So, I decided to drive myself insane and upload and tweak the checklist for the 1972 TCMA The '30's set (because I own two cards from that set so yeah, I'll mess with this 500+ card set).
Anyway, since this is a massive set that almost nobody has a complete set of, I've been using a couple of sources to put it together (Standrad Cat of Vintage Cards and a guy on eBay that has a near complete set for sale). I'm pretty confident that I have all the players, teams, and variation cards correct and now I'm trying to tie all the names to the right players.
Since this is the 1930's, almost everybody has a nickname. From the images of the cards that I have seen, this set generally includes the full given name and the nickname (if applicable). But since I don't have all of them in front of me, I'm having to go with the info I have and then do some detective work to verify if I need to link the PID to an existing player or create a new one.
Anyway, as best as I can determine the rules, the name on each individual card should be the name entered for that card in the database (identify the card, not the player) and then if it differs from the official TCDB name then just link the PID to the correct name. Correct?
The alias entry helps with some, but I'm finding that some of these guys are presented on cards with more than two variations. My favorite is the guy that played 2 different sports at Alabama, has three total cards (1 TCMA, 2 Alabama football) and his name is different on each one.
Anyway, where I'm going with this: could we possibly get a set-up to add more than one alias? If I have a guy whose given first name is "James", he has the potential to be known as James, Jim, Jimmy, Jimmie, and possibly even a nickname like "Lefty". It would also help in situations like Cal Ripken, Jr. in that we could put in all the variations of commas and periods with that so that it would catch whatever version is on the card checklist (that SHOULD match the actual card) when it gets uploaded.
Turning off trading because my collection is in complete disarray after moving and I don't know when I can get it organized.