Character Names - Entry details and the Description

So I always thought, when CK was created, that the whole point was to see how names were frequently used and potentially crossed various books.
Then the description field has appeared.

Now we have people who are purposefully labeling characters so they split out from the prime character page -- just so they can describe each character as related to the specific fictional world.

To me, that defeats the whole purpose of the CK character field. It was meant as a lumping field. (And I'm not normally a lump it together type person.)

So which is actually right? Breaking characters apart or lumping them together? (If you want examples, give me a chance to get away from my work computer where I have more time to dig them out.)

>1 gilroy: It was meant as a lumping field.

I've literally never thought of it that way. I've always considered it as a field for unique characters, not characters in entirely unrelated books that happen to share a name. I use the description box to describe that character rather than as some sort of disambiguation notice.

>1 gilroy: I’ve always thought the fun in it (and in the places field) was the lumping of the fictional names as well. But I rarely use the field(s).

>3 AnnieMod: It may be fun, but it makes it hard to find books with a specific character/person. If I want to find books with the John Smith who knew Pocahontas, I have to go through dozens of works to find the John Smith I want.

I much prefer it as a lumping field, but I do think examples would be helpful to the conversation. Especially examples as evidence that people are doing this on purpose and not due to a misunderstanding of the field.

>4 amanda4242: You noticed the word “fictional” in what I said, correct? Real people are a different kettle of fish.

>6 AnnieMod: And on the John Smith page you have a bunch of real and fictional people together. Even with fictional characters, if I want to find all of the instances of John Smith in a specific series, I'd still be wading through a bunch of entirely unrelated works.

>1 gilroy: I don't think this is actually a right/wrong thing, so much as it is a question of how different people want to use the field. You want to use it to see all of the characters who happen to share a name, and I want to use it to see a specific character. Neither way is wrong, but it's probably not possible to accommodate both ways under the current system. Perhaps an RSI requesting something like the author disambiguation for characters?

It could be inferred that it doesn't want extraneous info, going by the example text "Hermione Granger, Andrew Jackson, Oberon, St. Paul of Tarsus, or Zeus (Deity)" rather than it saying "Hermione Granger by JK Rowling, President Andrew Jackson,..." etc., so supporting the lumper instinct.

>To me, that defeats the whole purpose of the CK character field.
I'd say not the whole purpose, because it's still creating a page that displays all works with a specific instance of the character name. But it does lose the "interestingness" connection of seeing it all together on what >1 gilroy: refers to as the prime character page.

Ideally we would want the page to service both options—to see everything together AND be able to filter it down (by author name, by series, by text in the parentheses, to manually set splits like authors?). Maybe that's jumping ahead to talking points for when that section gets LT2.0ified.

Similar points would apply to Important places and Important events fields.

Edit: changed a "you" to ">1 gilroy:" for clarity.

Okay, a few examples: (I'm realizing not all of these have the description field filled in as I find a few, like the first one)
https://www.librarything.com/character/Charlie+Parker+%5Bfictitious+character+by...
https://www.librarything.com/character/Leela+%5Bin+Doctor+Who%5D
https://www.librarything.com/character/Dylan+%5BThe+Cat+in+the+Cradle%5D
https://www.librarything.com/character/Justin+%5Bin+Unfollow%5D

In some of these cases, the book title could be added next to the character name in ( ) but that makes it duplicate information on the character page.

RE: Series - If the character is filled in on all the books in a series (not guaranteed) you can always goto the character page, find the series in the right bar, then click through to the series.

Tim and Chris are discussing changing Awards over to a similar system like Series. Would characters work in such a system?

>10 gilroy: From my perspective, all of those are very good character pages. They give the works the specific characters appear in, as well as awards, series, and related characters that are actually related to those characters.

>11 amanda4242: I find them all disconnected and scattered. (Then again, maybe its because I'm coming from a database maintenance mindset.)

>12 gilroy: When I see a page that has dozens of unique characters grouped together just because they happen to share a name, I see it like an author page that needs to be split.

Two different views, equally valid.

