Dead or Alive

I only noticed the "Dead or Alive" meme just now. However, the authors shown on the page don't appear to be mine. (Given the collection of Greeks and Romans, I have a sneaking suspicion who's they might be.)

Also, the page is still titled "You and None Other".

Hmm, I seem to have suddenly taken over somebody else's library when it comes to 'Dead or Alive' (either that, or I've suddenly become far more classically knowledgeable than I was a few days ago ...). Also sharing Scorbet's suspicions as to whose ...

Guessing these are all authors from Tim's library?

ha! Okay will fix soon (on iPhone, out for a few hours)

well, now we know what he reads ;-) It sometimes seems to me LT's method of releasing new features is rather like sprinkling fish food on the top of the tank and waiting for the goldfish to notice...

There is a probable mistake in the caption to the picture on the left. Methinks it should read "Grave of Henry David Sorrow"...

5> An apt description, gwernin. :-)

This is all an evil trick to up the CK OCD activity...isn't it?!?

or is it just me that hates seeing "unknown?"

8> No, that was one of my first reactions, too!

I love the picture of the grave of "Henry David Thorough" up in the corner.

There could be a special place where people can upload grave pictures and then on each person's "Dead or Alive" page, it could randomly pull a grave picture from that person's dead-authors list. :)

Also, Shakespeare is in the "unknown" category. Does someone know something I don't know?? k4k

>12 krazy4katz: Odd - he has a date of death...and it's been filled in for quite some time.

>12 krazy4katz:,13

That's because it's Shakespeare in the unknown catagory, not William Shakespeare. I guess Tim was careless when he entered his library and only put the surname.

My favorite:

Unknown: Catholic Church

(Still a list of authors that are not mine, presumably Tim's).

That's because it's Shakespeare, not William Shakespeare. I guess Tim was careless when he entered his library and only put the surname.

Them's fightin' words!

Them's fightin' words!

*stammers* Maybe it was part of some sort of testing??? To see if the feature worked??? Yeah, that must be it. ;)

Oh lordy, there's something in there about having say over your own catalog and whatnot...

>.

I thought Shakespeare was one of the exceptions to the don't combine full names with surnames rule.

What exceptions? Are there others? And why Shakespeare - there could easily be other authors with that surname.

there could easily be other authors with that surname

There are. http://www.librarything.com/search_author.php?q=shakespeare

> 20

What exceptions?

The only exception I'm aware of is when there are no other authors who share the surname. There are some, but Shakespeare isn't one of them.

(P.S. What's this "Dead or Alive" thing you guys are talking about?)

Tim's sloppy data aside, the feature appears to work now.

This does suggest a need for special handling of institutional authors -- it is a bit odd to see "National Geographic Society" as dead, while "National Baseball Hall of Fame" is unknown.

>22 lilithcat:
Check your "memes" - http://www.librarything.com/profile/lilithcat/memes/deadoralive

My favorite part of the list is

Zombies (?)

None yet...

I believe Homer is the poster-child exception.

The argument for Shakespeare could be that he is *so* famous that anyone entering just Shakespeare must mean William. Can you imagine entering just Shakespeare as an author for one of your books written by some other Shakespeare?

It's just told me I'm dead! (http://www.librarything.com/profile/gwernin/memes/deadoralive , G. R. Grove) Apparently putting anything in the CK date of death box (such as "not dead yet") counts as dead ;-)

(eta Or maybe I'm the Zombie mentioned in #25?)

> 27

Yes, I can.

1. Not everyone enters their own data. Some people pull it from places like amazon.com, which notoriously have truncated or incorrect data.

2. Some people are lazy, or are entering a lot of books at once, and use shortcuts.

So I can quite easily imagine someone simply entering "Shakespeare" for an author other than William.

The Shakespeare pulled up by the touchstone isn't Tim's, and the book is probably not by William - actually pobably not by anyone named Shakespeare, either.

>30 MarthaJeanne:

My apologies, I forgot to reset the author touchstone when I edited (I've fixed it now), but it doesn't change the point of the explanation that I was making in response to #12&13. The Shakespeare under Tim's account for the Dead or Alive meme showed up on the Unknown list (#12) because it wasn't William Shakespeare, who has a death date (#13).

