Male or female?

Blog post: http://www.librarything.com/blog/2009/02/male-or-female.php

See: Mine | Yours

I looked at mine, and it says the number 2 after unknown, but the text underneath says None, the unknowns are not listed.

Got it. Thanks.

Fixed it, thanks.

In the links in your post at the top:

Yours takes me to Tim Spalding and Mine takes me to FicusFan. I think they are reversed.

Thanks.

I'm working on my female unknowns.

It'll be interesting to see if we can establish that women do in fact live longer...

You mean female writers?

Women living longer than men is a medical fact based on much research...or is this what you wish to test? :)

You do realise that I have a document for work to produce by first thing tomorrow? Thanks for yet another timesink.

Women living longer than men is a medical fact based on much research...or is this what you wish to test? :)

Bah, it's just a theory.

With the addition of Male or female, can you fix the missing bullet against dead or alive on the meme page? It is also missing on each meme page in the box on the right.

Well, it was intentional. It's a sub-page to the one above it.

just as in http://www.librarything.com/topic/56585#1064456 I have in my list http://www.librarything.com/profile/TimSharrock/memes/gender two "Andre Norton"s - one female and one unknown. The unknown one is listed in the As rather than the Ns, but both, when clicked go to the same author page http://www.librarything.com/author/nortonandre - I have not normalised the names in my catalogue in case there is a clue to this imperfect author combining - there is at least one "ANDRE NORTON" (I subcontracted some data input to my son without enough training...)

>12 timspalding:

OK, that makes sense. An additional indent might make it doubly clear.

>8 Lman:, 10
It has been clinically proven that men whose last words are not "Hey, huh, hey, watch this!" actually live just as long as woman.

>1 timspalding:, Tim - I know you noted elsewhere that CK contributions spiked after the introduction of the "Dead or Alive" Meme & I wonder if they will spike again now that this meme has been introduced. I think this is a great way to encourage small contributions to CK. I tend not to contribute on an author unless I feel like I can fill out most of the page, which means that a lot of my authors - especially the academics writing non-fiction - don't have any CK data. But with these memes, I feel such a compulsion to move people out of the "unknown" category.... This is a clever game you're playing with us!

Yeah. I think this will push us over 1,000,000 CK contributions. :)

This appears to be language-based. Any possibility of making the same gender appear on all language versions, similarly to how "Dead or alive?" works?

I don't know if it had been discussed elsewhere and I've not seen it, but is there any consensus over how transgendered individuals should be listed?

i believe transgender would go under other/contested/unknown.

Why wouldn't they go under the gender they identify with, if they have a preference ?

-> 21 Because some transgendered people prefer to identify as transgendered, genderqueer, etc., not as male or female.

22: And those TGs can be listed under "other/contested/unknown", but transwomen and transmen who identify as women or men should be so listed.

More fun. These new memes made me think of another one you could do: could you use the birth & death dates to list authors by century?

#22
Hence my comment 'If they have a preference'. Some do pick a gender and to put them in the unknown group is an insult.

Perhaps a case by case assignment depending on the author in question.

>25 FicusFan:

I quite agree. Many transgendered people would find "unknown" insulting. I was surprised to see one of my authors in the unknown/other column, as I had believed the person identified with a particular gender. Now I wonder if I should change it.

Case-by-case was kind of where I was going with my comment. Sorry that it wasn't clear.

I have just noticed Jan Morris listed as other/contested/unknown and have altered the entry to female, leaving a brief biographical note explaining my view. I don't think there is any doubt about her view of herself.

Hope I'm not treading on toes.

I was surprised to see a clear male majority in my authors, as most of my favorite authors are female. Then I realized this is not accounting for how many books I own by each author. I offer "percentage of books by men/women" as a potential additional meme.

If an author has expressed a definite preference then that should be the one used, I think.

> 16

I wonder.

I have to look up birth/death dates. When I'm looking up those dates, I find other biographical material, and so enter it as long as I have it in front of me.

But it's the rare author whose gender I don't know.

Yes, this conversation was exactly the reason Tim was persuaded to add the Other category (I don't think it should be combined with Unknown however).

It sounds, then, that the "Other/contested/unknown" category is supremely useless. Taking each one...

Other: While I've tried to use it for transgendered individuals, it appears no-one else wants to.
Contested: I honestly can't see a situation where people, disagreeing over whether an author should be marked male or female, would agree to have them marked contested (see above).
Unknown: Seems pointless, in that if people don't know, they'll simply leave the gender assignment alone.

If LibraryThing's Common Knowledge is supposed to be a collection of facts, then I don't think it's useful for transgendered writers to slip by out of view under the gender they prefer (and nor do I think it's useful to force them to be declared as whatever their birth gender may have been). Similarly, I'm not convinced by the argument that we should use what the person self-identifies with; I note Poppy Z. Brite has her gender set to female, even though, as I understand it, she does not identify herself as being so.

In any case, to take a spurious analogy, if writers lie about their date of births, are we supposed to list the date they identify with, or the date they were actually born?

That's my view, anyway. I won't force it on LibraryThing is the consensus takes the other view. Either way, I think it might be a good idea for Tim to clarify or drop the 'Other/Contested/Unknown' option, in light of what's been said.

33>

The Other/c/u category came from a discussion of a particular author (who I don't remember, nor remember where the thread is) who had been one gender, then another, then the first again, as I recall. There really are a few people out there who don't want that label. If Poppy ZB is one of them, my personal take is that I'd change it.

28> At present we can't combine Jan Morris with the author James Morris, because of other authors named James Morris, so I suppose Female is OK. I certainly would refer to her as 'she' at present.

However, it would be good to eventually have all the books by that individual on the same author page, and some of them were written by a man. 'I have lived the life of a man, I live now the life of a woman, and one day perhaps I shall transcend both--if not in person, then perhaps in art, if not here, then somewhere else.' (From 'Conundrum'.) Perhaps we should change it to 'Other/Contested/Both.'

