User talk:Lou Briccant

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I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~&#126;); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! -DES Talk 02:32, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Analog, May 1976
Thank you for your update of our record of the May 1976 Analog. Unfortunately some of the submisison did not match out conventions. The ISFDB is a rather complicated system, and it is not as obvious as we would like. Some of the ways in which we record things are a little arbitrary, but they help our database remain consistent and, we hope, useful to people. The following are items in your submission that did not exactly match our conventions or ways of recording information. The wiki page for Analog documents our agreed conventions specific to Analog. A number of different editors have worked together to make sure that the data for the magazine has been entered in a consistent manner.


 * You changed the Essay title "How to Move the Earth" to "Science Fact - How to Move the Earth" We handle this by including such essays in the series and then omitting the overall title "Science Fact" from the title for the specific essay.
 * You changed the story title "This, Too, We Reconcile" to "This, Too, We Reconcile1976-05-00" -- an obvious click error. Note that caution is needed when changing the titles of contents items, as this changes the title for all occurrences of the item in our database. See this help screen for more information.
 * You entered the editorial as "Editorial - News World For Old" and with type EDITOR. Editorials, like most non-fiction text included in a magazine, anthology, or collection, are recorded as ESSAYs. The EDITOR type is a rather special type used for the record that identifies who the editor of a magazine issue was. It is normally created automatically when a magazine record is created, and there is usually no need to create or change EDITOR records manually. For Analog, our convention is to enter editorials in the series, and omit the word "Editorial" from the title of the individual item.
 * You entered "The Reference Library" (a review column) with type REVIEW. This seems logical, but in fact we record the column as a whole with the type ESSAY. Records of type REVIEW are created by the individual entries in the Book Reviews section. Such records include the title and author of the work reviewed, as well as the name of the reviewer. This distinction can be confusing at first, but it becomes natural in time.
 * You created two identical book review records, for "The History of the Science Fiction Magazine, Part 1, 1926 - 1935", possibly one was supposed to be for part II, or possibly it was just a cut&paste error.
 * The cover artist should be credited exactly as the name appears in the magazine, in this case as "Kelly Freas" rather than as "Frank Kelly Freas". We have a method of recording that "Kelly Freas" is a name used by "Frank Kelly Freas", so that all of his work can be found in one place, with indications of how it was credited when it appeared.

I know all that sounds like a lot. Magazines (followed by anthologies) are one of the more complex areas of our database, because it is important to keep formats consistent over many different issues. I am going to approve your submisison and deal with the above issues. Note that it is not required that any particular editor enter everything that is in a magazine, or handle things like adding essays to series. Nor is an editor required to correct existing items. Any edit which improves the record, such as by adding contents we did not have on file, is quite welcome. Obviously the more closely the conventions can be followed, the easier it makes things for other editors.

Your contributions here are welcome, and we hope you will make many more. This note is intended to help you understand our rather complex and not always obvious system. The ISFDB was built entirely by unpaid volunteer programmers, and we continue to work to improve it. All the data was contributed by volunteers like you. If you have suggestions for how we could do things better, please do make them: the ISFDB:Community Portal is not a bad place to start. Again, thank you and welcome. -DES Talk 14:39, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

I have now corrected the items I mentioned above. The resulting record can be found. Please take a look at it, and if anything seems incorrect, either change it, or leave a message on my talk page, or on the help desk. If you have any questions about what I did and why, please ask here or on my talk page. Again, welcome and thanks for your contribution. -DES Talk 15:13, 16 July 2009 (UTC)