Play Book Tag discussion

For anyone who is interested in viewing the list we are working from, you may find it here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/...

What a pain to compile, lol, . . so much duplication in the shelves and a lot of meaningless shelves as well.

Wow! Interesting. I can't imagine any of us voting for 1star and it was fun to see a shelfari favorites shelf.

So interesting - thanks!

There are a few on here that I seriously hope never come up ;)

Booknblues wrote: "Wow! Interesting. I can't imagine any of us voting for 1star and it was fun to see a shelfari favorites shelf."

It looks like the year tags are meaningless. I think most people use those tags to keep track of which books they read during the year (as opposed to the year of publication or setting). The 2016 tag list has books from all different years. Is it possible to delete all of those in the next revision? I have a selfish reason, so feel free to disregard this. I was hoping to see Great American Read on this list.

NancyJ wrote: "Booknblues wrote: "Wow! Interesting. I can't imagine any of us voting for 1star and it was fun to see a shelfari favorites shelf."

It looks like the year tags are meaningless. I think most people ..."

I'm surprised the Great American Read didn't end up there.

I think we have had some of those year tags and I think perhaps some have won, but I think most of us here decided to do year published.

Booknblues wrote: "

I'm surprised the Great American Read didn't end up there.
..."

Me too, though it didn't start until May 2018, and people were very inconsistent with the way they tagged it. I counted at least 8 different ways - including PBS top 100, PBS Great American Read, greatamericanread, GAR, TGAR, etc. I'm sure it's that way with many other concepts too. Look at Italy and Italian. Maybe "Italian" was used for books written in Italian, but I would guess that for most people the terms were interchangeable.

At least the "books" tag made it, which I would interpret as books about books. I really hope that tag makes it one month. (Though who knows, some people might have used the tag to distinguish between print books and audio or ebooks.)

Gosh I hope we never land 1-star!!!

Thanks, Anita. To me, many were very helpful.

Thanks for all the hard work compiling the list. I don't think we have to worry much about 1 star ever winning the monthly vote :-).

Rachel N. wrote: "Thanks for all the hard work compiling the list. I don't think we have to worry much about 1 star ever winning the monthly vote :-)."

Agreed! That's what is good about voting and also about having one member nominate a tag - - usually, there's at least two that are acceptable and bad ones don't get chosen. Although I personally have rated some literary masterworks with one star, so who knows what's in there.

In terms of the year tags, we have had those chosen before and nearly all the members go with the idea that the book must be published in that year. Some people really hate the year tags and other really like them as a way to go back and clear a long standing TBR title. I don't really like to bring my personal biases to the task of compiling the tags. I start on page 1 and add every tag that seems like it could possibly work for the group. I do eliminate ones like "kindle" and "books I own" and "to buy" . . .tags I'm confident will not work.

Then, I try to consolidate truly synonymous tags, but I am never quite sure on tags like Russia and russian. To me, the Russia tag would include books set in Russia, about Russia, history, etc. where the russian tag suggests to me that it was written by a russian author (originally in russian). Individual member could stretch either of these tags to encompass the other one, but some of us who go by stricter interpretations might not.

NancyJ wrote: "The 2016 tag list has books from all different years. Is it possible to delete all of those in the next revision?"

We will not be doing this for the 2019 list. The only edits we make to the list are to remove tags that are truly redundant, and we do not make a value judgment on whether a tag should be on the list or not.

So, while the year tags are fairly broad and can be interpreted a couple of different ways, they are not redundant with each other and, therefore, we kept them all.

That is the solution at least for this year, but we will certainly keep your feedback in mind for the 2020 (that sounds so weird!) update. However, to manage expectations, this suggestion has been made in the past but we have yet to find a reason compelling enough to change our minds given how extensively those year tags are used!

Booknblues wrote: "NancyJ wrote: "Booknblues wrote: "Wow! Interesting. I can't imagine any of us voting for 1star and it was fun to see a shelfari favorites shelf."

