Feature:90028

90028 OPEN It looks like the ISFDB Directory hasn't been updated in quite some time. The copyright date is 2005. It would help if the Directory could be updated with the latest version of the Author list every night or so. Ahasuerus 14:03, 26 May 2006 (CDT)

There are those of us who would like to see the directory go away, but there are others who who like to see it live on. Since I'm trying to get rid of the static pages, I don't want to have to build a directory on a regular basis and upload it. I'll be looking at constructing a dynamic directory, and we can use this entry to track that feature. Alvonruff 15:05, 28 May 2006 (CDT)

Well, static pages are usually created to avoid "computationally intensive" database queries, as you call them elsewhere. How about a compromise? Build a static page with URLs for "A", "B", etc. Then link these URLs to real time queries for Author records whose last name starts with that letter. You can make the URLs as granual as you want if it takes too long to process a query on, say, "B" or "S" (traditionally the worst offenders).

The only problem with this approach that I can think of would be adding an algorithm that would identify "last names" and then building an index on it. Something like "strip off all known suffixes like 'Jr.' from the end of the canonical name, then take the last space delimited piece of the name"? Ahasuerus 16:25, 28 May 2006 (CDT)

The directory is quite useful, but it has to be kept up somehow. Also, the idea of algorithmically identifying "last names" is fine, but there has to be some way of overriding or supplementing the automatic identification. The case that prompts me to mention this is of Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who are listed on the H directory page rather than N. I think the entry on H should stay (because some people will look there) but that there must be an entry on N (because their last name really is Nielsen Hayden). The N entry should be generated automatically, since the Author Data page has the information, but there should be a way of specifying an alias alphabetization, hopefully without generating a duplicate author page as with Yoji Kondo, also known as Eric Kotani. --Dan Hoey 14:02, 23 Mar 2007 (CDT)

I was mistaken--the Author Data page has information enough to determine the legal last name, but we shouldn't be using legal names in the directory (or at most, we would use them in a supplementary fashion, in case someone wanted to look up Dr. Seuss under Geisel.) And the textually last part of someone's name isn't necessarily the one you want to alphabetize by, if it's an oriental name. So the author data page may well default to the longest space-free string before the last comma, but there needs to be a way to override that with one or more preferred alphabetization keys. --Dan Hoey 18:30, 23 Mar 2007 (CDT)