gone through without a hitch. Rather, I imagine it's a reaction to some people that, as a rule-of-thumb, generally vote against any abbreviation or acronym proposals, or at least ones that are less familiar like I guess WO II must be.

I think people's need for some simple heuristics when voting comes into play big-time here, since I think often a mind-numbing quantity of boring and sometimes pointless proposals often get made at once, so I think sometime people just pass through stuff that looks closely similar enough and are sometimes unnecessarily suspicious of things that look too different (at least that's why I assume proposals like Prince: 1958-2016 with Prince Rogers Nelson are currently failing pretty spectacularly despite referring to the same guy). There's too much to look at to always give it a full analysis. Given the quantity, and given some historical lack of care taken with certain kinds of proposal, some folks simply feel no other choice than to reflexively vote against things like Name with Name (birth-death), regardless of likelihood that Name refers to anybody else. (Though let me be clear: I think the 5-to-threshold change just sweeps such problems under the rug instead of actually improving this issue.)

There's also something of a bandwagon effect that happens at times. I have found that if I make a no-vote shortly after a proposal I disagree with was made, that no-vote counts for a lot more than if I make a no-vote on a similar proposal close to threshold or after it's met. Future voters see it and give more scrutiny to the proposal. Things literally depend on the time of day.

The luck or lack thereof of non-English combinations sometimes perplexes me. I do often wonder how everyone here became a polyglot and confidently votes yes on them. Then my cynical side tells me they're just pushing everything through on sometimes naive assumptions of good faith.

>140 omargosh:

I imagine it's a reaction to some people that, as a rule-of-thumb, generally vote against any abbreviation or acronym proposals, or at least ones that are less familiar like I guess WO II must be.

If I don't know that something is the same (and if I also am not sure that they are different), I vote "undecided". I do that a lot with foreign languages.

. . . they're just pushing everything through on sometimes naive assumptions of good faith

I will say that there are some people whose proposals I am inclined to vote for because I trust them, as they often will post in the various tag combining threads to explain the proposal.

Re: tulevaisuus, I looked closer, and have another theory why this one got mixed results. I see that it was proposed by TAir, who has also recently expressed some opinions here on this thread about what might be her tag combining/separating philosophy. I've noticed in the past that if I propose combinations shortly after writing in opposition to some other proposal(s), my proposals then tend to attract more no and undecided votes than if I had waited a while or if somebody else had made the same kind of proposal.

re: voting on combining across languages

I try to think mainly how people use tags for searching. What people are searching for, and why? Searching tags helps me find books so easily, especially the more I remember about a book. Themes and elements are more specific than titles and authors. For this, merging all the languages together is like throwing all the different colors of sand into one big pile: it gets much harder to find the two dozen grains of purple or green sand when it's mixed in with the hundreds or thousands of grains of all colors.

In this way, the language of a tag matters. Look at Christmas. Weinachten is more likely to occur in books either set in Germany OR in the German language. Navidad is more likely to point to Latinx American books, or Spanish language books, or books set in places where Spanish is the primary language. I read a lot, and these small points can make a big difference when searching tags. Lumping all the words together under the English-language equivalent is the opposite of helpful.

>141 lilithcat:
Agreed. I have a ton of Undecideds under my belt. I think we're in the minority. I think as for trusting certain proposers, I'm probably a bit opposite, haha. That is, I distrust some of them if they never explain themselves or change their patterns when I call out their proposals in these threads, haha.

>143 karenb: Lumping all the words together under the English-language equivalent is the opposite of helpful.

Unless you want to look up books about Christmas, and don't care where they're set. Or want to look up books about Christmas in Germany without having to guess what the German word for Christmas is. A general rule here is that tags in different languages are combined unless there's conflicting meanings.

>140 omargosh:

I'm very depressed by your message. It looks to me like people are doing some sloppy work. Ultimately, that's the fault of the system which, as you say, often presents large numbers of boring tags.

