Need help with Author name

Greets:

Please take a look at William H. Kieth Jr.'s author record:

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

The author's name is stated to be Jr. William H. Keith

I'm looking at the CK page located here:

http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Common_Knowledge

The Canonical name and the legal name appear to be in the correct format as per the CK page:

Keith, William H., Jr.

What should the format be?

Thanks,
-drmike

Take out the comma before the Jr. - it sees the last comma in the list as indicating the end of the last name. Actually, it needs to be Keith Jr., William H. to show up correctly - attach the Jr. to the surname and no comma.

ETA - I fixed the Wiki page. I've seen this before, but never saw the Wiki example.

Thanks.

I was wondering about this. I thought to go to MLK, Jr. to see how it was done (on the assumption that an entry for such a popular author would get it "right"). Well, the CK history is interesting.

I note that Feb 11th, 2009, Tim set it to: King, Martin Luther, Jr.
On Apr 4, 2010, someone else set it to: King Jr., Martin Luther

I've done a bunch of searching and I can't find any authoritative statement about it, other than the Wiki page (which jjmcgaffey has just changed to be opposite from what Tim did). Is there some place in talk that I've missed where the official way is stated by TPTB? Did Tim just slip up on this one or has he changed his mind since then?

The 'official' way is the February 11th. The way that works - that gets you Martin Luther King Jr. - is the April 4 way. From Feb 09 to April 10, it was Jr. Martin Luther King (and was sorting in the Js, etc.). I'm surprised the error lasted that long!

I suspect that the code doesn't allow for the standard (name), (Jr., Sr., III...) format. It apparently looks for the last comma and makes that the beginning of the surname. I had lots of fun with it when I was (before Roles for main Author) putting in (name), ed. for editors of anthologies....

ETA - actually, it does move around the stuff before the first comma, too...huh. But I've fiddled with it six ways from Sunday and it only works with Jr. after the surname and with no comma in front of it.

So you're saying don't do it the official way, but the way that works? And then change the wiki to say the way to do it is supposed to be opposite of the official way? ;)

This is starting to sound a bit like the whole zero copy thing all over again. :D

Define official. The person who wrote the wiki...hmmm, who seems to have been Tim...though I can't see (I'm not going through the entire history) if it's been changed in between - put the standard format for the things. It would have made the code much more complicated, so maybe this is a 'unfinished feature' thing? Vatefer.

Yeah, I'm saying do it the way it works...that's simple logic (MLK sorting in the Js is just silly). And change the wiki so that people who want to see what to put will see the correct thing, that's what the wiki's for.

ETA - so I did go through the history. The MLK example was added Feb 2008, to conform to the 'MLA citation standard' - as far as I can see, there was no checking against actual code usage there.

There I go again. Ask a simple question, cause trouble. :)

Okay, so the problem is that the most correct way.

King, Martin Luther, Jr.

is turning into

Marin Luther, Jr. King

?

When it's displaying as first last, it shows as Jr. Martin Luther King.

I don't have anything by MLK, but I enter L E Modesitt, Jr as Modesitt, L E, Jr, and it's handled correctly. Are we _sure_ the problem still exists?

Yes. I also don't have anything by MLK, but I tested it out on William A. Gutsch, Jr. and Bernard Clayton, Jr. when I was trying it at the time of Msg 5. However, it works fine now! (the magic of Tim)

ETA - Fixed William H. Keith, Jr. canonical & legal names. Also reverted the wiki, since the old info is now correct.

Perhaps we have one of those bits of code which are subject to bit-rot. I know it used not-to-work, so I entered the suffix in the middle for a while, then Tim said it was fixed, so I suffixed my suffixes. Today it sometimes works.

Ah. Well, then, William H. Keith, Jr. is a good early warning signal if the , Jr.'s start misbehaving again! Yeah, I vaguely recall that it was working once. But the (surname) Jr., (first name(s)) works either way, so I haven't noticed if it's been working on and off - I got into the habit of 'fixing' any Jr. names right away.

FYI, I reset MLK.

So, how do I get the author name to become "Falstaff, fakir" properly? (it's an old Swedish humorist's nom de plume) Previously, I had entered it as "fakir, Falstaff,", and it worked. Now it's just "fakir, Falstaff", which is wrong.

