Should these tags be combined?

Questions, help wanted, a place to hash out theories? Discussion before (not after) proposing combinations.

Labor and Laboring classes (US spelling)
with
labour and labouring classes (UK spelling)

I'd lean towards combining, as the political party (Labour) does not apply to the four books with these two tags.

Of course it does. There is a labour party in Australia.

>3 MarthaJeanne: Not quite. The Australian Labor Party is officially so spelt.

https://www.alp.org.au/

I’m not sure whether that’s for or against karenb’s point though.

I was thinking more that these tags seem to use the sense of "work and working classes". Note that the "labour and labouring classes" tag is used on one book, about Australia: No paradise for workers : capitalism and the common people in Australia 1788-1914.

Typo, yes, but similarly spelled names. What if a person types the wrong thing? Is combining these two tags helpful?

https://www.librarything.com/tag/Sam+Fisher
https://www.librarything.com/tag/Sam+Fischer

(Note that I usually propose merging only typos that are pretty clearly typos and not actual/possible tags in themselves.)

I suggest looking the two names up on Google.

We can only be sure it's a typo if there's no one in particular with mistyped name (or if a mistype isn't possibly two different things/persons)

In this case, there's a musician Sam Fischer, so I'd leave it, even though the only existing tag is used for a Clancy novel just like 'Sam Fisher' is. Since music is catalogued too, the musician might appear in time

Also wanted to say, this is an excellent and needed thread.

>7 MarthaJeanne: Yes, there are clearly people who exist in each spelling. The tags currently used on LT are a typo, but it's an easy misspelling to make.

Another example that I just found: Berenstain/Berenstein. The former is the proper spelling for the popular (in the US, at least) kid books the Berenstain Bears. However, I've only heard it pronounced "berenstein". The Berenstein tag is applied only to works created by a Berenstain. However, Berenstein is a perfectly good surname out in the world. Should we combine these two tags?

(I don't know the answer(s). I just have the questions.)

>10 karenb: Berenstein vs Berenstain Bears is a special case, since there are some conspiracy theories related to the different spellings. Personally I won't touch that one :-)

>10 karenb: I think the whole Berenstain/Berenstein has been proposed and gotten stuck at 50% a few times.

Thanks for all the responses.

>11 norabelle414: & >12 gilroy:
I had no idea. Well then, hmm, I'll just have to see how it shakes out this time.

OK, I already proposed these combinations, but a discussion couldn't hurt.

For the Dirk & Steele series by Marjorie M. Liu, I proposed combining each volume into a single tag. A few of the tags include "PB", which normally would I think disqualify them from being combined with other tags. However, all of the printed books in the series were paperbacks, so I thought it would be okay to combine the tags for these books.

For example, Tiger Eye, the first book in the series, has four different tags:

#1 - Dirk & Steele; PB
Dirk & Steele 01
Dirk & Steele 1
Dirk and Steele 001

>14 karenb: It's available on Kindle, so not all copies are paperbacks.

>15 prosfilaes: I see so many more tags that refer to paperback and hardcover that I keep forgetting that ebook is an equivalent format. (facepalm)

This set of tags illustrates the tension between splitting and lumping, I think. The character Roberta Steel appears in at least eight works of the Logan McRae series by Stuart MacBride. I have found five six tags that refer to the character by name, sometimes including her rank (which changes over time).

1. Roberta Steel
2. Detective Inspector Roberta Steel
3. DI Roberta Steel
4. Steel DI Roberta
5. DCI Roberta Steel
6. Steel DI

As a splitter, I might try to combine only the tags that use the name plus the rank of Detective Inspector/DI.

As a lumper, I might try to combine all five tags, because the tags all refer to the same character in the same popular books. I've been leaning towards lumping, myself.

Which tags (if any) would you combine?

>17 karenb:

All of them? They refer to the same person - keeping the separately does not really serve any useful function. But I am usually in the “lump them together” camp for tags. :)

Except for the one without the first name, they all seem relatively straightforward to me. I assume there is no other DI Steel, but when voting I'd check the tag page to see whether it points only to the same series.

I suggest you pair all the tags indicating her rank and one of them with Roberta Steel. That way, even if the last one does not pass, the ones that contain both her rank and name probably will.

I'll reiterate once again my wish that the main tag voting page show disambiguation notice (if filled) below the pair. It would make voting easier and save me opening some tag pages and googling

"Bold and the Brave" and "Brave and the Bold" look to be entirely different series, based on the books so tagged. Does any one know for certain?

