get rid of all tags - how ?

[cybmole]

after loading around 80 books, I saw that I had close to 300 mostly useless tags cluttering the library so I decided to get rid off all of them. (I never use genre tags for my music or video libraries so why start now ! )

I figured how to delete them all & I then changed my metadata download options so that no more social data was retrieved.

then today I find I have 22 tags. looking more closely it's because I downloaded & imported one ! new book. I guess the book came with tags already in its metadata ?

is there any easy way to keep the library tab-free, until I decide that I want to add tags. i.e. prevent new tag creation from happening when I add a book to the library ?

[Manichean]

AFAIK, tags that are present in the metadata of the book file itself will get loaded no matter what. You can always edit them out after importing, you might want to use bulk metadata edit.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by cybmole

then today I find I have 22 tags. looking more closely it's because I downloaded & imported one ! new book. I guess the book came with tags already in its metadata ?

This is the reason I gave up on tags and I use custom columns instead. You import one epub and it adds like 10 nonsense tags. I tried to fight this, but it was hopeless. Sadly, this makes tags completely useless. What good would tags do, when each e-book that is tagged in metadata brings their own, unique, incompatible set of tags. What good would tags do, when you have more unique tags than books?

So, my advice, until someone gives us an option to ignore tags during import.
- download the latest and greatest Calibre. You might want to wait a few days, because a new, significant version is being finished
- make custom columns for your categories
- you can even make Tag-like custom column, named myTags
- hide tag column in the main window
- hide tags in categories windows (right click)
- from time to time, (like once a month, or after you add too many books at once) use bulk edit of metadata to delete all tags. You can also delete all tags in other places, like from inside categories

- if you already have meaningful set of tags, make a custom column with Tag-like data structure and use advanced search and replace command to copy the tags to your custom column.

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by kacir

This is the reason I gave up on tags and I use custom columns instead. You import one epub and it adds like 10 nonsense tags. I tried to fight this, but it was hopeless. Sadly, this makes tags completely useless. What good would tags do, when each e-book that is tagged in metadata brings their own, unique, incompatible set of tags. What good would tags do, when you have more unique tags than books?

Having a custom column works fine but is no more or less work then selecting and removing the tags after import. If you import 100 books, select them all and remove all tags with one batch metadata edit, check a box to remove all tags and click OK.

That said, I might move my collection creation to Series and a custom genre column and let the tags run crazy.

[Starson17]

Originally Posted by kacir

This is the reason I gave up on tags and I use custom columns instead. You import one epub and it adds like 10 nonsense tags. I tried to fight this, but it was hopeless. Sadly, this makes tags completely useless. What good would tags do, when each e-book that is tagged in metadata brings their own, unique, incompatible set of tags. What good would tags do, when you have more unique tags than books?

I'll tell you what good "tags do, when you have more unique tags than books" - it gives you data about the book that is searchable. I like that data.

So, my advice, until someone gives us an option to ignore tags during import.

You do have an option to ignore tags during import - choose to get your metadata from file name only, not internally. You can also turn off tags during metadata fetch, if they bother you there.

I'm not trying to disagree with your preferred way of structuring your database, but if you're going to use a custom tag-like field, IMHO, that's an even better reason to keep the regular tags imported with the book and during metadata fetch. We can't search the contents of books, so searching the tags is the next best thing, for me. Plus, I just like browsing through the tags. I find lots of interesting tags that send me to interesting books.

Each to their own, but I really hate throwing away searchable data about my books.