Authors with initials for first names

[Lori]

I know this has probably been discussed somewhere but I couldn't readily find the thread. Is there a way to associate authors when they use initials instead of a first name.

Example

D.J. Manly - returns 69 books
DJ Manly - returns 1 book

Can they be combined?

[Melody]

Yes - just correct DJ Manly to D.J. Manly. (in the author profile)

[Cait]

They can and should be merged, yes.

The standard form of this author's name would be "D.J. Manly", so "DJ Manly", "D. J. Manly", or any other variation should be merged into the standard.

To merge authors:
1. Copy any bio information from the incorrect profile to the correct one.
2. Edit the incorrect profile so that the name matches the correct name.
3. When prompted, select the correct profile.

Note: If the author is part of the GR Author program, you can't follow these steps; post here or contact GR support to get GR Authors merged.

[Lori]

The records appear to have already been merged. It's just that a search of dj manly only returns one book.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Once the cache resets, it won't return ANY.

[Lori]

I'm sorry but I'm guess I'm still confused. When someone searches any variation of a name that has been merged, shouldn't they just automatically be redirected to the correct author. What if someone thinks that dj manly doesn't have any books in the database yet and starts adding them. I would think it would be better if no matter what they typed, they got the results for D.J. Manly. Maybe I'm just missing something.

[Cait]

No, once a name has been merged, there are short-term ghosts in the index caches but no other record of the previous names.

There's an "author aka" feature in the works that will allow authors to be listed with more than one name, so that searches on either will work, but that's not available yet.

However, having "DJ Manly" not turn up "D.J. Manly" in the search results is actually something you might want to bring up in the Feedback group: it's possible that something in the search index could be tweaked to provide matches on initials. I agree that it would make sense for the search engine to recognize that DJ and D.J. can be the same word, but I don't know enough about search engines to know whether that's possible with the search as it stands on GR.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

It would be good if that happened, but most often it does not. But that's a Feedback issue, and will (hopefully) be fixed if & when we ever get that aka feature I keep pushing for. ;)

[Cait]

rivka wrote: "It would be good if that happened, but most often it does not. But that's a Feedback issue, and will (hopefully) be fixed if & when we ever get that aka feature I keep pushing for. ;)"

Jinx! ;)

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Beat me AND had a significantly more complete answer. The shame! ;)

[Lori]

Thank you both for explaining it to me.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

BTW, this sort of case is one of the primary reasons I think we NEED the aka feature. It would be nice to not have to use workarounds for pen-names and such. But people not being able to easily search for reasonable variations of an author's name is a far more pressing problem.

[/soapbox:]