The ability to nest tags

I would like a tag nesting ability added to LibraryThing.

Pretend I have a group of books about gardening which I would like to further subdivide into the different types of gardening.

For Example:

Gardening --> Organic --> Fruit
Gardening --> Organic --> Vegetables
Gardening --> Biodynamic
Gardening --> Conventional

I would like to be able to nest Organic, Biodynamic, and Conventional under Gardening.

The Organic, Biodynamic, and Conventional tags wouldn't be visible until you clicked on the container "Gardening" tag.

This feature would greatly help me in organizing my library.

Until that ability is available, have you thought about using collections for the top level tags?

Some more examples:

Textbooks --> Computer Science --> Programming --> C++
Textbooks --> Computer Science --> Programming --> Java
Textbooks --> Computer Science --> Artificial Intelligence
Textbooks --> Mathematics --> Calculus
Textbooks --> Mathematics --> Trigonometry

Yeah I did consider that but decided against it because I would have way too many collections categories.

Do you mean you want tags that would be restrictively nested? That is, would nesting organic under gardening on some books preclude you from nesting it under chemistry for other books?

Or do you want the ability to search tagmashes in your library to be easier and more prominently placed?

I support the second option wholeheartedly. It's easy to search tagmashes sitewide, but a little weird on one's own books (I have yet to figure out how to do so without searching termmashes). The first option, on the other hand, is a little out there for me, as it restricts how tags could be used.

Sorry about that, I hit "submit" before I was done typing.

Yeah, I can see how it could get unwieldy. It's just the closest thing I could think of while we don't have a nested tag function, other than just adding a new tag for each nested set. (The closest in my own catalogue is a set of "fiction, historical fiction, historical:decade" for all the fiction that isn't set in the 1990s or more recently. Or the future.)

You may find past discussions on this topic by searching on hierarchical tags. The problem is that this goes against the philosophy behind tagging which is that it is more free than a formal classification system.

Hello, liphi.

Members here have talked themselves hoarse (if fingers can be said to be hoarse!) over this tag quandry - nested, bundled, buckets, facets ... you name it. Like you, I wanted something like this and carefully followed and bookmarked all the discussions on the subject. I had a computer crash recently and lost all those bookmarks, but had thankfully captured some of them on my profile in a comment to myself titled MASTER LIST OF TALK TOPICS ON TAGGING STRUCTURE, if you want to go see some of the past talk on this subject. IIRC, Tim (the owner of this marvelous Thing) has made his thoughts known throughout those threads.

And - Welcome to LibraryThing!

I am (in the process of) arranging collections as keristars suggests, but I would prefer nested/hierarchical tags. This has been requested in the past -- I recall lengthy discussions before collections appeared, with variations on the theme, no single universally accepted system. (ETA: countrylife slipped in with more info while I was composing this.)

I would want tags always visible, not hidden until the next level up is selected/expanded. So in addition to a list in alphabetical order, have a list with indented subcategories. UI-wise, I imagine tagging a book with "gardening : organic : fruit" and LT treating this as three distinct tags, visually arranged with indentations, and separately selectable. If other books are tagged with "chemistry : organic" and "organic", then the list would appear as:

chemistry
---organic
gardening
---organic
------fruit
organic

Maybe in the hierarchically arranged list, clicking "organic" gets only the selected subcategory, but in the alphabetically arranged list, clicking "organic" gets all three groups.

(ETA: indentation.)

After scratching my head for a while over this, I'm still no nearer to figuring it out: What would nested tag do that tagmash currently doesn't?

>10 ErlendSkjelten:
Pretty much my opinion. But I have yet to figure out how to do a tagmash on my own library (as opposed to sitewide), and I said in post #5 that I would support a straightforward, reliable, easy-to-find way to do such a search.

Edited for further clarity.

Pretty sure you can just use AND in the search term.

"termx" AND "term y" search category Tags.

Just checked and it worked for me. , instead of AND defaults to OR IIRC.

>12 reading_fox:
Well, I'd hardly call it reliable. I just entered "history" AND "Short List" into the search box on my catalog, made sure it was still set to search tags, and hit the search button. It didn't return all 71 books I tagged "Short List", but what it did return was pretty... interesting. The three main points:

* All 43 books it came up with I had tagged "Short List"
* Only some of them (maybe a bit more than half -- I'll do the math in a minute) I had also tagged "history"
* Some of the books I hadn't tagged "history" could be plausibly so tagged, but there were a few oddballs, like Persuasion and King Lear.

The bottom line is, what is called for is a way to search our own tagmashes: books that we've tagged with X and also with Y.

#13

I don't think that search syntax is right.

I've just searched using "tag:runequest tag:glorantha" on my catalogue. It returned 21 items all tagged with runequest and glorantha.
Searching using tag:runequest returns 30 items (not all tagged glorantha).
Searching using tag:glorantha returns 30 items (not all tagged runequest).

So it seems to work for me.

I've been asking for this for years (sigh).

13>

It's a longstanding bug that if you search for multiple parameters, the second (and subsequent) actually search "all fields" rather than just the specified field (so you must have put "short list" first, then history, and the others have "history" in some other field -- for instance, King Lear has it in the Subjects.)

14>

I'd bet that you don't have "glorantha" in any field other than tags for anything tagged "runequest" that is not tagged "glorantha".