How about if, when you combine, you get to briefly describe why?

Another idea: The treshhold is different for smaller and larger tags--probably combinations of their counts. All these combinations of piddly and obvious tags really clog up the system.

>143 karenb:

I hear your arguments, but I have to disagree with them and indeed rule them off-sides. The system was designed to lump tags together by language, unless some compelling reason prevents it.

I do appreciate your thinking here, though. The point is indeed use. But if there are problems, we need to talk about the user interface. That the system allows users to see the various versions broken out, if they want to, is my solution to this.

>141 lilithcat: >144 omargosh:

Speaking of "undecided", do those votes have any weight in the threshold/outcome?

How about not allowing the combination of a single use tag unless the proposer is actually the single user of that tag.

>146 timspalding:
I kinda doubt an optional place to describe your reason for proposal would get used much. But maybe if it were required ... hmmm, that might be something.

I don't think size of the tags is usually related to the quality of the proposal. Or rather, I've seen bad proposals for big tags, and bad proposals for small tags. (Although the proposals involving tags with no uses at all ... I find those annoying. I'm assuming these are usually found because of search index delays?)

>147 karenb:
No, but occasionally their presence, esp. if done early on, are signals to other voters that "something's different here" (from the normal yes, yes, yes).

>146 timspalding:/149:
I would use an optional place to explain a combination. More than occasionally, I do a proposal that could use an explanation. Foreign language combos particularly may need this. So my record on this is ⅓ have uniform yes votes, ⅓ pass with some no votes, ⅓ fail. Early on, I seldom proposed tag combos that where there was a single use tags; but I normally do now unless the seem pretty different.

I think that the huge volume of tags could be cut by having hyphenated tags automatically combined: e.g. Europe history, Europe-history, Europe--history, Europe - history, Europe -- history, history Europe, history-Europe, history--Europe, History - Europe, History -- Europe.

Speaking of "undecided", do those votes have any weight in the threshold/outcome?

No, I think they're ignored. But they allow you to take something off your to-do list.

How about not allowing the combination of a single use tag unless the proposer is actually the single user of that tag.

Meh. Members don't own the global level. But there's something to be said for doing less combining of single-count tags.

I kinda doubt an optional place to describe your reason for proposal would get used much. But maybe if it were required ... hmmm, that might be something.

Yeah. Maybe. Much depends on who's combining and why.

Although the proposals involving tags with no uses at all ... I find those annoying

It would be a good idea to prevent that.

I think that the huge volume of tags could be cut by having hyphenated tags automatically combined: e.g. Europe history, Europe-history, Europe--history, Europe - history, Europe -- history, history Europe, history-Europe, history--Europe, History - Europe, History -- Europe.

I'm okay with X - Y, X-Y and X--Y being automatic. But combining them with X Y seems wrong.

There are problems with combining tags across languages.

One is simply that the person suggested gets it wrong. Doesn't know both languages well enough to make the right suggestion.

The second is the fact that there are lots of words that mean one thing in language A but something totally different in language B. And those suggesting don't bother to Google to check.

Perhaps we should allow members to give themselves language flags. So when someone who KNOWS Polish combines a Polish tag…

internet/intrenet

Spelling error, but there are two words the error could be, "internet" or "intranet," which have different meanings.

>154 WeeTurtle: Several of those have made it past the threshold.
http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Intrenet+Profits#combinations
http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Intrenet+resources#combinations

http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Church+Doctrines#combinations
Church - doctrine could mean doctrines about the church or the doctrine of a specific church. Church doctrine is very probably only the second.

There is a proposal to combine "Waals" and "Wallon". While in some instances these may both refer to a language, they are also the surnames of quite a few authors.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Wallon#combinations

>156 lilithcat: Also a proposal to combine Waals and Walloon.

Gent does not always refer to Ghent
http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Gent#combinations

It would be really nice if the disambiguation notices (or a link to them) were obvious on the "Proposed Tag Combinations" page, because if you're doing your combining from there, you'd have no idea they even exist.

