User talk:JLaTondre/Archive 2008

Welcome!
Hello,, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:
 * Help pages
 * What the ISFDB Wiki is for
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 * Help:Screen:EditPub - Warning and a note on how to update a publication's contents
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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 19:14, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007
Your submission duplicates our already exixting record for, so I am going to reject it. However, I did take data from it to add the story "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter" to the record. if you have a copy of the book, adding the otehr contetns to the existing record would be vry helpful.

Also, when creating a new anthology, if you enter a story in the first contents slot, please remember to change the type from "anthology" to "shortfiction".

The links above and Help:Getting Started may be usefuel to you.

Again welcome, your contributions are much appreciatated. -DES Talk 19:25, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I just accepted your second submisison for this edition, which added content to the existing record, as I asked. Thank you very much. The result is linked above. By the way, what is the largest roman-numbered page? I entered it as "cxxvii", but this assumes that the obits took up only a single page, which seems unlikely. If the record is now correct and compelte, yopu may procede to verify it if you wish. See Help: How to verify data for more on this process. -DES Talk 19:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * The largest Roman numeral is "cxxxi". --JLaTondre 19:37, 6 September 2008 (UTC)


 * (Copied from User talk:DESiegel60)
 * I wasn't attempting to create a new record. I was attempting to add the stories to the existing one. I thought I followed the directions to do that (other than mistakenly hitting save after entering the first story & then having to do a second edit for the remainder of the stories). Can you tell me how I should have done it? I used the "Edit this Pub" link. Thanks. --JLaTondre 19:34, 6 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I made an error. on looking back at the submisison, it was indeed an update rather than a duplicate. My apologies. You did just fine. Fortunately, no data was lost here.
 * A minor point, when entering a publication that has both roman-numbered pages (usualy at the start) and normal arabic-numbered pages, list the pagecount as something like "xxvi + 354". But compared to everythign ou got right on your firat try, this is minor indeed. Again, welcome and my apoligies for the error. -DES Talk 19:41, 6 September 2008 (UTC)

Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories
I'm going to use the information that you supplied to update this pub record, but will reject the submission. I know you went to a lot of trouble entering all the contents, but a better approach would have been to import the contents from this pub record (which I will do.) If I had accepted your submission, all of the newly created content records would have to be merged with those that already existed in the database, taking many more submissions. Thanks for your contribution. MHHutchins 22:04, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Okay, thanks. Is there somewhere this level of detail is spelled out in the help pages. I've read through and, while it's quite possible I missed it, I didn't see anything about it. --JLaTondre 14:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure it's in the help yet, it's quite a new feature. BLongley 14:49, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * I see some problems in the entries. For example, it's showing 1995 for Garnett's "The Demon Pope", but my copy shows it as being 1888. Looking at the other version, it doesn't show a year for this story. I'm guess it picked the year from the Oxford book itself. There are a couple of more stories that have the same thing. How should this be rectified? Should I just edit those entries? --JLaTondre 14:36, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * If those are the only records for the story, then yes, you can edit the title date to reflect the first publication date. However, it's always wise to check whether another record for the story exists, which may be under a slightly different author-name or title. If there's an exact match you can merge the records, choosing the earliest publication date for the merged record. If another record exists with a different author-name or title, then we'd make one record a variant of the other. In this case, changing "The Demon Pope" to 1888 looks fine. BLongley 14:47, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Just to clarify to make sure I don't make a mistake: I should edit the story's entry to reflect the date? Not the date for the story in the anthology's entry? I was originally thinking the later, but from I'm interpreting what you wrote as to do the former. Thanks. --JLaTondre 15:34, 14 September 2008 (UTC)


