I was looking at a contribution change for 'Spiderman' and noticed that the contributor was using the 'credited as' field for the following two actors:

J. K. Simmons [J.K. Simmons]
K. K. Dodds [K.K. Dodds]

The reason this is being done is because the person's name has been parsed differently by different people.  Some have done it 'J./K./Simmons'  while others have done it 'J.K./ /Simmons'...the latter being done because there is not space between the two initials.

My question is, should we be doing this?  To me, it makes more sense to simply change the way the names are parsed but I am wondering what other people think.

Please note, I am not attacking the person making the contribution...this just made me stop and wonder for a minute.

I saw another of these just in the past few days.  I don't see it adding value to the data though.

I'd never submit something that splits hairs this way.  The two initials appear to run together because that's a stylistic choice of whoever did the credits.  It may be different the next time someone does credits.

Can (should) this be stopped?

I often have a hard time determing whether or not there's a space between the period and second initial when I look at a screen credit.  I have the same problem with people either adding or removing a space after an ellipsis in an overview "because that's what is shown on the cover.  I don't know as it makes that much difference, except that a long sentence will scroll on a space but not if there's no space.  It just makes the resulting paragraph "fuller" with less jagged ends of the lines.

J. K. Simmons [J.K. Simmons] = One could argue it either way.  (1) It should be J./K./Simmons because it stands for Jonathan/Kimble/Simmons.  (2) It should be J.K.//Simmons because he uses J.K. as his stage name (single name).  Who's to say which is better?

And while TheFly is correct about this being a good reason for a two-field name structure, I'm still agin' it.

Of course you're right, Unicus.  But it's gonna be hard to get any kind of consensus with THIS crowd.

No comment, we have had this discussion too many times already. Ken made the point quite correctly.

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I haven't noticed that it hurts anything since, in this case, new actors are not being created.  That being said, I voted neutral and won't be accepting in my local.  If somebody wants to actually go through and do a credited as to remove a parsing space, it's their energy not mine.

IMO, there's no difference between J.K. and J. K., and both variants should be parsed J. / K. The punctuation mark means that they are two separate names. It's a different situation with JK vs. J K - IMO these are two "different" credits and should be parsed JK /  and J / K  , respectively, since there is no punctuation mark.

Quoting Behemot:

Quote:
IMO, there's no difference between J.K. and J. K., and both variants should be parsed J. / K. The punctuation mark means that they are two separate names. It's a different situation with JK vs. J K - IMO these are two "different" credits and should be parsed JK /  and J / K  , respectively, since there is no punctuation mark.

You be correct!