All About Tags! [ Edited ]

[Jon_B]

Tags are a new feature that allows you, the community, to contribute to better organization and navigation here on the Book Clubs.

Here's how it works - suppose you are writing a post about the latest Twilight movie.  When you've finished writing your post you can enter some tags like "Twilight, movie".  Be sure to seperate your tags with a comma, and if you want to do a tag that is two or more words, use an underscore to connect_them_together_like_this.  

These tags get added to the community's pool of tags.  Someone can now click on the tag "Twilight" and get a list of all the posts that people have tagged with "Twilight".  For example, here's what that looks like now:

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/bn/tagging/view_tag?tag.text=twilight

Note that this link shows you all the posts that have been tagged with "twilight" in the entire Book Clubs community, not just any one board.

Now, say you've written a post tagged with "Twilight" and  "movie" and someone else writes a post about a Harry Potter movie, which they tag with "Harry_Potter" and "movie". If someone was looking at the list of posts tagged with "movie" they'd see both of those posts - and the other tags (Twlight and Harry_Potter) would show up in the "Related Tags" area.

If you look down at the bottom of any board, you'll see an area called a "Tag Cloud".  This shows you which tags have been used the most in that board - the more a tag is used, the larger and bolder it's font becomes in that display.  Click on "view all" to get a complete list of the tags for that board.  If you click on any individual tag, you can look at that tags use on both a board level and on the level of the community as a whole.

You can check out your own tags at any time simply by looking at your own Book Clubs profile.

For reference, this link is a list of every tag that is currently being used by the entire community.

If you have any questions or comments about the tags, please post in this thread.

Thanks, and happy tagging!

Message Edited by Jon_B on 02-23-2009 02:30 PM

[debbook]

Jon, can we personalize tags for our own use? For instance, often when people are discussing books that they have just read, I make a mental note to check it out- and then forget of course. Could I tag a post with my name and books_of_interest, or something similar?

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Jon_B wrote:

Tags are a new feature that allows you, the community, to contribute to better organization and navigation here on the Book Clubs.

Here's how it works - suppose you are writing a post about the latest Twilight movie.  When you've finished writing your post you can enter some tags like "Twilight, movie".  Be sure to seperate your tags with a comma, and if you want to do a tag that is two or more words, use an underscore to connect_them_together_like_this.  

These tags get added to the community's pool of tags.  Someone can now click on the tag "Twilight" and get a list of all the posts that people have tagged with "Twilight".  For example, here's what that looks like now:

http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/bn/tagging/view_tag?tag.text=twilight

Note that this link shows you all the posts that have been tagged with "twilight" in the entire Book Clubs community, not just any one board.

Now, say you've written a post tagged with "Twilight" and  "movie" and someone else writes a post about a Harry Potter movie, which they tag with "Harry_Potter" and "movie". If someone was looking at the list of posts tagged with "movie" they'd see both of those posts - and the other tags (Twlight and Harry_Potter) would show up in the "Related Tags" area.

If you look down at the bottom of any board, you'll see an area called a "Tag Cloud".  This shows you which tags have been used the most in that board - the more a tag is used, the larger and bolder it's font becomes in that display.  Click on "view all" to get a complete list of the tags for that board.  If you click on any individual tag, you can look at that tags use on both a board level and on the level of the community as a whole.

You can check out your own tags at any time simply by looking at your own Book Clubs profile.

For reference, this link is a list of every tag that is currently being used by the entire community.

If you have any questions or comments about the tags, please post in this thread.

Thanks, and happy tagging!

Message Edited by Jon_B on 02-23-2009 02:30 PM

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[Jon_B]

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debbook wrote:
Jon, can we personalize tags for our own use? For instance, often when people are discussing books that they have just read, I make a mental note to check it out- and then forget of course. Could I tag a post with my name and books_of_interest, or something similar?

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Sure, just remember the space issue... so you could do something like books_of_interest_debbook or perhaps a simpler version of the same thing, so long as all the characters in the phrase were connected together.    

[Melhay]

If we would do a tag of books_of_interest is there a way to remove a tag after you may have read that book?  I was thinking of using this idea for myself when these were announced but the list will get rather long if I can't remove a tag later.

Mel

[Jon_B]

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Melhay wrote:

If we would do a tag of books_of_interest is there a way to remove a tag after you may have read that book?  I was thinking of using this idea for myself when these were announced but the list will get rather long if I can't remove a tag later.

Mel

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Yup, you can remove an individual tag (of yours - you can't remove tags created by other people) from an individual post simply by clicking on the little box next to it and choosing "delete".  You can also delete all instances of one of your own tags from within your profile - but be very careful with that as it will remove that tag from every post, not just one of them.

Note that you should only do this if you are using tags that are specific to you like "books_of_interest_Mel" - if it's a more general tag, other people will probably continue to find it useful even if you are done with it, so its better to leave it there in case others want to use it.

 

Message Edited by Jon_B on 02-24-2009 11:58 AM

[dulcinea3]

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Jon_B wrote:

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debbook wrote:
Jon, can we personalize tags for our own use? For instance, often when people are discussing books that they have just read, I make a mental note to check it out- and then forget of course. Could I tag a post with my name and books_of_interest, or something similar?

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Sure, just remember the space issue... so you could do something like books_of_interest_debbook or perhaps a simpler version of the same thing, so long as all the characters in the phrase were connected together.    

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Of course, keep in mind that that would not prevent anyone else from using that tag, too, even if it seems like they would have no point in doing so.  I don't think you can create a private tag that only you can use.

[Everyman]

Of course, keep in mind that that would not prevent anyone else from using that tag, too, even if it seems like they would have no point in doing so.  I don't think you can create a private tag that only you can use.

There would definitely be a point.  If there's a book I think a person should read, it would probably be more effective to slip in the tag than just to mention it in a post.  They could easily ignore the latter, but the former would bring it up every time, and since it was my tag they couldn't delete it.  

If you start an IJonwanttoreadthis tag, I can think of several books I would attach it to, books IMO you would benefit from reading. But I won't mention them here, since forewarned would be forearmed.  I'll wait for you to create the tag, and them, Wham.  .  

[Melhay]

Thank you Jon.  That is a perfect explaination.  Exactly what I was looking for.

I will also be careful to not delete anything from a tag others will be using, only ones for me.

Thank you again.

Mel

[dulcinea3]

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Everyman wrote:

Of course, keep in mind that that would not prevent anyone else from using that tag, too, even if it seems like they would have no point in doing so.  I don't think you can create a private tag that only you can use.

There would definitely be a point.  If there's a book I think a person should read, it would probably be more effective to slip in the tag than just to mention it in a post.  They could easily ignore the latter, but the former would bring it up every time, and since it was my tag they couldn't delete it.  

If you start an IJonwanttoreadthis tag, I can think of several books I would attach it to, books IMO you would benefit from reading. But I won't mention them here, since forewarned would be forearmed.  I'll wait for you to create the tag, and them, Wham.  .  

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Oh, dear, maybe I shouldn't have said anything - now I've given you ideas!!!

But, of course, there would have to be a post about the book before you could tag it.

[Jon_B]

Actually I think Everyman's idea of using tags to recommend books to other readers is great, I hope he and others act on it!