ISFDB:Community Portal/Archive/Archive07

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Contents

For Those Working On Fritz Leiber

As a last bit of this many-day-long, many-handed effort, I think I've figured out what do do with this puppy 155747. I've created a new anthology here 420221 that has actual contents, which will in due course migrate to the Leiber page and be merged where appropriate. If you think this is the wrong approach, let me know: I'll hold off deleting the offending "collection" for a few days to let you think. (Scott Latham 20:52, 6 Mar 2007 (CST))

There are two questions.
1) Why would someone think this is the wrong approach? It all seems fine to me.
I thought there might be those who would want to see this publication on the Leiber page, since all the content except the Introduction, the Afterword, and the Letters is by Leiber. (Scott Latham 10:37, 7 Mar 2007 (CST))
2) I'm moderately puzzled as to why you created a new publication with contents rather than adding the contents to the existing publication record for this book.
I was reliving the trauma of once trying to convert a collection to an anthology which seemed to take a gazillion edit passes, so I opted just to start afresh, particularly since the content, which was moderately lengthy, had to be entered either way. (Scott Latham 10:37, 7 Mar 2007 (CST))
It should just be one edit per publication and on any one of those publications you would also change the title type for the parent title record (down in the Contents section). I usually approve changes to the title type without a second thought as there's next to zero data loss and most people understand very clearly the difference between a novel, collection, anthology, omnibus, etc. meaning it's quite unlikely they will be making a mistake. I agree it's a pain if you have dozens of publications that need to be changed. Marc Kupper (talk) 21:32, 7 Mar 2007 (CST)
The only issues with the old publication record seem to be
  • An extra colon in the title
  • The month is February vs. May.
  • The page count is 323 vs 328.
  • The pub-type is NOVEL instead of ANTHOLOGY.
  • BTW - is the cover image correct? You might as well copy its URL to your new record. Marc Kupper (talk) 03:42, 7 Mar 2007 (CST)

All to be done, as well as adding the hardcover publication. (Scott Latham 10:37, 7 Mar 2007 (CST))

Leading spaces in author names

There are hundreds of author records whose canonical name begins with a space. Rather than hunt them manually, I think it would be better to correct (and merge where appropriate) them all at once with a SQL command. --JVjr 07:46, 9 Mar 2007 (CST)

Different problem - I tried that Search link and got an error for "http://localhost/cgi-bin/edit/aa_search.cgi?author_canonical%3D+record%3D100" when I tried to click through to the next 100 records. If the first 100 are on ISFDB, why would it think the next 100 are on MY PC? BLongley 15:39, 21 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Yup, it's Page 2 of Advanced Search for author results uses localhost :) Ahasuerus 19:17, 21 Mar 2007 (CDT)
It turned out to be fairly fast to deal with this manually and to clean up things like author names with a period at the end. A couple of mysterious authors remain.
  • (space) - a single space
  • A - Usually with an author named N
Marc Kupper (talk) 00:11, 10 Mar 2007 (CST)
Thank you, Marc, this has been a particularly vexing problem since spaces are hard to see in HTML tables.
Also, just as a heads up for new editors, we have a sporadically active ISFDB:Author Names Cleanup project. So far I have contributed a Perl (to be migrated to Python at some point) script that finds questionable suffixed and Marc has come up with a table of anonymous and uncredited authors. Feel free to add more tools, tables, etc modulo free time and scripting skills :) Ahasuerus 01:14, 10 Mar 2007 (CST)
Playing around with the SQL dump, I also found one author with a trailing space in its name. This review: 316481 is supposedly written by the same publication it's a review of, which is screwy even aside from the trailing space in the "author"'s name. --WimLewis 22:10, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)
Probably just a cut-and-paste gone awry. I have all Quantums in my collection, which I will be able to check in late April, but I believe that Michael has them as well and can probably get to this issue first. Ahasuerus 22:21, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Reference book up for adoption

I have a copy of The MIT Science Fiction Society's Index to the Science Fiction Magazines 1951-1965 that I picked up at Barnes & Noble in the mid-70s and have never used. I'd like it to go to a good home, so I'm offering it here. Moderators get first dibs, then editors. You can respond here or on my Talk page. (Scott Latham 12:21, 9 Mar 2007 (CST))

I'm definitely interested -- how much do you want for it? I'm getting on a plane in a few hours, though, and will be away from computers for a week, so I won't be able to respond again for a while. Mike Christie (talk) 20:56, 9 Mar 2007 (CST)
Yes, I'd like to see someone like Mike with a bunch of magazines get it. My magazine collection is small and while this sounds interesting my main use for something like this would be as a secondary verification source for ISFDB. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:28, 9 Mar 2007 (CST)

Mike gets it. (Scott Latham 13:01, 10 Mar 2007 (CST))


