Please vote against my bonehead suggestion

Please vote against my absent-minded suggestion that americana be combined with american (you can vote at the bottom of the tag page for americana).

As a feeble argument in my defense, I was in the process of combining tags from works originally written in spanish -- I completely missed the more obvious meaning of "americana" in English.

Please vote quickly and put me out of my misery.

Oh, I did.

What if we prefer to draw it out a bit and let you wallow in your misery???? ;)

It looks like the nos have it.

Done, and "threshold met"!

Whew!

There ought to be a medal for that ;-p

For bonehead suggestions? ;-)

No. For owning up.

Drat.

Doh - I accidentally hit the button before I cut/pasted the tag I wanted to combined. Now it looks like I want to combine "bio/autobio" with "."

Erm? - How would that work exactly? And how is someone UNDECIDED on a NON-suggestion?!?

http://www.librarything.com/tag/bio%252Fautobio

There are some fabulously funny (if unintentionally so) 'undecided' votes

The first person voting on a suggestion to combine two versions of 'Agnosticism' was undecided

as was the first person to vote on 'Identity'

perhaps it's just my sense of humour.

I also keep seeing that scene in Monty Python's 'Life of Brian' everytime someone declares themselves a 'splitter'

Well, it very well have been me on Agnosticism and Identity if the proposal included a non-English looking word - I am undeciding all of those to get them off my list. If I'm actually undecided (I want to do more research) then I leave them alone until I've thought about it.

Please don't misunderstand - I have no issue with anyone being undecided for whatever reason and I was not laughing at the voter... whoever they were.

I just thought it was funny given the nature of Agnosticism - where someone cannot decide if they believe in God or if they do they can't make up their mind about what kind of thing it is they believe in etc...

Likewise Identity and the notion of being undecided as in identity crisis

Although I'm I guessing by your response it IS just my sense of humour

Again - no offense was intended to any voter and I will try to keep my sense of humour to myself.

>11 PortiaLong:
I voted undecided because I couldn't decide what you were trying to combine here - seriously! :)
Better than a yes; though now I think of it a 'no' would be more appropriate!
add: OK changed to 'no'!!!

Like Portia, I am voting undecided on all those tags I don't know so can't decide - until I hear/see the arguments to give an informed vote.

>14 Littlemissbashful: - Please don't misunderstand - I have no issue with anyone being undecided for whatever reason and I was not laughing at the voter... whoever they were.

Looking back at my post 13 - I should have prefaced my response with *PortiaLong types the following while wearing a rue-full smile acknowledging the irony of the juxtaposition of words.*

I didn't think you were saying anything negative or making fun! - I was really just kicking myself for failing to see the potential humor at the time I made my "undecided" selection.

...no offense was intended to any voter and I will try to keep my sense of humour to myself.

No offense was even contemplated - please continue to share your humour/humor with us at every opportunity.

>15 Lman: wrt 11 - yeah, I figured it was something along those lines! ;-)

(Either that or someone who had recently been at the receiving end of one of my vitriolic rants was so cowed by the experience that they were afraid to risk my ire by voting "no" - *evilsmirk*)

>17 PortiaLong:

*shakes head while grinning*
How did you guess!!!?

adit: Umm...actually; what vitriolic rants...I've never seen any - can I have a link please?

>18 Lman:

Hmmm...vitriolic rants...*PortiaLong slaps at pockets, starts looking under the stacks of papers on the desk.*...I must have some around here somewhere...

It's probably actually Tim that bears the brunt of my invective:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/81530#1709915
- but that one is more of a "hysterical pleading" than a "vitriolic rant" (Although his response here might lead you to think otherwise: http://www.librarything.com/topic/81530#1712102)

(*PortiaLong wanders off to check in 'Happy Heathens' and 'Pro and Con (Religion)' - bound to find some old vitriol hanging around there.*)

Lyn, do not listen to her - Portia is such a nice person - she never rants at people. She tends to get overexcited at times though *grin*

Yeah - I agree Annie...which is why I asked with*tongue-in-cheek*

BTW: that post wasn't Vitriolic - that was a great post!!! IMHO. I remember agreeing most emphatically!

I just proposed combining Lyndon Johnson with President Johnson, momentarily forgetting about Andrew Johnson. Turns out no one has used President Johnson for a book about Andrew, but...

22>

I was just coming here to recommend against that proposal for exactly that reason.

d'oh!

I obviously did not mean to create a proposal to combine diskografi and song writing.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/song+writing

The second one here:
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Edward+II#combine

should be a no (Edward II and edaward iii) - my finger slipped and forgot to add a I :(

PS: With all the Henrys that I did yesterday, it is a miracle that is the only one that slipped :)

Wanted to propose combination of several versions of "(st.) Bernard of Clairvaux". By mistake also proposed "St. Bernard" - (which includes the dog).

http://www.librarything.com/tag/st+bernard

Meant to propose combining "bin laden" and "ben laden" (the latter is the usual way to spell it in some European languages).

