re: People/Characters: implementation changes, goals, bits of common LT SW code, exploits etc.

Hi! This is somehow related to the change mentioned in http://www.librarything.com/topic/100032 Topic: implementation related to series synatx changed

If you look at People/Characters: Mohandas Gandhi you may see that since today we have a new "Order" column there.

It seams that the implementation change activated today is using the syntax "foo (bar)" for this.

One main question is "What goals do we want to achive?" Onother is "Does "Order" make sense here?

For myself I can say that at some LT characters I used "(bar)" for alternate spellings
a) mainly if some special characters from other then the Unicode Basic Latin Block where used
b) if the character name was quite uncommen; some names are used for characters but are seldome used for tags

The idea of this "exploit" was to allow users to find the works via CK search. You should remember that LT characters are not combined today.

I hope this was no crime ...

One additional note on "cleaning" characters. Sporadicaly "other" LT character spellings are used by users in other languages. If you want to "correct" these you must log of from eng LT, log in to the other language and make the change there.

Regards Reinhardt

an example for a) can be seen at http://www.librarything.com/work/3102448/commonknowledge The zookeeper's wife ;
However it is difficult to decide case by case; please compare with People/Characters: Stanisław Lem ehere the "ł" character sus still used.

an example for b) could relate to
People/Characters: Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and
the short tag variants at Tag: georg wilhelm friedrich hegel

re: the additional note
http://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/changelog.php?item=147832&type=1 and
http://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/changelog.php?item=1529472&type=...
are examples from discrepancies for characters between languages

I was thinking about cases where "foo (bar)" is used for characters:

People/Characters: Napoleon
The first two examples:
Animal Farm by George Orwell pig
Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez dog
are using "foo (bar)" syntax.
The third example does not, see http://www.librarything.com/work/1874893/commonknowledge

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The implementation change affects also "Places":

I added places to Nebel im August ; see http://www.librarything.com/work/5297264/commonknowledge/60232151

See the impact at Places: Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany

This is an example for tag "Euthanasie". Some months ago I planed to ad the places for man of the books listed at &alias=1&tag=Euthanasie.

My plan was to list small places, mosten mental hospitals where people where killed using the "bar" syntax.

conclusion: It might be useful to display "bar" . Probably it would be best to supress the "default foo".

changed typo