Tag combining is supposed to increase the usefulness of tags. It is not a game or an exercise to find the most possible potential meanings of the tags being combined. When there's extant examples of tags being used in multiple meanings, incompatible with the combination proposed, this thread is extremely useful to prevent those proposals going through.

However, I fail to see the point in pointing out each and every possible and potential meaning, regardless of its use. I'd like to propose the following rule of thumb: only when a tag could actually be split into different meanings incompatible with a certain combination, that is grounds for refusing the combination. (Hanes' razor)

To the point: >156 lilithcat: in some instances these may both refer to a language You mean in each and every instance of the 5 uses of this tag it refers to the language, meaning the tags are the same in both meaning and usage on LibraryThing. (The key part of that sentence is "on LibraryThing", by the way).

>158 MarthaJeanne: Correct! Gent can also mean gentleman. So it probably is used in that way as a tag on LibraryThing?

I do hope Tim delivers some edict to settle this philosophical split once and for all.

>160 ianreads:

Tags are not to be combined unless they are identical in both usage and meaning. See: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Tag_combining in bold print at the very top of the page

Doesn't the bit in bold specify they need to be identical in usage and meaning "on LibraryThing"? I voted to combine Waals, Wallon, and Walloon, because no one using them to tag had used them in the sense of the author names mentioned in >156 lilithcat: as far as I could tell. Though I don't really understand "Hanes' razor," I agree with his overall point that the philosophy of splitters reduces the utility of the tagging system.

>160 ianreads: In general, I think we needn't consider potential meetings that aren't represented in LibraryThing or likely to be. However, the Waals tag apparently refers to a person's name on De verrader leven en dood van Anton van der Waals.

>161 lilithcat: Yes, that is exactly my point. You are conveniently leaving out "on LibraryThing."

>162 Stevil2001: It's a joke referring to the fact that the tag "hanes" can't be combined with anything on LibraryThing because someone might come along in the future to use it to tag underwear.

Sorry for the double post.

>163 Edward: The Waals opposition is bordering on reasonable. It's the gent issue that I think is really silly.

I guess the question is, how many books does it take to prevent combination. A literal reading of the guiding principle would suggest 1. My suggestion of only blocking combination when a tag split is possible would lead to the same conclusion. Wallon and Walloon could be combined under that principle though.

>160 ianreads: You refer to making tags more useful. I really question that combining Hanes and History is useful. If you want history books on Wales or written in Welsh, Hanes will give you lots of useful information. You can see every book with that tag on the tag page, whether it has 5 copies tagged that or only one. This is over 500 books. If it were combined into history, where only the top 1000 books show - only those with at least 127 uses, at best it mght move some books up a space or two that are already there.

>166 MarthaJeanne: But it would be useful if what you wanted was all history books regardless of language.

What you're suggesting is similar to how humor and humour used to be separate since it might be useful to get at the british humour using the second tag. But the LT community overrode Tim's objections on that one and voted to combine them.

You only see the top 1000.

By that logic you shouldn't combine any tag with its translation.

If you read the guidelines, they actually suggest NOT combining established tags that have different top books, unless there are very few books on one of them.

With tags that are on few books, combining probably adds usefullness. With tags that are on many books, combining hides books and makes the scarcer books harder to find.

I don't remember the group discussing that never mind coming to a consensus, so who put it in the guidelines?

>171 jjwilson61: Looks like it was some interloper named Tim Spalding: https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php?title=Tag_combining&diff=next&ol...

>172 Stevil2001: That busybody!

Patrick Rothfuss's Kingkiller fantasy series is on its way to television, so I'm especially leery of combining "book X" tags with "X" (the plain number) tags: there will be DVDs and seasons to consider too.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Kingkiller+Chronicles+1#combinations
http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Kingkiller+Chronicle+2#combinations

Though a lumper at heart, and though it doesn't seem to be much aided by in the actual tag usage, I am sympathetic to the fact that though the US is in the Americas, it is not all of it:
http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/US+fiction#combinations
http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/American+literature#combinations

The tag fiction (Nigeria) could easily mean fiction about or set in Nigeria instead of Nigerian fiction.