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Bold+and+the+Brave
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Brave+and+the+Bold

>20 lilithcat: Looks like you're right; good catch. I assumed the items tagged "Bold and the Brave" were part of DC's series Valor and thus a reference to DC Comics's Brave and the Bold, but it's Valour actually, a Marvel Comics series.

>21 Stevil2001:

Thanks!

I don't read Dutch and don't trust Wikipedia (Eng) + Google Translate. Are these all the same person?

Capellen tot den Pol (Joan Derk van der)
Capellen (Johan Derk van der)
Joan Derk van der Capellen
Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol

Related tags:

https://www.librarything.com/tag/%252Fvan+der+Capellen
https://www.librarything.com/tag/Capellen+tot+den+Pol+%28Joan+Derk+van+der%29
https://www.librarything.com/tag/Capellen+%28van+der%29
https://www.librarything.com/tag/Capellen+%28Johan+Derk+van+der%29
https://www.librarything.com/tag/Joan+Derk+van+der+Capellen
https://www.librarything.com/tag/Joan+Derk+van+der+Capellen+tot+den+Pol
https://www.librarything.com/tag/Johan+Derk+van+der+Capellen

I think we need to be careful - the Labour party - and the politics of labour - are very different things.

>23 karenb: Yes, they are! He was an 18th century Dutchman, who defended a political form of Enlightenment and preached revolution, which is why he exiled to Italy where he died (he has a monument in Rome). I'm Dutch and went to the same college as he did (it exists since the 13th century!) so he's no stranger to me...

>25 JanWillemNoldus:
Thank you so much!

>25 JanWillemNoldus:
Do you have any suggestions about combining the relevant tags? Does one version of his name occur more often?

Other Dutchie speaking: I have never heard of anybody else with exactly that surname. It's likely his surname was just "van der Capellen" and that "tot den Pol" refers to some obscure titled land he held.

>28 Nicole_VanK: Thank you! Proposals submitted and mostly passed.

What do you think about combining acronyms with the full thing spelled out?

Examples:
Polycystic Ovary Syndrome is commonly called PCOS
Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome is commonly called AIDS

1. Combine the tags at all?
2. Prefer tags with full name + (acronym)? (If such a tag is available) (AIDS example)
3. What about when abbreviations vary across cultures and languages?

Exception(s):
-- When the acronym represents other things too.)
-- What else?

It's very rare that an acronym has only one meaning.

>30 karenb: It's against standing policy

I think it's like names. If an acronym is so overwhelmingly known that its unlikely that someone would tag their books with it to mean something else, then I think it can be combined. I think that AIDS is in this category, as is WWI and WWII. It also think that acronyms of 5 or more letters are less likely to have multiple meanings so it's safer to combine those.

AiDS is one of the few acronyms that is probably fairly universal. But the other example is not. Remember that case differences are not recognized.

PCO has various meanings that make sense in the plural.

PCOs cannot be differentiated from PCOS.

Ah, but it's SIDA in French and probably others! So I'm not sure that it's quite in the same category as WWII. Sida was also a journal published by a botanical research institute. (Among other things, but that there might be journals tagged that way seemd particularly relevant for LT.)

I think AIDS/SIDA may have been one of the early examples about lumping or splitting and acronyms, years and years ago.

>35 keristars:
I noticed that AIDS has at least one SIDA alias already.

re: not combining acronyms, mostly, as policy
Aha! Thank you. I was wondering about balancing usage and possibility.

(Thinks about updating the wiki, which is a Different Post.)

What's the reason for separating the various "fictitious character" tags from Lord Peter Wimsey? Is there a non-fictional person with the same name?

For me, an acronym of 7 or 8 characters is usually combinable with the the full name.

>36 karenb: wow, thanks! I really need to read more carefully or get my glasses checked. in that case, my hypothetical is moot! :)

>37 Edward:

Even if there's not, I would definitely separate "Wimsey Peter Lord (Fictitious character) : Fiction." and the like from "Lord Peter Wimsey", as there are non-fiction books about Wimsey.

I would also note that "Wimsey" could refer to any member of the Wimsey family, or the family itself, rather than just Lord Peter.

>40 lilithcat: Yes, I agree with separating the "--Fiction" tags and the ones with just the surname.

