Missing character/person descriptions

I put in person descriptions, with links to Wikipedia where available, relating to Let Me Finish, by Chris Christie, over a period of several days. Many disappeared. I've done so many of these, I don't think it's that I don't know how to do it. Is something wrong with that module? Because I don't want to do that much work again only to lose it.

It would be helpful if you put the work in question as a touchstone (in square brackets).

When I look the page, I see a list of some 40 characters and the descriptions. Perhaps you just need to reload the page. Also note that Common knowledge fields can be edited by anybody, so it's possible to delete anyone's entries, but looking at the history of CK there, it doesn't seem the case.

Edit to add the touchstone Let Me Finish

I'm not sure why you included all those lengthy descriptions. That field is for a list of names.

I would also avoid using links in the CK fields. Those should link to a page like this: http://www.librarything.com/character/Jeb+Bush If you link to Wikipedia (or any outside page), it might interfere.

Let Me Finish, by Chris Christie

Those descriptions should all be taken out, but I'm too lazyto do it.

I did fix the Alternative Title because only the subtitle was in there.

When you talk about character descriptions, are you talking about the ones in the CK area (which could almost be considered spoilery on some books and tend to be removed) or are you referring to going to the character page itself for the descriptions?

>4 MarthaJeanne:
Fortunately, LT seems to ignore everything enclosed in parentheses in the CK character names. Clicking on "Chris Christie (Attorney, politician)" just takes you to the character page for Chris Christie.

Everything in brackets is considered metadata in any CK field

>7 SandraArdnas: Parentheses are considered metadata. Brackets are considered part of the name.

https://www.librarything.com/character/Leela
Is a different page from

https://www.librarything.com/character/Leela+%5Bin+Doctor+Who%5D
Though they are the same character.

>4 MarthaJeanne:

Those descriptions should all be taken out, but I'm too lazyto do it.

I'm not.

And fixed a spelling error, too.

I put in the descriptions to help people keep track of the characters. I try not to give away plots.

BTW, I have been putting in the Wikipedia links for a long time, and they never caused trouble.

I'll give up trying.

Looking up the character pages, it looks like you mean the descriptions on the character page, not the CK information. Based on the one book you've noted, I'd say you have issue with one other user who doesn't like it. What you put in there, from what I can tell, is fine. I wouldn't touch those...

>12 gilroy:

The descriptions were in the CK fields on the work page; they've been removed.

I actually got the idea of adding the information on the CK fields from other people. So have fun trying to revise everyone, lilithcat

I’m really sorry I brought this up.

I’ve never timed it, but I bet I spend an average of any hour on every book. I took a lot of pride in it as communal work putting in a lot of information that doesn’t necessarily interest me, but apparently someone else wants: additional authors, first and last lines, blurbers, all sorts of author information and links. Consolidating people/characters who have been split across variant names, looking up authors in loc.gov to improve the division of authors with the same name, and trying to get biographical information on the character/person page for real people and major fictional characters. I found that Monkey King, the legendary Chinese character, was mostly under the Chinese name. So I put that on all the works with the dread parentheses (Monkey King) to clarify it for people who don’t know the Chinese name. And now I find that I’ve lost a lot of work on the person/character pages, and lilithcat proudly announces that she’s destroyed my annotations on the CK page. I find that obnoxious and disrespectful. I fail to see how they were hurting anyone.

But it’s freeing, too, because I realize that there is no reason to consider other people when I build records. I’ll just put what interests me and if someone wants to know something else, that’s their problem.

>13 lilithcat: Unless they were spoilery, or duplicating information, they should have been left alone.

>15 PuddinTame:
I get your feeling, I've been there. My own decision has to focus on what I find important in my data on LT, and just not bother fixing the rest. I have only so much energy, and LT is never going to be ideal for what I want. (My grief is with work combination/splitting and series. Can't be bothered anymore)

Having said that, wouldn't your wish for detailed data also be fulfilled with the description field on the CK character page itself? That is a dedicated space for the information you provide.

In the case of nonfiction, I have a rule of thumb to list anyone who appears 10 times in the index. All I know about some of the lawyers and other people is that they worked with Chris Christie at a certain time. I don’t think that’s worth a truncated entry on the person/character page since I don’t know anything else. On the other hand, on the CK page, it enables people to quickly check on anyone, if they’ve forgotten who they are, and the metadata that creates on the person/character page helps someone know if this mention is only in a particular period in their life, and helps clarify the identity of people with the same name.

>15 PuddinTame:

Yep looking at what you have done for The Fifth Risk I would remove the descriptions as well. These should be in the description field on the CK people/character page which can have a much longer description with a proper link out to Wikipedia.

Although having looked at the People/Character page for Max Stier https://www.librarything.com/character/Max+Stier - it reads as far more about The Partnership for Public Service rather than the man himself. IMO it needs to be edited to put the focus on the man.

>18 PuddinTame:

I don't think anyone is saying that you are listing too many people/characters (we have been around those houses with Lord of the Rings). Obviously if there needs to be disambiguation then that is a different matter - however as you have the descriptions in parentheses they will not disambiguate (as in lead to different CK pages) between two people of the same name.