Thanks for this, Tim. Two comments:

Mass edit: I have over 1277 "not set". If I could tick these off en-masse, I could easily sort out the gender of at least half of these. Without mass edit, I'm afraid I haven't the time.

It's exposed a bug with long author names: Of of my authors is listed as International Conference of Building Officials - which was a surprise! It turns out that my author is actually International Conference Of Reformed Churches, but LT has merged the two together - despite my book not appearing on the ICBO page, and the ICBO page saying (show all 0 books)

>35 MarthaJeanne:
In this context I feel more comfortable living with what 'is' rather than what 'was', let alone with 'what possibly may be'. As you say, I would refer to JM as 'she' at present. It would be interesting to ask her what she thought of 'both' - I'm sure she wouldn't like 'contested'.

Absolutely agree that the works should be combined, and I presume that when separation runs its full course and everone has his/her own page that will be easily done.

36> Long author names not being kept separate after a certain number of letters is a well known bug. Maybe the future new author system will sort that out, too? Hope, hope.

I've noticed today when I'm combining authors, the CK disappears & I have to re-enter it. Anyone else having that problem?

Thanks for this, Tim.

Now I have an easy way to watch for the idiots/bigots who keep moving people out of the "other" category!

It sounds, then, that the "Other/contested/unknown" category is supremely useless.

There are two alternatives:

1. Require biological gender. That's binary.
2. Allow absolute freedom in labelling. That's great if the purpose is description, but CK is not only a descriptive thing. Indeed, it's greatest value is as structured data, for presentation (eg., this feature) or searching.

Other: While I've tried to use it for transgendered individuals, it appears no-one else wants to.

I doubt "no-one" is accurate, but absent a survey, I'll stick to this.

Contested: I honestly can't see a situation where people, disagreeing over whether an author should be marked male or female, would agree to have them marked contested (see above).

Are you kidding? Read the blog comments when I added this feature. Not a few LTers would like to see this category exclusively binary. But, assuming they lose, there is still room for debate on various people. (For example, are we recording gender at birth, death, first book, most popular book, mid-point of career?)

Unknown: Seems pointless, in that if people don't know, they'll simply leave the gender assignment alone.

Actually, there's no way to revert it to empty. But anyway, you're missing the Rumsfeldian known-unknown vs. unknown-unknown distinction. Some people haven't been filled in. Some authors (ie., some ancient authors) are of unknown gender.

In any case, to take a spurious analogy, if writers lie about their date of births, are we supposed to list the date they identify with, or the date they were actually born?

Ha. That's excellent.

I have over 1277 "not set". If I could tick these off en-masse, I could easily sort out the gender of at least half of these. Without mass edit, I'm afraid I haven't the time.

We're about to hit 15,000 changes today... Mass-editing would be a major hours-and-hours consuming edit. If people are willing to enter it piecemeal, sorry, but I'll take that. Anyway, entering it piecemeal allows you to change other fields at the same time. That's how today is running so high in non-gender edits.

It's exposed a bug with long author names

I know. At the moment, it's a non-trivial fix.

when I'm combining authors

It only combines when a smaller author combines into a larger author. I think the system needs to inform you of what's happening and give you choices.

Now I have an easy way to watch for the idiots/bigots who keep moving people out of the "other" category!

Great. Edit wars! :)

Did some kind soul do all of mine, or is everyone just that good?

I'm at

Male: 609 : Female: 96 : Other/Contested/Unknown: 0 : N/A: 11 : Not set 22

!

Oh, I fixed the problem with when you did it on a non-English site.

If LibraryThing's Common Knowledge is supposed to be a collection of facts, then I don't think it's useful for transgendered writers to slip by out of view under the gender they prefer (and nor do I think it's useful to force them to be declared as whatever their birth gender may have been). Similarly, I'm not convinced by the argument that we should use what the person self-identifies with; I note Poppy Z. Brite has her gender set to female, even though, as I understand it, she does not identify herself as being so.

Leslie Feinberg is sort of the poster child for "Other" here, one of the examples that kept getting brought up when we were fighting to get this option in place. MTF or FTM transgendered people are easy to classify here -- just look at how they self-identify -- but there really are cases where "Other" is the only option that is truthful and not deliberately hurtful.

I would be FURIOUS if Tim dropped the option.

41>

1. Require biological gender. That's binary.

Not as much as you might think. Intersexed people are rare but not nonexistent, after all.

Why the hell are some people so upset about not having a binary here? (Not you, Tim.) What harm does it possibly do anyone to allow us to correctly classify all authors, not just 99% of them? I find it really hard to see this as anything other than bigotry.

> 45 Intersexed people are rare but not nonexistent, after all.

Not even as rare as our binary culture would like to believe. We Americans are very left/right, on/off, good/bad oriented (no pun intended). Life, however, is messy.

Not even as rare as our binary culture would like to believe.

Depends on definition, as the Wikipedia article writes, you can argue between 1.7% and 0.018%. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex) Even at the low number, however, there'd be something like 500 authors on LT, given a normal distribution across authors.

*carefully steps around trans-conversation*

Okay, yes, this is what did it. I was able to hold back with the dead-or-alive, but THIS got me combining, seperating, and adding to CK. Combining and seperating I've done some of before, but I've never added to CK before. Guess this pushed me over that line! lol

We're going to hit 26,000 edits today—as against 3,000 on a normal day. A lot of Common Knowledge badges are going to arrive tonight!

>48 Heather19:,
Me too, Heather. Perhaps it was having this together with dead-or-alive, I could try to fix both lists at once. Plus I ended up finding a lot of combining on some of those author pages.

carefully steps around trans-conversation

I know. It's like a field of land-mines. Where's Princess Diana when you need her?

