A warning and looking for assistance

[rivka, Former Moderator]

We seem to have a bug which allows books to be created with no author, or with an author name that begins with a space. I have filed a bug report, and hopefully it will be fixed soon.

EDIT: This bug is now fixed.

Meanwhile, be careful when creating and editing books, be on the lookout for authors with a preceding space. And please help with the 130+ books with no author. [Link redacted. No longer valid.]

[Lobstergirl]

I was just editing one of those and noticed that the cursor was automatically depositing me one space in. I don't know if that assumption is in your post or not, but I just wanted to state that in case people are making edits.

[Palle]

I think I may be able for find authors for a few of those books, I found one for 'AA Illustrated Guide To Britain' but I'll have to have patience to find the others.

[Nenangs]

recently I tried to combine one chicken soup book, and found out that the name jack canfield started with a space, that made the book uncombinable.

never thought it was a bug then.

and just noticed the same thing with lobstergirl too.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Lobstergirl wrote: "I was just editing one of those and noticed that the cursor was automatically depositing me one space in."

Yeah. The "author" appears to be a single space. I just came back to warn of that as well.

[Vicky]

I think the author that Rivka linked is actually a single-space, not an entirely blank author. Which would be why the cursor is a space in.

I suspect the bug is not that a book can be created with no author OR with a leading space, but rather only that the book can be created with a leading space. The space looks blank to us, but it is a character to the computer.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Vicky wrote: "I suspect the bug is not that a book can be created with no author OR with a leading space, but rather only that the book can be created with a leading space. The space looks blank to us, but it is a character to the computer."

I think you are correct.

[Koenraad]

Got:
Today and all the days of your life
The 24th Century Technical Manual Volume 2


'Close Encounters Fotonovel' was in fact already there as
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
I merged them and recombined with the other editions.

[Koenraad]

Got Mémoires d'un naïf too.

[Paula]

Looks like World cat has a different author

http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=Tale...

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Down to 21. Nice work!

[[deleted user]]

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13...

I spoke to a GR member who just read and rated this book. She believes it belongs to this author:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/...

Here is the book on amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tales-Crypt-2...

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Re 12: Author added. We cannot use any data from Amazon and other booksellers, though.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Update: the bug is fixed, and so are most of the affected books. Thanks to all who helped!