"(Fictitious character)" is different from "--Fiction" as it's an LC heading that can apply to both fiction and nonfiction about the character.

ROOT is a Librarything acronym, for "Read Our Own Tomes", yes?
For tags, is it okay to combine "ROOT 2019" with tags that mean the same thing but use more words (such as "read" or "books")?

I already proposed combinations for 2019, but then I thought to ask:
https://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/ROOT+2019#combinations

I would not combine "ROOT read in 2019" and "ROOT 2019".

The former would probably include books that the person actually read. The latter could be aspirational.

Could also mean something totally different. There are lots of things ROOT can mean.

>43 lilithcat: & >44 MarthaJeanne:
Thank you. I will try to avoid proposing similar combos in the future.

The tag "read in 2018" currently has seven translations. Four are seperate, one is aliased into "read in 2018", and the other two have no status information.

I found perhaps two dozen tags seem to be "read in 2018" in these languages:
Arabic (1)
Bulgarian (1)
Catalan
Dutch
Estonian
Finnish
German
Italian
Lithuanian (1)
Portuguese
Spanish
Welsh (1)

(1) - means only one tag in that language.

Should any of these tags be combined? If yes, then what would be the better way(s) to combine them?

For further information, according to Google Translate:

Arabic: 2018قراءات-
Bulgarian: прочетени-2018
Catalan: llegit 2018, llegits 2018
Dutch: Gelezen in: 2018, gelezen-2018, gelezen in 2018
Estonian: Loetud 2018, 2018-loetud
Finnish: luetut 2018, luettu 2018, 2018-luetut, luin 2018
German: gelesen-2018, lesen-2018, Gelesen 2018, Gelesen in 2018, ~gelesen 2018 (combined with Gelesen 2018)
Italian: letti-2018, libri-letti-2018
Lithuanian: skaityta 2018
Portuguese: leituras-2018, lidos-em-2018
Spanish: libros-leidos-2018, libros-leídos-en-2018, Leído en 2018, leídos-en-2018, leído-2018
Swedish: läst-2018, läsa-2018, lästa-2018
Welsh: darllenwyd 2018

Already combined with "Read in 2018": Letto nel 2018 (Italian), Lest/lest 2018 (unknown but not German).

(Followup questions: What about "published in {year}" and "acquired in {year}" tags?)

>48 karenb:

No!

Just because I acquired a book this year doesn't mean that it was published this year. Of the last 20 books I added to my library, only 6 were published this year.

>48 karenb: I'm sure there are some combinations that would be acceptable, but I'd be too worried about the subtleties between "published in 2019" and "first published in 2019" or "acquired in 2019" and "bought in 2019", etc. to vote on anything. We can hardly agree on combining in English.

>48 karenb:: I have books that were published way before I was even born. Nope.

>48 karenb:

Sorry, I was horribly unclear! What I meant was, apply the question(s) from >46 karenb: and >47 karenb: about combining across languages to other year-based tags.

(I know I can be a lumper in some cases, but combining "published" with "bought"? No.)

Or, could we skip >48 karenb: and go back to >46 karenb: and >47 karenb:?

>47 karenb: lest 2018 is not German.

What about "fictional" and "fictitious"? I see that many specific characters have been combined (for instance, Jane Eyre. What about other made-up things?

>54 karenb:

"Fictitious" doesn't always refer to "fiction" (in the sense of fictional writing). For example, a partnership might do business under "fictitious" name.

There are non-fiction books about fictitious characters/situations. So: nope

(an analysis of LOTR, or Harry Potter, etc)

>54 karenb: I'd combine tags like "Jane Eyre (Fictitious character)" and "Jane Eyre (Fictional character)" with each other.

But they should be separate from tags like "Jane Eyre (Fictitious character)--Fiction". These are usually Library of Congress Subject Headings in which "Fiction" indicates that the work being tagged is fiction (as opposed to literary criticism, films, etc. about the character).

>55 lilithcat: >56 Nicole_VanK: >57 Edward:

Thanks, all. That's pretty much what I thought too.

The United States isn't the only country with some part of the military named Marines. However, the tag "Marines" has six instances of the single word, and the other fifteen aliases mean "United States Marine Corps". What's the best way to tease out the four "Marines" away from the US-specific terms?

I'm hoping to avoid proposing 15 seperations, but I can't think of a way around it.