#33 I note Poppy Z. Brite has her gender set to female, even though, as I understand it, she does not identify herself as being so.

At one time on her web site she wrote that she was a gay man in a woman's body. That seems to have disappeared, or been buried, because her biography only talks about her writing.

On this site Freebase.com

http://www.freebase.com/view/en/poppy_z_brite?domain=%2Fbase%2Fgender

They say she self-identifies as a non-operative transsexual, and male.

I don't know where they get their info, it appears to be a user entered site. I don't know if Poppy's web site statement was before or after her marriage, and if that statement is still true.

You could certainly change the sex to male or other, but it is likely that those
who read her books, but are unaware of the issue would change it back

The author I am thinking of is Patrick Califia who at one time was a woman named Pat Califia. He changed his name and actually sent out press announcements to state he we changing his name, identifying as male and wished to be referred to as such. I saw it on-line in several of the genre sites.

To my knowledge Poppy has never done that, so I refer to her as her. I think it would be horribly insulting to someone who has made a legal and public statement (Patrick) to consign them to Other because you feel the need for some kind of data purity. I think Other is usable for those where there are questions, or where the person seems to have multiple genders.

I also think the idea of comparing Gender to DOB is not relevant. Many people lie about their age, especially celebrities. Even if you find and post the correct DOB, there will be enough of the fake dates floating around that there will never be much confidence in which date is correct.

I think Freebase's data here is from Wikipedia.

They do have Wikipedia citations, but they also seem to have edit buttons that the user/viewer can use to edit fields. Not sure what vetting process they use, if any.

It's mostly scraped from Wikipedia. Their traffic is pretty minimal.

Dead or Alive Comparison How do you stack up against others?

Minor detail: do you want punctuation between "Comparison" and "How" since the others have punctuation?

Binary? Quite apart from the "intersexuality" & "transgendered" issues. There are also authors out there who wrote under an alias and kept their identity secret.

The true identity and/or gender of Albertus Parvus, stated author of a "grimoire" - first printed in the 17th century but possibly written earlier - for which (s)he might have ended on the pire??? Okay, probably male, but we'll never be sure.

Of course, when need be, one could leave those instances unmarked, but I do like the " unknown" option.

Are there any thoughts on the gender of pairs of people? I've got two listed as N/A - Grant Naylor and The Wachowski Brothers - both of which are two males working together. I can sort of see the argument for saying that a collaboration doesn't have a gender, but it also seems weird not to list them as male, when they both are.

Definitely n/a. There needs to be a field to indicate that an author is really a collaboration.

59>

Are we using n/a for any other purpose at the moment? That seems to be its sole function.

Beside collaborations, there are also companies (Readers Digest, Walt Disney Productions, &c) that have author pages. Though I guess you could call a company a collaboration as well.

p.s.: Oh, and institutions, both government & church...

Yeah, I was thinking of companies and institutions as collaborations. Or at least, I'm not sure where the dividing line would be in terms of practical classification.

Agree, on the far ends it's pretty obvious. But where/when exactly does a collaboration start to be a small business?

I was hoping that at some point in the distant future a collaboration author page could have links to each of the individual author pages that constitute the collaboration. For companies this isn't practical though, so there is some difference.

It sounds like a lot of work, but yes, that would be lovely.

I know of at least one author who has incorporated with her husband. They write separately and together and under pen names...

It can be complicated to untangle some of these collaborations.

If the authors who collaborate publish under their own names, e.g. "Fred Smith and Joe Jones" then only one of them should be listed as the main author, and the other as an Other Author. Someday that will put the book on both pages.

If they publish under a single name, e.g. Grant Naylor then you could put links to the two real authors in the disambiguation notice, though it would be nice if the books could show up on the individual authors pages, perhaps in a "Written as" section or something.

Hmmm... maybe you could combine the two: put Grant Naylor as the main author, then list Rob Grant and Doug Naylor in the Other Authors section, as Collaborators. That would work, once the Other Authors section starts working.

Yeah, Tim really needs to get Other Authors working while he's fiddling with the author pages anyway.

Are we using n/a for any other purpose at the moment? That seems to be its sole function.

I'd argue it should be used for books written entirely by computers.

What about infinite numbers of Chimpansees?

69>

I agree that if there is a book written entirely by computers, it should be classified as "n/a." Now, it may be that LT has such a book in its database, but don't know, which is why I asked if "n/a" was currently being used for anything other than "authors" made up more than one human being. Being told that such a book is classified in LT's database (which it might be, for certain values of "written entirely by computers"!) would answer my question.

Is there?

70>

I think that would count as a collaboration.

No, I was joking :)

An oddity:

H.D. is showing on my list as "not set", yet when I go to her author page, the gender field is filled in.

(Also, all those suggested combinations come up as "the author is no longer in the system", if I click on "combine". But if I click on the name, it comes to her Author page. No, I do not know what Euripedes is doing there.)

http://www.sptimesrussia.com/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=24786

Isn't the internet wonderful?

> 73 : I ran across a couple of authors - sorry, forgot to take notes - that suffered from this and where resetting the info solved the problem.

Rick Joyner was listed on my meme under 'Female', but on his CK page nothing was entered. I set him to 'male', but he's still listed under 'female'.

If you click the "view history" link in the CK section bar, you can see that someone set it to female in the language "por1". Anyone know how to get at that to reset it?

Rashid al-Daif is listed as male in CK, but in my Male or Female meme page, he shows up as unknown.

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

> 75

Doesn't seem to have helped. She's still "not set".

http://www.librarything.com/blog/2009/02/male-or-female.php

should say "Male or Female" and not "Male of Female" but I know, picky, picky.

