Warn librarians when a proposed author merge could refer to different people

[pidgezero-one]

Feature Request

Problem / Opportunity

There's many cases where authors who are different people have the same name. When an author merge is proposed, there should be a warning that tells the librarian when this might possibly be the case.

Proposal

Build an automatic Wikidata search into the author merge page that finds authors by name. If there is more than one hit, display a message on the page to warn the librarian that there's a possibility that the merge request could merge different individuals.

Caveats:

• Authors with multiple names/aliases
• Wikidata rate limiting. (Only librarians will have access to this page, so it's unlikely, but firing too many WD queries in quick succession is something we have to account for. See the wikisource import script for an example of how it is handled there)

Breakdown

Related files

TBD

Requirements Checklist

Checklist of requirements that need to be satisfied in order for this issue to be closed:

• An author merge request page should always show a warning when the author in question could refer to one of several people. This warning is triggered by a Wikidata search returning more than one row.

Stakeholders

@cdrini
@Spaarsh
@Freso
@seabelis
@pidgezero-one

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