Author bios — curation added

Following on the announcement of author bios: https://www.librarything.com/topic/341591

I've added curation to author bios, so members can call out incorrect information, and when an author has multiple bios, vote up the one they think is best.

You'll find the curation link in "improve this author." This link will only appear if there are any bios that could be approved, and you are signed in.



This takes you to a page where you can vote bios up and down, or flag them.



Clicking the flag icon takes you to this page, with various options for flagging a bio.



If a bio has more flags than counter-flags, it's removed from the pool. If all bios are flagged, no bio will appear on the author's page.

Other notes:
* Bios have been improved generally, so there are far fewer mismatches.
* Most authors have one or no bio. Those that have many are published by a small number of publishers that change the author's bio for every book.
* At present we are using only these Bowker- or publisher-created biographies. I am less certain whether LibraryThing should front the CK biography, which would be a terrible thing to get wrong. By and large biographies are written by publishers, with some say-so by the author. I think it's best to stick with that.

Example authors:
* bell hooks has three https://www.librarything.com/author/hooksbell/annotations
* R. C. Sproul has 23! https://www.librarything.com/author/sproulrc/annotations
* Murasaki Shikibu has two https://www.librarything.com/author/shikibumurasaki/annotations

Does the "nothing wrong" option nevertheless count as a flag? Or is it the counterflag? Clarification would be good I think.

Eggregiously outdated: 1,000 year-old eggs.

Does the "nothing wrong" option nevertheless count as a flag? Or is it the counterflag? Clarification would be good I think.

Yes, it's the counter-flag option. What would you suggest. How about just "There is nothing wrong with this (counter-flag)"?

What happens with something marked "egregiously wrong"? I don't see a way to say what is wrong. Since these come from outside LT, I assume there's no way to edit them.

I've come across several saying things like "X is", when X is dead, so it should be "X was". Or someone is described as an "associate professor", but is now a full professor and Chair of her department, or has moved to another institution.

>4 timspalding: What about using different colored flags (such as blue/red for flagging, green for counter flagging) next to each reason, like how we do for reviews? Unless that feature is going away with other updates.

lilithcat (#5):

I don't know that a promotion or a move to a different institution would count as "egregious" in the way that misgendering would. If there's a more up-to-date bio, sure, but if there's only one available, in that case it's probably better than nothing.

>5 lilithcat: >7 lorax:

I don't know. It's up to members.

>6 kristilabrie:

I could do that. For now, I don't think it's worth it. This is one of those features everyone insists is important and almost nobody will touch. Problems are unusual. The type is in any case stored. I'm just not displaying it.

>8 timspalding: The work descriptions do have flag colors though, this would just match them
Mapping the author flags onto the colors for work descriptions:

{yellow/orange flag} Has weird characters, fonts or other editing issues
{red flag) Is about another author
{white flag} Covers multiple authors
{gray} Vandalism
{??} Egregiously outdated and/or wrong (e.g. misgenders author)
{green flag} There is nothing wrong with this biography

>7 lorax:

I agree. I don't know that it's worth flagging a move (though dead vs. alive, perhaps), but the question really goes to what should or can be done about erroneous information.

Can you add a flag for something like "this is not a biography/this is a book description", like in the example, or should that just be downvotes?

>11 melannen:

Yes, adding. What did you see that was like that?

>12 timspalding: Added.

>12 timspalding: The one in your example upthread, I thought you'd picked it on purpose! The top one in the screenshot (now not top, since it's been voted on) is pretty clearly not a biography. Unless I'm misinterpreting something? I will use it to test the flag and we can find out if I'm wrong about it.

>4 timspalding:
Sounds good.

>14 melannen:

Ha. I didn't even read it :)

>7 lorax:, >10 lilithcat: So is a biography "Eggregiously outdated and/or wrong (e.g., misgenders author)" if an author has died in the meantime?

I'm looking at Dervla Murphy, an Irish travel writer who died on Monday. Her biography reads "Dervla Murphy was born in County Waterford, Ireland, where she still lives. Since 1964 she has been regularly publishing accounts of her journeys by bicycle or on foot, in the remoter areas of four continents"

I don't suppose we can just get in and edit the biography? If nothing else, I'd like to add a full stop.

PS. I'm not keen on "Eggregiously". Unless perhaps you can find a way to carry the joke through several of the listed problems.

Can we please have the option not to see these.

Could anybody help me about "Eggregiously".
My search in Google and dict.cc could not find that expresion. It has found "Egregiously".
Is it a spelling problem? Or is it somesthing else?

I think it's just a typo

>19 birder4106: "Eggregiously" is either a typo or a pun which hints at the (rotten) eggs thrown at whoever wrote the bibliography, I daresay.

Thank you Nicole_VanK and .mau.