People/Characters

I'm currently reading The Bookseller of Kabul and on the English version of Common Knowledge page it only shows the one main character in the 'People/Characters'. However, the French version of that same CK page shows 40 characters. Is there a way I can copy the data from the French CK page to the English CK page? (or even clear the English section, so that LT automatically picks up the French one?)
https://www.librarything.com/work/829/commonknowledge/127674361

You can empty the English CK fields by clicking on the pencil to edit, delete the names and save the empty fields. I don't know if that will end up with what you want, though.

You can also open the book in two tabs, with one set to French, one set to English, and copy and paste, rather than remove someone else's work.

gilroy: As a data engineer by profession, manually copying 40 names would only be my very last resort. Surely there could be an easier/friendlier solution?

Do you really want 40 characters?

MarthaJeanne: one of our French contributors has obviously gone through the hassle of writing down these 40 characters. Rather than you or me coming up with our list of 12, 20 or 40 characters (whichever we feel is appropriate), why can I not simply use that existing list of 40?

You can use the existing list as a list to copy from. There is no way to copy the list from one language to another if there is already any entry in the desired language. Clearing the fields doesn't completely clear it, iirc there's a difference between an empty field and a field filled with NULL.

If there's nothing in a CK field in language A but there is in langB, it will show in langA and give the option to localize it.

This is how it is, unless I'm mistaken.

JerryMmm: You're right: clearing the one entry in the English list, doesn't pick up a list from a/any different language because as you say it doesn't really remove the list; it just shows an empty list. NULL≠blank

http://www.librarything.com/work/11609750

Since this is a thread about People/Characters, I thought I'd bring this to this thread. Take a look at the completest filling this in. We even get "unnamed guard" and such. TONS of details, when I thought this was just a list of names, or very basic details.

Anyone got an opinion on what should be done?
This is just one of Many books this user has done this with.

>9 gilroy:

That is very much not what that field is intended for.

The user who entered it also has no familiarity with the concept of significant figures or unit conversion. People's heights are not measured with micron precision.

Copyright page under quotations!? In my opinion, most of what this user has done needs to be deleted.

That book has 17 lines with unnamed characters listed.
Saw another book where it said "two black clad people who talk about main character behind back" or some such.

Those synoptic "reviews" are obnoxious too.

Ouch.

If I'm reading the consensus right, the enthusiasm needs trimming. So I'll start removing excess detail as I stumble across it...

(I'll leave this book for now as an example unless or until someone tells me otherwise.)

That copyright page quotation BS is the most annoying, and I tried to methodically remove some of it yesterday. We are dealing with an extremely OC reader here, and he's using the LT Commons to practice it. Do you suppose a note from staff would be appropriate?

>16 2wonderY: I can drop a note to Lorannen if need be.

Edit to add: Message left for Lorannen

Also, found a second book with the copyright page, and tell me why an unnamed jewelry store clerk needs to be listed?!?!?
http://www.librarything.com/work/18043803

Here is another work with a lot of characters http://www.librarything.com/work/1044995, done by the same user. I always hesitate to remove this information, though it seems very excessive.

https://www.librarything.com/search.php?search=unnamed&searchtype=14&sea...

This is a search for characters with "unnamed." I think I saw three legit ones. *shudder*

>18 SimoneA: I cut that down to 25 names. Still seems excessive.

>9 gilroy:, et al

Consider the source: it's the same person who wrote this "review": http://www.librarything.com/work/11609750/reviews/133674120

It gets worse - http://www.librarything.com/work/13309062
We have
"hundreds of refugees in an underground station, sleeping, sitting, sprawling, rocking babies, reading, playing cards, or praying"
"passengers and would-be passengers of an underground train"
"crowd staring at a frozen-over building (it's a hot day)"
"a hollow only partially trapped in the ice, not actually dead"

Also reviewing some of the user's other CK entries the non-copyright page quotations seem horribly prosaic and don't seem quotable at all.
For example http://www.librarything.com/work/14179416 and http://www.librarything.com/work/177756

But yeah the reviews are probably the most annoying.

Looking at CK characters again this user has even entered them for anthologies of short stories
See http://www.librarything.com/work/9323439/book/132324494 and http://www.librarything.com/work/10612424/book/132324518
which definitely shows that they do not understand how it should work.

It would be nice if those reviews got sent to the bottom of the pile, but they're not flaggable. He does throw some commentary in briefly.

From a glance at one of the history logs, the member seems to be going back in and re-entering some of the stuff being deleted.

member JalenV

I looked at the log that was mentioned by >9 gilroy:

>22 andyl:

non-copyright page quotations seem horribly prosaic and don't seem quotable at all.

One man's "prosaic" is another man's deathless prose.

Which is one of the problems I have with putting quotations in CK.

>24 2wonderY:

The weird thing is that JalenV has been on LT for 5 years.

>26 andyl: I wouldn't be surprised if this has been going on longer and we're just now catching it full on.

Actually, looking at the history of one of the books you linked in >22 andyl:, this goes back to at least 2014, probably further.

I had to leave the last character entry at Still Life - "three dead mice (ch 11.)"

They didn't have any dialog, as I remember.

>29 2wonderY: Dark and stormy knights has a vulture, a lion and dead cattle. Talk about deathless prose.

>27 2wonderY: That comment seems unnecessary.

Has anyone tried talking to this user directly and maybe gently suggesting that he enter his wealth of detail in his comments or private comments? I don't much like his overwhelming input either but it seems like everyone is just piling on, and behind his back too.

>31 Crypto-Willobie: I left a message with staff to talk to the user, since that is the preferred way to do it. My original question was about the characters and that is where I remain focused right now...

General reminder: personal attacks are prohibited by LibraryThing's Terms of Use. Comment on content/ideas, not on people. Let's keep it civil, please.

Also, I'm catching up here. The incredibly long people/characters additions are definitely a concern. We could think about capping them at a certain number of rows, but I'm interested hear your thoughts before I bring my suggestion to Tim. What seems like a reasonable solution?

I'd like to make it clear that I'm raising an issue here—not targeting any specific members. This is a general problem, and I'd like us to come up with a solution together.

I would say limit the number but not too low.

