Bulk corrections to database ... or how to search case-sensitive

Following this thread on the different metals showing up on the dashboard I made corrections to all coins showing Bimetallic (mostly UK coins) to Bi-metallic. Only afterwards I found out that most coins in the catalogue are described as Bi-Metallic (2 capital letters!). When searching in the catalogue it does not differntiate both versions (not case sensitive), but in the metal count it does make a difference.

Just try adding 1000 coins to any of the different options and you'll get Bimetallic, Bi-metallic and Bi-Metallic showing up in you metal-list. You just start wondering what other "metals" are hidden in that "other" group (or maybe that is why we don't get to see them? ).

To correct this, I'd have to go back to the 70-something coins I just corrected and add a capital M to every coinsheet and also go through 2500 of Bi-Metallic/Bi-metallic coins to look up the ones without a capital letter.

Maybe in this case the grouping of metals can be made non-case-sensitive on the dashboard, but is there no way such bulk changes (relace Bi-metallic by Bi-Metallic) can be performed automatically in the database by an administrator (or Xavier) himself? Checking a few pages to make corrections is fine, but 25 is a bit too much ...

Just as a matter of interest, did you find any source to confirm which version is correct? All the dictionaries I have checked use the form 'bimetallic' without a hyphen and I believe there is also a thread on the Referee's forum which states that the preferred form for use on Numista is 'Bimetallic', capitalised as for the start of a sentence. Consequently, I will need to reject all the modification requests that have been submitted with a suggestion that it would be best to confer with others on which is the correct term before making a whole bunch of change requests to the catalogue.

I just took the most commonly term used as the correct one (whole catalogue except UK coins and 6 other coins). I think linguistically you're correct with bimetallic, but I notice that in most combinations with coins the term bi-metallic seems to be used (wikipedia, WBCC, ...).

But if at some point there has already been some agreement on the correct term (did not find anything on spelling in the public forum), it should be implemented. As it is now there is no consistency and thus ruins some of our statistics ...

Jarcek! A task for the CCIP? Or is there a way to do such thing directly directly in the database?



PS Radrick, after 15 requests I also started thinking I should have contacted you first ... but just kept on going ... I'll try not to waste our time next time

I can fully understand where you are coming from; it would certainly seem logical that if the UK were the only listings (bar 6 other) that were showing 'no hyphen', then the rest of the catalogue must be right. Also, as you suggest, to change the UK listings would be the lesser body of work than trying to correct the whole of the rest of the bimetallic listings. To be fair, when you surf through wiki sites, etc. it seems that both forms are in use but as we have learnt from past experience, Wikipedia et al. are not necessarily correct although they are regularly used as a popular reference. As I mentioned before, when I checked with Oxford, Collins and even the great Merriam-Webster, they were unanimous in stating that 'bimetallic' is the correct term and that is good enough for me. With regard to correcting the rest of the catalogue, it would strike me that a fairly straightforward 'find and replace' function could be performed but it would necessarily need to be at admin level and not something that could easily be done by the end user. Over to you, admin guys ...

Hi guys,

it's a known problem for which we already have a solution (not yet implemented though but bulk updates/corrections could be done at the same time).

To avoid/minimize such naming troubles, the idea is to have an auto-complete field for metals; meaning you start typing (here "bi") and a list of suggested metals appear below from which you can pick your metal (here, you would be able to select "bimetallic" from the list popping up below the metal field).

There could still be some kind of editable part in case metal is not in the list yet or maybe to input some more data (like which metals for the bimetallic coins, etc.).

Sounds great!
A metal class with autocomplete/drop-down + customizable field for specifics would be perfect!

Looking forward to implementation

thanks!

Cita: "BramVB"​Sounds great!
​A metal class with autocomplete/drop-down + customizable field for specifics would be perfect!
​
​Looking forward to implementation
​
​thanks!

​Aye, sounds wonderful.