On 19 June 2012 20:40, Alan Millar <[email protected]> wrote:
>>  By the way, it was AMillarBot that string-joined
>
>> the two series and put it in one list item, instead of adding one item
>> for each series. Could you perhaps change that?
>
> Ay, there's the rub.  The current implementation of stuff running under the 
> AMillarBot account is actually browser scripting (specifically, Selenium IDE 
> in Firefox).  As such, it doesn't use the formal API's; it uses the 
> human-interface web forms.  So it is limited in structuring the data to what 
> the web form supports.

Right, that's good to know. So you're not really to blame ;)
The form handling is a bit inconsistent in this regard: publishers and
publish places are split on semicolons, but series are not. Authors
and languages are added one per field (I can understand that is
because of the special dropdown list, but it may not be visible to a
complete newbie).

>
> I started with the browser scripting because I was doing semi-automated 
> changes.  Things like breaking out multi-author entries in works (like 
> http://openlibrary.org/authors/OL2800968A/NIVEN_POURNELLE), where I would 
> confirm the correct entries before saving.  Since there have been a lot of 
> them, mostly automated in simple patterns, it seemed like a good idea to mark 
> the account as a bot account, to unclutter the recent changes listings.
>
> Other changes, like moving series or edition notes out of titles, have been 
> running completely automated (no confirmation needed by me on each one), once 
> given a specific string to match, but still executing as Selenium IDE scripts 
> in Firefox.  I download the Works dump file and massage with grep&sed to make 
> the string matching work list.  I guess to a certain exent, it is still 
> semi-automated, in that I enter a series name or other string into the 
> Selenium script, let it fix a few dozen works/editions, then do the next 
> string, and so on.  After a month, download new works dump and refresh my 
> worklist.  Lather, rinse, repeat  :-)
>
> I've been considering making the jump to a proper script for the simpler mass 
> changes, but haven't gotten around to it.
>
> One question that certainly comes to my mind: if I force a list or array 
> through the API, when the web form UI doesn't support it, how will anyone 
> edit it later?

It will probably mess up things :( I noticed this behavior with
languages: I edited a book with two languages, but after saving my
change one of the languages was gone. (Now you can add multiple
languages in the librarian mode, thanks to Anand.)
>
> I did file a bug report to change the web form UI to allow the list/array for 
> series field.
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/openlibrary/+bug/1014956

Launchpad isn't tracked anymore for development; all issue management
is now done on GitHub.
https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues

(All bug reports on Launchpad that are still open and have been
checked to still exist should be moved, I think, but it seems no-one
has started doing that yet.)
>
> - Alan

Ben
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