I have added minor characters in a book that show up again later in other books of the series. I just checked one book that had 37 characters listed. Ashes of Victory

While I like the idea of a cap, I worry about the impact it might have on books that really do have large numbers of important characters. For example, the books in Colleen McCullough's Masters of Rome series each have a lot of major characters and many characters who have smaller roles in one book will go on to be major characters in subsequent books so I don't think it would be inappropriate to list them in their early appearances. The first book in the series, The First Man in Rome, currently has almost four dozen characters listed; looking at the list, I could make the argument for cutting at least ten of the names due to their minor roles in the book and series, but that still leaves a lot of names!

Perhaps asking that only named characters be listed would help?

>35 lorannen:

It isn't just the number of them it is the weirdly specific data attached and the quality of the entries.
"hundreds of refugees in an underground station, sleeping, sitting, sprawling, rocking babies, reading, playing cards, or praying" isn't a character. Nor is "passengers and would-be passengers of an underground train" I would guess not one of those refugees or passengers plays a real part in the narrative. Not one has a name, has a line of dialogue, or performs any significant action.

I am so sorry I am annoying you. I will stop listing unnamed characters immediately.

By the way, I am a woman and I am still on my generic Zoloft, thank you. Why did you think I was a man?

I catalog my books from the viewpoint of a former librarian, collector, and researcher who lives in the middle of nowhere. I started adding information when I became frustrated by the lack of information available online to help with cataloging my late 19th and early 20th century books. I wanted to help others.

I didn't want the copyright notations to be too long, so I dump some of the standards in the quotations section. I hoped researchers would find them helpful.

I started annotating the character lists because I was listening to an Elm Creek Quilts novel after not reading any of them in awhile and I couldn't recall the characters names to spell them correctly. (Sometimes authors don't give the full names of supporting character from book to book, which doesn't help.)

I started adding extensive notes for series books because I became frustrated wondering in which book certain events or character facts appeared when I would read/reread a bunch in a row. (I'm going to be 62 next week, which means I have decades of books to remember.) I've also noticed that the authors seem to have the same trouble. I've found minor supporting characters getting surname changes, etc. At Kelley Armstrong's site, she's mentioned the difficulty remembering things from her Otherworld series after so many years.

The reason for the heights and weights being in metric as well as American comes both from the time I posted at a comics site where many of the other posters weren't American and from having to convert measurements in British books to something I can understand.

I used to write extensive comic book recaps with notes to help with pop culture references and which definition of a word was being used in a particular sentence if it might not be obvious. The English-as-a-second-language fans thanked me for that. I also got thanks for pointing out odd little things going on in panels that might easily be missed. Fans didn't need to be ESL to appreciate references they were too young to get, such as a character's odd-seeming line of dialog actually being a quotation from an old song.

The author of 'Cable and Deadpool' told me how much he enjoyed seeing the efforts I put in trying to catch all of his references. A couple of authors didn't want me to write such extensive recaps, so I didn't for their comics.

I sent Denise Swanson a link to my annotated reviews/character lists for her dime store mysteries and got a 'Thanks!' in response. (I had previously typed her a list of her recurring characters and their relationships in her Scumble River mysteries based upon my annotated character lists, and she thanked me warmly for that help.)

I learned from ALibris (?) that one man who was trying to find a particular Honey Bunch book when he knew only the name of one that-volume-only character in it had someone else direct him to LibraryThing because of my extensive character lists.

If you really think fans won't find my annotations about character facts and where to find descriptions that I put in my reviews helpful, I'll just put them on CDs for my own use. I hope you will allow me to continue to explain older cultural references for younger readers.

If others are wondering if they need to do as I do, why not let them know they may put in as little or much as they want?

Please advise.

Sincerely,

Ann Elizabeth Lois Jane Nichols (my surname means 'the victorious army/people', hence JalenV)

It's not the fact that you added both English and metric units that's odd, but that you used way too many significant figures. Saying someone is 5 feet, 7 inches tall does not imply you know their height to the thickness of a hair, but the ludicrously precise conversion you gave implies exactly that. 5'7" is 1.7 m, not 1.702.

It's 1,70m, to be correct.

I'm sure your work is beneficial to some people. But the unnamed characters are usually overkill. What you can always do is put anything in comments and private comments, and when you're done with a book copy the really significant characters to CK.

Same with copyright notices, comments would be fine.

>44 JerryMmm: Quite agree. I put some of this stuff in comments. And use the TSV export and a script to make sense of some of it. I.e. publisher series to avoid buying stuff twice (or more) while getting a handy list of the entries I already have. Viz:
Penguin Books, Great Ideas 10, 12, 15, 22, 41, 56-57, 60-62, 67, 74-75

42

No-one has any problem with proper characters. Those who help drive the narrative forwards etc.

Some tips.

If you have to enter extra data then please do it inside parentheses.
So for example
Wilma Flintstone (Fred's long-suffering wife)

This way all Wilma Flintstone entries will be linked together when you click on them.

Secondly anthologies and short story collections (and this is a bit more debatable).
If you look at Dark and Stormy Knights you have entered characters.
The format you use doesn't work within the CK system.

Only one line (the one for Kate Daniels) mentions the short story, and that won't link to all the other Kate Daniels in the CK system because of the way you have entered the short story.

As A Questionable Client exists as a work - I think that all the CK about it as a story should be on that work and not the anthology. This is because that short story also appears in Magic Graves and Magic Bites.

I've been copying and pasting from the online conversion site and not sure how many or if I should delete ANY numbers. So, always delete past the first decimal point?

Thanks. I will keep the unnamed characters listed with chapter numbers for my own use because they're further memory cues. For example, the three dead mice in chapter 11 listed for Still Life is a non-spoiler cue to the scene where one of the significant characters falls afoul of a mouse trap in the cellar and makes a deduction based on the fact there are both cruel and humane traps present.

I see that most of the lesser characters from File M For Murder were deleted (and I've already returned the library book). Darn. The listing of the Doctor & chapter, not to mention the unnamed EMTs and chapter were a cue to find the chapter in which something significant happened to a significant character that would have been a spoiler had it been mentioned in the review.