Magazine entries duplicated after submitting data

Added some interior artists and essays to Imagination, Nov 1951. Entries appear twice on web-page. DB error or is it possible to accidentally hit the submit button twice and have this happen? Clean up by clearing data out of duplicate entries? --Swfritter 17:20, 12 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Very interesting! It does look like a duplicate submission, probably something for Al to look into when he gets back. Ahasuerus 01:34, 13 Mar 2007 (CDT)
To add to the mystery - A check only found one submission.
2007-03-12 13:02:29 415191 - PubUpdate Swfritter Ahasuerus Imagination, November 1951
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/mod/pv_update.cgi?415191
Marc Kupper (talk) 19:55, 13 Mar 2007 (CDT)
ps: I took a look at the title record numbers and it looks like a single submission was integrated twice as the numbers go from 441041 to 441111 and then duplicate in the same title order as records 441121 to 441191. Ahasuerus was the only active moderator at the time and so it probably was not a race condition between him and someone else. I then saw about a minute later an approval for a second magazine update, Imagination, June 1951, and it's contents are duplicated too implying that something was wrong with the code or database at the time. A casual check of other integrations around that time period did not find any problems. Marc Kupper (talk) 04:32, 14 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Wonder Story Annual 1951

This is not exactly a request for physical verification, so I will post it here. Could someone with a copy of Tuck's and/or Clute/Nicholls' encyclopedias please check who edited Wonder Story Annual 1951? It was right around the time when Mines took over from Merwin at the Standard Twins, IIRC, and I don't have my references here. TIA! Ahasuerus 23:02, 17 Mar 2007 (CDT)

I checked my copy of Clute/Nicholls and the first two issues were edited by Sam Merwin and the other two by Samuel Mines.:) Kraang 00:39, 18 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Thanks, all fixed now :) Ahasuerus 01:20, 18 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Error in Oldest Authors listing

The list of ISFDB Oldest Living Authors begins with "0000-00-00 - Richard_Parks (2007)". The strange thing is that he has "Birthdate: 15 June 1955" given. I even tried to AuthorUpdate his data, deleting the Birthdate and retyping it again in case it was a wrong kind of hyphens or something like that, but it didn't appear in the diff summary as any change, so apparently the format was all right but there must be an error somewhere deep in the SQL data. Which I hereby commend to expert attention. --JVjr 14:20, 20 Mar 2007 (CDT)

I have tried changing his DOB to 1980-00-00 and back and he still showed up as 0000-00-00 on that page. I suspect it's the punctuation characters in his Author record that confuse the Python script:

query = "select author_birthdate,author_canonical,YEAR(NOW())-YEAR(author_birthdate) as age from authors where author_birthdate is not null and author_deathdate is null and YEAR(NOW())-YEAR(author_birthdate) > 74 order by author_birthdate;"Ahasuerus 22:57, 20 Mar 2007 (CDT)

My first thought was that there must be two author's named Richard Parks. Bingo - I don't know how you display an author by record # but there were
I merged them and inspection finds the extra Parks was probably created as a result of something related to the shortfiction The Golden Star as extra copies of that showed up on the bibliography when I hit refresh after the merge. Marc Kupper (talk) 01:38, 22 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Does James Patterson write specfict?

I was diligently working through the New Submissions list, when I realized I'd just approved several title merges that were translations of James Patterson novels. I looked at the James Patterson page and was astonished by the number of entries. I've read very little of his work, but I'm under the general impression that it's mystery/thriller, not speculative fiction, and I'm not aware of any specfict work from this author. What do you think? (Scott Latham 13:46, 22 Mar 2007 (CDT))