>11 amanda4242: This is how I see it. I'm not interested in seeing every book that has a character named Leela in it; I'm interested in seeing every book featuring Leela of the Sevateem in it.

>14 Stevil2001: I do see value in the other way, too. Like if you've forgotten the name of a book but remember a character's name, seeing all of the books with that character name would be helpful.

FWIW, when we first designed CK it was for the "lumping" purposes. Being able to cross-reference similar data points between books. Oh, let me see all the other books that took place in Paris!

But CK has a life of its own and we've tried to be as hands-off with it as we could, letting all of you control much of the direction of CK. So now, I don't know if I can rightfully make a definitive statement about what it "should" be.

>16 conceptDawg: Thanks for the info about original intent! One of things I like about LT is that you guys allow features to grow beyond what you originally envisioned.

I would argue, though, that being able to pull up all books set in Paris is different than lumping together all characters who happen to share a name.

>17 amanda4242: Maybe. But I find the lumping based on the names as interesting as that based on places and will be sorry to see it gone.

>18 AnnieMod: That's why I think something like an author split would be useful: you could easily see all the characters who share a name and I could easily find the one I'm interested in.

>16 conceptDawg: Would you lump together Paris, Texas and Paris, France?

Lumping together different people who happen to share a name is just as ridiculous to me.

>18 AnnieMod: and >20 DuncanHill:
I was very careful not to position my answer on either side of this argument. :) You can't get me that easily.

But in all seriousness, I think character names might be a valid non-lumping field. But it's worth a debate and I'm glad you are having it.

>21 conceptDawg: I was not trying to get you :) I was just sharing how I use that field (when I look at it) - while it may be ridiculous to some, it’s a valid usage pattern. I find some other people’s usage of LT features weird but that’s part of the charm of LT - you can use it anyway you find useful for you.

>19 amanda4242: I’d be in favor of allowing a splitting or filtering - like the series groups for example - that way that are all on the same page if one wants them there but they are separated for the non-lumping scenarios. That may also make it easier for people to figure out where a name belongs, identify the same names which had been entered differently and not end up with a war in naming (do you use series name, author name, book name?). Or maybe use a differentiator which can be used for a filter or a split where the series number goes in a series list.

>16 conceptDawg: Well, since you waded in, maybe I could ask you what you might envision as a good UI to try to satisfy both (or multiple) uses?
Would a system like the Series (or even the planned awards upgrade) be something that could improve it?

A couple of people have mentioned series pages as a model for new character pages, but I'm having trouble seeing it. Yes, you can split things into groups, but you'd still have all the other CK lumped together and I don't think the description area on a series page is really robust enough for characters.

I have a much easier time seeing author pages as a model. I know author pages have their shortcomings, but I'd really like the ability to click on a specific division and see the information that is relevant to only that division. Perhaps there could even be a couple of CK fields, like pseudonyms and character relationships--yes, those things could be added in a description box, but people are much more likely to fill in one line in CK than they are to write a description.

If character names were formatted like “Tim Spalding; LT founder” or similar, it would presumably be easy to make two character pages from it, one ignoring everything after the semicolon and one not?

>25 AndreasJ: If you entered him as Tim Spalding (LT founder) it would appear on the lumped Tim Spalding character page with 'LT founder' in the right-and column. Much more useful than having multiple Tim Spalding pages, including one of 'disambiguated' Tim Spaldings, as with split authors.

I'm with the lumpers.

As I see this and perhaps I'm off topic, the People/Characters should only be used for real people and very occasionally characters in a book. I have complained about this before but got nowhere. Absolutely nothing is achieved by adding a character "Sally". There are 196 "Sally's" listed. I'm sure not one is related to any other sally. The only time this field should be used, and its useful to other readers is for real people.

So if I am looking for a book to read on say Rosa Luxemburg I get 67 works listed where she is listed.

>19 amanda4242:

Although for some like Leela in Doctor Who there would be many authors writing her. There are already over half a dozen in the link in post 10, and if someone was to complete it for all the Doctor Who Missing Adventures (and maybe audios) there would be a lot more.