You've also removed characters who may not have had a significant role in that particular entry, but they are recurring supporting characters within the series as a whole. I included them so anyone wanting to know in which books those deputies and librarians appeared would have been able to do so without reading the whole review.

Deputy Bates, for example, may have been introduced in the first book as a minor character, but eventually gets a first name and becomes the lover of the hero's gay boarder. At the end of the most recent book we find out that Stewart has convinced Haskell to take a big step in their relationship that should make his role in the series even more significant.

The descriptors were really helpful for me with that particular author because I'venoticed that a reader can tell when he remembered to look up the minor recurring characters' last names and job title from when he didn't.

May I please restore the named recurring librarians and deputies to the list?

#45 -- I guess I'll have to study some of the terms you're using. I was the medical librarian for a small Army hospital that didn't believe in giving its employees much training for the computers we used. I bonded with the LAN engineer over our mutual love of classic 'Star Trek,' so I think he forgave me when I explained that I had been taught how to use the computer as if I'd been taught to drive a car without ever having been taught the proper names for things, i.e., the steering wheel was 'that round thing that makes the car turn in one direction or another'.

To be honest, I've had to learn to do a lot by experimentation because most sites' help functions didn't have their information indexed in a way that made sense to me when I tried to search them.

Didn't take classes at the local community college because a. too tired after work, b. Every spare penny went for books.

Now I can't take the free classes at the library because my arthritic right ankle can't drive as far as town two days in a row anymore.

*gigglesnort* (dead mice and dialog comment)

I was trying to make it clear which characters belonged to which story but wasn't sure if devoting a line to the story title would be permitted.

Should I just repeat the title in all parenthetical comments for the characters for that story? In the parenthetical comment for the first character listed in the story?

Ah, if I have a short story that appears in more than one work, I planned on copying the information for each anthology it appears in, such as whenever I get around to typing up Shifting Shadows. I've got all the bookmarks in place, but these labors of love are painful to do. (I have to be careful not to overdo or I would temporarily lose the use of the last three fingers of my left hand. I already have to avoid using my right thumb when I type -- old injuries.)

>51 JalenV:

The problem is there is no good way of showing that a character belongs in a particular short story in an anthology. The only way that would work would be
Kate Daniels (A Questionable Client)
Saiman (A Questionable Client)
etc. but it isn't really a good solution.

Using square brackets or moving the story name to the beginning breaks the linking ability of Common Knowledge.

But as I said the right thing to do IMHO is to put the CK for the short story on the work for the short story*. That way you do not need to repeat the entry of data. Unfortunately support of short stories (and other inclusions like novels in omnibuses) is pretty rudimentary at this moment. You would have to click on the short story name in the "Work-to-work relationships" to see the characters and locations for that short story. If all the short stories are in the "Work-to-work relationships" then there is also no need to use Original Publication Date as a contents list (which I see other people doing). Nor is there a need to have one or more Series CK entries on the anthology work as that is better dealt with at the short story level. For example I have seen some short stories that have been anthologised well over a dozen times - obviously having all the anthology names on the series, as well as the short stories, is not particularly helpful.

Obviously there is some room for discussion about what to do if the short story doesn't exist as a work in LT yet (as quite a few of them do not).

* that is also a fine place for a review of the individual short story.

>48 JalenV:

I think minor characters, even walk-ons, who became major characters later on in the series are fine things to catalogue.

However the exhaustive nature of listing seemingly everyone, named and unnamed, even crowds of people, humans and animals, is what poisoned the well. People were just less willing to cut you any slack.

I guess the lack of brackets (parentheses as you are US) for the extra information made it more time-consuming for people to check to see if a character is used in multiple works, or who is just a simple walk-on part present for a sentence or a paragraph or a page and then disappears for ever.

The characters list in CK isn't really the place for listing non-spoiler cues and isn't really the place for lots of biographical detail about the characters. I still think there is too much detail for a number of the characters in Still Life for example.

BTW there are errors (I assume) in the CK for Still Life you have Gabri Dubeau (antique seller, Gabri's lover) in the characters. There are no other characters listed named Gabri. I would guess that Gabri isn't autosexual - I have seen some books where that might be valid but not a cozy mystery. You also have Isabelle Lacoste (Quebec Sûreté agent, one of Gamage's team) - I presume you mean Gamache. However unless we see more than one Sûreté team of investigators (and you don't mention any) that seems a little redundant to mention.

>42 JalenV: The primary reason I pointed this thing out was because of all the unnamed characters. Those were, from my understanding, outside of the expected use of the Common Knowledge field. Removal of items in parenthesis usually related to personal editorializing or spoiler information, though once I cleared one item from a book, I felt the need to clear all for that book.

If the character had a name, I tried to leave it. Even if it was just Detective Bates. That's still more than Unnamed Detective.

I believe I agree with others who've said that many of these details we're commenting on can go into the comments or private comments fields.

Common Knowledge is a public field, while the comments are specific to you and your book.

>47 JalenV:
metric works with meters and centimeters for height of a person, so 1m82cm or 1,82m

Books are smaller, so you can use cm and mm: so 21,5cm

Weights for people go in kg. People generally don't bother with fractions of kg when it comes to their weight.

>47 JalenV:

JerryMmm gives a good rule of thumb in 55.

More fundamentally, use the same level of precision that was in the figure you are converting.

5 feet, 5 feet 0 inches, and 5 feet 0.000000 inches are all different levels of precision. What you are doing with your conversion is taking 5 feet 0 inches and converting it to metric as though it was 5 feet 0.000000 inches. This is a pet peeve of mine, and when I was teaching undergraduates it's one they would lose points for. How precisely you have measured something matters, and it doesn't change depending on whether you are expressing that value in inches vs. centimeters.

>55 JerryMmm: My scale does tenths of a Kilo, but that part varies a lot from day to day.

Thank you all! I've got to get ready to attend this month's 1/2 price book sale, so this is as far as I've gotten with my first entry after your help:

Howliday Inn

Please let me know if I have done what you wished. I have changed the wording in my copy-and-paste document o' LibraryThing cataloging entries to 'See the comments section for more copyright page information.' (I also have two documents of publisher addresses/standard information for that particular publisher for copying and pasting, A-M & N-Z)

I do wish publishers had retained the habit of listing the years of later printings, or least the latest printing. I know that the library book used for this entry has to have been printed some time after the early 1990s because of the URLs and e-mail addresses included.