However, there is another bug (mentioned here) that an author will show up as dead if the "date of death" has a history, even if the entry has been erased, many months ago. For example, J. K. Rowling and Laurell K. Hamilton have been brought up so far as examples of the living "dead".

So...they should go under Zombies, right?

Totally just noticed message 32 regarding J.K. Rowling as "dead". Sorry about that.

For those who noticed, the bug where J. K. Rowling was dead because sometime in the past she was listed as dead, is now fixed.

Oh, dear, another time suck. I spent 20 minutes on the internet trying to figure out when Max Ferguson died, and another half hour or so on other authors. I so don't need this.

I've changed it so that if something has a gender of "n/a" it classifies it as "Not a Person" rather than dead, alive or unknown. So, yes, your gender determines whether you're alive or not—I won't even get into the sexual politics of that!

Homer is listed as dead even though there is no date of death listed in CK. Hesiod is listed as unknown, presumably because there is no date of death listed.

Is there some override for the ancients like Hesiod with disputed or unknown dates of birth/death that can make them dead without listed a date? (That really makes me sound like I'm in the mafia or something - "make them dead" indeed.)

Homer sleeps with the fishes.

In the blog post, Tim said that over 100 = dead.

fleela! I feel like I should be reminding you to take the cannolis!

Thanks, fleela - Hesiod has been knocked off.

"In the blog post, Tim said that over 100 = dead."

Ah, that explains Jacques Barzun. But why not bump this up to, say, 120? More arithmetic?

And that still doesn't explain Susan Blackmore. Born less than 60 years ago. Never given a CK death date. Why is she listed as dead?

Why is Barbara Brooks-Simon showing up on my list of authors? I've never heard of her before. On her author page, it doesn't mention that I have any books by her and I don't recognize any of her works.

>43 The_Kat_Cache: If you search your library, you have her entered as an author of a vegetarian cookbook.

#44 - Good point. Looking at the book, the author is Karen Brooks, so I'll fix that. It's possible that the wrong author has always been entered, but why wouldn't the book (and the fact that it's in my library) show up on the author's page? Very odd.

ETA: Nevermind. I'll bet it's that the book was correctly combined, right?

>45 The_Kat_Cache:
Because Karen was listed as the author for the majority of the books, so it went to her author page.

*shamefaced*

On the plus side, this is helping me to catch various errors in my library.

Yes, having all the authors on one page certainly shows up the errors, doesn't it?

In the blog post, Tim said that over 100 = dead.

Over 100? That seems a bit limiting. 120 seems a lot safer. Jack Williamson made it to 98 (and was publishing well into his 90s), and I'm sure someone will be along in a minute to point out a centagenarian.

>49 lorax:

I was thinking we could apply age and actuarial tables for gender and country of origin.

Would that be your actuary who advises that LT Lifetime = 2.5 x one year?

Hmmm. I just entered a birthdate for Eleonore Riego de la Branchardiere
http://www.librarything.com/author/branchardireelonorer
which caused her to move from the Unknown column to the Living column; but the birthdate was 1834, so I seriously doubt she's still alive. This is clearly more than 100 years, so what gives?

Ha!

Ha?

I don't like this. I went to look up dates for an author I have talked to, and whose work as an embroiderer I really respect (OK she was really nice about helping me with my stitching.) And Now I find out that she died.

I've only just discovered this facility but love the number of 18th century authors that are not known to have died yet!!

>57 Mouldywarp: Yeah, they're a tenacious bunch.

I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone take note of this yet... but isn't the "percent dead" backwards? I have 161 dead authors, 327 live authors, but it says "Percent dead: 67.01%," which is actually the percent NOT dead.

I was just going to note the same thing, ellen.

59, 60: Have you calculated in the "unknown" category in your "not dead"? k4k

>61 krazy4katz:,
I have more living authors than dead and more unknown answers than dead, so saying 70% of my authors are dead would only possibly work if my unknown authors are being counted as dead, which actually still doesn't quite calculate right, although it is close.