76, 77: Copy the URL for the common knowledge page or the author page, then substitute por1 for the www in the URL. You'll have to sign in on that por1 site. (I don't know what that site is. It seems to be in English.) then substitute br for www. It's the Brazilian Portuguese site. Then go back to the author or common knowledge page and delete or change that information.

Btw, whoever added that information (username Mily) has no books, and also set that author's canonical name as "jamile." Maybe a spam-attempt gone awry? Might as well delete that too.

H.D. is screwed up for me too ...

82 etc.> I'm wondering whether something gets screwed up if there is information on more than one language site, even if the information is the same.

>73 lilithcat:/74

Maybe this has to do with the old bug of canonical titles not "sticking" after combining and having to be re-saved? (by hitting edit - not changing anything- and then resaving). Perhaps it applies to other CK as well.

Thread on canonical title not sticking:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/53981

>81 rsterling:
Done. I changed the Canonical Name and Gender; you can't just delete the name, that sets it to blank (old bug).

Is it a bug? How else could you indicate that the proper form of someone's name is in fact blankness?

> 86, 85

What I guess rorrison means is that once a canonical name has been entered, that author will forever have a canonical name: there's no way of going back to the default name that LT auto-selects. Even if you enter a blank name, that becomes their canonical name.

I'm guessing at that, based purely on the comment here. However, I just tried blanking Rick Joyner's canonical name, and the page seemed to display perfectly happily. Maybe there's caching going on as well? Anyway, I reinstated his canonical name, to ensure I'd done no damage.

I guess I can't argue whether it's a bug or not, since I don't have any books in my library by (touchstone not working), so I haven't needed to set a blank author.

But it does happen. I suspect it's not happening with Rick Joyner because the por1 canonical name is filled in, and you're not blanking that, right? Try it with William Rollinson.

86> I normally enter those into my library as written by Anonymous. Tricky bugger writes a lot. Unless I have some indication that they wish to be known as "blankness", in which case I'd probably list it, in my own library, putting blankness in for the author.

>89 MikeBriggs: : Not only does (s)he write a lot, but such versatility!

edited to correct typo

> 69

I'll tell you where I've been using it.

When some infernal idiot enters a specific gender for "Jones" or "Smith", I can't make the field revert to empty. So I use "n/a".

I was joking, people!

On the subject of books written by computers -- not the entire book, but one chapter of Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea was written by computer.

And a very fine chapter it is too, she says with her tongue rammed firmly in cheek...

I am beginning to get very unamused at how often one of the top results in Google for some of my rarer authors is:

MarthaJeanne's author cloud | LibraryThing

Heh. We're going to give Google a sitemap, and discourage them from caching those pages.

93>

Yeah. That doesn't surprise me.

Are the Clancy Brothers -

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

male or other or N/A, please?

All the photos of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem show a bunch of guys; I think you can mark 'em as male
:-)

(I have quite a few of their LPs.)

97>

N/A seems to be the consensus so far, AFAICT.

>97 abbottthomas:

I agree, I would mark all multiple-person authors as N/A. I mean, the Clancy Brothers certainly aren't a MAN, even if they are male.

I suppose that "n/a" is the most useful choice, since it serves to distinguish multi-author pseudonyms from ordinary names.

>95 timspalding:, 94

Could the CommonKnowledge history pages be included in that request? Yesterday while I was searching for more information on an author, search results at Google listed entries I had done earlier: http://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/changelog.php?user=(deleted)

> 94, 95: Yeah I've been getting a lot of those too. Well, with BarkingMatt in my case. It's amusing and disheartening at the same time.

It isn't just Google by the way, I've tried Lycos with similar results.

Couple of odd ones - L. Sprague de Camp and Thomas Bullfinch have a set gender, but show up on my list - is this some possible issue with having multiple name variations and one of those is not set?

If CK data is going to stay separate by language site, could we at least have green data when something is filled in on another site?

I know that it has been generally accepted that multiple authors, whether male (Clancy Brothers), female (the Andrews sisters), mixed (Janet and Allan Ahlberg) or neuter (Tate Gallery) should all be n/a as far as gender is concerned. Is there a consensus about CK gendering with split authors - always assuming that the same gender is shared by all?

My inclination is to de-gender them but as one I had done was very rapidly made male again I don't want to waste everyone's time if that's not the general view.

I've been giving genders to authors that need splitting in the future. My logic is this:

1) Every author is that gender, so it's not really wrong to say X, Y, and Z are male.
2) Once splitting occurs, the CK will probably migrate to one or all of them, and it will still be correct.
3) I can't always say for certain if an author page represents multiple authors or not and I don't want to check every title of every author just to verify, yes, this is one author.
4) Even if I know an author page represents only one author now, that might not always be the case. So there's always the possibility that a second author might sneak onto the page and it would be laborious to constantly check for that and change the gender label.

It just seems to me that any ambiguity that exists for these authors is an artifact of LT's limitations, not ambiguity in real life. John Sutherland (all of them) are male. That's a fact and I'm not going to pussyfoot around it just because LT has some quirks.

I agree with 107. The reason for showing multi-author pseudonyms as "n/a" is to highlight the fact that they aren't the names of individuals. That isn't a consideration with author pages that merely await splitting.

Where a page contains both male and female authors, I would leave the sex blank for now. If it's marked "n/a", that designation may migrate to one or both authors after the split, at which point it will be unambiguously wrong.

I have been coding split authors (or authors who need to be split but haven't been yet) as male or female, depending on the name, unless the name is ambiguous (initials or a name that could be either male or female like Leslie).

I left all my ambiguous names blank for now and will go back to them when I have time to do the research. I've got about 80 of them, sigh...

How come my "Not Set" says (6) when there are only five listed?!

>110 bookel:

There are six listed (six bullets). The first one has a blank name, possibly due to someone blanking out a previously entered Canonical Name for that author (whomever it is).