BTW, the 'this book is a...' is the first time I've encountered a more comprehensive statement than 'or are used fictitiously' or the version used for historical fiction. The scholarly part of my mind finds the differences between the copyright page info for the 1979 first book and this later printing of the 1982 second book quite interesting.

Please, would it be too much of an imposition to ask for help in changing that "see" reference and moving copyright page info from quotations to comments for previous records of mine? I wasn't kidding about the pain.

>52 andyl: andyl: So,

a. check to see if any short story has its own work entry and enter characters there with a 'see reference' my review or comments section that characters, the review, & annotations are available at that particular story's work entry?

b. For short stories that are not yet entered as works in their own right, put title and colon at the end of the parenthetical info for the first character listed for that story?

>53 andyl:, andyl: Thank you! I've made the corrections, deleted some of the information, and added this note to my review: 'My thanks to LibraryThing member andyl, who kindly let me know about two errors in my character entries. I truly abhor giving incorrect information, so if I screw up, please tell me!' (I used to do that for my comic book recaps. It was particularly helpful to me when younger fans told me about techie slang, etc. I didn't know and couldn't find.)

I had entered some local police officers who were not members of Gamache's team, which is why I listed that, but the locals have been removed, so I deleted the info.

>56 lorax: lorax: Can one do that at onlineconversion.com? I've been mentally converting to inches and ounces before I enter the amount. I even bought a ruler with metric measurements (the ones already in the house are too old to have them) just for this site because it's easier to measure books and cases in metric and convert than to guess the correct fractions of inches. (Another way to tell editions/reprints apart. I make sure to note if the record I'm making is for a book club edition because these days they have the same ISBN as publisher editions. So do even much later printings.)

Hey, old enough to recall the family excitement when my tech-loving dad brought home an early CALCULATOR and, later, a POCKET calculator.

My slide rule from my college freshman fundamentals of math class is in the garage somewhere....

TIP: If you have an old corded phone in working condition in the house, keep it. When lightning struck our house EVERY cordless phone was fried. The 3 corded ones were fine.

>59 JalenV:

Use "Work-to-Work Relationships". You can say that Work A contains Work B. No need to make a note unless you want.

I think the approach you outline where the short work isn't fine is OK. But so is adding the short story as a work too - a lot of people have done that - and then putting the CK at the short story level.

Oh and no need to credit me at all. Normally I would have just gone in and corrected errors when I see them.

>60 JalenV:

On conversions. As a rough rule of thumb 1" = 2.5cm. 1lb = 454g. So if you give weights in pounds then to the nearest 0.5kg is fine. For height then nearest cm is OK although a little more precise than inches. Although I am not sure why heights and weights are necessary in a Dramatis Personæ in most cases.

>61 andyl: andyl:

Thank you. I'll have to check how short stories are entered as works because I haven't done that yet.

I think a "see reference" would be good because a patron checking out an anthology's entry might wonder why there are no characters mentioned.

As for heights and weights, never underestimate the obsessive interest of a fan (or, speaking as a former moderator, the argumentativeness of fans -- I settled a lot of fights through research. One poster joked that my use of the facts was unfair). For example, I used to describe the civilian clothing superheroes were wearing in my recaps. When one male fan complained, the female fans let him know they wanted that info. The reason for my notes including mentions of authors and/or their books comes from knowing that the Wolfe Pack is interested in knowing EVERY reference to Nero Wolfe in books outside the series itself. (Once had a fan tell me that Wolfe was 4' 10". No, he's 5'10". His weight varied a lot in the early books, too.)

I've been a big Prof. X fan since 2003. I had stopped buying 'X-Men' in 1980 and I wanted every Xavier appearance even if it was just one head shot on the cover. That's why I listed even the cameo appearances in X-Men'92 Vol 0: Warzones! So, move all listed cameos to 'comments,' right? May I put the 'see reference' note in a line after the names in the CK?

That's why I was going to list every superheroine in The Supergirls, revised edition, in the CK. I first listed the ones who have chapters of their own, then by page count for those with least 12 pages total among the chapters.

The rest were just going to be alphabetically listed, with page numbers included for those mentioned-by-name-only who weren't in the index. (Some are, some aren't. *shrug*)

I'm assuming that all of the mentioned-by-name-only belong in the comments. How many pages should I use as a cut-off point for whether the lady goes in the CK or the comments?

>62 JalenV:

The rest were just going to be alphabetically listed, with page numbers included

Please don't do that. Not all editions of a book will have the same pagination.

You've got 30 there now. That is certainly enough. Probably more than enough.

>63 lilithcat: lilithcat: How about a note adding that the page numbers are for the first revised edition only, just as my copyright page notices headings state the editions to which they pertain? (BTW, upgraded one of my book club editions to a first edition. The book club edition is missing a couple of notices in the original, but they are otherwise identical.)

Thanks! You've made me realize I should note that the rest of the cast list is for the first revised edition only. Here's hoping all the ones that will stay in the CK were also in the first edition, but I've never seen a copy of that. Ask the author?

>64 MarthaJeanne: Martha Jean. Aside from Lois Lane, who should get in the CK because she gets a big chunk of the 'the girlfriends' chapter,' everyone from Avengelyne down was slated to be moved to the comments section.

Just wanted to know if superheroines who get at least 10 or 11 pages, not the 12 that was my cut-off for the first listing, deserve to be in the CK.

OK, I've moved the lesser mentions from the CK to the comments (every heroine I've typed so far). Were I a big enough fan of any of these ladies, I'd want the book even if she's only in it by having her name mentioned. (Also, as I recall from my undergrad days, if a paper has to have a minimum number of resources, any excuse will do. Once, although a particular fact was mentioned in a lot of my sources, I used it from an otherwise non-applicable book just to get that fifteenth book for my bibliography.)

http://www.librarything.com/work/18102881/details/134490208

Regarding Howliday Inn -- Should Bunnicula and the Monroes be moved to the minor characters list? The Monroes appear in only the first two and the last chapters. Bunnicula doesn't appear at all. (He's mentioned in a paragraph in the first chapter to explain why he won't be boarded at Chateau Bow-Wow with the other family pets.)