>59 ellen.w:

It has been noted - on the Dead or Alive Comparison thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/56546

I'm sure Laren Stover and Santa Montefiore would be intrigued to know that they are, in fact, dead. :-)

I just noticed this whole dead/alive thing (I'm a little behind), but is the 100= dead rule going to remain?
I really would like Claude Levi-Strauss to return to the land of the living. He is probably the oldest anthropologist ever!

Yeah, we should have an option to put something in the dead field like "n/a" to indicate that someone is alive...

Is CLS alive?

Yep.

CLS is still alive - he turned 100 in November, 2008.

I think the 100 year old cut off should be increased, too. I ran into two still-alive 99 year olds that will be in for a shock in 2009 if they suddenly become dead on LT.

See here for the report of the death of a 116-year-old :
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14550820/

Living past 100 isn't so very rare any more.

Levi-Strauss - definitely alive. According to my professor he is "rather frail, but still alert." Not sure how she knew that, but anyway...

I'm totally amazed. I would have expected him to have died in the 60s.

I'll change 100 next time I'm in the code. 120 okay? Maybe I can do 120 plus the square root of the year minus 2009, you know, to keep up.

I think 111 would do just fine. It's extremely unlikely to find a published author who is 111+ and living...

Noticed a problem with Avram Davidson - his name is alphabetized badly and despite an entered death date, his life-status is listed as unknown. His entry (in my list of unknowns) is :
...
John G. Avildsen
Avram Davidson
Francois Avril
...

So he is alphabetized by his first name, with others alphabetized by last name.

>77 EowynA: Got it. I separated out your version of the author, gave his a birth and death date and recombined him (with /davidsonavram - instead of /avramdavidson which was then combined with /davidsonavram), and I think it worked.

>78 christiguc: -- yes, that solved it. Thank you!

This is not a bug, but I don't think it's exactly desired behaviour either.

Some of us have been putting estimated dates in the Date of birth boxes to make authors be counted as alive. Now it seems that if characters that are neither a number nor a hyphen are entered in the Date of birth box, the author is counted as dead even though the Date of death box is empty.

Isn't it better to have them counted as alive when we know they're alive, than as unknown which now is the only alternative. (Well, we can type a false date in the Date of birth box, but that's plain wrong.) Some of these authors refuse to make their year of birth public.

Or shall we decide on a convention which the system accepts, such as 1922-22-22 for someone we know is born in the twenties, 1955-55-55 for someone born in the fifties etc?

A few examples:

http://www.librarything.com/author/azzoparditrezza
http://www.librarything.com/author/dartthorntoncecilia
http://www.librarything.com/author/grimwoodjoncourtenay

Try, for example, c. 1920 for someone born in the twenties.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/56585#1052174

OK, so 1920s kills them but c. 1920 resurrects them again. I'll try that. I'm not sure I think c. 1900 is truthful for someone born in the mid 1900s, but if that's what it takes...

I'm not sure I think c. 1900 is truthful for someone born in the mid 1900s ...

Yeah, I don't like that either.

I just tried c. 1940-60 and it worked (but c. 1940-1960 doesn't work).

Okay. I need to change the algorithm so that c. 1920 doesn't kill you.

It doesn't, it's putting any non-numeric character last that does. So 20th C. kills you and 1920s.

It would be good to have some codeword that means 'I know this person is alive, but I don't have enough information to even make a rough guess as to age.' Like 'Alive'.

If I see a live interview on television of an author, I can be pretty sure the person is really alive, but unless they say something like 'on the occasion of her 80th birthday', I probably can't tell the age at all.

86>

It would be good to have some codeword that means 'I know this person is alive, but I don't have enough information to even make a rough guess as to age.' Like 'Alive'.

I guess that depends on to what extent you see the "Dead or Alive" feature as the primary reason for the birth/death date fields in CK. I think the codeword would lead to a lot of lazy data entry -- people won't even bother to click over to Wikipedia to see if there's a date there, they'll just type in "Alive" and go on their way.

Yes, it's annoying to have to leave known-alive people in the "Unknown" column, but I can live with it.

I'm not guessing on dates, myself. Like lorax, I'd rather have no data and leave them in the unknown column, than input an estimated date or a code word.

