Author name sometimes appears as URL segment instead of name

Sometimes I see an author whose name is showing as the final URL segment, instead of the name. Here's an example. If you look at the combine/separate page for Margaret Deansley, her name appears reasonably correctly on every edition listed. However, the system seems to think her name is "deaneslymargar" (which you can see at the top of the page). That's her URL on the site, but why is the system using it as her name?

In this particular case, someone had entered a Canonical Name, presumably to fix it, but I've removed it -- both in celebration of the fixing of the blank canonical name bug, and to demonstrate this bug.

It has happened on authors who have never had a Canonical Name set, so it's not related to removing it.

http://www.librarything.com/author/clarkegeorgeherbert is another example.

Hey, when you left it, was it showing "clarkegeorgeherbert" or blank?

I'm thinking that blank CKs are changing it outside of normal usage--probably an admin script.

It was showing clarkegeorgeherbert, and still is. I'm pretty sure it's not an effect of blanking Canonical Name, because I saw names like that before the bug was fixed (at a time when blanking it would have left it blank).

By the way, Margaret Deansley is showing blank now.

Changed her name to fred, then blanked again, and she's back to deaneslymargar.

Another example: Eric Josephson. I just took out the canonical name I had added a long time ago and the top of the author page reverted to josephsoneric.

Same for Nina Fishman and John C. Louis. The last has only one work with two copies. Perhaps that will make diagnosis easier.

It was showing clarkegeorgeherbert, and still is

Got it. It was showing blank when I looked at it. I had to blank it out again.

The two bugs aren't connected, but I think I now see it re-blanking authors. (So another bug is reopened.)

Probably related, but slightly different: When I blank the author name on the Shobunsha page it reverts to a number instead of the Japanese Kanji it's probably supposed to be:

http://www.librarything.com/author/3522589899

This should be fixed in a few hours. It's recalculating all of them now.

Note that if no books by the author are currently in the system, it can't necessarily get a definitive form of the name, so it default to the URL-string.

Confirmed fixed for my examples and Shobunsha in message 8. Thanks.

Looks good for the two in message 1 - thanks!

Someone just added a Canonical Name here because the name was wrong:
http://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/changelog.php?item=4938659&type=...

>13 r.orrison:
I think that was a different bug. The one where when a user edits the title or author of a book with few owners (in this case just the one) and the work data doesn't automatically recalculate. I forced a recalculation by doing a separation and got the correct author form to display without a canonical author.

It is actually what I intended this bug to be -- as I said in the first message "It has happened on authors who have never had a Canonical Name set, so it's not related to removing it". This was, I hoped, an example of that case.

Doesn't seem to be quite fixed yet. The following one now occurs in "last name, first name" notation:

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

>16 koffieyahoo:
I'm curious as you are the only member with this author. I notice that there are several 0 copy editions attached to the work. Did you enter the book and then edit the author? Could the work author still be taking the pre-edit version?

That's what I thought was going on in 13, 14 above. But perhaps it's something else.

I definitely edited the title and some other fields, but I'm pretty sure I never edited the author.

Re-processing.

Fixed. Send problems.

> 20: Forwarding all unpaid bills ;-)

The one I mentioned in 16 is still wrong.

Here's one that's showing in URL notation:
http://www.librarything.com/author/schoopalbert
There's never been a canonical name set, there's only one book and only one edition, and it looks like his name is listed correctly there. Where did it come from?

The bug is still present: http://www.librarything.com/author/gaudagudrun&norefer=1&all=1
I have added three books; the name displayed gaudagudrun since adding the first book. Adding more books does not recover the error. Seen this a dozen of times during last months.

Fixed. Thanks. The code can, under certain circumstances, generate these. It now tries hard to recalculate it. If it remains, waiting a few seconds and refreshing should do it.

It won't recalculate if there are no works for the author. It can't.

Great, thanks!

I'll report the "Lastname, Firstname" display as a separate bug. (Message 16) (This is now bug http://www.librarything.com/topic/100615)

It won't recalculate if there are no works for the author. It can't.
Works, or editions?