I've proposed separating the following tags from Nigerian fiction:

• africa nigeria fiction
• Fiction Nigeria
• Fiction-Nigeria
• fiction - Nigeria
• Nigeria fiction
• Nigeria-Fiction
• Nigeria; Fiction

BCCI can have several meanings.
http://www.librarything.com/tag/BCCI

It is likely that on John Wright's Indian Summers it stands for Board of Control for Cricket in India

https://www.librarything.com/tag/Princess+diaries+%231

The Princess Diaries #1 could refer to either the book or the movie. So I would not combine them with a tag that is book specific.

I've also proposed separating out the book specific tags from that tag.

>178 gilroy: It could refer to either book or movie, but every instance of the tag in question on LT refers to the book, so I'm comfortable leaving it combined, as per the guideline that combined tags "are the same in both meaning and usage on LibraryThing."

>179 Stevil2001: But would you not consider future usage of the tag for the film? It seems a likely thing to happen.

>180 WeeTurtle: No, because 1) it becomes paralyzing to anticipate all future usages, and 2) that's not what the guidelines state. And in this case, I'd add 3) that tag is so little used anyway, I'm doubtful the argued-for thing will even happen.

>189 karenb:

I would. Frankly, there are so many book-based films, television series, etc. that my natural inclination is to always keep "Title book" separate from "title".

But that's just me.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Counselling+-+Abuse

Counselling - Abuse could be about abuse in counselling or about counselling about abuse. I would think that abuse counselling would only be the later.

Similar thinking for http://www.librarything.com/tag/Counselling+-+Crisis

http://www.librarything.com/author/adamsdouglas is a divided author.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Douglas+Adams even on LT is not only Douglas Adams 1952-2001

Some recent no-votes of mine:

to-read w/ want to read (doesn't account for books one has to read). (voting here)

Zot! with Zot: one use on the latter page is by a Dutch tagger, where apparently zot means fool or foolish, and another use is apparently for some protein name referenced in The Singularity is Near ... in any case unrelated to the character in the comics, nor the Albanian meaning of god (which admittedly doesn't have usage on LT yet) (voting here)

series: star trek parody with Star Trek parody: the latter contains parodies not in a series (voting here)

family:Kennedy just has genealogical works not related to the political/Camelot folks who (with only one exception) dominate the Kennedy Family tag. I have my doubts that the one work tagged at The Kennedy Family is related at all either; it's hard to tell w/ that work, but the proposer is hardly careful, so I voted no to it too. (voting here)

Similar situation with Adams Family (mostly related to the political family). Works at family:Adams is unrelated North Carolina genealogy stuff, and while The Adams Family two books on the political family, it's also got one that's a misspelling fo the kooky/spooky Addams family (voting here)

Business: Family Business contains a non-fiction book about family business governance, and by the prefixing I would imagine would only ever contain non-fiction books, whereas family business is actually majority fiction (voting here)

Bible Study - N.T. - 1 John with Bible. N.T. 1 John: books about the bible aren't just for bible study, and I doubt the translator's guide in the former tag is intended for use in the usual/layman's sense of Bible Study (voting here)

Self Esteem. Children's has one children's book, about self-esteem, whereas Children's Self-Esteem has one non-children's book, about children's self-esteem (voting here)

The top tagger at Country:USA uses that style of books to indicate where its organization has sent books (that don't necessarily have anything else to do w/ the country) (voting here)

Here are some proposals in the "why are you wasting everybody's time proposing these?" category:

Golden Archeive and Golden Archieve have hundreds of uses, but only by a single tagger. Are we sure we know better than them that they mean the same thing to that tagger? (voting here)