A code-word like "alive" isn't going to stay accurate forever. It wouldn't be subject to the "120 years" rule, either, so no automatic movement to the "dead" column. There are many LT keeners who rush to update CK when news is received of a death, so updates will probably happen, but no guarentees on that, especially for more obscure authors.

Sooner or later, we'll get accurate data for most authors, but if we're artificially moving them to the "alive" column with a code word or a guesstimated date, then we're not going to know to keep searching for better data.

Very good point, tardis.

Wikipedia is usually updated within hours of a death, so we just have to keep checking.

What the heck? I just wrote a long message and it turned into a blank message.

My point was that those who care about accurate and complete (not the same thing) data are not going to care any less about it because someone entered alive or entered something like n/a for date of death. "N/a" for DOD, for example, would be accurate, since there is no date of death. Those who want more complete and precise information will continue to go look for it, and to scour CK looking for information to correct, and if someone dies, they'll enter the information. If there were a codeword, it would be pretty easy to search for it in CK, too, to periodically see whether any more precise information could be added.

I think guessing dates is more problematic and encouraging of inaccurate and lazy data than would be some codeword that was technically correct (e.g. unknown for DOB, or n/a for death, or some other string of characters).

It annoys me that I have more authors in the unknown category than either of the others, and that 80% percent of those "unknowns" I know to be living, breathing academics, though of unspecified age...

Maybe we need a boolean that switches the sense of the date of death between "date of death" and "last seen alive". That way, if you have an obscure author who wrote something with a copyright date of 1996, you set the field to "last seen alive: 1996" and let an algorithm for presumed-dead take care of it. If you get evidence they're dead, you switch the field to "date of death".

It gets really frustrating to try all sorts of ways of finding a DOB and just finding more evidence that s/he is alive. I'm ready to just ignore the whole page. I've got three times as many unknown as daed and alive together. That makes this meme useless as far as I'm concerned.

If it is interesting whether someone is alive or dead, let us enter that information regardless of whether we can find DOB. If the purpose of this is to get people to enter more CK in general, a home page module with a random 'your author who needs CK' would be better.

Tim created a solution:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/56585#1056021

I moved an author out of the Unknown column by entering a birth date of 1853. Couldn't find a death date. I expected him to become Dead, but instead he became Alive. I killed him by entering "unknown" into the DoD field, but wonder whether this should be necessary.

http://www.librarything.com/author/leeedmundjennings

It's telling me that both Veda Vyasa and Lao Tzu are alive. Awfully long-lived, they--older than 120 years old by quite a bit.

In one of my accounts Dr. Seuss is both dead and unknown. Strangeness abounds.

On my Dead or Alive page I have this author listed in the unknown column

Robert H(enry 1839 - 1903). Thurston

When I click on this name the system hangs up, will not display the author page.
In my catalog I have him listed as Thurston, Robert H. and the system also hangs up when I click on the name. Same result from the book page.
(XP SP3 IE7)
Edited to show where square brackets are on my list.

99> Hmmm. I played around with the author page for Robert H. Thurston a bit, separating out and then recombining, and I think it's working now. However, in the process, his name seems bizarrely to have dropped off your dead and alive list. I'm guessing that's a caching thing, but I hope I didn't break something... However, you can still click on his name from within your catalog and get to the author page.

100> Thanks, it does not hang up now.
I now see a bullet with blank space after it now where Thurston should be in my dead list. I will wait and see if it is a caching thing.

Not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but... I have a couple of authors whose birth/death dates and genders have been entered, but the system refuses to recognize them - they show up "unknown" on both counts. I've tried reformatting the dates a couple of times, but I suspect the problem is something else, since it affects the gender entry too.

Philo of Alexandria
Saint Thomas Aquinas

>102 cinaedus: Got them.

How?

>104 timspalding: Okay, I've found another example, so I can answer your question. :)

If you go to this dead or alive page, you will see that George Plimpton (/author/plimptonedgeorge) is listed as "unknown" even though George Plimpton has a birth and death date.

To fix that, I would separate out /plimptonedgeorge, then separate out the author that is also combined with /plimptonedgeorge, and then finally combine the two into the dominant author /plimptongeorge.

Now, why this happens in the first place, I have absolutely no idea. But it works.