Anyway, I ended up also proposing combination with "Osama bin Laden", while "ben laden" could obviously refer to anybody of the clan (author Carmen bin Laden for instance), or to the family as a whole (even if it's not used that way yet).

http://www.librarything.com/tag/ben+laden

But this is one of those cases where a person is so famous that if you just say the last name everyone knows you're referring to Osama. So I'd vote for it anyway.

You may have a point. Okay, we'll see where it goes.

I voted against the combination, for the very reason you note.

Please vote against my suggestion to combine chauffer with chauffeur -- just after I submitting the combination request, I realized that "chauffer" might also be used as a French verb with a very different meaning.

Please vote no on strand mag and sidney paget - http://www.librarything.com/tag/strand+mag

Don't know what just happened, but somehow I ended up proposing combinations of "aardrijkskunde" (Dutch for geography) and "Bulgarien" (German for Bulgaria). And "Bulgarien" - again - with "Albanië" (Dutch for Albania).

Neither of these would be a good idea. http://www.librarything.com/tag/bulgarien

mistaken proposal: "graphic novels" and novela gráfica

http://www.librarything.com/tag/%22graphic+novels%22

oops: please vote against my accidental request to combine military history - wwii with wwii. europe. Thanks.

RE #35

The last two requests to combine with ‘military history – wwii’ specifically ‘history ww2 military’ and ‘history military wwii’ I wanted to vote against. They both look like something I get when I forget to put commas between my tags. However, after looking at the way the individuals use them and the type of multi-word tags they use I voted for the combinations.

36> -- exactly, some people simply rearrange the terms so that they can sort their library using their tags. That's why its important to look at what books have actually been assigned these tags.

Here's another one that I requested by mistake: normany. I don't know if this is a valid combination or not. A quick look at the books didn't convince me, so I voted "Undecided."

Oh my. Very confusing.

The link did not work for me.

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

>33 Nicole_VanK:

I leave for a while and you try to combine Bulgaria with half the world :) Just kidding.

> 39: I'm a terrible person ;-)

Oops!

http://www.librarything.com/tag/mystery%252Fdetectives

Please vote against the "own: yes" proposal.

Please vote against my proposal to combine literatur - gedichte with literature - poetry.

I realized my mistake when I went to vote: -- "Gedichte" means poems not poetry. Sorry.

Please vote against my proposal to combine "bezetenheid" and "possession" - the Dutch word only covers it in the sense of "demonic possession"

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

Yet looking at the books for possession they all seem to be about demonic possession. In fact, I can't really imagine someone using possession to mean that they own or have the book, so I think the combination is fine.

That's how come I made the suggestion in the first place. But I can imagine lawyers using the word in the sense of "property rights" (and there must be lawyers on LT too).

There are a couple of copies of a guide to Possession by A.S. Byatt tagged, plus a couple of copies of The Bostonians by Henry James. I haven't read the James, so I'm not sure why it would be tagged.

Demons are not the only spirits known to possess people, either. Loa commonly do so, for one.

Yeah, okay, but Loa - by some definitions - would be demons / daemons too. Demons aren't necessarily what Christian mythology made of them - in fact, in the old sense of the word, angels are demons too. But I wasn't being that precise anyway.

I wouldn't confuse demons with daemons, either.

That's a matter of preference - in my library the tag "demonology" covers the lot. But, being aware that other people use it differently, I would certainly not suggest to combine those tags.

Proposed combining "Saint" and "heilige" - while it is a perfect translation of the general meaning, a huge part of the "Saint" page appears to be about the fictional character "The Saint".

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

p.s. I think the same objection goes for the other proposal "helgen"

Heilige can also be holy - so even without the character would have needed checking.

But if the fictional character Saint (since the tag is saint, not the saint), were translated to your language wouldn't it still be heilige. So there's no reason not to combine since the conflation would exist in both languages.

No, they are "De Saint" - the conflation is language specific.

Please vote against my suggestion to combine "externalization" with "externalizacion" -- although, free of context, the english and spanish words mean pretty much the same thing, they are being used in LT to label completely different things (in one case, as a psychological term; in the other, as a synonym for international out-sourcing).

#37/38 normany / Normandy seems OK to me. The Railway work cover shows that it is about the railways of Normandy and Proust visited Balbec-plage in WABG - in Normandy, non?

http://www.retaworks.com/random_walk/random_htm/France/Cabourg/Cabourg.htm

Oh lovely! Very useful thread. I hadn't realised it was a general thread rather than about one specific bonehead suggestion :-)

::n00b wave::

I take the chance to apologise about trying to combine "donne" and "women". I realised the mistake almost immediately (but at that point I hadn't thought of this group). However, I can see that people weren't fooled!

