Automatically added tags

Andrew Moylan
When I imported an article from ISI Web of Science, a note containing the abstract text was automatically added, which was very useful. Various tags were also automatically added, which was not so useful. I think automatically added tags have the potential to conflict with, or else be redundant due to, user-created tags. Would an option to not generate them be possible?

Of the about 10 tags added, one of them was something like this:

"keyword; keyword2; keyword3; keyword4; keyword5"

Such a tag will surely never appear on any other article, which partially defeats the purpose of tags.
  • dstillman
    We'll make automatic tag-grabbing a pref and also make automatically added tags show up differently (and not show up in the tag selector, for which they're often far too long).

    We might also be able to add some logic to discard some obviously unhelpful automatic tags and/or parse concatenated ones into more useful ones.
  • Andrew Moylan
    To clarify, I think the keywords and other metadata that databases attach to references are still useful things for Zotero to import, for searching purposes. I only desire that they don't interfere with the tags system.

    Perhaps an alternative is to have a "Keywords" field for items.
  • amc
    This is one thing I'm trying to get my head around as I contemplate how to set up my references. In another thread, it's suggested that tags would be useful for discriminating read and unread items. I agree. However, tags as implemented are also are ideal for keywords.

    Now, I suppose I could use both, but do I really want my "read" status mixed in with my keywords? No.

    I've never used iTunes, but from what I can gather, the term "tag" comes from that. Perhaps the best way is to rename tags as "keywords" and make fields for everything else.
  • Andrew Moylan
    amc, have you considered using collections / subcollections to manage read / unread articles? These are equivalent to tags in many ways, yet have a separate user interface.

    There is a distinction that can be made between data that are inherrent to the item in question: Title, Author(s), Abstract notes, etc.; and data that are at least somewhat dependent on the Zotero user: tags, (sub)collections, related articles, some attached notes, read/unread status, date added/modified, etc. Most of the former data are on the Info tab in Zotero, and most of the latter are in the other four tabs (Notes, Attachments, Tags, Related). I agree that generally one wants these two different types of data separated.

    amc, I agree that a "Priority" field would probably be a useful addition, and that eventually Zotero will need to be able to sort by, and display a customised set of, the various fields.
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