I’m posting this in response to this recently shipped change: Delete tags from book when removing it. Tags have been my favorite feature on TSG precisely because they are (or were) independent from other lists, i.e., adding/removing tags and adding/removing books are separate actions. I don’t have to add a book to tag it, so I don’t think removing a book should affect the tags (at least not automatically).

I’m a prolific tagger; I have nearly 500 tags and over 4k tagged books. I use my tagged books list like an extended TBR. I frequently add/remove books from my to-read pile as their availability or my interest changes. That’s how I keep my to-read pile more manageable. Sometimes when I remove a book I also want to remove all the tags, but the majority of the time I want to keep the tags. Each of my tagged books has around 10+ tags. Now with this change, I’ll have to manually add all those tags back after removing a book. Adding tags is more inconvenient than removing tags. Especially because when there are a lot of tags, I’ll have to screencap them or write them down before they’re deleted so I don’t forget any that need to be added back. So this change is going to have a significant negative impact on my use of TSG.

It seems the pain point here is having to take the extra step to manually delete each individual tag when removing a book. To address that, I have a couple of suggestions:

1. Add a question to the ‘remove book’ pop up screen asking the user if they want to remove the book and tags or just the book, so the deletion of tags is optional rather than automatic.
2. Add a ‘delete all’/🗑️ option to the tag edit box, which could be used regardless of whether the book is being removed. This would be my preference, so that adding/removing tags remains independent from adding/removing books.