(Just for the record, "donne" does mean "women" in Italian, but yeah, the English poet accounts for far more taggings...)

I accidentally proposed to combine "settling us" and "set in the united states". For some reason I read that first tag as "setting us".

Please vote against my proposal to combine "profeten" with "prophets". As andejons correctly pointed out (http://www.librarything.com/topic/87964) at least half of the "profeten" tag is from Scandinavian users for whom it means "The Prophet" (Mohamed).

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

Sorry, I did it again.

Please vote against my proposal to combine dhamma and buddhadharma.

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

While on the one hand "dhamma" is an exclusively buddhist term (because it's in Pali), on the other it is specifically a Theravadin term (not used generally by the majority of Buddhists, who follow the Mahayana and would use the Sanskrit term "dharma"). And in fact, looking at the books for the two tags, it is used differently -- "dhamma" is more specific (and usually more scholarly), "buddhadharma" is more general (and more practice-oriented).

(While I'm at it, I would also pre-emptively discourage trying to combine dhamma and dharma: while they are indeed the same word in two closely related languages, "dharma" is much broader in usage -- it applies to any religion that happens to be taught/followed in India, and it means "teaching"; and it also means "element" in some Eastern philosophical systems.)

Clueless, so taking your word for it.

Heh. Yeah, a bit arcane, I know. That's why I gave a potted explanation... Of course, you can always find out more on Wikipedia, it's a fascinating subject, and you can spend years and years researching it... :-)

I'm doing a fair amount of buddhist-themed combining today. Generally, I'm keeping on the conservative side. Feel free to do the same and vote "Undecided", I know a bit about the subject but I'm neither a world expert nor generally infallible...

I'm neither a world expert nor generally infallible...

You're not? I'm shocked! ;-)

What, you thought I was the Pope? I'm offended! ;-)

Oops...

http://www.librarything.com/tag/zazen.+dharma+talks

The proposal to combine with "zazen" was a mistake, I hadn't seen that this tag continued after the full stop. I only saw it now in the list of unvoted proposals...

(It looks like my habit of NOT voting immediately for my own proposals has some utility, so I'll keep doing that for a while...)

Please vote down my suggestion to combine read 08-09 with read aug 2009.

obviously, 08-09 could mean other things, such as 2008-2009 or September 2008

Please vote against my proposal to combine "gotik" and "gothic". The German word can only be used for the noun, so the translation doesn't work two ways.

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

(I need more coffee).

I probably don't need to post this one for it to be voted down:

combine lit.classics with liteature

(another case of my fingers moving faster than my brain)

67> There are lots of combinations suggested on the gothic page. Gothic seems to be mostly used for 'gothic romance' type stuff, but also for the art period. The others seem to be one or the other.

From that point of view gotik is actually about the closest there.

Please vote against separating space/time from space time. I thought it was a general tag that had been combined with a technical term, but according to Wikipedia at least, "space/time" is actually an alternative way of writing "spacetime". Should have checked that before suggesting.

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

It's not my proposal, but please vote again combining http://www.librarything.com/tag/hokku and http://www.librarything.com/tag/haiku as it appears to be two related but different types of poetry.

Actually, it appears that poems that used to be called "hokku" are now called "haiku", while the term "hokku" is only used when the (same) poem is taken in a specific context. Or in other words, that they are so closely related as to be in practice the same thing.

Anyway, here is the Wikipedia article for people to make their own mind up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokku

Most of the people using hokku also use haiku. One assumes that they think it is different.

#73: Good point. I hadn't noticed.

Please put this bone-headed proposal out of its misery:

SilentInAWay has proposed combining the tag twenty-first century mexican history and 21st century american history.

You can vote here.

Please vote against my proposal to combine worldwide web into World Wide Web. Two of the three works tagged "worldwide web" are apparently not about the WWW, but instead are part of the Doctor Who drama Worldwide Web (Wikipedia).

I would have set that one up as well.....

Oops: please vote against my proposal to combine 20th century historical fiction with historical 20th century fiction.

Although each tag is currently applied to only one book (of historical fiction), I could easily imagine someone using the differing word order for two different meanings--historical fiction written in the 20th century and 20th century fiction that made history.

Oops here, too. Meant to combine "November 2010" with "Nov. 2010" but ended up pasting the remnant of looking for more combinations. Please vote against my proposal on "novembre"

Here's another slip-up (sorry):

Please vote against my proposal to combine the tags 21st Century British Literature and British literature--19th century.

