calculate series author differently

I had posted this in bugs, but was asked to file it as an RSI:

Look at the author page for Jim Butcher, there is a huge list of series that he is the "author" of because he is the editor of an anthology that is included in those series under "Collections and Selections". Maybe the calculated author should be the author of only the core works? In fact that seems to be the case if you edit the series, (only the core author is listed as the series author). Then that series is removed if you reload Butcher's author page, but it comes right back later (maybe after some stored process runs?). It happens with other authors of anthologies, such as Charlaine Harris for instance.

A suggestion from Nevov which seemed like a neat idea:
>3 SandraArdnas: al.vick:
>maybe if the author were calculated from core works only...

A second check box in the Basic Settings, Series Author section could be a neat way to accomplish this, and allow some nuance and a measure of control over it:

Series Author
☑ Allow series author to be calculated
☑ Calculate series author from core works only

Or better, a selection of options could cope with cases where there are several groups beyond the core that you'd want to include, but not the collections/selections due to anthology pollution:

Series Author
☑ Allow series author to be calculated
◉ Calculate from all works
◎ Calculate without collections and selections
◎ Calculate from core works only

IMO the cleanest solution would be for the system to calculate a list of potential series authors and then let users mark which of those are or are not series authors. I think there's too wide of a variety of series author situations for any calculation system to truly account for them. If the users are already going to have to decide which works should be used to calculate series author, might as well just let them set the series author(s).

Non-core authors should be excluded by default IMO.

Yeah, I don't know why you'd list authors limited to works deprecated as "non-core" as authors of the whole series.

It seems to inlcude the illustrator on works as well, even core works. I guess I'm okay with that...

When I debuted the system, it limited the authors on a series. There was a lot of push back. I didn't like it, but I acceded to members requests.

See https://www.librarything.com/topic/336317#7677800

I have no answer here. But I do know if I do what people above are asking, I'll get complaints. Some people want the system to list every author, some don't. This isn't a per-series issue, but a per user one.

>6 timspalding: Anthologies have authors that have nothing to do with the series (because the anthology contains stories from multiple series usually). Those are the ones which are the problem here. Just because a book contained a story in the series does not mean that all authors who happened to have a story in the same series should be added to the series authors. Which is what is happening now.

That's different from what was the initial implementation problem: an author who wrote books/stories in the series but not enough them to qualify based on the threshold value that was set.

If we restrict it to primary authors, the same will happen. Think illustrators. Actors. Directors. Some people want more info, some less.

>8 timspalding: But this is not what this RSI is talking about. Neither will restricting to primary authors solve anything - as the anthology editor is the primary author. It is the core group of titles inside of the group vs the selections and other groups authors.

Illustrators ARE valid series authors for a comic book series for example. So are actors for movies. They belong.

But the editor of an anthology which contains a story in the universe of the Dresden Files is not. Or a writer who has a story in the same anthology as the Dresden Files story is in.

IMO, series authors should include only primary authors of core works. Listing every secondary author will still lead to some author pages looking akin to Jim Butcher's. But I said that in the original discussion already. To no avail.

I've only ever seen users disagree over how the series author should be calculated across ALL series, I've never seen significant disagreement over who the series author should be for any particular series.

Lots of people can disagree over whether, for example, this Greywalker series should have anthologies attached, but I don't think anyone disagrees that Kat Richardson should be the one and only series author of that series.

Lots of comics series, on the other hand, should have many authors, some of which might be the author on very few works. An example is Lumberjanes, which had no series author at all until a minute ago when I checked the "Allow series author to be calculated" button.

I really think the best solution is to let users set the series authors, just like they can set the authors on works, because there are different kinds of series with different kinds of series authors.

>10 SandraArdnas: I see no problem listing the authors that have stories in an anthology, but they should be listed as a contributor, not as a primary author. The editor is the primary author. The author's who supplied a story are contributors and it is correct that they should get a mention. These appearances by an author in an anthology would appear in a correctly done author bibliography, but they would appear in a different section from books that they wrote entirely themselves. The issue I find fairly often is that some users will list an author that they like or collect as a primary author in places where that is not the case. I am not sure how you fix that issue.

>12 Bernarrd: If you are referring to listing authors on the work page, no one is disputing listing the contributors. I am disputing the relevance of propagating that data to series. Contributing one story or article in a series of anthologies, magazines or what have you does not make you a series author. You're still just a contributor and series pages should not include secondary authors because of the very nature of series having multiple works, so a secondary author of a single one has no business on a series page. That data is available on the work page of that particular work, which is enough. As it is, there's a sea of authors in numerous series and that data is useless because it's impossible to sift primary from secondary ones.

To change from primary to secondary on the work page, you need to edit that entry in 'other authors' section. Click the pencil next to the name and change the designation to secondary author - all editions (or some editions if that is the case)