I've fixed it -- it was Alison Cragin Herzig. Her name has been blank since 22 October 2008.

Oh weird. Thanks for finding / fixing!

>107 The_Kat_Cache:, 108

I can't fault your logic in 1) and 2). As far as 3) is concerned, I've taken a different line and used the 'nudge' of gendering as an excuse to review the works on the page to see if there are homonymous authors - takes much longer, of course. I see 4) more as a reason for not entering anything genderwise.

I didn't, incidentally, mean to suggest that N/A should be used on split multiple author pages: rather leave them ungendered until the eventual climactic page split.

My only reason for NOT inserting gender is that it leaves a marker for multiple authors - albeit a negative one. If there was a neater or simpler or more reliable way of marking them (for later sorting) I would be very happy to go along with your logic.

That makes sense except that a lot of the time a gender has already been entered, perhaps when there were only works by one author on that page but later works were added by another author with the same name. In that case you cannot blank out the field so the only thing you can do is add n/a. So the only meaning that you can attach to the blank entry is that no one has entered anything yet.

>115 jjwilson61:

a lot of the time a gender has already been entered

Pity, isn't it? ;-)

I think something has changed with the gender field - I had thought that what you describe was true but now, if you click on edit, you get four blank radio buttons: save like that and the field says "undefined". The author page reverts to the 'not set' column and the gender field appears blank. Neat, huh?

That's odd since I was just repeating what Tim said several days ago.

116:
Doesn't happen to me. If there's a gender entered already, when you edit the field it's selected and you can't get rid of it.

Here's the way it's going to work:

When the split happens, every author is going to get their own CK. If there is CK filled in, split #1 is going to get the CK info—all of it. The rest will be blank.

Will the occupant of slot one remain constant from now till the Great Auctorial Divide?

>118 r.orrison: - Odd that. I've just done it to John Baker and he became 'Not set'. Mind you I did it to Francis Bacon before I posted #116 and someone made him male again within 5 minutes - on the ball, these LT-ers!

>119 timspalding: - Thanks, Tim. That is helpful.

>120 TomVeal: - Anyone can edit the split, so I suppose there is no guarantee of this.

I'd like the numbering to be automatic based on number of copies. Does anyone disagree?

>119 timspalding:

Wish I'd known that before. On a number of occasions the number 1 slots on authors I've visited have been the authors with most books; not the more famous author with fewer books and the CK filled in.

ETA: ... and having just seen Tim's 122, that sounds better.

More famous to whom? If more people have copies of books by the first one, it would be reasonable to think that that person was more famous - at least on LT.

Should have been clearer - I meant titles, not copies of works.

> 122: There has to be a rule, and that sounds like a reasonable one. It also invites a new parlor game: Which homonymous authors are most nearly tied in number of copies of works?

Has the rule that the author with the most copies will have the first slot in splits been implemented yet? I isn't the case at the moment for Charles Francis Adams, where the son is in the first slot despite fewer (by my count) copies than the father.

122>

I don't like automatic numbering. The split author with the most copies now might not have the most copies tomorrow.

By associating the CK data with the the split author who has the most copies, the CK data can become bad data if that author is bumped to a lower position.

> 122

I'm not sure what you mean.

If one Author X has written one book, and 20 people have it in their libraries, and the other Author X has written 21 books, each of which is owned by only one person (perhaps the same person), which of them is #1 in your scheme?

Edited to add: #128 has a very good point.

I have, at least once, come back to a split with more information and moved a title away from one author to another. And as said in #128, the situation is fluid: how many new books are added each day? Looks like a lot to me.

I think it should be static as well. Otherwise it isn't predictable and the wrong author might get the CK info due to a last minute change before the split.

Why is Selma Lagerlöf still listed as unknown when her sex is stated as female in CK?

I suspect it's because she's different things in different national LibraryThing's. I'm looking into it.

Further to #130, new copies have been arriving today at around 2000/hour.

We add 30-40k per day.

... i've gotten almost all of mine now; only 73 left to go. But they're hard .... )-: If anybody wants some moderate-to-hard challenges:

http://www.librarything.com/profile/lquilter/memes/gender

... in particular i'm stumped by some of the two-authors-in-the-same-field problem. they're not *my* records .... hard to figure them out & clean them up.

Did Alexandre Skirda for you - still plenty to do on my own authors though

>136 lquilter: I did a Heidi and a Justin!

The two author problem is not easy - it helps if the first author has a page with some copies of the work in question on it. I've fixed one or two of my own but more by luck than judgement.

I'm down to 27 "not set". I got some of the later ones just by pulling the books off my shelf and checking the dust jackets. "S. Smith teaches at X University where he is beloved by all".

I'm down to initials, names like "Lee" and "Pat" , and several Asian names, including one in Japanese: http://www.librarything.com/profile/lilithcat/memes/gender

Over half of mine are done, and I hope to get below 1000 not set tomorrow. (Warning. Most of these are quite difficult to find anything on, and many are German speaking.) If anyone reads French, there a few that I won't even try, because my French is so poor.

The books are translated, but I wouldn't expect much luck in English language sources:
Bezancon Jean-Noel
Philippe Béguerie
Charles Bonnet
Sylvie Fournier
Jean-Pierre Torrell

Books in French
Monique Bonnin
Jeanne Bourin
Isabelle Contreau
Mick Fouriscot
Valérie Lejeune
Nicole Lemaître
Pierre-Marie Varennes

Does this mean I have books I can't read? Yes. But most of them are actually needlework pattern books - the words aren't important. The others are things where I either can work out short bits if I really need to, or that I used when we lived in Geneva for vocabulary.
Louis-J Rataboul

I have only two that I cannot figure out:

* N. Jones
* P. B. Masters

> 140 : I'll take a look at your French authors if you wish

p.s.: That's properly Jean-Noël Bezançon by the way.

