User talk:Grendelkhan

Hello and welcome aboard! I remember your many posts on the Forum and glad to see that you are applying the same diligence to the database :-) Ahasuerus 20:02, 15 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Thanks! I hope to get some quality work done here. I'll be sure to bug you and/or Al when I have questions I don't see answered in the wiki. grendel|khan 12:31, 16 May 2006 (CDT)

Merging authors and library editions

 * The easiest way to merge two authors (that I know of) is to merge all of their respective records. You can do it by running a custom Advanced Search in the navbar and then merging records cross-authors. When the last record is merged, the software should (hopefully!) delete the orphan Author. Seems to have worked for me so far.


 * I don't think we have a standard for "library editions" vs. "hardcover" vs. anything else at this time. I suggest we discuss it at Bibliographic Rules.

Have to run, be back later! :) Ahasuerus 12:52, 16 May 2006 (CDT)

Translation troubles
I have posted some ideas at the bottom of Bibliographic Rules. Ahasuerus 18:58, 16 May 2006 (CDT)

Ace paperbacks
Post-1968 Ace paperbacks are tricky since, as Mike Christie wrote in the relevant Wikipedia article just a couple of weeks ago:


 * In January 1969, Ace switched to a numeric coding system. The code depended on the title of the book; or specifically on the first significant word in the title. For example, Tom Purdom's The Barons of Behavior was published by Ace in about 1972 as serial number 04760. The first letter of "Barons" is "B", so the code assigned is fairly early in the numeric range 00000 to 99999. This procedure for assigning numeric codes was in use at Ace at least into the early 1990's, and may still be in use today. For Ace doubles, one of the titles was selected and used to determine what serial number should be used. For example, 11560 is the Ace double The Communipaths by Suzette Haden Elgin, backed with Louis Trimble's The Noblest Experiment in the Galaxy. The serial number here is derived from The Communipaths; a serial number derived from the Trimble would have been about 58000.


 * For the later numeric series titles, the number is also part of the ISBN. To form the ISBN (if it exists) for one of these books one prefixes "0" for English language/US, and "441" (Ace's publisher number), to the serial number. The last digit can then be calculated with an ISBN check digit calculator. For example, Christopher Stasheff's Escape Velocity has serial number 21599; the ISBN is 0-441-21599-8.

Having said that, Pandora's Books, Ltd., a well established genre bookstore, claims that this edition was published in 1970. I suggest that regardless of whether we put "1970" in the Year field or the Note field, we add a comment to the effect that the exact date is not known at this time. Ahasuerus 08:20, 17 May 2006 (CDT)

Capturing the tangled web of non-SF authors
Hi hi! When you delete non-SF Publications and Works (Scooby-Doo, RPG, comics, etc), could you please add the names of their Authors to the respective project pages? That way we can later find less obvious Works that don't have give away keywords in their titles like "X-Men", "Scooby-Doo", etc :) Thanks! Ahasuerus 16:37, 22 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Will do. I try to traverse them in a way that I don't delete a publication unless I have its authors open already, so I can make sure that I'll cover all the authors spanning out from the first. (Does that make sense? I'm not sure how else to phrase it.) Do we want to keep track of authors who have been deleted, so that we can filter the monthly imports against them, or do we not care about them if they've been purged? grendel|khan 01:11, 23 May 2006 (CDT)


 * Oh yes, it does make sense. That's what I tried doing with RPG related Authors at first, but there were just too many of them: A leads to B and C, then B leades to K, L and M while C leads to Q, X, Y and Z, who lead to even more Authors, etc. That's why I started cataloging them in the first place :) As to whether we want to use the list in the future to filter new Publications out or at least to flag them as "suspect", that's still an open question, but if we have a master list, then we can always use it later on. Ahasuerus 09:08, 23 May 2006 (CDT)

John M. Ford: middle-name correction.
Since I'm not authorized to edit ISFDB entries, I request this correction:

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?John_M._Ford

Legal name is shown as Ford, John Michael

His nickname was "Mike" but his legal middle name was "Milo".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Ford now shows his name as: John Milo "Mike" Ford

Suggest name here read: Ford, John Milo -- unless you also wish to include his nickname, in which case try: Ford, John Milo "Mike"

--SAJordan 19:48, 7 Oct 2006 (CDT)


 * It's been fixed (though not by me, curse my slow pace.) grendel|khan 09:55, 27 Oct 2006 (CDT)

Community portal text
Hi -- good to see you back on the site again. I think your edit to the community portal collided with one of mine -- there's definitely something weird going on, since the diff shows your text but it's not in the portal page. I dropped a note on Ahasuerus's talk page asking him to take a look; I'm at work and don't have time to dig in. Just wanted to let you know.. Mike Christie 13:37, 20 Nov 2006 (CST)


 * Welcome back! The problem with the Community Portal page was the "p" template which was messing it up for some reason. I took it out for now and the page is back in business :) Ahasuerus 13:50, 20 Nov 2006 (CST)

That's weird. All does is substitute in TEXT. grendel|khan 14:22, 20 Nov 2006 (CST)

Ah, I fixed it. Someone didn't close a template properly (they called {{a|Kenneth_Bulmer), which ate all the text until the next template closure, or something like that. Looks fine now. grendel|khan 14:27, 20 Nov 2006 (CST)

Section moved from Community Portal to Help Desk
Hi -- just to let you know that I moved your merge question from the Community Portal to the help desk -- we're trying to get in the habit of using specialized discussion pages now. Thanks. Mike Christie (talk) 06:50, 16 Apr 2007 (CDT)

OpenSeriesBug 30016
Welcome back!

Unfortunately, OpenSeriesBug 30016 hasn't been fixed yet. We came up with a workaround that involves changing dates to 1980-00-02 and the like :) Ahasuerus 23:21, 16 Jul 2007 (CDT)


 * Whoops; that's my bad. Sorry, there. grendel|khan 10:08, 20 Jul 2007 (CDT)


 * No worries, 30016 needed to be rephrased to reflect the current state of the example series anyway :) Ahasuerus 12:14, 20 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Blocking spambot accounts
Just a quick FYI that the spambot accounts that you blocked yesterday and earlier today had to be unblocked. Unfortunately, our version of the Wiki software is very old and doesn't work well with the dynamic IP addresses generated within the TAMU network. Half the time blocking a single account locks everybody out -- see this section for a detailed discussion. Ahasuerus 18:42, 11 Aug 2007 (CDT)


 * I had to revert your last spambot block again since it locked everybody out. Unfortunately, blocking spambots is not a viable solution at this time due to the way the Wiki software works (or rather doesn't) -- please see the discussion linked above. Thanks! Ahasuerus 20:03, 12 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Welcome Back!
I see you editing again, would you like to update the moderator availability table so people know whether to bother you or not? BLongley 16:02, 21 Sep 2007 (CDT)

Changes to user rights
Just to let you know that there was a discussion of the best way to handle inactive moderators over on ISFDB talk:Policy. The executive summary of the discussion was that a moderator who hasn't been active for a over a year will have a hard time keeping up with all the policy and software changes that we have been going through. ISFDB:Policy has been updated accordingly and, since you haven't been active since mid-2007, I have turned your "moderator" flag off, so when you come back, you won't be able to approve submissions. No need to panic, though :) as we have a list of Moderator Qualifications and you can reclaim the ability to approve submissions once you go through the process. Hope to see you again when you have time for the ISFDB! Ahasuerus 05:07, 1 June 2008 (UTC)