Anthropological Society of Washington and anthropology? was an overly fast paste and return forgetting that I hadn't copied anthropology yet.

Didn't think I'd even have to bring it up but there are two yes votes. No there was no secret thought here. Sorry for the trouble.

ExVivre sent me the following note regarding proposal to combine congress* with congress.

"Regarding your tag combination proposal for congress* and Congress, the other tags on the book marked congress* indicate place names, so I suspect that tag is also referring to a place and that the user intended the differentiation."

Seems to be true. Please vote no.

82> http://www.librarything.com/profile/ksuphone is just a list of phone books, and the star indicates partial coverage.

Well, it's not my boneheaded suggestion, but it's clearly an error, nonetheless.

"Social science criticism" and "science fiction criticism" are not the same thing! You can vote "no" here: http://www.librarything.com/tag/Social+Science+Criticism#combine

84> crap--Crap--CRAP!!! That one's mine. Thanks, lilithcat (and your italics were unnecessary--we all know that you don't make mistakes). As for me, I'm not sure what my eyes thought they were seeing...

> 85

Sure, I do!

As for me, I'm not sure what my eyes thought they were seeing...

Well, it looked as though you were combining a variety of forms of "science fiction criticism", and I know full well that, when you are on a roll, it's easy to see what you expect to see, and miss the difference.

Yeah, that's probably what happened. I am nevertheless as thankful as always for your unfailingly sharp (and seemingly panoptical) eyes...

I absent-mindedly issued proposals to combine the tag government with the following four tags:

the United States Government
Government -- United States
United States - Government
government United States

On each of these pages, there are two proposals--one to combine with the tag government and one to combine with the main tag US Government. Please vote for the good combination and against the bad one. Thanks.

On second thought Air Farce really is a pun and not a typo.

These screw-ups are so obvious, I probably don't need to point them out. Nevertheless, please vote against my accidental proposals to:

combine Leonard Peikoff with Peikoff

combine 3 forms of Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy with Dr. Leonard

Posting them here gets people to vote.

>91 MarthaJeanne:

I'm not quite sure what you mean -- obviously, the entire purpose of this thread is to try to quickly remove bad proposals by getting people to vote against them.

92

I think Martha means that there are lots of people not voting at all, and this thread encourages people to start some voting again.

In any case, most proposals are taking a while to get through.

93> aaah. I see.

Please vote no on this suggestion of mine:
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Known+as+Cross+Stitch+in+Australia

with Cross stitch Australia

I went back and looked at the book in the former and it's a romance???? Heaven knows but the use isn't craft cross stitch.

Thanks

>95 fdholt:
To further clarify, the book "Outlander" is published under the title "Cross Stitch" in UK (and presumably, in Australia).

I've voted no.

A little over-enthusiastic in my Le Corbusier proposals.

The tag LeCorbusier - Pierre Jeanneret is indicating Le Corbusier (actual name Charles-Édouard Jeanneret) and his brother Pierre. So it should not be combined with the main Le Corbusier tag.

Please vote against my bone-headed proposal to combine the tag portugal "portuguese literature" with the tag Portuguese Literature.

The Portuguese Literature tag, of course, has been applied to books by authors who are neither from nor writing about Portugal (e.g., brazilian authors).

> 98

It has? Just goes to show the varied uses of tags, I guess. I'd have labeled Brazilian authors as "Brazilian literature", perhaps "books in Portuguese", but never "Portuguese literature"!

99>

Yeah, I know--there are books by Machado de Asis, Clarice Lispector, Jorge Amado and Paulo Coelho that have all been assigned some variation of the tag Portuguese Literature

(I'm not sure if its worth the time figuring out which subtags were assigned to these books)

There are probably other authors in this tagset as well -- these are just Brazilian authors that I recognize in the first eight or ten screens of books (there are over 2000 uses of this tag).

> 99: Whereas I use such tags for (original) language. So for my catalogue "English Literature" covers American, Australian, and New Zealand lit too. And I couldn't rename it "Books in English" since a.) it also covers Dutch translations of books originally in English, and b.) a lot of my non-fiction is in English too.

The real reson I prefer this system is Kafka. I wan't to put the English translation of his work in "German Literature", because even if he lived in Prague he never wrote in Czech.

98: It doesn't seem odd to me. Among the first tags I used were "Latin literature" and "Greek literature" tags for the original language of works; tagging ancient literature by place of origin ("Ptolemaic Egyptian literature", etc.) strikes me as much less natural. So, for consistency, I also tagged modern literature by original language. I've recently moved to less ambiguous tags ("English language literature", etc.), but until recently I would have used "Portuguese literature" for most literature from Brazil.

