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If we can get http://ncatlab.org/nlab/authors working, then that would be great! I tried to use it today, but it's down.
Thanks for reporting, I will have to look into that when I get a moment.
The authors page should be working now. Unfortunately there are a lot of spam authors, but I think it would require rewriting parts of the architecture of instiki in order to do anything about that.
I think it would require rewriting parts of the architecture of instiki in order to do anything about that.
Would it be a big deal to give alternative lists which only show authors 1) with more than 1 contribution, 2) with a personal page? This would cut down the size a lot.
I know some real authors contribute without a personal page, but this might encourage them to create one.
Also is there some way to just see the contributions just from a particular author?
If so, in the lists like latest revisions would it be easy to add a link following the author to see his/her contributions?
And is this the right time and place to complain about how the nLab handles my name “Rod McGuire”? (The orthography “McGuire” is a computer induced compromise for people who used to write the name as “McGuire” to indicate that it was an abbreviation of “Mac Guire”. My father when typing would actually roll the platen down half a character to get the raised “c”. In the US at least those of Scots or Scots-Irish descent always abbreviate, maybe to distinguish themselves from the Irish who never do so. But that is not what I’m complaining about.)
The general convention is to spell the name without a space between the “Mc” and the “Guire” (Wikipedia list 28 mathematicians whose names start with “Mc” and non of them have an inserted space.) However the nLab wizards decided that names that look camelcased should automatically get an inserted space. Then again many years ago (to defeat simple searches) I started camelcasing my whole name as “RodMcGuire” and did a little here under that name, so at least both versions I’ve used are cannonicalized to the same 3 word name even if it is wrong.
(I’m not seriously suggesting that someone fix my name problem. I can live with the situation but just wanted to rant.)
Would it be a big deal to give alternative lists which only show authors 1) with more than 1 contribution, 2) with a personal page? This would cut down the size a lot.
I don’t know about the second, but I think the first suggestion would be good, and I wouldn’t mind implementing it if no one has any objection.
If so, in the lists like latest revisions would it be easy to add a link following the author to see his/her contributions?
That would indeed be nice, and I may implement something like that when I get a moment.
And is this the right time and place to complain about how the nLab handles my name “Rod McGuire”?
Sorry about that. That must be a result of some deeply entrenched behaviour of Instiki that might be risky to try modifying.
if no one has any objection
For what it’s worth, myself I certainly wouldn’t object. These are reasonable points that Rod suggests.
I wouldn’t mind implementing it if no one has any objection.
If there is a way to get from author name to a page of just his/her contributions then maybe the authors list could be changed to just display for each entry: AuthorName #contributions e.g. John Smith 3, with a link on the second to the individual contributions page.
This would allow many more entries to be displayed on an authors page, cutting down the now high number of 29 pages.
A further hack would have each row in authors show say the first 3 contributions: AuthorName #contributions page1 page2 page3. If you want to see more you click on #contributions.
Apologies in advance for lingering on this, but this caught my eye:
In the US at least those of Scots or Scots-Irish descent always abbreviate, maybe to distinguish themselves from the Irish who never do so.
Really? Saunders Mac Lane (MacLane when he was born, in Connecticut) was pretty vocal about his being of Scots descent. I’m sure there are many other counterexamples. Did I misunderstand what you meant?
There are various legends about Saunders Mac Lane and that gap! It was said it was because wordprocessors refused to put the ell in capitals if the gap was not there.
Again the Mac is Gaelic for ’son of’ so strictly speaking a gap is needed and it would originally have been Mac not Mc. This is all explained in gory detail here BTW The surname ’Price’ comes from the welsh equivalent ’ap Rhys’ Note the ’p’ to ’q’ change going from the p-celtic brythonic Welsh to the goidelic irish or Scottish.
In the present authors list are all the spam authors as well!!!!
I have updated the Authors page to only show contributors who have revised at least three different pages.
Adeel, thanks for the action with the Authors list. It is very reasonable.
4 > I know some real authors contribute without a personal page, but this might encourage them to create one.
This kind of pressure for political correctness is not acceptable. I hope it is just a joke. If this had happened I would have likely deleted all my homepages out of civil disobedience protest. I also think that selecting “the first 3 contributions” is not sensible as those can be not representative even for a typical author.
I used to use the authors page to help me keep Contributors up to date, but it's been a while. I would like to see an authors page with every contributor, even those who contribute only once, for this purpose.
Having it broken up into manageable pages is nice.
The problem was the very high density of spam among authors with only one contribution. I don’t know a good way around that, except to add a feature allowing certain admin users to delete pages (really delete, I mean). This would eliminate all the “empty X” pages and with them the authors who have only contributed spam.
I see; that would be a technical reason for deleting history, which I have wanted to avoid.
Instiki seems to naturally like to divide things (such as allpages and recentlyrevised) by category. Would it be difficult to get it to give an author list without any authors who appear only in the empty category? (Probably the reverse would be more natural, if anything, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.)
Or, of course, just having both lists of authors available at slightly different pages.
That’s an interesting idea, but I think that query would be very slow, due to the way the database is structured. It wouldn’t be much work to have two different pages, though, I’ll look into implementing that when I get a chance.
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