> 142 : Just two? But my, those could be just about anybody...

Worldcat is useful for this. N. Jones is called Norman there but does that make him a man? http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/9259989?tab=details#tabs and mister Masters seems to be a publishing house http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/154726139?tab=details#tabs

Norman L Jones is attached to Faith by statute on Googling but whether he (Norman is surely never a girl's name?) wrote about the aircraft carrier - who knows?

LoC search gives us Norman Leslie Jones b.1951, but no sign of USS Entrepid.

Changed Masters to n/a. Will leave N. Jones alone now that it's multiple authors.

Norman is surely never a girl's name?

I'm somewhat uncomfortable with this sort of assumption being used to classify gender here. It fails dramatically in cases of cross-gender pseudonyms, people who don't identify as male or female but have a traditionally gendered name (like Kate Bornstein), and people who just have an unusual name.

My officemate is Sam on HER birth certificate and that's the name she goes by.

I actually found Google Books (website) useful for once. Search for the author's name (usually "Lastname, Firstname") and "about the author" revealed a lot in books titled "Something about the author" and double-checking the dates (for years born) elsewhere (via Google or library catalogues) also confirms it. Google Books is also good for finding whether male / female in author bios.

I'm down to two not set now. Anyone know these?

Ari Hill
Tadasu Izawa

>146 lorax: Look at the authors other works on LoC - I think your scenario is unlikely - not impossible but unlikely. I really don't think that one can hover on the contested/other fence unless there is something to suggest that hovering is reasonable.

Of course pen names are always a trap - in the last 24 hours I have 'female-d' two women who used ostensibly male noms-de-plume, in one case three of four different ones.

142> Please.

BTW it wasn't me who put in that wrong form. I was just copying and pasting from my list. Mine is entered in the right order, if without the special characters, but I'll fix it. I have also put in a canonical title.

>148 bookel:

pace lorax, this webpage suggests that tadasu is normally a given name for a boy - take it or leave it ;-)

http://epublishing.nademoya.biz/japan/names_in_japan.php?nid=T

149>

I don't see "other" as a fence, but as a third option. I'm not setting anyone to "neither/contested/other" unless I know that to be the case; I leave them unset in the hopes that someone with actual knowledge will set them.

I just don't see much point in someone going along saying "George is a male name; okay, George Sand, male, George Eliot, male...."

136:
I set the two-authors-in-one to n/a and added a disambiguation notice suggesting changing to just one and putting the other in the other authors field. There's something funny going on, though: if you click "Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson" on your list, it takes you to their page which lists one book which appears to have one owner, who isn't you. But I did a search in your library for Shea and sure enough you do have that book cataloged. Ah! I see -- the singleton that shows up on their page isn't combined with the one you have, the one you have is actually cataloged on Robert Shea's page: http://www.librarything.com/work/206597/book/21484048 - that's indicated by the "(otherwise under Robert Shea)" bit at the top of the page.

Francis Hapgood Elmore is male: Google Books had one of his books, and the introduction referred to "him".

Fun, but not enough time!

Edited to add: Found this which says "his" when referring to Terry V F Brogan.

>152 lorax: There is very good evidence that both your Georges considered themselves women - that is often the case with assumed names and ambiguous names but sometimes one is left with the choice of leaving a blank or making a reasonable choice based on less than perfect evidence - I'd take the latter course, that's all.

I'm really not trying to wind you up - perhaps you'd grant me the same courtesy.

154>

I'm not trying to wind you up, either.

I'd just rather leave a blank rather than make a guess, is all. I didn't mean my first post to be "Oh, nobody should ever make the other choice" -- just to point out to people who may not have considered the issue that it isn't always as simple as sitting down with a list of Male And Female Names and ticking off authors when you don't know anything about them.

>155 lorax: Fair enough.

Are we going to get a comparison for this meme too? I'm curious as to what the average percentages are for male/female, and how my library stacks up.

I'd like to see that too.

136/153> Singletons combined with the main work - not that that does anything about the mashed author showing up lquilter's list - I would mark it as N/A since it is not an individual person...

157/158, I think I'd actually find that more interesting than the dead/alive comparison.

157/158/160 -- me too -- definitely. fwiw I have 46.32% female authors.

oh -- and by the way -- thanks to everyone who worked on authors in my catalog! there were several smooshed up authors and they're all gone now! that was some awesome combining / separating / fixing. altogether a third of my gender-not-sets have been fixed: only about 50 left.

And my French ones are gone!

I will admit to gendering my Icelandic authors if I can't find anything else out about them. Halldora Bjarnadottir must at least consider herself female, or her patronymic would end in 'son'. Actually for her I found dates, too, but was very, very frustrated that I couldn't read the whole article. (Needlework pattern books again.)

Yes, patronyms are great - at least for this feature...

As for gendering in general, since I have so many long dead authors I often go by the conventional information - no way of telling how they felt about it themselves.

>161 lquilter:

Lucky you - I still have 134 not set. And work's been busy enough I can't really work on it at the moment.

Hah! I have 437 not set.

Spousal Unit says I should stop trying to "regularize site data" and finish cataloging. As I now have all the book boxes here instead of in the storage locker, I am pressed for an argument.

BTW, I just went to set gender for George Forman, whose appliance cookbook I have. When I clicked the link, I was taken to George Forman who wrote something called Constructivism in the Computer Age. Don't know where "my" George is ... yet. (Once combining gets in the blood, you are dooomed....)

George Foreman

PhaedraB, you may have better luck finding "your" George Foreman under the correct spelling of his name. :)

Hey, I found the typo myself while y'all were giving me the heads up :-) Beat me to the editing button.

But this is great; had I not gone to set the gender, I wouldn't have found the data error. Kewl.