Also take Sherlock Holmes, for example, it is pretty fun to see where he crops up (maybe as a cameo, maybe as a primary character) in other books.

>27 bergs47: To me, that's a very limiting view of the field. Then again, I argue against using it for every absolute character in a book. (Third man on corner with a speaking part isn't necessary to me.) I do think all the primary characters should be listed, and maybe important secondary characters.

>28 andyl: I'm not exactly sure what you're saying. I meant the character page should be modeled after the author page, and all instances of a specific character would still show on a page, no matter who wrote the work they're in.

>27 bergs47: I'm with gilroy on this.

Ways I expect the People/Characters field and resulting pages to be used:

As I think was mentioned already, someone looking for a specific book remembers a main character's but not much else that can be easily searched. Even if a character's full name was entered-- Sally Smith as a random example-- then a search on "Sally" might bring up the book that otherwise might not have been found.

Seeing what types of works a simple character name is frequently used for can be interesting, too. Is "Sally" more popular here in comedies, romance, or horror stories?

Ways I use People/Characters:

I like to see what's on LibraryThing for characters that have become something such as folklore archetypes. They could have been real people such as presidents-- Abraham Lincoln is one who now appears as a character in a variety of fiction as well as in nonfiction-- or characters who originated in a story so famous to be reimagined or discussed in both fiction and nonfiction. Note that this is easy only if the people and characters were entered in a consistent way. To make a random example: "Mephisto (Marvel villain)", "Mephisto (god)", and "Mephisto (original demon from Faust legend)" would create a better list than the mismatch of "Mephisto from Marvel", "Mephisto, God of Time", "Mephisto / Mephistopheles", and "Mephisto -- Faust" would.

Knowing which characters are in a book also helps identify which part of the story a series book is in. The titles, covers, descriptions, and reviews are not always enough.

I need a break from my phone. I'll be back again to edit this post, if needed.

>1 gilroy:

I tend towards lumping. Not every character that happens to share a name with another from a different work needs to have their own separate page.

Also with what >26 Cynfelyn: said about the parenthesis.

>31 aspirit: Good examples!

>33 norabelle414: thanks.

A note I forgot to make earlier is that despite the value I see in a full People/Characters page, I don't always ensure names for the same person or character are lumped together. Entering a name exactly as it's used in the work instead of entering the variant more often used across works is typically for my convenience, to save time until I figure out which really makes the most sense.

And that brings me to a question I'll post in a new thread.

I really don't understand the "advantages" of, say, having Richard Lloyd the guitarist from Television clumped together with Richard Lloyd the cobbler of Llanystumdwy.

Or John Smith the Labour Party leader clumped together with John Smith the Colonist.

"I've just read a really interesting book about someone, I'd like to see a list of lots of books that aren't about him" is not a thought that has ever occurred to me.

>36 DuncanHill: Because it wasn't about the specific person. It was just about the name itself.
So "I know the book had a guy named Richard Lloyd," meant you could go to one page and scan until a title looked familiar, or find out that the name is more common (or less) in writing that say "Andrew Smith."

And even with the existing UI, you could still put basic notes in parenthesis to add some details. No one tried to organize by them, though, because most people didn't use them.

>37 gilroy: "Because it wasn't about the specific person. It was just about the name itself"

Useful if one were interested in the frequency in print of particular names, but useless if one is interested in the content of the books.

If it were only about the name then the Character description field would be redundant.

>38 DuncanHill: If it were only about the name then the Character description field would be redundant.
Yep. That's exactly the entire point of this thread.

We can use the description field on the page to describe different types of uses of the name. Although, so far, I've only used it to describe famous people with unique names.

>15 amanda4242:

I think splitting the page, as with authors, would be helpful in that situation as well. It could act as a bit of a memory jog ("oh, yes, that's the one!"), but also help eliminate books/series which the person recognizes right away as not correct.

>39 gilroy: I would rather have no characters in CK than lumped, just as I would rather a book had no index than a wilfully inaccurate one.

