prefer legislator nicknames where available?

[dcloud]

Got an email saying we had the wrong first name for Sen. John Reed of Rhode Island. He goes by "Jack" so there was some understandable confusion. There are 41 legislators with nicknames in the API, most of them short versions of given names, some are vastly different:

bioguide_id	first_name	last_name	nickname
B001282	Garland	Barr	Andy
S000051	Marshall	Sanford	Mark
T000461	Patrick	Toomey	Pat
T000462	Patrick	Tiberi	Pat
S000522	Christopher	Smith	Chris
S001148	Michael	Simpson	Mike
S000185	Robert	Scott	Bobby
S000148	Charles	Schumer	Chuck
S001145	Janice	Schakowsky	Jan
R000487	Edward	Royce	Ed
R000395	Harold	Rogers	Hal
R000582	David	Roe	Phil
R000053	Charles	Rangel	Charlie
P000449	Robert	Portman	Rob
P000265	Thomas	Petri	Tom
P000588	Stevan	Pearce	Steve
M000933	James	Moran	Jim
M000508	Howard	McKeon	Buck
M000312	James	McGovern	Jim
M000133	Edward	Markey	Ed

I could do something like this:

What do you think @jcarbaugh and @nickom and @cweber ?

[dcloud]

But taking care to fix:

[nickom]

I think this is a great idea. :+1:

[jcarbaugh]

Yeah, sounds good to me.

[jcarbaugh]

Sorry, I meant... Whatever. I don't care what you do.

[konklone]

I would actually not bother displaying the first name if there's a nickname. That's what I do in the Android version, and what we do in OpenCongress.

That's because, though we use the term nickname in the data, these are actually just the names people always go by. You'll never see "Jack" in quotes before Reed, and if you visit Jack Reed's site, http://www.reed.senate.gov, you won't see John anywhere. It's just not ever used.

GovTrack does do the John "Jack" Reed approach, but my advice is still to show nickname-only if it exists.

[dcloud]

Well, you do see John on his website under his bio.

[jcarbaugh]

What does his mother call him?

[dcloud]

Turnip.

[dcloud]

I turniped this in the bud:

See also ef70afc4fba435707770fe4b0edc22a974695b32