May they stay because they are important characters in the series as a whole, no matter how minor their roles in this entry?

>65 JalenV: I hope you copy characters' names more accurately than you did mine.

>65 JalenV:

How about a note adding that the page numbers are for the first revised edition only, just as my copyright page notices headings state the editions to which they pertain?

Those are fine in your own catalog. They do not belong in the CK fields,

>69 lilithcat: Yes.

>65 JalenV: >69 lilithcat:

When those page numbers (and other data) are entered in your comments field you can not only see but also search them in your catalogue. And anyone visiting your catalogue can search them as well (though they're not searchable through Site Search).

>67 JalenV: I'd argue that at least Bunnicula is not a character in Howliday Inn. His absence is explained away - he doesn't take action or even move the plot along. (Now, it's probably been 30 years since I read that book, so if the author says that the characters do something because he's been boarded, maybe there's an argument that he's a character. I think I reject that argument, but I see it. IMO, Godot is not a character in Waiting for Godot, even though the plot revolves around his absence.)

The way I see it, LT has a Series field so that people can find other books in the series. But if you're interested in the character of Bunnicula, I don't think "here's a book in which he explicitly does not appear" is a terribly useful piece of information.

The Monroes are maybe harder, since they do appear in the book. From your description, they don't do much as characters in the plot, so I'd still call them "minor characters" more suited for a comment than a Character field listing. But if they are individual people who take actions in the text of the book, they are characters.

(PS: I must say, though, that Howliday Inn is a great example of a book where your parenthetical remarks seem useful. Those characters have very common names, and I imagine that, on the character pages, it'll be useful to have some guidance on which are connected and which aren't. Not that I think there's much risk of a reader jumping from Howliday Inn to Johnny Got His Gun just because both have a character named "Howie", but still.)

>68 MarthaJeanne: MarthaJeanne: My sincere apologies. That was typed, not copied. As an 'Ann Nichols' who keeps getting her name typed as 'Anne' and 'Nicholas' or 'Nicholls,' I understand.

>69 lilithcat: lilithcat: I'm sorry that I just assumed that anyone reading my suggestion would realize that my proposed note would be for my comments section since that is where I've been told the information should be going. I apologize for not making that clear.

>71 Crypto-Willobie: Cryoto-Willobie: So If I want other fans/authors to know that they can find a more extensive annotated cast list and researchers to know that more copyright page notices are in my comments, I need to direct them to MY catalog's comments?

>72 hipdeep: hipdeep: Ah, so move listings for ancestors or other persons from the past who do NOT become ghosts but whose actions/tragedies have an important bearing upon the plot to my comments section?

Well, if I were interested in only those books in the series in which Bunnicula appears, I would find it useful to know he's only mentioned in some of the books.

Yes, the Monroes take actions and have dialog in the chapters in which they appear (Well, Pete the obnoxious older son speaks only in the last chapter).

Thank you.

BTW, the other day I was frustrated trying to remember the name of supporting character in the Claire Malloy series and didn't find it here -- found it in a review of one of the books at Goodreads, though.

Since then I've discovered that my brother's usual summer re-arranging of the garage has now made it possible for me to access all of my bookcases except for one. I'll be able to consult most of my books again!

Of course, I still can't unpack some of my boxes from when I moved back home 11 years ago that my brother piled heavy stuff in front of (he assumed I was only faking my crippling foot injury and retaliated/made puzzling hints instead of confronting me.)

>75 JalenV:

You could post on your profile page what kind of data is available through a search of your catalogue. You can describe it in great detail under, say, "About My Library" and invite other users to access it through catalogue search. And of course you can inform or invite other users directly, or by mentioning your data in Talk.

>77 Crypto-Willobie: Crypto-Willobie: Would that help a casual user looking at the character list from the work's regular entry to know that there is a more extensive character list available in a specific user's library's entry for that work?

I've managed to move the copyright page notices and cut down the character entries for 4 or 5 books today. Do I need to fix them all before I can work on newer entries, or may I please do, say, 3 per day and still catalog/review new books?

>78 JalenV:
Not sure how that would work...

>78 JalenV: Crypto-Willobie: I've tested copying & pasting 'See JalenV's comments section for more characters.' at the bottom of the CK characters section for two books. It doesn't lead to my comments, but it does inform where the rest of the list is. If clicked on, the casual user will discover two books with a more extensive cast list.

From yesterday and today, I see that someone has already deleted my copyright page notices for several books. So far, they've all been library books, which means I have these choices:

a. Resign myself to information lost

b. Check them out again to be able to recreate the info in my comments section

c. Do as many of them as I can in the library before the heat makes me sick (or wait for winter -- I can use the online catalog to put the books on hold, since I can't browse the shelves when my ankle gets too stiff)

Whoever you are, if you could feel for even one day the amount of pain in my fingers, wrists, left elbow, and right shoulder from copying and pasting, you would understand why I want to cry right now.

PLEASE give users a chance to move entries you consider unsuitable instead of just deleting them.

>82 JalenV:

PLEASE give users a chance to move entries you consider unsuitable instead of just deleting them.

I think this request is not unreasonable, you guys. JalenV is being cooperative in moving excess info and in scaling back future entries.

>82 JalenV:

What I generally do when deleting inappropriate data like this is to send a private profile comment to the original poster with the content I deleted. (I have not deleted any of yours.)

If this project is causing you physical pain, then STOP. I think anyone reading this thread is aware of your efforts, and isn't going to delete your content irretrievably.

Of course, there may be any number of people cleaning up CK information that have never seen this thread but are simply reacting to what they see as bad/extraneous data without any intention to cause pain or have a personal vendetta against anyone.

>82 JalenV:

Have you checked the history in the CK entry to see if the information is still there?

BTW - I deleted a few Copyright Notices before you turned up in this group. So some of the missing ones may have been taken out last week.

>81 JalenV:

Um, NO!

Do not put a "see my comments" notice in the CK. This is not the place to put that. You put it once, in your personal profile.