>42 DuncanHill: And I'd rather not have characters in CK than see them split into non-connected groups... To use your own example: Indexes group the same names together and differentiates them one after the other - it does not send one John Smith on page 32 of the index and another one on page 89 (unless all pages between 32 and 89 are John Smiths) - that's what we are asking for here: Find a way to differentiate but still make it possible to see all of them together.

I've created an RSI asking for a way to divide character pages.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/340530

>43 AnnieMod: Sounds like you need something like this https://www.librarything.com/search.php?search=RIchard+Lloyd&searchtype=14&a...

What we do not need is a list of all the unconnected Richard Lloyds, or whoever, jumbled up together which is what we have on pages like John Smith.

The related data (characters, events, series, etc) depends on discrete entries for each different person. Again, it is useless on lumped together pages.

>45 DuncanHill: So now I need to click on each to see which books it is connected to so I can eventually find who I mean? That's not the same as having them on the same page.

They may depend in the way you are using the field. They don't in my usage pattern.

Unless you are trying to tell me that your way is the only correct one and mine does not matter because you do not like it, we will just need to agree that there should be a way to get the data shown in a way that works for both usages. If your opinion is that only your way is correct and noone else's usage pattern matter, then sorry, you are wrong. :)

Example of use that the lumped page can give (for those bamboozled why anyone would want that): revealing niceties like the strange/"random" name your author chose for their antagonist, actually was a deliberate literary reference back to some character in an earlier work. A small thing, but opens a little door of knowledge that isn't there if every character is compartmentalised. Has piqued me to go and find out about what this original character was all about, was there foreshadowing that I can now appreciate, or parallels the later author wanted drawn.

Not saying it isn't understandable to want to be able to get "just that one" on a character page without unrelated info, which I've also wanted at times. I will write a bit on the RSI because if both aspects of the page can be gotten, everyone wins. Until we argue about whether Abraham Lincoln (alternate timeline) belongs in the same split as Abraham Lincoln (non-fiction). Wait, don't bite (bonus reference) let's save that talk for another day. :-)

On topic about descriptions, I've almost been tempted to write a bit of a character biography for some, but I tangled myself worrying about whether things would be too spoiler-y. Should the description only contain what might be on the blurb for the first book in a series, maybe just the most generic info "a character from the such-and-such world by A.N. Author" (yawn), or copy a bit of description from Wikipedia or a fansite and credit with a link (didn't want to do this in case I actually hit spoilers myself)? And I think I quickly ran into one that was a very common used name, like a character that was important to the story but only a single name, and so shelved it all as something to come back to another time. Maybe will be prompted by this topic.

>46 AnnieMod: I'd rather click on a handful of links than scroll through a page like the John Smith one and try to guess which books are about the John Smith I am looking for.

If your book has a character called "John Smith" and you want to read more about that John Smith, then surely a page with only books mentioning that John Smith on is more useful than one with all the John Smiths on?

I'm not saying that other people's usages don't matter, simply that clumping makes some pages pretty much useless for people looking for specific persons. Some of the clumpers don't seem to think that matters.

I have no objection to people who want a list of random people with nothing in coming but the accident of a name having such a thing, I do object very strongly to those of us who need to look up specific people - and those people with meaningful connexions to them - having that made impossible, or nearly so.

>48 DuncanHill: Covers, preview descriptions, character descriptions in paratheses, work titles, and (if you're that familiar with the genre you're reading in) author names help when scanning through the longer lists of multiple people with characters. When looking for a specific person or character, someone can also use tags (such as "Captain John Smith"), tagmashes, series lists, and sometimes even work recommendations. There's an abundance of tools for finding works on a specific character or person.

What helps us determine that we need to search around for separate people and characters with the same name? Or to see the variety of uses for a name such as "John Smith"? The serendipitous discoveries of works through a person's or character's name and the attempts to find a work on only the memory of one of the character's name are lost when the name is split between different pages.

Note: At this time, some of us can't perform a site search for CK without extreme workarounds with offsite tools. That might change when the LT2 menus are repaired, but for now, there's not so much as the advanced-level option to look for character names that way. There's only clicking on the name from a work page to get to a P/C page, what hopefully has more than the one work on it.