Similar situation with CHRISTINE - READ ME!! family and CHRISTINE - READ ME! family at a smaller scale (voting here)

unread: Paul with Paul Unread: what on Earth does anybody gain by knowing on the same page what two unrelated people that happened to be named Paul haven't yet read?? (voting here)

Perhaps these should be in Undecided because they're a bit edge-casey for me as a non-speaker of the languages involved:

Drachen with dragon: it would appear that while most of the tags there seems to be referring to dragons, there are at least where it's used to mean kite (here and here) and besides the other possible meaning of vixen, harpy, wiktionary also informs me that Drachen is the plural/genetive form of Drache, and Drache is already combined with the dragon tag anyway. (voting here)

draak with dragon: at least one of the books is used for the Dutch taggers' reference to the constellation which in English is called Drago (which I guess is Latin for dragon, so maybe it kinda works, but still (voting here).

>185 omargosh: Someday, literary historians will rue our lack of knowledge as to what books people named Paul did not read, thanks to you! :p

Zot! with Zot: In addition, it looks like Zot! is the name of the series while Zot is the name of a character.

series: star trek parody with Star Trek parody: I disagree on this one. Star Trek is a series whether that fact is noted in the tag or not.

"ancient Egyptian mythology" is not the same as "Egyptian mythology": http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/ancient+egyptian+mythology#combinations

"WorldCat religion and mythology" is not the same as "religion and mythology": http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/WorldCat+religion+%2526+mythology#combina...

"Hindu mythology" is not the same as "1691 Hindu mythology" (and similar tags): http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Hindu+mythology#combinations

"mariage homosexuel" translates as "homosexual marriage" -- not "gay marriage" (though some US folks use "gay marriage" as a catch-all term)
http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/mariage+homosexuel#combinations

>188 lilithcat:
Also, "Native American mythology" is not necessarily the same as "Indian American mythology"
http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Indian-American-mythology#combinations

https://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Catholicism#combinations

There's more types of Catholicism than just Roman Catholicism.

I'm the one who proposed several of the above combinations and if I may ask what exactly are the differences suggested as existing? My approach to tag combination is from the semantic point of view - if they refer to the same thing, they belong together.

What other Catholicism is there? AFAIK, Catholicism or the Catholic Church are merely a shorter way to say Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholic Church, precisely because it cannot be confused with anything else. Perhaps I'm mistaken.

Similarly, why is Egyptian mythology not corresponding with Ancient Egyptian mythology? Is there an Egyptian mythology from another period or is it again just a shorter way to say the same thing? Unlike Catholicism, I have quite a few books on Egyptian mythology, all of which are tagged exactly that, and all of them could perfectly fit Ancient Egyptian mythology tag too. So do others' books I see tagged as Egyptian mythology. What am I missing?

The same goes for Native Americans vs American Indians. To the best of my knowledge, those are synonymous, with the former being the preferred modern usage, but both mean indigenous people in Americas

Mind you, people vote down far less disputable proposals, like exactly the same tags that differ only in whether counselling is spelled with a single or double L, so I'm a bit bamboozled about the criteria

>192 SandraArdnas:

While "Catholic Church" is often used as shorthand for Roman Catholicism, it can also refer to any one of the many groups within the Independent Catholic movement.

For example:

http://www.thelccusa.org/
https://www.occus.org/

>192 SandraArdnas: Without addressing any of the proposals specifically, just because someone posts about a proposal they are voting against here does not mean that it was inappropriate to propose it, nor that many people will follow suit in voting against it.

Personally, I am a "lumper", so I voted in favor of several of your proposals after seeing them mentioned here.

ETA: To address one in particular, I do agree that "Native American" and "American Indian" are close enough that I would be in favor of lumping them. However, the tag you proposed to combine was actually "Indian American Mythology", and "Indian American" refers to people from India who live in America, not Native Americans.

>192 SandraArdnas: Having grown up in a house where three different Catholicisms existed, I can honestly say no. Catholicism is not short for just Roman.