#102: I use British literature for material from the UK just to avoid English literature. But, yes, I use German literature for literature from Germany or Germans, and tag the Robert van Gulik Judge Dee books Dutch literature (and Anglo-Dutch literature).

Please vote against my proposal to combine the tags Quantum Mechanics and Kvantteori. I messed up and was suppose to propose the combination Quantum Theory and Kvantteori (which simply is Quantum Theory in Swedish).

My apologies.

oops -- please vote against the request to combine the tag deathless with Koshchei the Deathless. Stupid slip-up. Mea culpa.

I have realised that there are several "Sepoy Mutinies" besides the Rebellion of 1857 (Wikipedia disambiguation page), so please vote against my proposals to combine Sepoy Mutiny with tags specific to the 1857 conflict.

I suggested the combination of the tags fiction and skönlitteratur. However, it has come to my attention that the proposal has been made before and discussed in a thread.

Please vote against this combination.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Catholic+Church+-+Prayer+Books+and+Devotions

I put in a tag with "Catholic women" instead of "Catholic Church". Please vote no on that one.

I meant to combine "@box 3" with "Box 3", but instead entered "Box 2". Please vote against!

I just suggested combining '(The Merlin Chronicles)' (link: http://www.librarything.com/tag/%28The+Merlin+Chronicles%29 ) -- a Mary Stewart effort with 'Merlin Chronicles' (link: http://www.librarything.com/tag/Merlin+Chronicles ) -- Roger Zelazny effort. So, this needs a negative vote. It looks like 'Chronicles of Merlin' (link: http://www.librarything.com/tag/Chronicles+of+Merlin ) is ok to combine with 'Merlin Chronices'.

Sorry, I proposed

http://www.librarything.com/tag/society+and+culture+-+American
http://www.librarything.com/tag/culture+and+society

The box auto-filled from a previous proposal microseconds before I pressed enter. I wonder if there is a way to turn that off.

Something like that would be nice.

Anyway, it happens, don't fret. As long as we keep posting our "mistakes" too.

> 12

The box auto-filled from a previous proposal microseconds before I pressed enter. I wonder if there is a way to turn that off.

Auto-filling is a function of your browser, not LT. You should be able to turn it off at using your browser's preferences.

Yes, I presumed so. I have found the option and turned it off. Thanks.

Also, I'm trying to propose:

Religious: Denominations: Society of Friends (Quakers)
Religious: Denominations: Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

(http://www.librarything.com/tag/Religious%3A+Denominations%3A+Religious+Society+of+Friends+%28Quakers%29)

The first tag is already combined into http://www.librarything.com/tag/Quaker

When I tried to combine the second one:

1. It cut it off and created http://www.librarything.com/tag/Religious%3A+Denominations%3A+Religious+Society+...
2. Does not appear in the voting list.

Is it a bug?

Also (sorry)

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Religious%3A+Society
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Religious+Society+of+Friends

Paste into the wrong window I think.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Britain
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Brittany

Bretagne is combined into Brittany.

Which is correct. Bretagne is French for Brittany.

Great Britain would become Grande Britagne (offically - though in practice often Angleterre = England). Never just Bretagne.

Yes.

But what do the french call Britain?

You read my mind :)

However, we would not combine Britain with Great Britain?

No, because in English language usage Britain could mean ancient Britain as well. It's a bit like the football / soccer situation. Where do we combine Dutch "voetbal"?

By the way: the other one "Breizh" is Breton language for Brittany - I think we should leave this tag alone.

Thinking about this, I'm more confused. "Great" Britain, is the big island of the British Isles on which is England, Scotland and Wales. The "other" Britain (Brittany, Bretagne) is the peninsular on the Atlantic coast of continental France.

When we use "Ancient Britain" do we mean just Great Britain or both. I saw one book A Guide to the Stone Circles of Britain, Ireland and Brittany which implies (in this case) that "Britain" only means "Great Britain".

Surely "British" only pertains to Great Britain?

"Great Britain" has a political dimension too but still, I think it always refers to the geographical island. The UK is "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland", so Great Britain is not synonymous with the UK. I don't think people in Northern Island are called "British".

Would "Britain" and "British" ever be used to refer to anything other than "Great Britain"?

The term "Britain" is a complicated concept. Here is an article from Wikipeida referring to the terminology for Britain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_the_British_Isles . Little Britain, I guess, is Brittany (Bretagne), and Great Britain is England, Scotland, and Wales. The concept of the "British Isles" frequently extends to Ireland, but is not a popular concept there. I'm not sure that anyone extends the concept of "Britain" to Ireland.

Interesting article. The main points that clarify for me are:

Britain is a political and geographic term which can refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or the island of Great Britain.

(so as a tag "Britain" needs to remain separate from "Great Britain" because of the ambiguity).