I've found another case where these are created. I've just entered an author's name for an event, he wasn't previously in the system; there are no books cataloged by him. The page created (and linked to from the event) had his name in URL format, although it appeared correctly on the event listing. The author is Paul Chrystal, http://www.librarything.com/author/chrystalpaul. Is there any way to get the author record created/updated with the name from the event, or is it only possible to get the name from books?

>27 r.orrison: When editing such an event the "FirstnameLastname" might change to "LastnameFirstname" (see /author/geraldettl and /author/ettlgerald) depending if you click on "Look Up" or not. /local_add.php?event=140539. It will not be possible to combise the two author url variants; they will not be identified with the new search. BTW: The example may sugest that more then one author can participate the ecent this is not the case.

test: :geraldettlGerald Ettl and :ettgeraldlGerald Ettl

P. S . No clue how the author name changed. As far as I rememeber I definitively did not insert Ettl, Gerald as author name.

This is especially interesting when the author page URL gets converted into a numerical string: http://www.librarything.com/author/1333680856

http://www.librarything.com/work/10667914 - this shows the author as "1333680856".

The editions page shows "K-On! 02 / Kakifly (ISBN 4832277812)" (I'm not sure why the work page shows the author/title combination it does - the title is "けいおん!" with some other stuff after it, should it change soon, which isn't the same as what shows in kyuuketsukirui's catalogue, so that might be a partial indication of the problem?)

ETA: For the curious, that numerical string should be listed as "かきふらい", unless the import from amazon (presumably) did something weird to it.

>27 r.orrison:

Yes, unfortunately, it's not possible for the author system to be dipping into the event system for names. (The idea never occurred, and while I see it could be useful, I think it would be useful only very rarely.)

More generally, I need to redo authors to be based on full name strings and aliases between them—independently and by work—without the current half-way house of author IDs. Until then, this stuff will persist.

Closing, since we haven't seen any recent examples of this.

#30 by @timspalding> Yes, unfortunately, it's not possible for the author system to be dipping into the event system for names. (The idea never occurred, and while I see it could be useful, I think it would be useful only very rarely.)

Often new authors go on tour to promote their first book, in which case the first instance of their name in LibraryThing could well be in an event.

#31 by @lorannen>
I'm pretty sure that if you created an event for an author that isn't already in the system you'll still see the problem, if you ever want another test case.

But I am happy to accept deferred as the resolution. It is easy to work around by setting the Canonical Name.

>31 lorannen: Last update, from 2014: we haven't seen any recent examples of this

I'm still finding examples regularly. Here's one I found today: https://www.librarything.com/author/froedegordon

Canonical name has never been set on that page, so the problem isn't caused by removing it. There is one work, with one edition, which has the author name correct.

I have no doubt that if you did Recalculate author name on that page it would correct it, but the bug is that it happens in the first place.

>33 r.orrison: Tried an experiment. I see this now and then on newly added authors with only a single copy of a single work. I added another copy of that work, and have since deleated it. This did not correct the author's name. In fact the wrong version now also shows on the work, which I don't think it did before.

I'm not terribly bothered by this bug, because recalculate has always worked for me, but I have reopened it so that it gets looked at again, since it definitely still happens.

New authors appearing as surnameforename until someone clicks recalculate is is so common that I've always just assumed that everybody must know about it.

>33 r.orrison: >35 DuncanHill: Sorry, am I missing something? I thought author pages were typically meant to be listed as /lastnamefirstname ..

The name at the top of the author page shows as First Last. See https://www.librarything.com/author/westkeon

>36 kristilabrie: Yes, but in the body of the page it should display as Firstname Lastname.

eg /carnellhilary displays as Hilary Carnell.

But it didn't until I hit "recalculate author name" on it a couple of days ago, after confirming them on a book. It displayed as carnellhilary.

AH, that's what I was missing.. thanks.

https://www.librarything.com/author/jonssonjon (until someone does Recalculate author name)

Another report (though I fixed the issue with the author recalculate)
https://www.librarything.com/topic/383784#n9180898

https://www.librarything.com/author/barondegirardot
I'm going to stop listing these again, and go back to fixing them. It would be nice if the cause was identified and addressed, but they are easy to fix.

>43 r.orrison: Sorry, I don't think this would get enough traction in the last week that I'm here :/ Probably worth it to keep fixing but keep one active just in case.