#140 Redirect deleted titles when merging

[Marc Kupper]

When titles are merged ISFDB deletes some title records and consolidates any linked publications to the title with the lowest record number. At present the deleted title record numbers are never re-used.

The feature request is to have the "deleted" title record point at the title record for the merge target. This would allow external sites to reference a title and even if it were to be merged the link to that title will not break. A way to do this is to add a MERGED title type. The parent title field will be used to link to the merge target.

If someone attempts to display a MERGED title record then ISFDB will return an HTTP "301" which is "Moved Permanently" and also return the correct URL for the title record.

This will require coding changes in:
• Merge-title to both set up the initial MERGED records and to check if a record is already a merge target to update the original records to point at the new target.
• Delete-title user interface would allow for deleting of titles that are merge targets.
• Delete-title back end would also delete any MERGED records that reference the title being deleted.
• Basic and Advanced search should not include MERGED titles in their results.
• Display title to check for MERGED and to return an HTTP 301 with the current (parent) title number as the target.
• All bibliographic displays to not show MERGED titles as variant titles.

Fortunately, the change can be implemented and debugged incrementally as each of the areas that would need updating are not dependent on other changes.

[David E. Siegel]

Great minds think alike -- I was planning to add a very similar feature request, except that I was going to suggest that the URL simply auto-redirect to the merged record, much as a wiki redirect page does. The proposal above may be better. I think this (in either format) would be a very good idea. -DES

[Ahasuerus]

It may be easier to create a new mySQL table for merged Titles. That way we would need to add only one check at the top of the Title Display screen.