I thought personal tags were allowed, until I found that some of mine are gone. Needless to say, I am rather annoyed. From originally tagging books from each of my lists, splitting up some of the tags, to individually re-tagging each personally-tagged book to add my initials (this was before the "My Tags" list and the "rename tag" option), I invested a LOT of hours tagging and I do not have the time to do it over.

Yes, I could've used the notes, but I was under the impression (see below) that personal tags were allowed. Being able to click on a link and have each book with that characteristic come up in a list, all at once, was a lot more convienent than using the notes feature. Especially for the tags that I have denoting which libraries carry books on my WL/RL, or what WL books I can get very cheap on Amazon. 

I guess it's only a matter of time before ALL of my personal tags get deleted so maybe I should start finding somewhere else to host these lists.

You can make Personal Tags or Club-Useful tags.

• A Club-Useful tag uses words and phrases that describe the content of the book. See examples of Club-Useful tags below.
  • When coming up with a Useful tag, ask yourself "What words will other members search for to find books like this?"

• A Personal tag has meaning only for the tagger.  See examples of Personal tags.
  • Members can use these, but there is almost always a better way to do what you're trying to accomplish.

• An Inappropriate tag is one that describes a particular copy of a book, or that is scatalogical (these are never appropriate!), or that actually impedes other members' use of the club.  See examples of Inappropriate tags.

    Examples of Useful Tags:

Historical Fiction, Newbery Medal Winner, Nobel prize-winning author, Set in Spain, Catholicism, Baseball History

    Examples of Personal Tags:

pjfb, 11/13 on 0708,  15 36, hmmm, 11/13, etc.

These have meaning only for the tagger.  They will not be useful to the other members of the club.

Done, Wish List, TBR, RL, BIR, JohnRL, MarysTBR, Traded, My TBR, John-bookshelf, Sent, etc.

        Note that many of these tags are redundant.  The On My:  section of search listings and My Lists serve the purpose of most of them. 

    Examples of Inappropriate Tags:

cover has small tear, No Dust Jacket, some yellowed pages, autographed, etc.

       These tags apply do not apply to EVERY copy of the book, only one.  

Do not order

     Put yourself in the shoes of a new member who finds a book she'd like to order bearing this tag!      

Posted for John S. only - all other requests will be canceled!

       Egregious inappropriate use of tags (and of the site)! This tag appears to apply to every copy of the book, so no one will request it. A tag like this will also likely get your account suspended for Terms of Use violations.

If you have created any inappropriate tags, you should delete them. Otherwise, they will start to disappear without warning as other members report them as inappropriate! See below for more information about reporting tags as inappropriate.

Yes, they are allowed, but some readers on this site of readers can't read. Simple as that. The rules state what is redundant, personal, and not allowed, but yet do you think they are getting read? Obviously not if you and other's personal tags are still being tagged to be removed. Water damaged books aren't allowed, but we still get them too, so who knows, maybe that's why some of these people are trading their books... they really don't know how to read and they are all ordering picture books!!! hahahahahah

I feel your frustration Nicole. I have tagged 50 or so books as Trade Size 4 times now and they keep getting removed. I sent feedback a while back and after seeing them gone again today I sent more feedback. It's just frustrating to do all the work to tag books to just have them removed by those who can't take the time to read the rules!!

I too have felt the pain of tag removal. I would hate to make more work for anybody, but I am starting to think there ought to be some kind of reasonable real person whom tag removals have to go through instead of some automatic process (that I assume exists?) when a certain number of "objections" are logged. ... someone who KNOWS personal tags are acceptable and can recognize one when she sees it.

(OR... maybe "group/general" tags could be in ALL CAPS and personal tags lower case (or SOMETHING!)

It is a frustration that I don't think will get better. I had my WL tags all disappear recently. I use that tag to mark the books on my TBR and BIR (that I still have) that are on someone's WL so that I can pull up a list of just those books and also spot them easily on someone else's WL. I use that tag a lot and am working with the list of them a few times a week. Had over 100 tagged when they diasappeared. When I sent in a complaint that is still so easy for misunderstanding members to remove personal tags all I got was someone trying to convince me that my tag was not useful. The person did not even know the functionality of the newer My Tags lists. I was also told that the reporting of a tag enough times will remove it from all books with that tag, which completely contradicts the Help Center where it says it will only remove it from that book. I was quite disappointed that it sounds like the site is assisting in the removing of personal tags even while they are saying they are allowed.