The CK is the public sphere where everyone has access and ability to edit. So someone will come along and just erase the "see my profile" note as a non-character, not valid CK entry. And probably complain about it in Talk after deleting it multiples.

Anything you put in CK can be edited by any other member. If you put inappropriate things there you have to expect them to disappear. 'See my profile' is not a character. The copyright notice is not a quotation from the book.

>89 MarthaJeanne:

The copyright notice is not a quotation from the book.

Very true. In addition, the copyright notice will vary, not just among editions, but among printings. Can you imagine the mess if everyone decided to enter the copyright information from their copies of, oh, say, Pride and Prejudice?

Imo since the copyright information is specific to your edition its best place is in the publication field.

>91 JerryMmm:
I agree... the publication field in your entry of your copy in your catalogue...

>84 lorax: Lorax: Thank you for being consider of others. This project is a way for me to use the skills I can no longer offer an employer, satisfy my desire to help others -- which was the greatest satisfaction I received as a medical librarian, and not feel useless.

>85 rosalita: Rosalita: Never thought there was a personal vendetta or desire to cause pain, only thoughtlessness. I wished to prevent further loss of data for myself or anyone else, whether or not that person is disabled.

>86 andyl: andyl: Thanks. I checked the history for A Haunt of Murder. If the data is still there, I must have failed to click on the right thing.

>87 Collectorator: Collectorator: That information is of use to a scholar researching books and publishers/publishing practices or anyone with an interest in what CYA (cover your a**) information publishers felt prudent to include.

That you find no use for some information doesn't mean that no one else will find it useful or interesting.

>88 gilroy: gilroy: Okay. Thanks for letting me know. Just wanted to make sure that info would be easily found by anyone who might want it.

>89 MarthaJeanne: MarthaJeanne: Even if entries are in an inappropriate place, they were important to the person who typed them. Wouldn't you be upset if someone deleted your hard work without giving you a chance to put it in the appropriate place?

How would you feel if that person then told you 'If you put inappropriate things there you have to expect them to disappear.'?

>90lilithcat: Personally, I would find that interesting. ;-) Yes, that was the very reason I created headings to indicate to which edition the info pertained.

>91JerryMmm & Crypto-Willobie: So go ahead and make the publication field very long instead of putting the other stuff in my comments section?

>100 JalenV: Sure. Make the pub field as long as you like. Or put it in the comments. It's your catalog so you can do it however you prefer.

But CK is just that, Common Knowledge. That means info entered into CK should apply to all editions of a work, not just to your individual book.

Actually, I get upset when I see inappropriate things entered.

But the point is, if it will upset you to have your work undone, CK is not the place for it. CK by its nature is not permanent.

100PhaedraB> I know that some editions of some novels may differ in the number of chapters, especially a classic that might have been added to by later writers, but don't most of them have the same characters in all editions?

Don't authors usually change the title if they substantially expand a work, as in Sara Crewe versus A Little Princess or Against the Fall of Night versus The City and the Stars?

101MarthaJeanne> Fair enough. I get irritated when I see an incorrect or misspelled name for the primary author, something I can't fix.

'CK by its nature is not permanent' -- lists of characters aren't permanent?

>104 Collectorator: Collectorator: Sir or madam, you do understand that I am in the process of moving it, do you not? Why would you be so inconsiderate as to delete it before it can be moved?

Indeed, why are you determined to destroy anyone else's hard work instead of giving that person the chance to move it?

>105 JalenV: The level of detail you wish to provide (unnamed characters in crowd scenes, for example) is seen as more burdensome than useful. You'll note that no one has come forward to say they find it useful.

One of the reasons that CK Characters exists is so people can click on the name and find other works that feature that character. Anything that you do to the entry that doesn't sync up with other ways people have entered the same character will prevent that from happening.

Ask yourself, is anyone going to click on "unnamed waitress" or "crowd of onlookers"? Highly unlikely. There is no purpose in determining how many books have unnamed waitresses or onlookers in them. Maybe to you, and that's fine, but it simply isn't what that field is designed for.

CK can be removed or changed by anyone. If someone removes it, it's gone.

If works are combined, that sometimes does weird things to CK. If books are falsely combined and have to be separated, the mixed CK can be a mess.

Don't spend painful time filling in CK. No, not even reasonable lists of characters can be counted on to be permanent.

>104 Collectorator: and others, JalenV has already stated their intention of moving the copyright info out of CK. Please don't go hunting down this information to delete it before they've had a chance to do so.

I'm not asking that you refrain from removing said information if you stumble upon it—that would require digging into CK history every time you go in to make edits, which is unreasonable. I'm just asking that others don't go chasing all instances down for this purpose at this point.

>110 Collectorator: Understood. I doubt that will be the case, but that makes sense.

lorannen: Thank you!

110Collectorator>

Thank you!

I see. 'I hereby notify you that I will delete all copyright information found in Common Knowledge.' implies that you intend to delete it from older entries.

Had you written 'I hereby notify you that I will delete all copyright information found in Common Knowledge in any of your entries posted after 10-06-2016*.' I would have understood.

*The date I became aware of the problem

107PhaedraB> My apologies for not clarifying my question.

You wrote 'But CK is just that, Common Knowledge. That means info entered into CK should apply to all editions of a work, not just to your individual book.'

To me that implied that not all editions of a work would contain the same characters, which seemed strange. I just wanted to know if that were true.

108MarthaJeanne> Eeek!

So put everyone in my comments section to be safe and copy the most important to the CK if I feel up to it?

>113 JalenV:

It's unlikely to be true* as it applies to characters, but it certainly applies to copyright information, which is what PhaedraB was referring to in the post you quote (which was >101 PhaedraB:, not >107 PhaedraB:).

*Abridged editions of a work may well eliminate some characters.

115lilithcat> Thank you for the correction!

D'oh! Hadn't even thought of abridged editions, which I abominate because they tend to leave out things I want to know or scenes I think are great when I see an unabridged edition. (Except of course, for Readers Digest Condensed Books, if they happen to have nice illustrations. Then I might want both.)

>115 lilithcat:

*Abridged editions of a work may well eliminate some characters.


Anything with that level of abridgment should properly be separated into a separate work.