It looks like the year tags are meaningless. I thi..."

So the tags are ordered by the number of books that carry the tag (on Goodreads). I put the tags in alphabetical order for you to review, but the most popular tags have more than 12 million books associated with them. Great American Reads has 463, and even if you consolidated all of the variants on it, I'm betting you might end up with 1000 books. I made it to about page 11 or 12 of the various tag options, and even those had over 125,000 books . . .

So that's why things stand as they do.

Maybe next year, we could use the top 250 tags and take 50 nominated tags from our members to round out the list. Or maybe I'll create a challenge that somehow adds tags. Hmmmmm.

Anita wrote: "Maybe next year, we could use the top 250 tags and take 50 nominated tags from our members to round out the list. Or maybe I'll create a challenge that somehow adds tags. Hmmmmm. "

Oooo, this could be interesting! We have also done some things in the past where we had special "tag" events where those not on the top 300 list were used for. . . something.

Anita wrote: "Rachel N. wrote: "Thanks for all the hard work compiling the list. I don't think we have to worry much about 1 star ever winning the monthly vote :-)."

Agreed! That's what is good about voting and..."

Thanks for all the hard work Anita! I can imagine this exercise was tedious.

Edit-Ok I just scrolled through the list-LoL- my two favorites-
Pleasure And Smut! Be warned, if I get chosen to pick the 3rd Tag!🤣🤣

Joanne wrote: "Ok I just scrolled through the list-LoL- my two favorites-Pleasure And Smut!."

Hahaha! I saw the "smut" tag and was like, "Oh, we are NOT getting rid of that one!" lol

Nicole R wrote: "Joanne wrote: "Ok I just scrolled through the list-LoL- my two favorites-Pleasure And Smut!."

Hahaha! I saw the "smut" tag and was like, "Oh, we are NOT getting rid of that one!" lol"

Why did I think of you when I saw it-hahaha!!!!-Oh! I know your reviews would be priceless.

I am always hoping for the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge!!

Fingers crossed for no "started but never finished"!

Joanne wrote: "Nicole R wrote: "Joanne wrote: "Ok I just scrolled through the list-LoL- my two favorites-Pleasure And Smut!."

Hahaha! I saw the "smut" tag and was like, "Oh, we are NOT getting rid of that one!" ..."

Oh I'm with both of you! But if we had to vote for one in the same month????

Susie wrote: "Gosh I hope we never land 1-star!!!"

LOL! I just can't see people voting for it!

Joanne wrote: "Anita wrote: "Rachel N. wrote: "Thanks for all the hard work compiling the list. I don't think we have to worry much about 1 star ever winning the monthly vote :-)."

Agreed! That's what is good ab..."

That's funny
Did smut or erotica ever get picked?
I'm wondering how Rory Gilberts book club beat out Oprahs book club!

Anita wrote: "Rachel N. wrote: "Thanks for all the hard work compiling the list. I don't think we have to worry much about 1 star ever winning the monthly vote :-)."

Agreed! That's what is good about voting and..."


Ah, OK, thanks for the explanation. Since it's based on the number of books, then it will never get in, because it's a top 100 list (about 150 with series books). If it was based on how many times the tag was used, it might have a shot (because some of the books are really popular), but probably not.

That also explains why there are no tags for Booker, Nobel, or Pulitzer, because there would be a lot fewer books on each tag. It's too bad more people don't use a catchall tag like awards or prizes.

I know it's a tedious task, so thanks for taking it on. I like that members can suggest tags too because we might come up with themes that are relevant to us, but not commonly used in the tags. (Or that are spread out among too many different labels.)

I'm surprised Rory Gilberts bookclub beat out Oprah's bookclub.

I looked at the first page of about a quarter of these lists. It’s funny to me that some of them I’ve read all the books on the first page, and others (like alpha males) I’ve read none. It shows where my interests lie, and where there are some gaps. Though I think I’ll pass on the smut, 1 star and alpha male books!