The word "Great" means "larger", in comparison with Brittany in modern-day France. One historical term for the peninsula in France that largely corresponds to the modern French province is Lesser or Little Britain. That region was settled by many British immigrants during the period of Anglo-Saxon migration into Britain, and named "Little Britain" by them. The French term "Bretagne" now refers to the French "Little Britain", not to the British "Great Britain", which in French is called Grande-Bretagne.

(Bretagne is not Britain but Grande-Bretagne is Great Britain and in agreement with what Matt sad above).

First of all we have no way of knowing if people are using "Britain" as a short form for "Great Britain" or for "Ancient Britain". Obviously there is a considerable geographic overlap.

But "Britain" is also complicated when used to mean ancient Britain. Personally I would only use it for that part of the British isles that got conquered by the Romans (and successor states) - so for me it would (roughly) exclude ancient Scotland, but include Wales.

That doesn't mean everybody would agree. There were Britons - as opposed to e.g. Picts - beyond the Roman frontier (so, roughly, in what's now southern Scotland). Therefore some people would include that region too.

Anyway, in short, I don't think we can combine Britain with either Brittany or Great Britain.

the Kingdom of Great Britain ceased to exist when southern Ireland gained independence, the terms Britain, British and Great Britain,and British Isles, are not well defined and there disputes as to what term if any term applies to a particular place. So for example one might exclude the Channel Islands from the British Isles but insist that its inhabitants are British. or vice versa. or any other combinationIt is a political and cultural minefield. And any attempt to impose order will lead to insurrection. this is an area in which experts agree to differ and the hoi poli find themselves in fist fights in bars over. or consider the Isle of Man definatle part of the Briitish Isles but , not a part the United Kingdom or the Kingdom of great Britain. so are they British? it depends who you ask.
Moving west from there Derry Is Irish While Londonderry is British, yet they are the same place.

Personally I would only use it for that part of the British isles that got conquered by the Romans (and successor states) - so for me it would (roughly) exclude ancient Scotland, but include Wales.

So the England of Edward I was a Roman successor state?

I wasn't talking about "England", I was talking about "Ancient Britain".

At the moment I'm using "Britain", which is more generic. But I'm thinking of changing that.

My point was that, as far as I know Wales was not conquered by Rome or any of its successor states, depending on how you define the latter.

Wales was certainly a part of Roman Britannia. A bit of a backwater, but still.

Accidentally proposed combing Friesland (Germany) and Germany (East Friesland). While East Friesland is in Germany, so is North Friesland.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Friesland+%28Germany%29

sigh the kingdom Great Britain was those parts of the British Isles that were governed By the Palace of Westminster, Other part of the British Isles, .had and still have their own parliaments. Great Britain is the largest island of that Kingdom. Britain was the part that was conquered by the Romans, It includes some islands and excludes Scotland. Ireland. and various other islands. of the group. The British Isles are not well defined. some people excluding the island Of Ireland and or the Channel Islands Britons can refer to inhabitants of any of these different entities. or to the current United Kingdom.

Or to put it another way the terms and tags are a confused mess. that are often used interchangeably, but any attempt to combine them will offend someone.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/1500+-+1700+-+Biography.+5.+Great+Britain+-+Hist...
http://www.librarything.com/tag/Great+Britain+%252F+History+%252F+Stuarts_1603-1...

I proposed combining "Aardman Animation" with "Aardman". What was I thinking! Though apparently mostly - if not entirely - used for the animation studio at the moment, "Aardman" also means a sort of gnome or kobold in my own native language.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Aardman+Animation

>136 Nicole_VanK: Though in Dutch the usual form is the diminutive: "Aardmannetje".

True, but still.

> 136

Sometimes, we just get a little bit too focused!

I just proposed combining "Powers" and "Pouvoirs" - and immediately after realized "Powers" is also used for the surname.

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

But any word could be a surname. Should we not combine doctor and doktor because either could be someone's surname?

You have a point of course. But you might argue that doctor and doktor are just spelling variants. I'm pretty sure people called powers are nowhere near being called Pouvoirs.

ETA: I agree there is a real problem there though. That's why, sometime ago, I posted the idea of tag splitting (similar to author splitting) in RSI.

Here's another reason. One of the top usages is for the 'Powers' series, which seems to also be called 'Powers' in French.

"F; British Contemporary" is only used by one person and to mean "Fiction; British Contemporary". Please vote against my proposal to combine this with "British Contemporary".

marq has proposed combining the tag eighteenth-century British fiction and 19th Century British Fiction.

Sorry.

lol

Accidentally proposed combining "Avant-Garde Russe" (Russian Avant-Garde) with "Avant-garde". Ack.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/AVANT-GARDE+RUSSE

I proposed combining "Indië" with "Indie". In Dutch it's a very common typo and occurs like that on LT. But it had slipped my mind that "Indie" is also colloquial for "Independent" (as in film making for instance). Bad proposal, please make it go away.