More the the point, though, as this thread so clearly points out, there is a great deal of difference of opinion as to how significant a character ought to be to be listed in CK, everywhere from "only the most important dozen or so" to "any animate entity described on page even in a few words", and since CK is community property, not the property of whoever first enters something or who does so most comprehensively or obsessively, nobody should put significant effort into it if they feel proprietary toward it or will be distressed when others edit the data in future.

>115 lilithcat: lilithcat: Thank you. Is it possible to spread the word not to delete my parenthetical identification for characters until I can copy them over to my comments section? PLEASE?

I don't seem to be able to recover them from that link Collectorator so helpfully provided.

Personally, I don't see why anyone would want to remove information that would help a reader identify a series character, but as you said, it's CK.

>118 JalenV:

Is it possible to spread the word not to delete my parenthetical identification for characters

Not really, other than your posts here. And, as stated above, a lot of people will just stumble on the CK, see it's wrong, and edit it. Not everyone participates in Talk, or, if they do, in this group.

I don't seem to be able to recover them from that link Collectorator so helpfully provided.

I'm not sure why you're not seeing the info at that link. It's grayed out, but should be visible. You may need to click on the symbol to the left to expand the information, though.

>118 JalenV:

Personally, I don't see why anyone would want to remove information that would help a reader identify a series character, but as you said, it's CK.

They may not agree with you that something like "unnamed Idlewild Airport porter" or "a middle-aged cab driver" are helpful in this fashion.

119lilithcat> Drat! Thank you.

>120 lorax: lorax: I was thinking in terms of main and reasonably important supporting characters. I did leave in the names of two characters in the CK for one entry. They seemed to be pretty minor -- until they were unmasked as the killers in the climax. (That did explain why they kept showing up where the heroine did.)

What about impostors who are later unmasked? For example, in one work I listed two supporting characters who are secretly the same person under the imposter's real name and the distant relative he was impersonating.

The parenthetical information for the relative is true without giving away that he's dead and being impersonated. Similarly, the entry for the impostor's real name is true without giving away that he spends most of his appearances impersonating someone else (or that he'll be murdered and will be a taunting ghost for the rest of the book).

Sometimes characters who are related don't have the same last name or there might be multiple relatives listed. Which one was the father/brother/son/uncle/cousin/nephew again?

Main character's pets can be important to readers, which is why I include them even if they aren't part of the series' name, as in 'A Cat in the Stacks Mystery' or 'A Bookmobile Cat Mystery'. I know of one author who has promised her fans that her heroine's hamster will not be killed or die of old age.

I noticed that the latest Meg Langslow mystery makes sure to at least drop the names of some recurring characters who don't really have a role in that particular entry, such as Spike, the heroine's grumpy dustmop dog, and wacky Dr. Smoot, who likes to dress up as a vampire (neither of whom will be going into the CK).

I personally own a copy of A Guide to Middle Earth and A Guide to Barsoom, as well as all 11 volumes of the privately-published Nero Wolfe Companions. I even have a copy of The Brownstone House of Nero Wolfe by Ken Darby. (Yes, there's a book devoted to a fictional character's house.) Because I am a fan of the Amelia Peabody mysteries, which has 19 works, I'm grateful there's a guide to many of the characters in Amelia Peabody's Egypt a Compendium. These are books that fans of their subjects pay good money to own.

Even though I went overboard with the unnamed characters (and details), I do find it discourging that my free versions of such character guides that I made accessible to anyone using LibraryThing have been seen as worthless and deleted. Would it have helped had I publicized them within the site?

119lilithcat> I'm seeing a grayed-out version of the first character's listing, but I don't seem to be able to get to any other names.

Is there any way to recover information I posted more than a month ago? (Thank God I discovered that my guide to Visions hadn't been destroyed yet! I've copied the character info into my comments, so if one of you wants to destroy it, be my guest.)

>122 JalenV:

Well we would have been at the same position at an earlier point in time. The issue is that what you want to do isn't what CK is designed to do.

>123 JalenV:

I think using words like 'destroy' doesn't help the conversation.

All we want to do is clean up the CK so it helps the normal user find the main characters. So, yes, it would have helped if you had advertised it, as it could have been cleaned out sooner.

We clean out various kinds of inappropriate material. We gang up on overenthusiastic authors and destroy their spammy topics. We separate out works that have been combined, but shouldn't have been. We move publisher series out of series. We flag Chinese spam in this topic.

The books you mention are owned by a very small minority of those who read the series they are based on. There are fan sites for various authors and genres that collect large amount of details for those who are interested. CK is there for the general reader. A few main characters help. The kind of detail you put in does not.

I've felt that the level of detail you wish to provide, while interesting to fans, would be better published on fan sites and forums, where you can go into as much detail as you wish. a wiki would help linking characters while giving you the opportunity to include as much detail as you wish.

http://www.wikia.com/about would be a good site to start.

I don't think anyone will argue with those particular examples. And if you hadn't gone so far overboard you can't even see the ship anymore with unnamed this and unnamed that and a single listing for a crowd scene, I don't think people would be complaining nearly as much. But the completely absurd inclusions throw everything into question for people who haven't read the books, so we have no reason to expect that "Fred's uncle" is important because he turns out to be Fred in disguise, when seventeen unnamed characters in the same book are also listed.

124andyl>: I apologize for the use of 'destroy'. That comment was written at 12:04 a.m. my time, after hours of frantically trying to copy my work. I realized that I was too tired and in too much pain to save anything more that night. The thought that some of my character lists might be deleted before I could copy them was anxiety-provoking.

126MarthaJeanne> Would you have cleaned out my character lists without warning me first and giving me a chance to copy them to my catalog? If so, I'm very glad I didn't publicize them.

127JerryMmm> Thank you. I'll continue to post the info in my catalog's comments section for my own use and then ask the relevant sites if they want a copy for theirs, to put in whatever format works best for them.

128lorax> As I wrote in comment 48, the unnamed characters with ch. numbers were memory cues.