 * When the 1995 edition of this title was entered (I'm assuming it was first, or the first with content entries), the submitter must not have recorded dates for each of the content entries, so the system by default attributed the date of the publication to the date of the stories. (I see that four of them still show 1995 as the publication date, all obviously incorrect.) If you're certain of the date you can go to each of the story's title record (click on the story title in the list of this pub's contents) and change the date BUT DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE.  I emphasis that because this title record is for all publications of the story.  Changing the title name would change it for all publications in which the story appeared. Because there can only be one date for its first appearance that would be easier to correct if it turns out to be wrong than to change the title as a story can have variant titles in any of its publications.  I hope this all make sense.  Please ask if there's anything that's puzzling about the procedure.  Thanks. MHHutchins 17:55, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Forgot to directly answer your question! Either of the procedures are correct.  If you click on the story titles you'd have four different submissions.  If you do an edit of the pub, you'd make the four changes (DATES ONLY) and have one submission. Sorry. MHHutchins 17:58, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005
I accepted your submission of this new pub, but had to make a few changes for it to conform to ISFDB standards Thanks for your submission. MHHutchins 22:21, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) For trade paperback use "tp".
 * 2) When linking to Amazon, remove the "_SS500_." from the URL (leave only one period before "jpg"). This will eliminate the white space border.
 * 3) For generic titles such as "Introduction" add the pub's title in parentheses to distinguish it from similarly named records, e.g. "Introduction (Fantasy: The Very Best of 2005)"
 * Thank you. --JLaTondre 14:23, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Highwaymen: Robbers and Rogues
Just a note that I have approved Highwaymen: Robbers and Rogues and then changed the ellipsis in Dennis L. McKiernan's "The Lesser of ..." to "The Lesser of . . ." as per Help:Screen:NewPub: "An ellipsis should be entered as the sequence "space", "period", "space", "period", "space", "period"." This is a relatively new ISFDB standard based on a review of what various manuals of style have to say on the subject. Almost half of the affected records (900+) are still using the "..." format, so it will take us some time to get them to a consistent state. Come to think of it, I should probably write a script to make the change automagically. Thanks! Ahasuerus 17:22, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Erl-King short story date change (Angela Carter)
Further to the Shippley Fantasy anthology ...

Hi, I've put your Erl-King date change on hold 'cos you are proposing a change to 1979, but if you go and look at Angela Carter's summary page, there is an Erlking 1977 with a variant title Erl-King 1995 (the one you are changing), and an Erl-King 1977. Would you please check the year you intend.

Also, when there are variant titles, our conventions are to try to capture the date the variant was first used. (This is possibly why those 4 or so short stories from the Shippley anthology had 1995?) However, establishing the first use of a variant title can be a little tricky when it's the form of the author's name that is the variant, and also for short stories. Variants with & without hyphens can be tricky too, 'cos it's hard to know if it is the book editor who changed it, or a data source or an ISFDB editor.

As the other moderators have noted above, some care is required when changing story data in an anthology or collection when the story is in multiple anthologies/collections/magazines, especially when there are variant titles &/or authors - especially authors. This is because one change can affect all instances, and you don't always want to do that.

Don't worry if it takes a few re-reads of the help and a few questions here &/or on the HelpDesk page to come to grips with short stories and with variant titles. It took me quite a while to get the hang of variant titles when I was an ISFDB beginner, as some of the well established moderators will testify!

Aside: What to do with the 2 separate Erlking/Erl-Kings on Angela Carter's summary page is a separate topic.

Regards ... clarkmci / --j_clark 04:17, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * The reason the Shippey anthology had 1995 is because when the person entered the trade paperback version they apparently did not enter dates for several stories and those defaulted to 1995 (the date of the anthology). When MHHutchins cloned the entry, it brought over the incorrect dates. Per the Shippey anthology, the source notes state:
 * 'The Erl-King' by Angela Carter (1940-92) was printed first in the magazine Bananas and then in slight altered form in her collection The Bloody Chamber (Gollancz: London, 1979). I have not been able to see the earlier version and have reprinted the later.
 * I don't know about the other title or the 1977 date (though I assume that was the Bananas date), but The Oxford Book of Fantasy Stories lists it as The Erl-King and dates it to 1979. If the The Erl-King is a variant specific to Shippey, then it should have a date of 1994 as that is when the hardback came out.
 * However, doing Google searches, I was able to find several pages that indicate The Erl-King as the title in the The Bloody Chamber which would indicate it should have the 1979 date.
 * Does that help? Or just confuse it more? --JLaTondre 23:10, 15 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I will approve. It will be useful to add that note from the Shippley anthology to the Erl-King title record. ... clarkmci/--j_clark 03:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Best of the Best edited by Dozois
Can you verify that the Waldrop story in this pub is titled "Flying Saucer Rock and Roll" or "Flying Saucer Rock & Roll" as it was in most publications? Thanks. MHHutchins 02:54, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I'll double check. It was a library book so I don't have it on hand. May take me a day or two. --JLaTondre 15:39, 22 November 2008 (UTC)
 * It is titled "Flying Saucer Rock and Roll" on both the TOC and the page heading. --JLaTondre 02:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I'll make the necessary changes. MHHutchins 05:37, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

Realms of War anthology
Thanks for submitting an update for this pub. Your change to the ISBN created an invalid checksum. Perhaps you meant to change the ISBN-13 which would have a "2" checksum (978-0-7869-4934-2). The ISBN-10 would have a "1" checksum (0-7869-4934-1). Can you check to see if the publisher made a mistake? (They often seemed to be confused about the new ISBN-13s as much as everyone else!) Thanks. MHHutchins 18:05, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * My mistake. The book only has an ISBN-13 number listed. I updated the record. -- JLaTondre 18:19, 27 December 2008 (UTC)