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

Please don't combine United States > Officials and employees with United Nations › Officals and employees.

Oops. Was making proposals for Festschrift, aka Feestbundel, aka Liber Amicorum. Accidentally also proposed combining with "Album Amicorum" - that's a different phenomenon though.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/album+amicorum

P.s.: surprised to learn there is no word for Festschrift in the English language.

150>

The English word for "Festschrift" is "Festschrift". Sure it's stolen vocabulary, but so is much of the language.

Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly. My surprise is about the fact that the word needed to be stolen. I would have thought English language academia had a long tradition of such publications too.

Never mind though - it's just an aside.

I managed to propose an impossible combination of Kung Hans and Hand Kung: http://www.librarything.com/tag/kung+hans . So, vote No. (But yes for Hans Kung and Kung Hans)

Accidentally proposed combining Pulitzer Prize 2002 with winner of such.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Pulizer+Prize+2002.

What I was trying to do is propose a separation of Karel V (Charles V) form Keizer Karel V (emperor Carles V), since it can also refer to Charles V, king of France.

(And probably to one of Sweden too, since their Karl's number beyond 5).

But things went a bit wrong, so please vote against separating Karel V and karel v

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Karel+V

#155: Has it been established that that's possible? I thought they were inseparable, and the system implying otherwise was a bug.

I don't know, but I managed to propose it somehow - which I agree is weird.

>155 Nicole_VanK:
We actually don't have that many Karl's in our regnal list. Before Karl "IX", there are only two known monarchs with that name, but a 16th century historian had invented 6 more and the King used that list.

Creative ;-)

Obviously "d'Este" shouldn't be bombined with "Beatrice de Este" - just a member of that family.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/d%27Este

(Sorry, slip of the mouse).

On that page I see no proposed combination.

Yes, very curious. I do know I accidentally proposed this, at least in one of it's variants, but I can't find it anymore either.

I'm fairly sure I saw it and voted against it.

A batch of proposals has been closed in the last 24 hours. If enough people had voted No to the d'Este proposal, it could have been one of them.

Sorry. Though virtually all of what ever was counted as part of Flanders is in modern Belgium, Flanders existed many centuries before Belgium came about.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Flanders+%28Belgium%29

urgh! I cant believe I did this. Having successfully requested people separate the prose fiction variants from the novel variants for super hero fiction I accidental proposed that they be recombined while I was attempting to tidy up the strays. please vote against my absolutely boneheaded suggestion.
http://www.librarything.com/tag/superhero+prose+fiction

>165 Nicole_VanK:

I don't think that's an intended disctinction. There are several books that are set in, or are about, a time before modern Belgium existed.

Sorry, merely meant to search for potential combinations and ended up proposing Rubens and Peter Paul Rubens. (Can't believe I did that).

Anyway: while he's by far the most famous, there are other people with that surname.

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

I managed to create some wrong combination proposals for dark horse ... with dark house ... These are all at: http://www.librarything.com/tag/dark+house+comics . A mispelling on my part and there is no such thing as dark house comics, as far as I can tell. Many have voted yes.

Managed to propose combining, of all things, "German" and "Impresjonisme". Please shoot it down. http://www.librarything.com/tag/German#combine

I managed to propose combining "Philip II" with "Philip II of Spain". I absolutely didn't mean to: there's also a "Philip II" who was king on Macedon, for example.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Philip+II

We believe you...

I ended up suggesting a combination for "genocidi" and ... a space / nothing / null (I thought I was pasting in "genocide", but my clipboard was apparently blank).

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

It's because of the quotes. It's an old bug. I thought it was finally fixed. Apparently not - sigh.

The only way you can combine tags with quotes is to go to the tag page without the quotes and then in the combination slot you paste in the tag with the quotes.

I managed to make a wrong combination of manga and marvel graphic novel tags -- and they should be voted against: http://www.librarything.com/tag/Marvel+graphic+novel .

I made a tag combination proposal for Brasil+-+História, when I meant to make it for "Brasil - História" (URL copying accident). Please vote against. Thanks.

I didn't check my spelling on this bad suggestion: http://www.librarything.com/tag/anti+aircfarft+defence . 'aircfarft' is not a word.

> 178

I don't see the problem. "aircfarft" is pretty clearly a misspelling for "aircraft", so why shouldn't they be combined?

Because nothing is actually tagged anti-aircfarft-defence.

Then where did the tag come from?

I believe that when you propose a tag combination that you go to one of the tag pages and just type what tag you want to combine it with. If you misspell the other tag then you end up with this situation.