Well, I'm almost done with mine, but when I click on some of the authors in my 'not set' list (most of them 'bad data' such as Sonia W.; Brigandi, Pat Black) I'm told I don't have any books by them, and thus can't change that to Black, Sonia W. and put Pat Brigandi in other authors. How do I fix something like this?

>169 EmScape: Couldn't you search your catalog for the author name and edit it from there?

169>

You have The Baby-Sitters Club Notebook entered as by that author. (As fyrefly98 says, you just need to search your library. You can't click through because that's not the dominant author name for that book.)

Okay, thanks! I'll fix those now.

Okay, great, now I only have two! Seddon Johnson and H.S. Vigeveno. Anyone have any suggestions, or want to fix them for me?

According to this site : http://www.freedominchrist.net/Sermons/World%20Religions%20and%20Cults/Buddhism%...

H.S. Vigeveno is a pastor in Hollywood CA - other than that, sorry....

Google Books search for H.S. Vigeveno finds The Touch of Jesus: Stories of Faith from the Life of Christ. The search result includes "From this perspective, Vigeveno presents his amplified stories from the New..." but the page linked to doesn't have that text anywhere. Searching for that text leads to http://www.alibris.co.uk/booksearch?qwork=6747047&author=Vigeveno%2C+H+S which also reveals that his first name is Henk. Searching for that finds loads of stuff, though it's hard to tell how much if any relates to your author.

Amazon thinks he's a he:

"In this thought-provoking book, H.S. Vigeveno creatively establishes common ground for today's Christians and several New Testament lives Jesus touched. Those he discusses serve as a reminder that Jesus intention is to transform those he touches."

I can only add that Henk is a common & typically male name in Dutch - short for Hendrik (Henry) - but since I can't be sure that it is Dutch in origin here...

LoC has his birthdate as 1925-12-22, if that helps. It also has a first name of Henk.

edited to remove double post.

As for Seddon Johnson, this page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Terman indicates that Doug Terman was one of the creators of the Choose Your Own Adventure books. That same page also says that Doug Terman's wife was "Seddon (nee' Johnson)". The two books that your Seddon Johnson wrote are both in the Choose Your Own Adventure series. Good enough for me.

Just a question. I've entered "Hermes Trismegistus" as n/a.

Traditionally it's a male (semi-)divine person of humongous antiquity, but in reality most scholars agree that the actual writings are by several different authors (probably all Greco-Roman Egyptian, c. 3rd / 4th century CE).

In my opinion Hermes is therefore not a person. But we could also be thinking of the person "he" is supposed to be. So : wondering if I did right. Opinions please.

The composite authors are likely (although not with complete certainty) to have been all male. I'd be most inclined go with what "he" is supposed to be.

>182 PhaedraB: I thought composite authors were being entered as "n/a"? That's what I've been doing. I believe somewhere way up thread it was decided even if you know the multiple authors are all one gender or another, the composite itself - the group - has no gender.

So, Siskel and Ebert as a composite has no gender, even though both of them are/were male.

>183 Talbin:

That was my understanding also.

I agree, two French sisters writing as Claude Izner are n/a, not female. This can be explained on the author page, of course.

I agree, two French sisters writing as Claude Izner are n/a, not female. This can be explained on the author page, of course.

US Navy Carriers: Weapons of War is a DVD, not a book, so Author is not so easily established.

It has occurred to me that I have never come across 'Junior' attached to a female's name. This dynastic signifier is much less used here in the UK than in the USA, of course. Does anyone apply it to their daughters?

I know one female writer that used Junior. Course it was an assumed name. James Tiptree, Jr.

I've never seen it used for a female name (US).

A very minor starlet of the late '60s and early '70s went by the name Lada Edmund Jr..

US Navy Carriers: Weapons of War is a DVD, not a book

It's a DVD AND a book.

What did we decide to do about gender for split authors?

Susan Carlson is two authors. Both USA, Both female, both alive. One has a book with 51 copies (Quilting); the other a book with 1 copy (British Theatrical Tradition). Neither gives a birth date.

I put the relevant websites into disambiguation, but I also entered 20th Century, Female, USA, so that she/they moved out of the not set lists.

Seems fair since that CK would apply to both.

There were several people in favor of blank or n/a. I'm not entirely convinced but my impression is that that is preferred by a lot of CK'ers.

It seems to me that the best solution would be for a separate column on the Meme pages for 'Split author : Currently undecidable'.

I'm really not happy with blank, simply because after all the effort, I don't want them sitting there on the list waiting to be dealt with. I want some sort of sign getting it off the 'to do' list. Both for me and for others. It's a waste of time and resources for people to keep checking the same authors on the 'not set' list

n/a has all the corporate authors, and this is a different matter, so that also seems inappropriate to me.

Other / Contested / Unknown ? It seems to me that those concerned about the other gendered will object if this gets used for split authors, who will quickly overwhelm the real issue this is meant to address.

I was going with n/a (in the same manner as has been advised for multiple authors) but was convinced by arguments against - chiefy that when eventually author #1 gets the CK, s/he will be lumbered with it. I've been leaving them blank for now.

ETA >195 MarthaJeanne: I love your first idea - I didn't like to ask (...pony??) ;-)

I can live with blanks but you are probably right.

Definitely n/a since when the page is about multiple people none of the CK fields can be applicble. However, it has also been discussed and decided that when one of the authors has the overwhelming number of books on the page it is permissible to fill out the CK for that author. I think that applies in this case.

Maybe?? with 300 some not set you can keep track of which ones you have looked at and either are part of split authors or just have no information to be found. I have over 900, and I just don't know anymore which I've already visited.

197> I don't consider one work each to be overwhelming for either. OK, one has a lot more copies, but still not on a par with some cases. And there are other cases with several authors and none of them is overwhelming.

> 197

Definitely n/a since when the page is about multiple people none of the CK fields can be applicable.