Further looking into things reveals that I had given 26 of those 43 books I mentioned in #13 both tags, or about 60%.

Six more*, or nearly 14%, were fiction, and I had not tagged any of those 6 with "history."

Seven books (by my count), or a little over 16%, had my tags which contained the word "history" but did not have the word on its own as a tag.

The last four (9% and change) I had not tagged "history" but were merely plausible.

So, to make it simple:
- 60% of the results were what it should have come up with in the first place
- 25% were valid results only if doing a hybrid search (sitewide tagmash in my library)
- 14% "WTF?" factor**

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* They are Persuasion, The Mayor of Casterbridge, King Lear, Pride and Prejudice, Alias Grace: A Novel and The Count of Monte Cristo.
** That last 1% is for figuring all this out. I'm going to lunch.

14> I recall a bug in the catalog search where the search modifier on the second term is lost and ends up searching all fields for that term. Unfortunately, that doesn't quite explain AnnaClair's symptoms, but maybe it's related.

>14 andyl:
I was following the syntax in post #12.

>16 lorax:
"history" was actually the first parameter.

Please, people, gimme half a chance to go to lunch before jumping down my throat.

19>

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to jump down your throat -- it's just that what you observed could have been very easily explained by a known bug, so that's the first thing I suggested.

>10 ErlendSkjelten:. "After scratching my head for a while over this, I'm still no nearer to figuring it out: What would nested tag do that tagmash currently doesn't?"

Allow you to distinguish between the history of philosophy (philosophy --> history) and the philosophy of history (history --> philosophy).

Allow me to clarify what I mean by nested tags and specifically the feature I'm requesting.

My tag page currently lists all of my tags: http://www.librarything.com/tags/liphi

I'd like to mark certain tags as child-tags to be contained in a parent-tag. On the tag page I'd like to be able to click on a parent-tag and if it has any child-tags then they would be expanded and shown below the parent-tag.

Ex. I would click on Textbooks and see:

Textbooks
---Computer Science
------Programming
------Artificial Intelligence
---Mathematics
------Calculus
------Trigonometry

Of course, designating a word/phrase as a child-tag doesn't mean you can't use it elsewhere as a normal tag. If Tim implements this he would have to distinguish between normal tags and child-tags.

>21 Katya0133:

Thanks! I can see how that could be useful. Not sure I'm brought over to the nesting party yet, though.

>23 ErlendSkjelten:

To be clear, I'm not sold on the idea that LT tags need to be hierarchical, either, but the "history vs. philosophy" example is a standard argument in favor of ordered tags.

10 (Obdormio) & 11 (AnnaClaire): The purpose, for me, of hierarchical tags is that the tag page would display the organization of my library. It's not that I want the ability to find all books tagged both "gardening" and "organic" (to use liphi's example), but that I want to see at a glance that "gardening" is a major category and "organic" is a subcategory. I do not see this if the tags are arranged alphabetically.

7 (jjwilson61): (I realize that you are interpreting Tim, not expressing your own opinion.) The trouble with this philosophy is that some of us want to classify our books and LT lacks a mechanism, so we each devise an awkward system. The request is for a mechanism that allows hierarchical tags, not one that forces them on everybody. My classification is idiosyncratic, and as such is more free than a formal classification system, which is intended to be universal and unchanging.

There is no reason to have the tags organized alphabetically. You can chose that option, but it is not forced on us. A lot of my tagging is somewhat hierarchic, but I express that by order, and prefer that to any nested scheme. A lot of my subcategories are used in lots of different main categories.

I believe qebo is talking about the tag page which can be arranged alphabetically or by number of books tagged but not hierarchically.

Yes, exactly. I was referring to the tag page. I already have my tags organized as hierarchically as possible in the tag field.

Again, the wish is for an _optional_ hierarchical tags, not forced upon people who prefer otherwise. And as I described above, I imagine a possible way to deal with tags that are used as subcategories in multiple main categories.

This is brought up every couple of months. I've written lengthy, insightful, seemingly intelligent posts on the subject.

Short answer
Hierarchical tags: I'm all for them and Tim's not against them per se, but I think he is doubtful that the work involved will be in line with the benefits of the feature. Can't say that I disagree with that. So for now it's not on the short list for new features. Maybe some time in the future though. We are certainly pro-tagging, that much is for sure.

We are certainly pro-tagging, that much is for sure. (#29)

This is where I sometimes bring up tag bundling à la the social bookmarking site Delicious. The idea is, in fact, like what liphi was describing in #22, but would possibly be easier to swallow for those who find anything to do with tag hierarchy obnoxious.

The simple version is this: allow us to tag all we want, but also allow us to pull out certain groups of tags into something that can be gotten to -- but where they won't clutter our tag page either.

My classic example isn't anything to do with subjects at all, but with my Dewey and LC tags -- which take up quite a bit of space on my tag page*. My 93 Dewey tags could have one bundle, my 59 LC tags could have another**, and my tag page would be much easier to wade through. And, since all I did was hide a bunch of specific-and-special-purpose tags, there's not a hierarchy in sight!

Edited to add dropped punctuation.

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* They're those tags like "@ 942" and "@ TT"
** Both those numbers are subject to change without notice: they're likely to go up.