Author Combinations

Over the weekend, I merged Matthew Head into John Canaday, as they are the same person and it appeared to merge correctly. I confirmed that they were the same person with both Wikipedia and a general google search. When I checked the next day, they were neatly separated again. Did I do something wrong?

One thing I'll note is that I don't see your username in the helper logs:
http://www.librarything.com/log_helpers.php?view=authors

Even on the 3 day view for All Types, I only see one work combination. Is it possible something happened that didn't actually finish your author combination?

Someone must have separated them. Maybe someone didn't realize the two were the same person and thought someone had combined two different authors. Or maybe there is more than one Matthew Head or more than one John Canaday; that would be a legitimate reason to keep them separate.

If (and only if) there is only a single author going by Matthew Head and only a single author going by John Canaday, then I think the pages can be legitimately combined. I would, however, recommend putting a note in the disambiguation field, saying that so and so also writes under the pen-name of ... etc.

2 - When authors are separated the log for the original combination disappears (as does your credit for it in your stats/badges).

#4 by rsterling> Wow, that's... just wow.

4: So there could be intense edit wars going on, and unless someone says something in Talk, there's no way for the rest of us to track that the page is shifting back and forth??

I'm almost as speechless as brightcopy.

It's how it's always worked. No idea why.

Well, I have an idea why, from a programmer point of view (pure speculation). It's probably that the helper log was reverse engineered out of some database structure that wasn't really meant for that. For such a purpose, I can see how cancelling out edits like that would be immensely sensible from a non-logging perspective. But not so great when you actually want, well, a log.

John Canaday needs to be split. http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/671 I'll work on it. (I'm not the one who undid the combination, but a short spell with Google found the problem.)

I've done a fair amount, and I'm stopping here. The CK needs to be copied from John Canaday 1 to John Edwin Canaday, and whatever needs to be done with Matthew Head. I think there is also some combining that could be done on that page.

I think I'll just step back for a while and wait for the dust to settle. I believe that John Canaday, John Edwin Canaday, and Matthew Head are all one person. If in a day or two Head is still a separate individual, I will try to merge him into the Canaday who is also the art historian. That should bring us back to where we were after I opened this can of worms. Thanks all.

#12 Problem is there are 2 John Canadays - yours which is Canaday, John, 1907-1985 with other names of Matthew Head and John Edwin Canaday (LC 81107946) and Canaday, John, 1961- with full name John Thatcher Canaday (LC 99256) who wrote Nuclear muse and Invisible world.

Both do not use the fuller form of the name. Books written under the pseud. will be listed by that name.

Edited to add: I can add this to the diambiguation notice is you would like or feel free to copy this info. But I agree that aliasing is the way to go here.

For ref:
http://www.librarything.com/author/canadayjohn
http://www.librarything.com/author/canadayjohnedwin
http://www.librarything.com/author/headmatthew

Unless there is also more than one author with the name Matthew Head, the second and third pages there can be combined: Matthew Head and John Edwin Canaday. Neither of those, though, should be combined with the John Canaday page, because there's more than one John Canaday. John Canaday (1 ) is already aliased to John Edwin Canaday, so that's taken care of. If combining Matthew Head and John Edwin Canaday messes that up, then someone might need to edit the alias on the John Canaday (1) page.

I separated John Edwin out - which left him with no books, but then I aliased to give John (1) a real page. But by the time I had verified the authorship of all the works on the page, I had run out of time.

How do I undo an author merge. Tom Straw is the real author of the Nikki Heat and Derrick Storm novels. Nick Castle is a character in the TV show which is derived from the novels and is listed as the author on the books. In any event, I merged to Tom Straw's record in to Nick Castle rather than the other way around. How do I fix??

https://www.librarything.com/author/castlerichard
Good thing you didn't combine with Nick Castle. That would have been really messy.

To uncombine (*And please do NOT recombine in any case*) -- on the author page, right hand side, there is a section labeled "Includes" Click on the link in that section and it will allow you to see all the names associated and allow you to break them apart.

>16 sloreck: What do you mean by "rather than the other way around." Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the direction of a merge matter, that is the result is the same no matter which way you do it.

>18 jjwilson61:

I'm guessing he means that he wants the books to appear on Tom Straw's author page, with Castle as an included author, rather than on Castle's author page with Straw as an included author.

Yes, Straw is the human being author. Castle is a literary construct to connect the TV show and the novels.

I suspect, because Castle has more books assigned to him than Tom Straw, Richard Castle will always become the primary author, no matter which direction you combine them.

I'd be of a mind to keep them separate, and note that Straw is the Ghostwriter for Castle, not to combine them.

OK, I'll leave this alone. Of course the amusing thing is that the author's picture on the dust jacket is actually Nathan Fillion who plays Castle on the TV show. Thanks one and all.