Add tags to groups...

I've added tagging for groups.



The hope is that we can develop a helpful navigation system for groups. The focus is on altruism and global usefulness, not the "do it for yourself and some global good with emerge"-theory of book tagging. So, in a way, it goes against everything I usually stress for tags. So, this is an experiment.

So far, there's only one feature, one place—adding tags on group pages. If the feature is a success, I'll extend it elsewhere. If it's not, I'll figure out what to do next.

This is great, but...

when I went to add tags to three different groups, all I got were tags that said "undefined".

example.

:(

Doubly strange, or doubly great! I just added tags to that group as a test, and it worked.

Robert

I know. I saw. But lots of others are adding them very well. Very odd. What's your situation again? Browser?

Can you try now?

It's IE8, but I can go try on FF2.

*runs to check FF*

On IE8, it now goes to "saving..." and then nothing happens.

example

Arg. Okay, now?

It's fine now!

May I suggest that it might not be a bad idea if you had to be a member of a group to add a tag?

Another weirdness...

For this group, I added "birds". When I went to add "birding", that erased "birds" and substituted "birding". It won't take more than one word. :(

example

Oh yeah, DEFINITELY agree with lilithcat!

Other then that, though, YAY!!! Haven't we been asking for this like FOREVER??

Yeah, although it saves your version, it normalizes the tags to the tag-combination form when displaying them.

Can we have an edit feature on the tags (in case they're entered incorrectly)?

You can edit yours. You can't edit others'. Just add yours, and hope the others are drowned by numbers.

>13 timspalding:

So does that mean I have to enter "birds, birding" instead of just an additional word?

Is that why wicca, wiccan was turned into wicca(2)? This is based on book tags that have been combined?

I'll change it so it can take both.

So were do we go to find the combined tags?

I've stopped using the combined forms. It will combine trivial upper/lower case things.

I'm asking where we go to find the topics.

Example: Say that I have the tag "challenges" on three different groups. What do I click on to bring up those three different groups?

ETA: I often wonder if we speak the same language! :)

The global nature of this feature is giving me tagging anxiety. The tags I keep coming up with seem like private in-jokes between my brain and me.

People don't seem to be adding tags once there are tags there. They should—giving weight to the best ones.

Example: Say that I have the tag "challenges" on three different groups. What do I click on to bring up those three different groups?

Nowhere yet.

:)

Is it useful to add tags for words that already appear in the name of the group? The current group search already can find those words and words from the group description so it might be redundant.

But if we keep tagging, no matter how redundant it feels, we'll be able to get something like a tag cloud out of it, e.g. most people think these are the groups to look at regarding gerontology.

Robert

Le Salon Litteraire now has tags gallore. I like this feature! Someone please alert me if I'm being redundant or not tagging as this new feature was intended.

OK, tags on groups is just like Christmas coming early ... ooooooo ....

That was a 'Thanks', by the way ;-)

Now, if we can just get a Groups module for the homepage .........

I love this! Thanks, Tim!

But if we keep tagging, no matter how redundant it feels, we'll be able to get something like a tag cloud out of it, e.g. most people think these are the groups to look at regarding gerontology.

Yes. That's the idea. Tell me how to express it better, or where to say what needs to be said.

And, I would like to say, I deserve a cider!

See:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/79507
http://www.librarything.com/topic/79509

I'm beginning to think I should do more programming. If only someone else could do my other jobs, like avoiding emails and eating Mike's pizza, as well as me.

Update: Man, I should release when there are 350 people on the site, not 80. ;)

Yay! I'm off to go tagging crazy, but I expect all the fun ones have been done already.

*ponders how to tag The Green Dragon*

Again, Tim doesn't sleep. Or is that 2:44am timestamp wrong? :P

Well, I'm up in the middle of the night too, so I might as well go on a group-tagging spree. Yay!

Be still my heart!!! The very thing I've been wanting from the moment I joined LT! Thank you, Tim!!!

