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:
- 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.
- 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.
Thank you for this post! I did consider option 1 before making the change! I'm assessing the rest of the feedback received on this change before deciding whether I leave it as is, do something like give the user the option, or revert back. (Reverting back is highly unlikely as it seems the majority of people do want all tags removed.)
There'll be some form of resolution to this, going to figure it out!
Nadia Thank you!!
I wasn't aware of this change until today, when someone brought it up in a discord server and truly this is interfering in how I use the app. I like to move books I'm interested in to and from by tbr and tags ensure that these books still exist on my radar. With this I'll potentially just lose books I wanted to read if I forget to re-add my tags (which is very likely). This just isn't the behaviour I expect tags to have.
I agree with separating the functions
Please consider separating these two functionalities out! To me it seems completely unintuitive for tags to be affected when removing my reading history - I still acquired/was recommended/whatever else I've tagged the book for regardless of whether it has reading history.
Please consider making some change here (I think suggestion 2 is the most intuitive, but 1 would do) because currently there is no way to work around this behaviour other than, as mentioned, taking note of every single tag to re-add after removing. If I know I want to keep my tags I have no choice but to remove tham anyway :(
Just adding my support for this because I'm also a prolific tagger and I maintain tags for books I think my friends might like or a variety of other things that I don't want to lose just because I took them off my own to-read pile.
Thank you for this post! I did consider option 1 before making the change! I'm assessing the rest of the feedback received on this change before deciding whether I leave it as is, do something like give the user the option, or revert back. (Reverting back is highly unlikely as it seems the majority of people do want all tags removed.)