Thank you, Gilroy.

I used to reserve all information for the person/character page, but I didn’t alter other people’s work except to consolidate people/characters, or if I had what I thought was a useful addition, like a surname. Then I found the metadata helpful, and I could use it to identify minor but recurring characters. It was a lot less work than a person/character page. I think Maude (Lady Jane’s maid) is better as metadata, and when Maude reappears after a 100 page hiatus, the reader)) knows who she is without having to go through the additional steps of switching to the person/character page.

I also use it to identify the stage of the person’s life. If Queen Elizabeth II is a character, but this is taking place when she is a child, I put Elizabeth II of England (then Princess Elizabeth of York) or whatever the standard name for EII is so that all the entries fall together on the person/character page, but readers see the name used in the book. I also do this to deal with characters who change their name in the course of a series, like women who marry: Jane Maidenname (now Jane Marriedname). If I go back and change earlier books to Marriedname, I’d be giving away a plot development (besides possibly doing a lot of work), but if someone hasn’t read the whole series and doesn’t know the earlier name, they still see the character/ person name that appears in the book, but all the books are still collected under the same name on the person/ character pages.

If someone appears under one name, but surprise! They are revealed as someone else, I put both names independently in the character list.

If the person is known by different names to different people, but this is not a surprise to the reader, I use the metadata to collect those names, especially as this may change from book to book, eg, Officer James Smith (undercover as “Greasy” Joe Jones)

>Andy L.

I could consider this on a case by case basis. Someone has complained about my Wikipedia links. I suppose I could copy the information with a citation instead. You may notice that if I copy an author’s short biography from a book, I note the book and the date. If I take it from Amazon, I note the source and the date.

Chris Christie’s communications director was important at one point in his life, but I don’t know anything else about her, and she’s not in Wikipedia, and this is only a brief period in her life, as far as I know. Occasionally, on the person/ character page the person will show up from some other book. I’m not reading the other book to see if I can get enough information for a decent P/C entry.

Meanwhile, I’m letting the reader of a book know who the person is in the context of this book. I’m experimenting with putting (bio) after the name if I have enough information for a decent P/C entry.

They will disambiguate when you get to the shared P/C page. That way one call tell that it’s not the same character in unrelated books.

>22 PuddinTame:

I am not bothered about the links - just where they are. IMO they should be on the Person/Character page. If people want to know about the person/character then they can always click on the link to that page. For example in The Fifth Risk I would just have David Friedberg in the persons list. On the P/C page I would mention that he founded and is CEO of Climate Corporation.

>23 PuddinTame:

How? I thought the accepted way of doing disambiguation was using square brackets as in post 8

Closing this as not a bug. OP, I can appreciate the frustration with having your work undone, and agree that the details (from what I've seen) should have been moved to the Person/Character page before deleting. Maybe there's something we could do here that would encourage that sort of editing, and make it easier to do?

The links to Wikipedia ARE on the P/C page. The annotations on the CK page are not links.

If you don't like the Max Stier mini-bio, please feel free to add to it. I just don't want it eliminated entirely. Otherwise, people can use the link to Wikipedia.

Well I didn't know about the brackets as disambiguation, but if I were still going to add such information, I would have to see if it opened a different P/C entry than those already established

Well it was a bug. Since I have gotten no help with that and a great deal of unsolicited advice and editting, please close this. I don't expect any further problems since I intend a to add a lot less information from here on out.

>27 PuddinTame: Can you tell me what you think the bug is, exactly? Having read this thread, I see instances of other members editing/deleting your CK edits, but that's the way CK works.

When it comes to using parentheses vs. brackets, I do it on a case by case basis. If Emily is Lady Haughty's maid, and I know nothing else about her, I note that in parentheses as a help for reader who has forgotten that Emily was last mentioned a hundred pages before. I don't see any point in separating her from other Emilys. If there aren't a lot of people by the same name that aren't terribly important. I may just distinguish them in the same character description. It partly depends on what other people have done, and if I think it's important enough to separate them.

If I think that it is worth making a separate entry, I use brackets.

I have also been asked why I add Wikipedia links to a character description (not Common Knowledge). For the same reason, I presume, that we add them to author pages - to point to more information.

Someone, who only had one book in LT at the time, went through and edited a lot of philosophers by added dates and putting them in the format LastName, FirstName. e.g., "Calvin, John, 1509-1564". I don't mind the dates, but the usual format is FirstName LastName. I changed a few, but I gave up when I saw how thorough they were.

There is a fairly recent topic (March) which got into a bit of discussion about the opposing philosophies (lumping: same character names together with parentheses as descriptors, versus splitting: using square brackets so a character has their own entry), if that is any interest: https://www.librarything.com/topic/340301

There aren't a lot of guidelines, hence the differing viewpoints, but one thing that's clear when we edit that field in CK is the text below in grey:
"Examples: Hermione Granger, Andrew Jackson,..."
So I'd say respectfully the helper who added in the format: LastName, FirstName, Dates is doing it wrong.

