Track Date Tag Added

mbruffey

Do we have a way to track the date upon which a tag was last added to a note? I want to identify all notes to which I have added any tag after, say, July 1, 2017. Can we do this?

adamsmith

I'm afraid not, no. At least in 4.0, adding a tag doesn't even change the modified time of an item (it might in 5.0?)

bwiernik

What sort of tag are you looking to track? What’s the specific use case?

mbruffey

@ bwiernik : The tags in which I am interested are the kind that appear in the lower left corner and are selected by list in the lower right. For any given note, I want to know the date/time that I last selected something from that list in the lower right (or created and added the new creation to the note). * Suppose that on July 1, 2017 I created a search and printed a report for all the notes tagged "BORG". After that I applied the tag BORG to some other notes. I have tens of thousands of notes total, of course. I want to create a search and print a report showing only those notes to which the tag BORG has been added since July 1. * Or suppose that I want to create a search and print a report for all notes to which any tag has been added since July 1, 2017. Does this make sense. >> I can see that a tension arises defining when a note has been "modified." Does addition of a tag constitute "modification" when the text of the note has not been altered? * If you do some research on a topic you tag notes, then you create a search and a report. But then you do some more research. You know enough now to add the tag to some notes you may have taken two years ago. Now you want to print only the newly tagged items. Append rather than reprint the entirety. Does this make any sense? Thx, M

bwiernik

Like adamsmith says, there is currently no way to see when a specific tag was added to an item. In Zotero 4.0 (the current version), tags don't even register as a modification to the item (e.g., the note would not show up as modified unless the text was also changed). The last part will change in Zotero 5.0 (adding a tag will be marked as a modification, even if the note text is not altered).

My question about what specific tag uses you were looking for was based on whether the tag you are doing was a more substantive or topic-based tag (which I assume it is base on your response) versus something like a tag for "read" or other more organizational tags. There are sometimes other ways to do the sorts of things people want to do for the organizational tags.

In your case, your best option would be to filter on the tag, then sort by Date Modified or Date Added. This may get you a reasonably clean report of only the new items. But there is no way to see when a specific tag (or other modification) was made.

mbruffey

Yes, these are substantive/topical tags. Had I paid attention I would have noticed that adding a tag did not change the modification date. But this is not the end of the world. I could always hit the spacebar in the note to modify it prior to adding tags, going forward. I actually like the fact, having thought about it, that only changes to the text of the note are reflected as modifications. But for the most part, having a permanent creation date will help to track the development of one's thoughts. Too bad we don't have a shortcut to plunk a date right into the text of the note at will, for subsequent modifications. I look forward to version 5.0. Thx, M

bwiernik

You can install the 5.0 Beta by following the link in the thread at the top of the forums. It is a very mature beta and very stable. It will have a final release soon. That way you don’t have to do the spacebar trick in the mean time.

mbruffey

Thanks on the 5.0 beta. I am actually using Juris-M. Don't recall the status of its 5.0 version. The original MLZ had a feature or two unavailable in Zotero at the time. I might be able to switch back to regular Zotero, as I am not using the language features of Juris-M. My workflow is input to Scrivener (including complex footnotes), run through the RTF/Citation conversion in Juris-M, then edit in LibreOffice with the Zotero plugin. But I'm at end-game with a Ph.D. dissertation and naturally quite conservative about changing anything.

bwiernik

Juris-M does have a 5.0 beta, but I’m not sure about it’s degree of stability right now:
https://juris-m.github.io/downloads/

But I’d agree that at your stage, it’s best not to mess with a system that is working.

earcanal

I tag things I've read with 'haveread'.

A few use cases for this:

As a reader, I would like to know when I read an article.
As a judge of a reader, I would like to know what a reader has read, and when they read it.