That's not necessarily true. If we know that both (all) authors on a page are women, then why not include that?

Also I don't believe we should go destroying all sorts of CK work done by others, if / when some author with the same name ever turns up. And that would ultimately have to be the consequence from such a strict interpretation.

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

Claude Izner is the pseudonym of two French sisters, Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefevre.

For a pseudonym of two or more people, I say that "n/a" is the correct gender in CK, and the other information about the situation can be posted under Biography or Disambiguation, or such as in this case, both.

I agree: two people don't have a gender - even if they happen to have the same gender.

Zombies!

IF author is split AND CK is set
THEN author is a zombie

Of course, zombies are only set up for Dead or Alive, so it's not a simple solution.

Can anyone get this one to stay put as an n/a? Even though I've changed it several times, it stays on my "Not Set" List.

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

Thanks!

#205
I looked at the record, and it does say n/a; and it does not seem to be combined with any "real" people; not sure what's going on!

>205 Talbin:
I'm having the same problem with Mother Teresa in my catalog. I look at the record and she is female, but it is still listing her as not set.

205> I did it! Black & Decker were mixed up with Creative Publishing International. Because of a set canonical title it was difficult to get the two separated and recombined. But I did it, and now you will find Black & Decker in n/a.

What I need to go back to is to find all the Creative Publishing authors that are NOT CPinternational. I have a funny feeling that is a separate organization. I also have a feeling that there are some author pages in there that include books from both. Isn't LT FUN!

>208 MarthaJeanne: - MarthaJeanne - Thank you so much! I just checked my own profile page and they are officially in the n/a list. It's weird, because I did go through the books listed to see if there were any non-Creative Publishing, but I must not have looked hard enough. Again, thanks!

207>I think you have a similar problem. Both the author page and your catalog say 'Mother Teresa', but the Meme page says 'Mother Teresa of Calcutta'. I have no idea if separating the various Mother Teresas apart and recombining would fix this. It might. BUT if someone were to do it, both the CK and the full list of authors combined would need to be noted first to make sure it all got together.

So why is it that I now have Black & Decker Corporation in my Male or Female list under not set but when I go to its author page, http://www.librarything.com/author/blackdeckercorporati, there is only one member listed and it isn't me.

Searching my library I do find a book by Black & Corporation but going to the work page the author is listed as "by Black & Decker Corporation (otherwise under The Home Improvement Editors of CPi)".

211> Thank you. I thought I had finished the clean up, but I missed a few. (It was after midnight here by the time I finished.) That looks better on the Male or Female list. As far as the book page goes, I don't think Black & Decker and CPI Editors should be combined as there are a lot of non-Black and Decker books under the CPI author. You can edit your author to go with the majority on the CPI page, or have your copy show a different author than most have chosen.

If you hadn't seen it before, the way that author is listed is discussed here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/57782

The Home Improvement Editors of CPi is still not combined with Creative Publishing International. I didn't combine them myself since I didn't want to step on your toes.

I hope that sticks. I was sure I had at least done that part properly. That I missed some Black & Decker was one thing, but I really did try to get all the Creative Publishings straight.

How about telling us how many books we have by male female and other authors. My 643 - 179 male dominance (which I think is continued in the unasigned) is in partly due to old reference books which tend to be by male authors each contributing one work. I suspect if books were counted the female authors, while not achieving parity, would narrow the gap somewhat. Similarly I suspect my almost equal dead to alive ratio would, on a book count, swing dramatically in favour of alive.

>215 ringman:

Not to mention, as I said in post 29, you'd be able to see the influence of authors for whom you holds many books by that individual, which could largely skew your collection percentage.

>205 Talbin: and >207 KarenElissa: and others. Having the same trouble with John Calvin
http://www.librarything.com/author/calvinjohn

He's set as a male on the author page, but yet appears in my not-set list.

What is the purpose of N/A? I see a lot of people using it for corporate authors and tag-team writers, but how is that anything but "other"? I really feel that the "other" category and the "N/A" field are far too ambiguous.
Might I suggest the following options that might make a few more people happy (especially with the transgendered selections):
-Identifies as male (the "identifies as" clause should make both bigots and rational people happy)

-Identifies as female (the "identifies as" clause should make both bigots and rational people happy)

-Corporation (since it was probably worked on by a bunch of both male and female employees)

-Multiple authors (since it could be male-male, female-female, male-female, or even more confusing)

-Unknown (perfect for anonymous works...why is that currently under "not applicable"? "Not applicable" would be something entirely genderless.)

If it doesn't get changed, somewhere on the "meme" page, someone should define once and for all where different things should get classified so I don't get rude notes from persons unknown complaining about me putting people where I feel they best belong.

After much discussion - here and elsewhere (sorry, looked for threads but my "Your Posts" list is WAY too long) - my understanding is that it seemed that "gender" was not the appropriate place to distiguish "multiple author/corporation" type entries. "Gender" applies to an individual - not a group of people - therefore an individual person may be male / female / other (i.e. someone who does not gender-identify or who has-been/identifies-as neither/both) - anything other than an individual person would be "n/a".

Now when you put it like that, "n/a" makes sense. The way that you have explained it should be posted somewhere people can find it and use it, such as on the meme page, instead of buried in a discussion log most people will probably not read.

I've added PortiaLong's explanation to the Common Knowledge help page. (Slightly edited.)

Thank you rorrison!
(wiki markup is not one of my current skills - I'm always afraid I am going to screw up the formating for the whole page)

218>

Still doesn't work.

"Male" and "female" can pretty clearly be used to mean "identifies as" -- for transpeople who identify as one or the other, even the old binary system was fine. It's people who don't identify as either male or female who were disserved by the old binary, and would be by this as well.

Thank you, rorrison, for mentioning the CK help page. This helps me do CK changes correctly.