Sick of deleting automatic tags

mclemee
I will never, ever have any use for tags other than those I have decided to add myself. In an effort to keep my records clear of them, I've followed the instructions -- unchecking the "automatically tag items" option in preferences -- but it makes no difference.

You provide no way to bulk-delete garbage tags. It is very time consuming (and physically painful after a while) to manually delete scores or hundreds of tags, only to have another ton of worthless tags dumped in again the next time I collect bibliographical information from a catalog.

Others have been asking about this for years, and for me it's really getting to be a problem. Can we expect it to be fixed soon? If not, it might be time to see if there's a better bibliographical tool available.

  • adamsmith
    I'm not sure there'll be a GUI batch operation for tags any time soon, but I'm curious about this:
    I've followed the instructions -- unchecking the "automatically tag items" option in preferences -- but it makes no difference.
    because that really should be working. Which catalog(s) are you importing from (URLs)? On which Zotero setup (Firefox add-on? Standalone with which browser?)
    If not, it might be time to see if there's a better bibliographical tool vailable.
    (FWIW, I think threats are the single least effective mechanism here to get something done).
  • mclemee
    edited October 9, 2016
    The Library of Congress catalog, through Firefox add-on.

    Not a threat, a reasonable assessment of the situation. I noticed that after one or two responses to earlier queries about unwanted tags, circa 2012, no one from Zotero bothered to respond to people asking about it. From my side of the situation, ignoring the problem is not a workable approach.
  • adamsmith
    I can't reproduce this:
    1. I go to https://catalog.loc.gov/index.html
    2. I search for "labor market structure" (without quotation marks)
    3. I click on the first hit, "Running the numbers"
    4. a) with the automatically tag items box unchecked, I get no tags
    b) with the box checked (to make sure the item has tags), I get 5 tags.

    What are you doing to get automated tags in spite of the box unchecked?
  • mclemee
    I follow the same steps, with the tag items box unchecked, and get five tags.
  • adamsmith
    which version of Zotero on which OS and Firefox? Using just the Firefox add-on or also Standalone?

    It sounds like you had a possibly related issue before and the stopped following up. Did that ever get resolved?
    https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/56635/how-to-prevent-downloading-of-pdfs-from-jstor#latest
  • mclemee
    No, it wasn't. But I've found a way around both problems by switching to Zotero in Chrome instead of Firefox.
  • adamsmith
    Given that, my guess would be that you had the relevant setting unchecked only in Standalone, not in the Firefox add-on (or vice versa). You could check on that if you're interested in keeping with the Firefox add-on.
    Otherwise, there's no real downside to using the Chrome add-on, so you might as well just do that and not worry about it.
  • ericms
    I've had this happen, and is was as Adam said -- I had unchecked the settings in standalone but not the Firefox addon. The Firefox addon will use the standalone settings but only if it's currently running, otherwise it uses the addon settings.

    FWIW the tags are pretty useless in my experience, unless they're directly captured from the stated keywords in the publication (which I don't think happens). ~10% of my library has unwanted tags, a method to purge them would be very helpful.
  • adamsmith
    If you're mildly adventurous (in the trying out type of way, not in the risk-taking way) this may work: https://www.zotero.org/support/dev/client_coding/javascript_api#batch_editing
  • ericms
    Thanks, very helpful! I'll give it a try, after making a backup.
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