>59 karenb: Not that I'm aware off. (Having served in the Royal Dutch Marines, I concur that it's a bad combination though).

p.s.: the tag translations suffer from the same problem
p.p.s.: I was a marine, not an entire marine corps - this tag is a mess

But what's the point (if you know) of trying to separate "Marines" and "marines"? LT ignores capitalization in tags, so those are the same, no?

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

In my informed opinion (I sometimes work with the US Marine Corps), it should be divided into three tags: "Marines", "US Marines", and "US Marine Corps".

"Marine Corps" is already a separate tag.

I would then combine "US Marine Corps" with "USMC" (https://www.librarything.com/tag/USMC), which already contains more than a dozen variations on "US Marine Corps"

>62 norabelle414:
You had me until the last sentence. "USMC" stands for several things other than the "United States Marine Corps". It could mean the US Maritime Commission, among others.

If USMC includes variations of "US Marine Corps", then separations should be proposed, rather than messing it up even more.

I've put in about six separations, but the drop down kept changing on me, so I wasn't sure if I was missing ones as I went. Thus I stopped...

>63 lilithcat: Wikipedia takes me to the page on the United States Marine Corp when searching for USMC even though it does have a disambiguation page for it. It does this when one topic can be considered a primary topic which it determines using these guidelines:

* A topic is primary for a term with respect to usage if it is highly likely—much more likely than any other single topic, and more likely than all the other topics combined—to be the topic sought when a reader searches for that term.
* A topic is primary for a term with respect to long-term significance if it has substantially greater enduring notability and educational value than any other topic associated with that term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Disambiguation#Is_there_a_primary_topic?

As another data point, searching Google for USMC yields a page which features an overview of the US Marine Corp in a box besides the search results.

Therefore I voted to not separate these terms.

Someone already combined "rite of passage" into "rites of passage" -- just one of many times where the singular and plural have been combined. Should they be separated?

>66 karenb:

Yes, they should.

Looking at the various spellings for Gawain (of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), is it okay to combine the all different spellings? I seem to recall that a couple of translations use specific spellings (that is, not "Gawain"), but those should be comparatively easy to find in the list of forty or so works.

39 various books: https://www.librarything.com/tag/Sir+Gawain+and+the+Green+Knight
Rick Riordan book: https://www.librarything.com/tag/Gawain+the+Green+Knight
lit crit/medieval lit: https://www.librarything.com/tag/%22Sir+Gawain+and+the+Green+Knight%22
a children's book: https://www.librarything.com/tag/gawan+%2526+the+green+knight
a children's book: https://www.librarything.com/tag/Gawaine+and+the+Green+Knight
medieval/lit crit (2 books): https://www.librarything.com/tag/Sir+Gawayne+%2526+the+Grene+Knight+%5BC14th%5D

plus a typo:
https://www.librarything.com/tag/Sir+Gawain+and+thre+Green+Knight

I wouldn't worry about the spellings, as long as the text is substantially the same.

But I sure wouldn't combine lit crit with children's books!

What do you all think about combinations of {country} and {of the nationality/country}?

Example that got me started: the tag Scottish historical fiction includes aliases for
a) historical fiction--Scotland
b) fiction > historical > Scotland

I will give an example: http://www.librarything.com/work/83756

This is historical fiction written in German by an Austrian-Danish author. It takes place mostly in France, but also describes the founding of the Swedish royal family.

It has tags
Austrian literature (she was Jewish and had fled Austria long before she wrote the novel, but she was born in Austria.)
German fiction
German literature (the language, not the nationality, I would assume.)

Literature-Austria or Fiction-Germany would just plain be wrong.

>71 MarthaJeanne: That's pretty much what I was thinking, too.

Another example: the author Irvine Welsh, who writes in English about Scottish people (and lives in Scotland).

Liaden and Liaden Universe. Some Liaden Universe tags have already been combined into Liaden, but now there are more Universe tags to combine. I suspect that proposing to combine them with plain old Liaden will fail.

These all refer to books by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller in the Liaden Universe series. This series is unusual because "universe" is (for once) part of the series name.

So, combine away, or seperate Liaden from Liaden Universe?

I don't see google offering any other meaning for Liaden, so hopefully it can pass. Separating and than recombining is a daunting process due to time needed for one and the other to pass, so I'd avoid it without good reason.