#15

On July 31st I redid MLK Jr. to what I thought was the correct form of canonical name:

King Jr., Martin Luther

It just looks strange to see Jr. Martin Luther King on the author page. When you look at Alexandre Dumas fils:

http://www.librarything.com/author/dumasfilsalexandre&norefer=1

the canonical name is set as:
Dumas fils, Alexandre

I've seen things both ways. Is there a rule for this? And does it have to do with comma placement? I'd like to see consistancy, one way or the other.

Thanks

Fianna

Hmmmm.... So I reset MLK because jjmcgaffey said William H. Keith, Jr. worked after he reset it to the official "Keith, William H., Jr." way. After resetting MLK, it appeared to also keep showing his name properly. I think we both got tricked by a delayed author name recalculation. I note they now say:

Jr. William H. Keith
Jr. Martin Luther King

So, there you go Tim, examples of the problem. Can you fix it without us having to kludge the canonical name into an unofficial fashion?

ETA: Okay, those examples have been messed with. See post #30 for more. Or just do a search for author names including Jr and you should find a bunch.

Strange. Went back to the William H. Kieth Jr page and it was showing again as Jr. William H. Keith. I went ahead and removed the comma and got I believe "Kieth Jr William H." Put the comma back in and got the correct William H. Kieth Jr name.

Isn;t this fun? :)

On a related note, the page that you're referring to as the Martin Luther King, Jr. page is actually the Martin Luther King page (look at the URL). It is combined with MLK Jr. but it is split between Jr. and Sr., so is it fair to add the Jr. to the canonical title?

20> Yes, I know, I posted about it earlier in Combiners!.

19> I'd prefer to leave both of these example pages with the canonical name as Lastname, Firstname, Jr. so Tim can see the problem and hopefully fix it, rather than us continuing to have to kludge it into submission.

I returned it to the way I found it.

Got it to work here:

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

Used: Babcock, L. Ross, III

Keep in mind there is a delay between changing the CN and LT refreshing the main author name. The other two appeared to work at first but then sometime later changed to exhibit the problem.

With my L E Modesitt, Jr example, the name is displayed correctly everywhere except on the author page. Not true for MLK though.

#23

I checked this and it is now incorrect.

>26 fdholt: Yup, now showing as III L. Ross Babcock.

Tim, are you messing with us? :)

Re-read #24.

Actually when I made a change to the CK field, it updated when I went back to the Author's Main page.

29> Yes, changes will effect it immediately. But if you go back and look later, you will see that another process must be changing it on some sort of cycle. If you go look at these two I just fiddled with, they appear to be right at the moment:

http://www.librarything.com/author/babcocklrossiii
http://www.librarything.com/author/douglasian

Even though they are in the Lastname, Firstname, Suffix format in CK. If you go back later, I have no doubt they will once again be displaying at the top of the author page as "Suffix Firstname Lastname".

Unfortunately, this kind of destroyed the examples I pointed Tim to. Here's three examples that no one should touch:

http://www.librarything.com/author/selbyhubert
http://www.librarything.com/author/jrlemodesitt
http://www.librarything.com/author/jrjoemcginniss

I am not sure if this is the same problem but I just added a book by Isak Dinesen. Looked on the author page and it is Tania Blixen, one of her other names. Yet the canonical name is Dinesen and correctly entered. (Did not correct so others could see this.)Is this a bigger problem and should it go to the Bug Collectors group?

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

Fianna

How odd. I can't figure out why it wouldn't use the CN, considering it was set in February. Yeah, I'd break this out to a separate bug collectors post if I were you.

I'd like to note that both of the first two authors mentioned in #30 have now "broked." I'm not sure when it happened, but I've been refreshing it on and off all day and only just now found it screwed up again. So at the moment, the pages are listed as:

III L. Ross Babcock
Jr. William H. Keith

My last CK touch was at around 2:30pm LT time.

I;m just leaving it alone now. I know who they are.

Here's hoping Tim will drop by again.

re: 31

See
http://www.librarything.com/topic/96281
in Bug Collectors