I have a problem with some members using tags for their own info.  A book I recently searched for had the following tags 43/61 11/1/2007, Have.  All the books by this author have the tag "have".

I thought tags were supposed to be a helpful little item to give people an idea about the book, not used for personal info.  What if 20 people tagged the book "have" and 20 more tagged it "don't have".  Beyond these 40 no one would care, and those 40 wouldn't be able to remember if they had it or not. 

I have seen very little good done with tags since they started.  Also they make each tagged book take up more space on the page, making it harder to search.

What do you think?

Well I finally broke down and tagged my reminder list books. I look at deals in book bazaar alot and can't remember what I've put on my RL.  Eventually as more and more people tag books you'll stop seeing so many personal tags.  You'll only see your own tags and the most common ones for that book like it's genre, series etc...,  They were very annoying to me at first but I've gotten used to them now.  You can help get rid of the more personal tags popping up on your screen by tagging books with tags that everyone can appreciate. 

I've only tagged 2 or 3 books.  When I posted them, one said "unknown binding"--its a BCE hardcover--so I tagged it until I could submit the request to edit the book info.  Another said "paperback" and a review said "hardcover and paperback have same isbn--it never came out in paperback, it's a hardcover that is the size of a paperback.

I get irritated when I see "43/61" etc....just like on half.com when people will list a number or something else instead of the condition of the book.  As if we know what "A351" means.  I figure that these people over there don't want us to order their books

Actually the tags ARE for personal use according to R&R.    The most popular of the tags then become seen by everyone and only you will see the personal one.        Anyone tagging the way of the example in the first post is just doing what was recommended by the site owners.

Here's an explanation from the Help Center:

What are they?

Book Tags allow you to mark books any way you like. 

• You can tag a book as "great" or "why would anyone read this?"
• You can apply any number of tags to the same book.
• You can view all the items in the database bearing a particular tag by clicking on the hyperlinked tag wherever it appears on a book listing.
• Others can see your tags.
• When you view a book you will see ALL of the tags you have applied to it, as well as the most commonly-applied tags for the whole club.  Less-commonly applied tags will not necessarily show, especially if a book has had many different tags applied to it.

Don't know if this was posted here or not, but there's a short explanation of tags on Librarything at www.librarything.com/concepts which references a long but fascinating article on the nature of tags and categorization in general at www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html  I can't wait until PBS tags are searchable--anybody have any idea when that might be?

I just tagged all my TBR books as "my tbr".  That way, when I'm looking for books to order, I don't order duplicates, like I have in the past.  I know which tags are mine, because there is a red 'x' by mine so I can delete it if I want to.  I have to say it... I like tags!  :)

I haven't been around a lot lately, but I remember seeing that the tags were meant for personal use.  So these tags make a lot of sense to me.  One person has that book and another person found that they were 43 of 61 on the wish list of this book on 11-1-2007.   Makes sense to me and actually seems like a good idea for personal tracking of books.

Now I can totally see why my information about a book would be boring to another person, but tags are for personal use that other people can see.  Sure, there is some great information that you might be able to find through other people's tags, but for the most part, they seem like something you should ignore on the book's information page.

K

I get irritated when I see "43/61" etc....just like on half.com when people will list a number or something else instead of the condition of the book.  As if we know what "A351" means.  I figure that these people over there don't want us to order their books

On Half.com, the A351 is probably where the owner has been storing their copy of the book posted so they know which book to send, especially if they have more than one copy.

I'm guessing the 43/61 is their place in line for FIFO:  I'm number 43 of 61 people wish listing this book.  If that's the case, it really makes no sense to input that in a tag:  place for wish listed books is not an absolute and you can find the up-to-date info easily.   But this could also be where the person stores this book. 

As annoying as some of the tags are, I really feel that folks should be able to tag them whoever they want. The rules put forth by R&R back this up.

However, what I would REALLY like to have is the ability for each of us to make our tags public or private. :)

Some of the tags I see are a bit annoying to me.  Like the reminder list ones - you already HAVE a reminder list, go look at IT!  LOL!  But, the best way to get those tags out of sight is.... tag away!  I try to add a few tags to every book.  Some tags are getting tons of use, like "mysteries", so when I add those tags, I try to add one or two less common ones.  The more useful tags there are, the further down the obviously personal ones will go.

Here's a negative to tags, though.  When I click to add a tag, it starts offering suggestions, based on the letters I've already typed.  So if I type "my", it'll suggest "mysteries".  But sometimes.... just to make this up.... I'll look at the suggestions and see something that gets my interest.  Say I've typed "my" and see "my sister wrote this book!" on the list.  I'm kinda curious about that tag.  There's only one way to go see that book - put that tag on another book, and then click it.  Then I go back and delete it.  Wish they'd make it possible to search tags!

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I'm going to guess that evb9 stands for Erotica Virtual Box [Round] 9.  It's a game that's being played right now in the Games Forum.

I honestly love the tags.  I tagged most of my books with my place in the WL so I can see how quickly a particular WL is either growing or getting smaller. 

And I like the idea that I can mark a book as read or that I own it already so I don't order another copy of it. 

I use the tags personally so I can view my TBR list to see how many copies are available for each book. (and how fast that number grows or dwindles).  It kind of annoys me that I can ONLY see this on my reminder list , and don't want to switch back and forth to see quanties on hand on Reminder, and then # of WL requests on TBR. Otherwise, I wouldn't personally use the tags this way.

I tagged my reminder list books because when you're looking at someone's shelf who's offering a deal it's a pain to go back and forth.  I have a lot of books on my RL.  I tagged them so if I perusing someones shelf and they have more than one I can maybe get a deal on them.  I kept seeing books that look familiar and then I have to look if it's in my TBR (200+) or my RL or one I looked at but decided I didn't want.

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I love the tags. I have wanted a way to give myself little notations about my books for years now, so I'm thrilled. And I agree, it would be nice to be able to turn off tags if they are irritating to you....but given time, I think most people will get used to them.

Also, given time, the more general tags will overcome the personal ones and become the only tags seen by the public -- assuming, of course, that we tag books with general tags, too!  I'm looking forward to the feature becoming searchable.

I've started giving more general tags to books to help the process of making the more personal ones be less visable to people they don't apply.  Of course some of the more obscure books may never get tagged or not enough to cover the personal ones.

A couple of weeks ago someone suggested tagging wish list books with their release dates.  And I have also been tagging audio books as abridged or unabridged, because that is not always listed in the book description. 

Another good use for tagging your spot in the WL FIFO line is to see how quickly it's moving... if it's moving along at a quick pace, then I'll wait for the book to get here.  There are a few books on my WL that have NEVER moved, so I'm considering just buying those.... if the system tracked 'movement' (or provided another way to do that besides tags), then I wouldn't tag them with my place in line.

Denise

Kristen, rather than tagging audios, why not edit their descriptions? If you know the information regarding # of tapes, minutes, abridged, unabridged, this is information that would be helpful to others, and the tags may not always be visible, whereas the description will be.

Sherry, might I suggest both?  The unabridged tag would be very useful to me because I only like unabridged audios, and that would be a quick way for me to find more.  I also appreciate it greatly when the book despcription data has it listed as abridged or unabridged.

Sherry-

I have submitted edits for the ones where I know all the info on (# of cd's, abr., unabr.) but I think the tags are also useful b/c when you are looking at the list of 275 posted audio books you can click the "unabridged" tag and all the ones that have that tag will be separated for you.  It's actually kind of handy. ykwim?