My format was:

a. main character and significant other

b. recurring supporting characters:

(1) main character's spouse & children (if any), closest friends, pets

(2) main character's relatives/in-laws

(3) main character's co-workers

(4) neighbors, customers/patrons, rich do-gooders, pains-in-the-neck, local bigwigs such as the mayor, council members, etc.

c. one-shot characters, in order of importance

d. unnamed characters/supernatural creatures and their respective chapter numbers

e. animals

(2) & (3) might be interchanged, depending upon their importance in the series.

Important one-shot characters might be listed before minor relatives, in-laws, and co-workers.

A named pet's entry might appear under its owner's entry instead of after all the humans/sentient non-humans. (Named pets who get mentioned within the series as part of a character's recurring description without actually appearing in the books were listed in the owner's entry. If they appeared for as little as 'I noticed Sandy's cat, Precious Pie, in the window as I walked past her house,' they got their own entry.)

Right now I'm going to concentrate on just copying my character lists since they seem to be unrecoverable.

Oh, dear -- I'd forgotten that I started out listing characters in order of appearance. Thank God I later thought to bookmark them and enter them after I finished the book.

>132 JalenV: It's clear you used them as memory clues. Clearly that's important to you.

However, as we've stated repeatedly, CK is not for notes important to you or any of us as individuals, it's intended to be for information that will be useful and of interest to everyone, which includes the general/casual reader.

It's unfortunate that this is so stressful for you, both physically and emotionally. No one wishes to deliberately cause you distress. However, we all try (in greater or lesser ways) to defer to the larger purpose of CK. Your memory clues are extremely personal, and thus not appropriate for CK. Your catalog is the place for notes that are important to you; CK is for notes that may be of interest to anyone.

Page numbers especially are inappropriate, since they will vary by format (hardcover v. softcover), reprints, and foreign editions.

I think the suggestion made above that you find fan sites and forums to post this info is an excellent one. Your work will much more likely to be well received and appreciated. It's too bad that you put a lot of effort into doing it here already, but it simply wasn't what the site was designed to do.

Also, if you are filling in info that is of extreme importance to you personally, I highly recommend also keeping a copy on your own devices. Websites are notoriously ephemeral. There's no guarantee that anything you put online will stay there forever. Sites change formats, or go out of business, or any number of things can happen that would make your diligently entered data inaccessible to you.

>133 JalenV:

Why not clean them up yourself after you've done the copy-and-paste?

134lorax> I was, until I realized y'all couldn't prevent the deleting of CK data that can't be recovered. I was going to list the titles in case any of y'all don't want to wait for me to finish copying and pasting that info first.

133PhaedraB> Thank you. I was puzzled because my unnamed characters and their chapter numbers keep being mentioned in a way that I couldn't infer from the wording of the post that the poster both understands what their purpose was and that I am not going to do that anymore. (Page numbers were used for one entry because the characters weren't in the index. The author has told me they were left out because his editor didn't want the index to be too long. Had his editor realized that the rabid nature of many comic book fans might compel them to buy a book just because their favorites are named in it, I think they would have been included ;-)

Excellent suggestion! Must save data first, though.

>132 JalenV:

Do you really need pets?

Yes I can understand having them when they play a role in the book, but if they don't then I would personally leave them out. Your example "I noticed Sandy's cat, Precious Pie, in the window as I walked past her house," is a case where I wouldn't mention Precious Pie at all. The cat plays no role in the story if that is the only mention.

138andyl> That's something that will now be in only my comments section, along with the very minor characters and the memory cues

>137 JalenV: Please note that even the book editor didn't want the level of detail that you wish to put in CK. CK is not meant for the rabid collector, it's for information of general interest.

I understand that this level of detail is very important to you, which is why you need to put it somewhere where it will be available to people who are equally rabid. LibraryThing is not really designed for that. I know that is a disappointment, but it is the truth.

I'm not sure how to word this, because it reminds me of an incident from my working years (from the days before e-mail and electronic forms):

The Post Contracting Division had set a local rule based upon an Army regulation. One fiscal year-end ordering frenzy I got back my purchase request with a special separate form for every book worth over $50.00. (Most of them were.) It had been a very nice thing for the contract specialist to do, but if s/he had only called me, I could have explained that libraries were exempt because they fall under their own regulation. It would have saved him/her a lot of work.

So, for those of you who have been deleting my work, I apologize for doing what I thought would be helpful, but left you feeling that someone had made extra work for you.

There's no index to the recipes throughout a novel so I created one. I put it in quotations because my review might get moved off the first screen. Hope that's okay.

Also, tried to cut down character descriptions to one line, generally only relationships and professions.

>142 JalenV: That would be something for comments

>143 gilroy: It was actually in the slot meant for the "Last sentence" (and why on earth that particular one was chosen is beyond me). I deleted it. Comments on her copy of the book would be an excellent place. She could have even put it in her review (there's ONLY two reviews, and I'm betting that there won't be so many that the review will get lost).

>142 JalenV: Please just put it in your review. CK isn't meant for this.

>Lyndatrue Oops! It's called realizing that I had to get ready for church and not noticing I'd opened the wrong section. Good thing that, unlike the people/characters section, the history for the last words section included all of the index you deleted. I'd already removed all the bookmarks that enabled me to create it.

Okay.

When I added my advance reading copy of Seven Trees of Stone, I tried to find out the name of the trilogy, both at this site and elsewhere. No luck.

The back cover included an e-mail address to the publisher. There is no official name for the trilogy, but Jamie Tan told me that 'Luke Manchett (3)' would be fine.

>147 JalenV: If it is book three, do you know which books are one and two? It would be helpful to enter the whole series.

>148 MarthaJeanne: MarthaJeanne: Yes, I do. I just checked them out from the library today and I will be adding that information. {Addition: I see that someone has beaten me to it.} (I decided to wait to review the third book until I read the first two. As I found out when I started watching Buffy in the middle of season 3, the info I was able to find out wasn't enough to let me fully appreciate what was going on. Angel's back? Didn't know him, didn't care.)

By the way, I wanted to mention that I did not enter every author or character from Detective fiction from Victorian sleuths to the present. I started to with lesson one, but quickly realized there were just too many. I first deleted and then didn't list the ones who didn't have at least a whole paragraph to themselves. Some of them didn't even have a whole sentence to themselves.