It's amazing what the LT team can do when they are free from large projects taking all their time...

This is great Tim, I've thought this was a great way to help the groups page for quit a while.

The focus is on altruism and global usefulness, not the "do it for yourself and some global good with emerge"-theory of book tagging. So, in a way, it goes against everything I usually stress for tags. So, this is an experiment.

It would be great if we could have personal tagging of groups as well, so that we could organize our own groups in the way that was most useful to us. For example, I'd love to give a "favourites" tag to some groups and then filter Talk to show only my favourite groups--not really an option with the sort of tagging we have now.

Still, I think the feature that you did make will be useful too :)

Is it useful to add tags for words that already appear in the name of the group? The current group search already can find those words and words from the group description so it might be redundant.

I definitely think this would be useful, especially given how terrible the group search is--it may find the groups you're looking for, but it will find 100 unrelated groups too.

Since is tagging for a social purpose I think it's appropriate to discuss tagging strategies. Since I presume the purpose or at least a purpose of the tagging is to make a better group search, I think it makes sense to tag for more specific terms that might be discussed in the group. So, you might tag the Psychology group with OCD as well. I think it also makes sense to tag with more general terms as well, so you might tag Psychology with medical as well so someone could find all the medical-related groups at once.

Does that make sense, because it sounds to me like if I followed that philosophy I'd be tagging all groups with everything.

I think trying to be completely thorough will just lead to madness. I'm sticking with basic tags for now.

I hadn't looked at Groups (overall) in a while. What if I started adding a spam-specific tag to groups that are clearly created by spammers? (example: http://www.librarything.com/groups/limohireblackpool)

#40
I love the way you use OCD in your example and later say that you could be tagging all groups with everything. Because, y'know, it's true!

karenb, I like the idea of tagging spam groups with "Spam"!!

--> 32

Tell me how to express it better, or where to say what needs to be said.

Each LT member has to add his own tags to a group, even if those tags (i.e. words, terms) are already seen associated with a group. This, in effect, will "heavy up" some terms making their prominence the most used search word(s).

Did I just muddle the issue more?

So is this supposed to work only on www.librarything -site?
Normally I'm using the Finnish site (fi.librarything.com) and I just tried tagging some groups. There is the link "add tags" but nothing happens when I click on it.
I then went to the www.librarything -site, tried the same groups and everything worked quite well.

I'm sorry if this has already been discussed -- if it has, it must've slipped by as I have tried to follow this thread from the start.

I have a question about case sensitivity. on http://www.librarything.com/groups/bookmooching
I see tags for Book Trading (1) and book trading (1) and wonder if that shouldn't be combined into one tag?

As a prankster myself, I suppose I bring this on myself - and I'm honestly not upset about it - it's a good gag whoever just did it in Le Salon Litteraire, but it might actually upset members of other groups were it to happen to them: someone deleted all the tags I'd put up in the salon. Again, not looking to tell on anyone or get anyone in trouble, but my concern is that since anyone in a group has access to editing the tags of the group, they also have access to deleting the tags - and ergo, deleting the time and energy and work it took to input those tags. The nature of my group naturally lends itself to these types of gags, but what's to prevent some troll from joining other groups just so they can delete the hard work of it's members, and cause havoc for "fun"?

The only tags you are supposed to have access to delete are the ones you have added. Not all of them. that would be a bug if you actually accomplished that.

Editing group tags still seems to need some work.

> 47

How is that possible? Earlier (see post # 15) Tim said that you may only edit (I'm assuming delete takes effect here as well) your own tags.

I think adding a "spam" tag would go against the nothing-derogatory rule, though it might be worth making an exception in this case.

I didn't think it was supposed to be possible for people to delete tags other than their own.

50>

If I can't be derogatory *toward spammers*, what the hell is the point of having any sort of anti-spam policy whatsoever?