Regarding combinations of {country} and {of the nationality/country}, even though I'm more of a lumper, I don't see them as synonymous. Historical fiction Scotland refers to Scotland as setting in my mind, while Scottish would indicate nationality of the author. The two may or may not coincide.

I don't consider a single entry in urban dictionary relevant. Do you foresee someone using the Liaden tag in that sense? To mean a guy who's very fun to hang out with?

Currently, all of them refer to the series in the Liaden universe and I expect that will remain so

>73 karenb: Does one refer to the character and one refer to the series? Are there other books outside of that series within the Liaden tag?

(My gauge is usually if I'm not sure, I don't recommend combo. But then, that's me.)

>78 gilroy: The world itself is called Liaden. No works outside the series are tagged with any of the aliases.

I believe karenb's dilemma isn't whether these belong together, but rather that proposing straggler Liaden Universe/series tags will not pass, even though the tag Liaden already contains some. If it will not pass, she proposes separating aliases so that eventually we could combine various Liaden Universe variations.

>78 gilroy: Yes, I see what you mean. As SandraArdnas said, this series is named after the world(s), not the character(s). Lots of mystery series are named after the character(s), though.

>79 SandraArdnas: Yes, that's my concern with Liaden. Also, I'm thinking about guidelines in general for combining.

Italian question: "Narrativa senegal"? I'm not familiar with any of the Italian terms for fiction, literature, and so on.

ETA: (Google Translates as "Senegal fiction", but we know how nuanced that is.)

https://www.librarything.com/tag/Narrativa+senegal

>81 karenb:

I believe that it can also be translated as "literature" or (duh) "narrative".

Other combinations with Narrativa were combined with (English, French, German) fiction.
https://www.librarything.com/search.php?search=Narrativa&searchtype=tags&amp...

Literature is I believe letteratura. But these terms rarely have one-to-one correspondence between languages, so best handled by native speakers

... " so best handled by native speakers"

of both languages, I presume.

Of Italian, assuming command of English good enough to know the usage of English terms. Native English speakers with such good command of Italian to understand nuances of usage are much rarer breed

Also, 'Narrativa' can be Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, as well as Italian. Can we assume that the nuances are the same in each language?

I personally leave both the proposals and voting on different language combinations to those proficient in both languages in most cases. Unless I know that the proposed combination definitely is or isn't equivalent, I see no reason whatsoever to vote anything other than 'undecided'.

I do believe translated tags have basically been verified already by native speakers. Still, I'd leave it to those proficient in languages in question to make the call in particular cases.

>81 karenb: thru >87 SandraArdnas:
OK, no proposals from me then. Thank you.

a) "War - Algeria" to me could cover the any war that took place in Algeria: the war for independence from France (1954-1962), the civil war (1992-2006), or the WWII campaigns. This tag is used once, for a book about the war for independence.

b) This tag was combined with "Algerian war", which is used on 193 works about all three instances of war.
https://www.librarything.com/tag/detail/Algerian+War#tagaliases

c) So then I find the tag "War-Algeria".

Should I combine "War-Algeria" with "Algerian war", or do I propose a seperation for "War - Algeria" for combining later?

>89 karenb: No matter what you propose, you'll hit a stalemate. Some people will think they all belong together. Others will want to separate.

I try to check usage AND meaning. In my mind "Civil War" does not equate "American Civil War" - for instance. No matter how many times it has been used to refer to the American one. The ancient Romans had civil wars too, there was an English civil war, there was a Spanish civil war, there was a Lebanese civil war (etc). I think unspecific tags should not be combined with specific ones.

Both Algerian war and various notations of War-Algeria are specific only to the extent that indicates location to me. I would be in favor of combining/retaining all those.

There is however Algerian War (1954-1962) alias in there, which is specific and should be in the Algerian War of Independence tag, which already has similar aliases

https://www.librarything.com/tag/Algerian+War+of+Independence

To me the term "Algerian War" means the Algerian war of independence, I suppose, in part, because it took place in my formative years. So, I wouldn't combine the tag with another referring to all conflict in Algeria. Mind you I couldn't justify combining it wjth "Algerian War of Independence" either.

>94 abbottthomas: The trouble is Algerian War is mostly, but not only used in reference to the war of independence (currently on LT). So, it already refers to different conflicts in Algeria. Other aliases, like War - Algeria can be separated, but the remainder would still be a mixed bag because there is no real consistency how people use the Algerian War tag