You can try to find another way to keep those lists, or you can be stubborn like me and keep putting them back on. It took me over 2 hours to replace my tags :(

You can try to find another way to keep those lists, or you can be stubborn like me and keep putting them back on. It took me over 2 hours to replace my tags :(

LOL I'm stubborn too! In my feedback I said I was going to re-tag for the 5th time because I felt like I was at war and I was not going to lose. I tagged about 25-30 books this morning. UGH! Just frustrating!

I guess one lesson is to periodically make a printout of contents of each tag.... so if the tag should happen to disappear you can pull out your printout and "re-tag".... or re-re-tag.... or....

So I guess sending feedback is a waste of time, then? I guess I'll take Kalualani's suggestion and copy & paste them on my computer, but it would be such a pain to re-tag them, especially multiple times. If some of my other tags would've gotten deleted, I wouldn't have been able to get the lists back. Then I I would've been REALLY upset, probably to the point of using another website for personal cataloging (IMO, one of the best features of this site above another that I use is the ability to keep different lists and personal tags).

Could they implement private tags, so that users can hide them? I know notes are private but they're not as convenient as tags!

Oh yeah, I feel your pain.  When this issue was first brought into the open, I was livid.  I lost hours & hours of painstaking work as well.  I really haven't felt the same about this place since.   Here's the thread I started back then:  In my 3+ yrs here, I am finally brought to tears by PBS - in a bad way

So the real "guideline" for reporting inappropriate tags is that we should only report the ones that are truly inappropriate, like "damaged" or "unpostable", etc.  Personal tags, while not recommended, are not really up for report as inappropriate.

Is that the gist?  I don't think it's totally clear from the help doc (and I couldn't find stuff on tags in there without searching anyway!)

ETA that I also reported some tags that I knew were incorrect.  Specifically, ones that were marked as Newbery Medal Winners when they are acutally Newbery Honor Books.  I hope that was ok...  I would support reporting things where tags were spelled wrong or where there is only half a word, etc.  Is that ok too?

"So the real "guideline" for reporting inappropriate tags is that we should only report the ones that are truly inappropriate, like "damaged" or "unpostable", etc.  Personal tags, while not recommended, are not really up for report as inappropriate."

YES (as I understand it)

"I also reported some tags that I knew were incorrect.  Specifically, ones that were marked as Newbery Medal Winners when they are acutally Newbery Honor Books. ... reporting things where tags were spelled wrong or where there is only half a word, etc.  Is that ok too?"

I personally would tag it as a Newbery Honor Book myself... and then report the "medal winner" tag as incorrect. (Assuming I KNEW my facts to be correct.) If a tag that is spelled wrong or is half or word, etc looks to me like a "personal" tag, I just ignore it. If it is a "general" tag, I would tag it correctly and report the misspelled version.

I still wish there were some way to say "This is a personal tag. Please leave it alone."

I know some people like tagging their wishlist books. I sometimes like browsing their tag to get more ideas for books. WL is a logical choice for the tag, but I know it gets removed.  (Some of the reasoning being that people don't keep their tags updated so all the books tagged WL might not still be wishlisted, etc.)

But people still want to tag their wish list books... so they add initials or something. It seems inefficient to me to have a bunch of different tags: WL-KJ, WL-KM, WL-GN, etc. I would love to see something like *WL-- that anybody (or everybody) could use as a personal tag to say "this is on my wishlist". Who cares if every one of them is currently on the club wishlist, or not? For me, if I decide to browse for ideas, it is enough to know that at least at one time, one or more people were wishing for this book.

So, if every single person even those who don't read the forums, would please agree that any tag starting with an asterisk is a personal tag and leave it alone-- that would work for me! (Except then you'd get people thinking that "*damaged" must be okay, so I maybe there is no winning.)

Another catagory of tags I tend to report inappropriate are those that seem to try and use tags to review the book! I have seen full sentences such as "This is a really good book. Please order it from me."

I agree with you 100% K.J., I wish there was a way to indicate a personal tag and I also think that it is more efficient to have more people using one rather that a 100 different ones with slight variations. I was told tby the librarian who answered my complaint that it was preferable that everyone use a different one and I couldn't figure out the logic to that. At my time of irritation I contemplated setting up a LMDTTHA tag when I was told that my WL tag was useless and I should find something else to use. I thought maybe Leave My D- - - Tag The H- - - Alone would be more useful.

LOL! I have no idea what you just said-- maybe someone spilled pop on your keyboard?

I have also thought about using tags such as 101, 102, 103, ... and just keeping a key by my computer so I can keep track of which tag means what. (I am sure I'd learn my favorites pretty quick.) However, I was not sure they would be recognized as personal tags and be removed. The thing is, as it is now, I have no trust whatever that that won't happen to ANY tag I use.