> 49

I think you are right.

To check, I just went to a group of which I am a member, and to which both I and at least one other person have added tags. When I click on "add tags", only my tag shows in the box for editing or deletion, not the other person's.

But I wonder . . .

Suppose someone has added a tag I want to get rid of. If I then added the same tag, would deleting mine get rid of both?

(Answer: no, I just tried that.)

So Enrique's issue reamins a mystery . . .

--> 52, 47

I tried that, too, and it didn't work for me, either.

EnriqueFreeque, how *did* you manage to do that?! :)

52- I just tried also. I can't make others tags disappear.

I'm thinking now maybe I inadvertently did it while adding a few more tags, since it occurred just as I'd finished editing, adding some. I'm a computer genius, obviously - and maybe a little paranoid too. Sorry for the hubbub. I'll re-input and see what happens.

> 55

What I've found is that, if you save a blank screen, that will erase your tags. Perhaps that's what happened.

>55 absurdeist: Actually, I've seen this happen too, at least once. Clicking on the edit button brought up an empty box, so when I added another tag my previous tags disappeared.

Yeah. At one point, I also found that, if you added new tags, those would overwrite your previously saved tags. Maybe that's what happened as well.

still wondering about case sensitivity (example in message 46) as Tim said in message #20 that those would be combined?

Sorry. They will.

When this feature is fully implemented, will searches be able to be performed doing tag-mashes? (Wondering if the tags I've added need to be expanded to cover all redundancies.)

No. :)

Would it be feasible to agree on some tagging conventions for specific types of groups? For instance, we undoubtedly have many groups that discuss one specific work of literature, and it's conceivable that one tag would find them all.

Also, I've seen the tag 'A&E' in a number of groups. I can't click it because the & confuses the parser.

Uh-oh. A&E is me. I was using my category headings (from a previous Groups project/list) as one of the tags in my strings, so there are 142 of those A&E tags out there. In many instances, I also include the group name as a tag, and some of those had the ampersand. Tim, will we be able to do power edit on group tags?

Well, it's not your fault if LT can't handle an & in a tag name.

(What does that tag mean, though?)

darsu/63 - I like that 'one tag would find them all' idea of yours. That was kind of what I was thinking in including a category label for each group I tagged. Though, I wouldn't want to limit a group's tags to just one. As far as tagging conventions, I rather think that lots of individual minds doing the tagging will anticipate most future potential searches. Some future searcher might not think to search on the specific term a group may have agreed to.

But if each tagger uses their own tagging conventions somewhat consistently, it would still be helpful to the big picture.

darsu/65 - A&E means Arts and Entertainment, and I had used it as one of the tags for any group that mentioned music, art, movies, TV, etc., as kind of a category heading.

Did the same thing with Author Fans when I was going through that section of my list yesterday, so all authors with a fan group would get pulled up in that search.

#66, I meant to suggest that a tag such as, say, 'one book group', be used for groups that discuss one book in addition to whatever other tags the groups may warrant. Just like 'author fans' might cover groups that discuss one author without putting any constraints on other kinds of tags.

darsu/68 - I like it!

eta: I did understand what you meant. But didn't want you to get jumped on by folks who might say that one tag wouldn't fit all. So, in clarifying, I muddied. :) Sorry 'bout that!

68 > I knew what you meant I think it's a good idea.

And one tag to bind them all!

LOL!

Tim: In your Add Tags box, it says "Tags must be descriptive, and intended to help people find things."

Speaking for myself, and with memories of how badly Group Search worked before, I've been adding everything I could think of that someone might search on in order to find that particular group. Collection, collector, collecting, for instance. And I'm not the only one, as I've seen challenge, challenges, reading challenge. Sometimes the terms get normalized (as per your post at 13), but often they don't.

This post is just to suggest that you consider tag-combining for group tags. So that any of those words could work for yielding the desired groups, but the tag cloud would be less messy.