ETA: I'm probably wrong though since I haven't actually done a tag combination since soon after they were first introduced.

You can create any tag page you want by just going to the URL, e.g. efhluwbaskfej. You can then submit a combination proposal from this tag page.

It may also be that tag pages are created if you submit a combination proposal from a real tag to a non-existent tag. I don't remember and don't feel like creating a fake combination proposal to try it out.

Hm, but anyway: the tag exists now (and in my experience they don't go away), so I think it's better to have it combined.

> 185

Agreed.

> 184

In what way does the tag exist now? It's not being used on any books. It doesn't match any search results. In what ways won't it go away?

Empty tag pages still show in tag search. This one doesn't yet, but that's just because it's so new (it will when caching catches up).

It's not hugely important though.

Are you sure? I had assumed that all those empty tag pages I have seen in search results only show up because somebody at some point had actually tagged a book with that text (and later removed or fixed the tag, or removed the book (or perhaps the book is set to private or something?)); not because they're the result of combination proposals. And certainly not because somebody had "created" the tag via typing it into the URL (in that case, we'd not only eventually see eromsted's "efhluwbaskfej" show up in search, but also a TON of junk I've typed into URLs recently ... seems like it would be kind of crazy for a website to create search results based on what are essentially "404" errors). I had also assumed that all those empty tag pages could eventually be cleared from the search cache/index (and perhaps just aren't a priority for Tim, or the indexing schedule).

I could be wrong.

I just tried (again, possibly) to combine Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Imaginary place) with two variants. Both variants got truncated to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry (Imaginary place).

Hi, all. Sorry if my last batch was overwhelming. A few of my proposals ended up looking like I was trying to combine things like "Middle East Non-Fiction" to non-fiction. Of course, these were unintentional. I'm quite confident this is related to a bug (will report it shortly), since I noticed that I was unable to propose combinations from the nonfiction "middle east" tag page. Despite multiple attempts, they would never take (I eventually had to do the proposal to that tag). And I'm quite sure the pattern I see on the tag voting page reflects the order of my attempts (since I had suspected that semicolons might have been causing the problem).

You might see further proposals for me that are intended to test things with quotes, and they might just as buggy. Of course, be nice to the rest of the "Middle East Non-Fiction" proposals, if you agree with them of course, haha.

I thought that quote mark bug - it's an old one - had been fixed. Apparently not.

> 192
It may have been fixed for cases where the quote mark was at the beginning of the tag. I did some debugging, and those still work. Where things break is for tags that have the quote mark somewhere after the beginning. And proposals for those tags still work as long as you make the proposal from the page of the tag that doesn't contain a double quote (I guess you're screwed if both of them have them). I wrote up my bug report here.

I just suggested a combination of wood cut and woodcut illustrations: http://www.librarything.com/tag/woodcut+illustrations , which don't really belong together.

Giuliani should not be combined with Rudolph Giuliani. That was an absent-minded pasting in the wrong box on my part. Sorry.

My chicken/CHICKEN proposal was just a test of something. Please vote it down.

Accidentally proposed combining "Nieuwe Kerk" with "Nieuwe Kerk - Amsterdam. Never actually meant to do so.

While it would currently be correct - usage wise - "Nieuwe Kerk" simply means "new church" and there are a lot of Churches thus named in the Netherlands, in other places than Amsterdam as well.

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Nieuwe+Kerk

Please vote down my proposal to combine gen y with Genet. I was startled into prematurely hitting enter after a typo. Ugh.

The combination I just made for http://www.librarything.com/tag/Nature+%2526+General+Biology is the result of a misplaced search. Sorry. Time for me to go to bed ...

Too many tabs open, and I wasn't paying enough attention! Please vote against combining Astonishing X-Men and Avengers Disassembled. I realized I was in the wrong tab just as I hit the button. *hangs head in shame*

I mistakenly suggested combining Non-fiction -- history with a geographical variant.

The suggestion to combine Chicago with University of Chicago was an inadvertent click. Sorry.

> 202

I'm sure there are folks at the U of C who think that they are Chicago!

Had a copy/paste fail on American Revolution fiction. Ended up pasting "Deans Children's Classics" from a quick Ctrl-F run-through on another work's editions page.

I accidentally proposed combining "Apostle Saint Paul" and "Saint Paul".

http://www.librarything.com/tag/St.+Paul

Silly me. Even though lightening is mostly currently a typo for lightning they obviously shouldn't be combined.

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

Slip of the mouse: have accidentally proposed combining "expirimental fiction" with "experimentele literatuur" (experimental literature).

http://www.librarything.com/tag/expirimental+fiction

what distinguishes experimental fiction from experimental literature?

There is other fiction than just literature (graphic novels, movies...).