>30 Nevov: I think so too, I just don't know what can be done about, unless a number of people are willing to divide up the names and change them back. There are 13 books under "John Calvin", and 156 under "Calvin, John, 1509-1564"

I don't mind the dates, I put them in my personal tags, but unless it's needed to differentiate between two people/characters, they should probably be in parentheses.

>31 PuddinTame: I think so too, I just don't know what can be done about, unless a number of people are willing to divide up the names and change them back.

I'd be willing to work at this -- I do try to clean up Common Knowledge when I can -- but is there a way to systematically locate problem entries? I doubt it. And, if there isn't, it's probably not worth doing it in a non-systematic way; that might just produce more inconsistencies.

I think that it would have to be divided up by the names of the philosophers or theologians, which are the ones that someone systematically messed up. (I've nearly gone mad collecting all the variants of random names, but that can't be handled systematically) I'm willing to start on John Calvin, and John Wesley, and I suppose other Wesleys. It's a matter of cutting and pasting the correct link. I'd like to leave the dates in parentheses, since they are supplied, but I could be talked out of that.

It's tedious, but not as maddening as trying to get all the Monkey King entries together. It should be simple, if time consuming (famous last words LOL)

Another inconsistency: In Genres, people are marking nonfiction works on Jane Austin, and I suppose other authors, as "Fiction and Literature". I had interpreted "Nonfiction" and "Fiction and Literature" as a binary attempt to split works between those two categories or supragenres, with the rest of the list, excepting "Children" and "Young Adults," which are reading level categories, as genres in a different sense relating to the subject of the work.

Can a book be marked both "Nonfiction" and "Fiction and Literature"?

Oh no! I just found what it think is a split series.

>32 waltzmn: Waltzmn: I have started checking names that I suspect might have variations by doing a character/people search of the site.

>Waltzmn: Great, I'll start on the ones that I mentioned. What do you think of leaving the dates in parentheses?

>31 PuddinTame: >32 waltzmn: The PEOPLE who are converting all those names like that are actually several accounts, and they change them back as fast as you can convert them to the proper formatting.

I gave up on trying to fix those.

>37 gilroy: I'm pretty sure it's mostly one person using different accounts, with a bit of help from one or maybe two other people.

That said, yes, they are determined editors. I finally got them to stop editorializing and stick with just name & dates in at least one (non-biblical) instance, which I won't name in public.

>38 karenb: That said, yes, they are determined editors. I finally got them to stop editorializing and stick with just name & dates in at least one (non-biblical) instance, which I won't name in public.

Suddenly this starts ringing some bells. Are these the people who editorialize by putting descriptions with their character names, e.g. (these are not exactly correct, but they get the idea across) "Solomon (the wisest man in the Bible)" or "Solomon (wrote the book of Ecclesiastes)"? Because, if it's that crew, the problem is worse than the matter of their faith leading them into unverifiable statements. I've observed that they also often assign characters to books that don't actually contain them (e.g. "Acshah (Daughter of Caleb)" is a character in the Book of Judges, but is not necessarily a character in a commentary on Judges). So this person or persons is supplying false information about a book that the person very possibly has not read.

I realize that it's ultimately pretty much the same problem....

>39 waltzmn: Karenb: It appears so. If they are going to insist on putting in an incorrect character name, they might have the courtesy to also leave the correct name for everyone else. I've been improving records as I go along, e.g., adding additional authors, places, events, etc.

I wonder why this person/people want to mess up a database that they didn't create.

>40 PuddinTame: I wonder why this person/people want to mess up a database that they didn't create.

The ones I have seen do not appear to be malicious in the sense that the person is trying to misinform. It is simply that the person has data-resistant opinions, and doesn't bother actually reading the book.

That's a social issue. There is also a social issue in the "rewards" for putting in Common Knowledge data. For example, almost every book I own about J. R. R. Tolkien has turned out (when I have acquired the book and gone to enter the information I can enter) to have Common Knowledge edits on it. It is usually one edit, a person or a place, e.g. "Aragorn II" or "Rivendell." It is typically -- since the majority of my Tolkien books are commentary or biography, not his own writings -- completely irrelevant. Often the items in the CK edit are not even mentioned in the book. It's pretty clear that the person who put in those edits was simply seeking more badges.

So I end up, in addition to putting in valid information, having to clean out this invalid stuff. Fortunately it's relatively easy in that case, because those vandals are slapdash. :-) But it's a problem with giving out reward badges.

Note that I am not saying that LT should stop giving out badges. One might perhaps retract badges for someone whose CK edits all get stripped out -- but that might lead to editing wars such as Wikipedia has suffered. Any solution probably has to involve some social engineering as well as technology. :-(

>41 waltzmn: I was wondering also why they refuse to use the "firstname, lastname" convention, which is noted in Common Knowledge. That is confusing, because most people will be looking for it under that convention.

In the process, I've added people/character fields to about 80 books that didn't have them,

I've decided ti take my own advice, and I am leaving them their lastname, firstname, however, I am also adding the usual format. Whatever it is he/she/they think that they are doing by using the other format is still accomplished, but people looking for the usual format will find it.