Tim: Can members of a group contest a tag? Or can incorrect tags be removed by staff (and, if so, who should be contacted). I'm not a member of this one, but - case in point:

US Presidents Challenge - http://www.librarything.com/groups/uspresidentschalleng

It has been tagged '2009', though the description shows the challenge to end in 2012. Leaving it tagged 2009 could do the group an injustice, in limiting the number of people who will henceforth look at this group.

> 73

Tim: In your Add Tags box, it says "Tags must be descriptive, and intended to help people find things."

I'm really seeing a lot of tags that are neither. Like "Quality of Life". What the heck does that mean? I've seen "Books", "Authors", "Genres", none of which are likely to narrow things down for searchers! "People groups"? "Membership Defined"? What the heck?

If you wanted to see all the books about authors, you might search on Authors, so it seems to me that Authors and Genres and Books are helpful tags.

76. I agree, and I've used tags to find groups that way. I find the list of groups tagged "authors" especially interesting: I'd had no idea about some of these groups before.

75: I'm with you on "Membership defined" though. Too vague, too all encompassing, and really unclear what it means.

74 > It doesn't answer the larger problem but I was the bad-adder of 2009 and I have removed it. Sorry.

... maybe we should start a thread or something somewhere for compulsive group taggers if there are disputes etc.

I think the idea is that given enough tags, the idiosyncratic ones become insignificant, so if one person puts a bad tag on a group it shouldn't matter. In practice though, it seems that there isn't enough incentive for everyone to tag, especially if the tag is already on the group so you don't get the effect of popular tags being much more numerous than unpopular ones. Perhaps it just needs more time. Or maybe Tim should exclude tags that appear only once on a group from the tag cloud.

Clearly everyone should just go tag LOTS AND LOTS!

I am laughing over the use of the tag 'group.'
????

I send a message in the Bug collectors group:
cannot add tags for groups in translated sites:
There is a link Add tags in group pages, but in translated sites nothing happens when you click the link. I tried Finnish, Swedish and Spanish sites.

Now the link doesn't show at all in translated sites. It shows only in the English site.

now i want to add a tag called "tag".

83: you're it!

Lilithcat/75: I’m the culprit for both the Membership Defined and Quality of Life tags. In my tagging concept, one of my tags is for ~category~. (Upstream in this discussion, someone else was talking about the concept, too, and I had not yet seen any other objections.)

At one time, Tim was thinking about capitulating to the idea of categories for groups. IIRC, he wanted it to be a small number of categories. In the end, that discussion boiled down to the necessity of tags. Discussion here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/47774

Tags ARE wonderful for ~searching~ for specific things. But for ~browsing~ for ‘wonder what’s interesting here?’, I think that categories would work better. A combination of the two would be the best solution. But, since there is currently no vehicle for Categories, and since my categorization concept had already been worked out (back in the spring/summer of ’07, during a time in which there was much discussion in Talk about the Groups mess) I used it as my template for tagging.

If categories should ever be implemented, it would be easy to grab those groups into separate categories and then dispense with the Category tag. (Of course, there would be different ideas about where different groups might ‘belong’, but it could be a starting point.)

Except for ‘Site’ and ‘Books’, I tried to make my category tags unique, so that, if the Category-tag met with objection, it could be easily zapped by staff. (Actually, I began with ‘Identity Groups’ but found someone else using that tag, so switched mine to ‘Membership Defined’ so their tag wouldn’t get zapped, if staff decided to squash mine.) (*)

I’ll pop my list into another post. Now that we’re seeing that tag cloud in action, I’m wondering what the rest of you think about Category tags.

eta: *which also means I'm not alone in thinking 'category'.

My tagging concept, with Category tags:

SITE.
FAQs, helps, Site Talk, etc.