But just imagine what wonderful rants we (including our amazing PBT men) could all have about books that fit an ‘alpha male’ tag ...

It would make for a wonderful month of discussion, wouldn’t it?

KateNZ wrote: "But just imagine what wonderful rants we (including our amazing PBT men) could all have about books that fit an ‘alpha male’ tag ..."
😂

It would fit with the tags about werewolves and vampires, and the romance books with the shirtless men on the covers.

It is true that people use country and date tags differently. Personally I use both for setting rather than author or year of publication. Although I tend to tag by decade rather than specific year. So my "1950s" tag includes both classics and historical fiction.

I think a 1-star tag would be quite interesting. Choose something that you would have been interested in and see why so many people hated it!

Jess wrote: "It is true that people use country and date tags differently. Personally I use both for setting rather than author or year of publication. Although I tend to tag by decade rather than specific year..."

I agree Jess-a 1* to me, might be 3-4* for you

Anita ... did you delete any tags that are "off the table" because we've used them in the last two (or three) years?

Because we're using "action-adventure" now ... and it's no longer on the list.

And we used "strong women" in April 2018 ... and it's no longer on the list

Those were the two that jumped out at me and perhaps just a coincidence.

Glad to see Alternate History made it. I think that could be interesting.

KateNZ wrote: "But just imagine what wonderful rants we (including our amazing PBT men) could all have about books that fit an ‘alpha male’ tag ..."

Didn't alpha male come up recently to be voted on?

ETA: Yes, it did. Maybe not as recently as I thought, but in December 2017, these were the options:
December - alpha male, demons, social issues
(See this thread here:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...)

Social issues won.

ANd now I have a cat in front of my screen and can se nothing...

The 1* tag just reminded me of one of my yearly challenge stats that had me 😂😂😂 : I gave 1* to a Harlequin Inspired Suspense book in their military k-9 series, a series that failed badly on all levels except the K-9's themselves. Guess what book of the 183 I read in 2018 was highest rated on GR with 4.68*?!

And more seriously to the point of my 1* being your 4* or 5* - I gave Wolf Hall one star.

Book Concierge wrote: "Anita ... did you delete any tags that are "off the table" because we've used them in the last two (or three) years?

Because we're using "action-adventure" now ... and it's no longer on the list.
..."

So, people have been asking me behind the scenes about tags that may no longer appear from 2018 to 2019.

Some of the tags have fallen off the list (and some are surprising such as african-american). These tags were too low down to make this year's list.

Other tags, we opted to consolidate so we could get deeper into the list of Goodreads tags. Action-adventure is a great example - - the administrators decided that having a tag for action and a tag for adventure were adequate and that action-adventure is really already covered by these two tags - - so we consider that to be consolidated. There were a LOT of tags like that - - i.e. mystery, thriller, and mystery-thriller. We looked at each one individually to decide if the hyphenated version was unique, or if the same types of books would be covered under the individual components. If it didn't seem unique enough, we consolidated.

But as you point out, those tags could have been left off because they aren't viable for us - - but I didn't cross check to do so this year. If a tag comes up that isn't viable, we just select another at random.

I actually think 1-star could make for some interesting reading because one person's one-star is another person's favorite book ever, and the swingiest star ratings tend to be divisive reads anyway or come from misplaced expectations going into a book.

Theresa wrote: "The 1* tag just reminded me of one of my yearly challenge stats that had me 😂😂😂 : I gave 1* to a Harlequin Inspired Suspense book in their military k-9 series, a series that failed badly on all lev..."


I never finished Wolf Hall so your one * beat my DNF

Joanne wrote: "Theresa wrote: "The 1* tag just reminded me of one of my yearly challenge stats that had me 😂😂😂 : I gave 1* to a Harlequin Inspired Suspense book in their military k-9 series, a series that failed ..."

Joanne - I came verrrrry close to DNF! I had to stop about 3/4 way through and read fluffy nonsense for a bit just to settle back to finishing it!