Greek Orthodox Catholicism
Russian Orthodox Catholicism
Roman Catholicism

And those are just the ones I have experienced. This doesn't cover the whole spectrum.

Thanks for the answers. I didn't think it was deemed inappropriate to propose. I'm just trying to get a sense of the general logic behind what is likely to be accepted. No point losing time on combinations that will be killed or hang in 'below threshold' forever.

I'm basically bilingual, but still there are some cultural differences I may be unaware of, Orthodox Churches being the case in point. No Catholicism added here. And other examples I was unaware of. I do look at the tagged books if the combination is not one of those one would propose automatically.

As for several proposals to combine Hindu Mythology and 'random number Hindu Mythology', they are all typical books one would tag Hindu mythology and the single user using them for some reason prefaced that tag with some numbers. I don't foresee anyone else using 1094 or whatever number Hindu mythology, so it seemed useful to lump those books with the rest.

>192 SandraArdnas: There's the Melkite Greek Catholic (as opposed to Orthodox) Church: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melkite_Greek_Catholic_Church

I should know; my father's family were members.

It's one of the Eastern Catholic Churches: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches

>196 SandraArdnas:

the single user using them for some reason prefaced that tag with some numbers. I don't foresee anyone else using 1094 or whatever number Hindu mythology, so it seemed useful to lump those books with the rest.

Certainly not useful to the person who is trying to distinguish among the books by the use of the numbers.

But combining tags doesn't affect an individual's use of them.

r.orrison Exactly. I use some out-of-the-ordinary tags because it fits my system and then propose them myself for combination because mine will remain as they are, they will just be grouped with the rest

There are three suggestions equating Riction with Fiction, but I find Riction defined as 'The radical form of fiction'. Therefore I assume that this is not a misspelling, but meant to differentiate the books so tagged from those tagged fiction.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Realistic+Riction#combinations

http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/contemporary+realistic+riction#combinatio...

http://www.librarything.com/tag/World+War+-+1914-1918+-+Riction

>201 MarthaJeanne: The word is defined that way solely on Urban Dictionary, a site where anyone can submit a definition, and I can find no evidence that anyone in the history of the Internet has ever used "riction" to mean anything like "radical fiction." All uses I can find are typos or OCR errors for either "fiction" or "friction."

Other people tagged those same books contemporary fiction, so I assumed it's a typo

>202 Stevil2001: I agree, and also World War - 1914-1918 - Riction is almost certainly a typo for a Library of Congress Subject Heading "World War, 1914-1918 - Fiction". ("Riction" would not be a valid LCSH subdivision.)

I've just added an ex libris plate to an author's gallery, https://www.librarything.com/pic/6537896, and regular member of this thread has flagged it as "Not an image of the author."

The "Guidance on author pictures", https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Contributing_photos_to_LibraryThing, includes "Do not post: ... Pictures that do not represent the author".

On a book website, I would say that an ex libris can represent an author. What do other members think?

>205 Cynfelyn:

I'm the one who flagged it.

Let's discuss it in the appropriate group: http://www.librarything.com/groups/authorpictures

FOUR people have voted "yes" to combine "Loneliness-Religious aspects-Christianity" with "Loneliness -- Religious aspects -- Judaism" (Emphasis added)

Help.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Loneliness+--+Religious+aspects+--+Judais...

ETA: Oh, lovely, now five people have voted "yes".

I'm not sure a general monarch/ruler name should be combined with a specific one...

http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Edward+III+-+King+of+England+%281312-1377...

and

http://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Edward+III+King+of+England+King+of+Englan...

According to Wikipedia, Edward III may also refer to the play or to the Duke of Bar (who I have never heard of). Looking at the works tagged Edward III suggests the majority usage is for the king of that name or is set in his reign, with a few referring to the play. As the play is about the king, then combining the two tags would seem logical.

>207 lilithcat: Two changed their minds -- and 30 voted No. FYI.

Time for a new thread.