I'm coming across quite a few mistaken identifications in X-ray entries in books bought from Amazon. For example, in
Quiet: The Power of Introverts... by Susan Cain, Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the book is listed as Benjamin Franklin and the driver that kicked Rosa Parks off a bus in 1955 is listed as a tennis player born in 1979. In
SPQR by Mary Beard, both Julius Caesar and the emperor Augustus are lumped together as Caligula, and Cicero is listed as his younger brother.
Most of these errors, such as for FDR and the bus driver, are easy to fix, even for DRM infected books. Splitting the Caligula listings into separate listings for Julius Caesar and Augustus would be tedious, but once done, the fix would be quick and easy for anyone else with the book. I would like for this thread to be a collection point for these errors so that an organized set of corrections can be made freely available for download in a separate thread and/or wiki page and a git repository. A key component of the X-ray system is an sqlite3 database. It is very easy to construct an SQL statement that fixes the error.
Ideally, a report would consist of:
Title (not completely necessary)
Author (even less necessary)
ASIN (essential)
Name in book
Name in X-ray
X-ray entity number (value in entity column in entity description table)
Suggested source for description
However, I would like to encourage partial reports by people who spot errors but are unable or unwilling to make a complete report to make a partial report in the hope that someone else with the same book will supply the missing details. And I do request that even for complete reports that someone else with the same book confirm the details of the report.
So a report could be as simple as:
"In Quiet by Susan Cain, Franklin Roosevelt is misidentified as Benjamin Franklin"
or as complete as:
Title: Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That ...
Author: Susan Cain
ASIN: B004J4WNL2
Name in book: Franklin (Roosevelt)
Name in X-ray: Benjamin Franklin (implied by description)
X-ray entity number: 9
Suggested source for description: Wikipedia
Name in book: James Blake
Name in X-ray: James Riley Blake
X-ray entity number: 103
Suggested source for description: Wikipedia
Super duper extra credit brownie points for the SQL to fix, such as:
Code:
/* XRAY mistaken identity fixes for B004J4WNL2
"Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That ..."
*/
-- Was Shelfari entry for Benjamin Franklin!
UPDATE "entity_description" SET text="Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882 - April 12, 1945), commonly known as FDR, was an American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. A Democrat, he won a record four presidential elections and emerged as a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century. He directed the United States government during most of the Great Depression and World War II. As a dominant leader of his party, he built the New Deal Coalition, realigning American politics into the Fifth Party System and defining American liberalism throughout the middle third of the 20th century. He is often rated by scholars as one of the three greatest U.S. Presidents, along with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Roosevelt was born in 1882 to an old, prominent Dutch-American family from Dutchess County, New York and attended Groton School. He went on to graduate from Harvard College in 1903 and attended Columbia Law School. At age 23 in 1905, he married Eleanor Roosevelt, and the couple went on to have six children.", source=1 where entity = 9;
-- Was for: James Riley Blake b. 1979, American professional tennis player...
UPDATE "entity_description" SET text="James F. Blake (April 14, 1912 - March 21, 2002) was the bus driver who Rosa Parks defied in 1955, prompting the Montgomery Bus Boycott.", source=1 where entity = 103;