BOOKS.
Book-types:
....Genres, formats
Book-makers:
....Authors, illustrators, publishers, etc.
Book-specific:
....Specific books, series
Book-topics:
....Time periods, geographic area, culture
Book-general:
....Reading, challenges, booklists, collecting
Book-physical:
....Care & repair, book acquisition, bookish things (bookshelves, bookmarks)

DISCIPLINES.
Occupations, profession, careers, fields of interest, lifework, vocation…

SOCIO-POLITICAL.
Beliefs:
....Religion, philosophy
Politics
Society:
....Social, civic, community, cultural

QUALITY OF LIFE.
A&E:
....The arts, art, movies, music, theatre, museums…
Sports
Leisure:
....Hobbies, online communities, travel
Homelife and personal:
....Home & garden, food & drink, health & wellness, relationships & family

GROUPS DEFINED BY MEMBERSHIP.
Academic
Age-based
Book clubs (IRL)
Geographic
Cultural
Self-described

I think categories are good as long as you can tell that's what they are. I added geography-based and age groups. Instead of Books, make it Based On Books or Related to Books. Quality of Life is just too generic, I think, as the categories under it can stand on their own.

I’m the culprit for both the Membership Defined and Quality of Life tags.

The problem here is mine. The system should seriously down-weight a tag that's "way down the list" on most groups it's applied to. I need to figure out why it isn't. They are fine tags, I think. Just too large.

I also apply category tags -- "reading group" for instance is a specific category, distinct in my mind, and separate from simply "reading". So when I use "x group" it's to create or take advantage of a semantic distinction that better facilitates browsing through an entire set of groups.

It's just tagging, people. Over time the majority opinions will dominate. "Wrong" tags don't do injustices; at most they may misdirect someone to a group. Redundancies aren't a bug; they're a feature. With the best intent in the world everyone will tag somewhat differently -- classification, keyword, phrases versus splitting up phrases into separate words -- and it will all work out.

Breathe, in ... out ... in ... out ... (etc.)

Over time the majority opinions will dominate

Might makes right!

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few... or the one.

live long and prosper.

> 91
Unless the One is Tim =)

Possibly it needs to be made more clear that duplication of tags on a particular group is desirable; at first, I would look at a group, see the tags I would give it already there, and think of something else. This will not cause the most popular tags to win out.

94- yes, exactly. When I see a group already has the tags I would have added, I usually move on to the next one, without adding them. I'm sure I'm not alone there.

> 94, 95

Interesting! I've been doing the exact opposite - when I'm in a group I haven't tagged yet (and sometimes ones I have!), I look to see if there are any tags I think really fit, then I duplicate them so that they'll be more likely to float up the tagcloud and be easily spottable.

Of course, I also add anything that I think needs added. But I am making a conscious effort to duplicate tags that I 'agree' with.

> 94, 95

Same here. To me, a tag is an identifier. Once a group has been given a tag, I don't bother adding it again. It's redundant.

I see Aerrin99's point, but since I'm not a fan of tag/book/author/etc. clouds, that's not a consideration for me.

Tim, any chance of Power Edit for our group tags?

I think I mentioned this on the bug thread for the new groups page (and if not I will), but it is still not possible to add tags to groups on the non-English LT pages. The link doesn't open. Tags are also not language specific yet, which I assume is intended, given the warning, "Use the language of site/version of LibraryThing you're on. This site is in English." I can see the English-language tags for a group when I'm on the Spanish or French site.

>98 countrylife:

I don't think so. What would you want to do to them?

I could tag all my African-American groups "African American" and all my Jewish groups "Jewish" at one stroke, figuratively speaking.

Robert

Yeah. Not a bad idea. Tag combination would solve those too. But both are features that, while good in theory, are just not worth the effort at present. Sorry :)

I just went through my list of groups, and tagged everyone that felt like it would be served by the tag history 'history.' It was a pain in the neck.

Power edit, or something similar would be lovely on my Your Groups page (which I would love to be able to link to). It might also be made to let us change membership status.

Robert