Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Book & Author Page Issues
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SOLVED/COMPLETED Author profiles with "G initials" oddities ("G A" thru "G nTer")
message 51:
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Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)
(last edited Aug 13, 2013 04:35AM)
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Aug 10, 2013 02:31PM

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But, I'll let someone else carry on with (where ^ = a space) G^H. and G^H^ alphabetically thru G^Z. and G^Z^ — use add book/author on comment box to search out the oddly formatted author profiles to post (or if a librarian just go ahead and right-click open and edit directly).

I was wondering how you were able to find all those profiles, I'll look for them too now that I know.

I was wondering how you were able to find all those profiles, I'll look for them too now that I know."
Goodreads regular search doesn't find (ignores punctuation so "A" and "A." have exact same search results).
To see a list of the goofy author initial ones, whether you are posting a list like this thread to mark when done (I have to because not a librarian) or just fixing directly (if you are a librarian): from any comment box, click "add book/author" and search. The add book/author pays attention to spaces and punctuation (doesn't care about capitalization).
Another place to look is to edit one of the non-goodreads author profiles you find, scroll down to click "similar names" and glance at that screen for author names not formatted to goodreads standards.
Ways to find the odd initial formats keep being posted; but, no one was making a list to work on. I started when I had time a few weekends ago thinking it would (a) get worked on (b) librarians could see that G's were being worked on or Brians ... or (c) jump ahead of what I was alphabetically posting somI was finding less to post in these messages as I progressed.
I'm a little shocked at how huge an undertaking it turned into ( admittedly, with anyone on goodreads able to add a book with just title and author and without any knowledge of how goodreads format author names — for all I know most of these could be brand new additions).

#22 to #24 done

Also the fault of some data imports. Goodreads does put the little tool tip popup when adding name sot author field -- just seems to get ignored a lot. Or authors edit their own profiles to suit their own purposes no matter how it vandalizes goodreads database. Would be nice to have something running to auto-post to librarians group when an author name was oddly formatted (single character with no period a really good indication as are commas or other odd punctuation marks).
I am posting over in feedback thread that maybe the programmers could change it so that author names containing commas could not be entered, isbn13 field be set to numbers only and that isbn(10) field be set to capitalize contents (that lowercase x in isbn10 causes issues and goodreads search doesn't work with unless that's since been changed).
Authors mentioned in this topic
Richard G. Milter (other topics)John G. Miller (other topics)
G. Miki Hayden (other topics)
G. Milburn (other topics)
Gianfranco Miletto (other topics)
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