I have run across a number of non-specfict authors in ISFDB. For now I've decided to let them be in hopes that some day we will have a data export capability where we could generate an export dump that could be put on the author's bibliographic wiki and if someone then wants the data for their own bibliography it's there. A thought is to use the new "tags" things to tags the titles non-genre. That will preserve the existing title codes and bibliographic layout but also make it easy to find the non-genre works down the road. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:05, 22 Mar 2007 (CDT)
That's more or less what I had in mind as well. We can convert these worthy folks' "NOVELS" to "NONGENRE" for now (time permitting), although keep in mind that the Summary display logic ignores the two Series-related fields in NONGENRE Titles and displays them chronologically within the NONGENRE section. Ahasuerus 23:58, 22 Mar 2007 (CDT)
I did this once (long ago) and afterwards was not happy with the result as the bibliography had been nicely divided into novels, omnibuses, anthologies, plus shortfiction and afterwards everything was lumped into non-genre. James_Patterson's bibliography, while all non-genre, looks pretty good at the moment except for some foreign language titles that I assume are translations and should be merged with the English titles. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:47, 23 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Our current nomenclature is somewhat limited. If a Title is marked as NONGENRE, it can't be a NOVEL, a COLLECTION or a NONFICTION Title at the same time. Analogously, a NONFICTION title can't be an ANTHOLOGY title, so a compendium of articles about SF can't be easily distinguished from a monograph. I have been arguing for adding more axes to our taxonomical model for some time now, but it's likely too much work at the moment given our limited programming resources and other priorities :( Ahasuerus 20:06, 23 Mar 2007 (CDT)
That's why I had suggested using a non-genre tag. From James_Patterson I started chasing down the co-authors tagging away as the story titles looked like detective mysteries until I got to Stephen_King who I have not read at all other than one shortfiction but I believe he's specfict horror for some (all?) titles. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:37, 23 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Yes, mostly supernatural horror plus some fantasy and some science fiction. Ahasuerus 00:11, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)
The nongenre tag allowed me to keep the structure of the existing bibliographies and if someone disagrees with a choice they can change the tag. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:37, 23 Mar 2007 (CDT)
That's a reasonable approach that Al has advocated for some time, but, unfortunately, it hides genre information 1 level below the surface. I think there is a great deal of value to separating genre and non-genre Titles at the top level in a genre-specific (or at least genre-privileged) database, but I readily admit that our current implementation of NONGENRE Titles leaves much to be desired. Ahasuerus 00:11, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)
I just realized I've read some Dean_Koontz that qualified as specfict though he does not have much on isfdb, for example I suspect Sole Survivor should be added. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:37, 23 Mar 2007 (CDT)
He is (much) better known to ISFDB as Dean_R._Koontz :) Ahasuerus 00:11, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Those edits that alerted Scott were mine (I got to Patterson as it was his birthday on Thursday, and I have a mini-project of gradual checking internal consistency of those authors who get on the ISFDB homepage due to biographic anniversaries); I had a similar feeling, expressed at Author:James Patterson. I suppose when the data is already in the database, it would be a waste to delete them, but I sincerely hope that more books like these, especially translations, won't be imported further without human control (and immediate processing). Really, I think wanting to document every translated edition of any English-language SF book is too huge a task; countries mostly have their own bibliographies, which can handle such a specialization much better, while for ISFDB it is out of the primary scope and creates many difficult problems (for example, what about foreign collections/anthologies without a direct 1:1 counterpart in English? recently it took me quite some time to find that "Siebte Schrein" is apparently a complete translation of Silverberg's anthology Legends and not just a half of that), for minimum use.
Another interesting bug of the workaround with "non-genre" tag: after I merged a few more translated Patterson titles, their tags were merged irregardless off duplicity, so now several books there have the tag twice and even thrice, although from a single editor. Marc, can you check whether you can delete the superfluous tags? --JVjr 11:52, 25 Mar 2007 (CDT)
P. S. Meseems that "Modern Hungarian Society in the Making : The Unfinished Experience (A Central European University Press Book)" will be by another Patterson... :-)
and a p.s. from Marc - I was reading https://tv.ku.edu/blog/frank/2006/dec/04/readers-cant-get-enough-patterson/ and see that there apparently are a couple of specfict titles in James_Patterson's bibliography - When the Wind Blows, The Lake House, and the Maximum Ride young adult series.
Thank you for the reminder on merging - I did a merge and had wondered if the code would spot and merge the duplicate tags but forgot to check this afterwards. Fortunately, if you click on the tag name it takes you to a list that have the titles with the most tags sorted on top and so locating/removing the duplicates was easy. This afternoon I finished Ken_Follett's Triple and out of curiosity checked ISFDB - yep, yet another non-genre author and I'm wishing for a way to tag all of an author's works as non-genre in one shot. Follett's bibliography is a mess but he's clearly non-genre and so I'll leave it alone for now. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:49, 26 Mar 2007 (CDT)
In thinking about thus further and about how to keep the focus on spec-fict I'm starting to lean towards
  • If we identify an author as non-genre we just delete everything.
  • If an author has a mix of genre and non-genre works then the non-genre novels would use the NONGENRE title type but other title types (Anthology, collection, etc.) would also get changed to NONGENRE but also have something like "(non-genre anthology)" appended to the title so that people will know it's original type. If the titles were part of a series that would be removed and added to the notes instead.
Marc Kupper (talk) 00:49, 26 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Oh yes, I've come across Maximum Ride on the Wikipedia, but managed to forget it before I came here. I've added synopses to the two adult books about winged children (another question is whether Maximum Ride should be treated as their sub-series, but I'll happily leave that to dedicated bibliographers); so, can you delete the non-genre tag from them? --JVjr 10:23, 26 Mar 2007 (CDT)
BTW - deleting/changing tags is easy. From a title click on [Add Tags], delete the tags (leave them blank), and click [Submit Data], it's not connected to the moderator system meaning your updates are immediate. I went ahead with removing the non-genre from the Patterson sci-fi books plus also reclassified the remainder of his books using title-type non-genre. James_Patterson looks fine to me at the moment in that the spec-fict titles are all on top and the non-genre is now all collected at the bottom of the page. Fortunately, he did not have shortfiction as then it would have been messy to go case-by-case to decide which should be non-genre and to move those into the title-type nongenre. Marc Kupper (talk) 13:34, 26 Mar 2007 (CDT)

still broken

The site still seems to be broken; I tried to edit some errors I happened to come across; when I try to correct an error it tells me "Login required to edit. You have to login to edit data," and then when I log in and go back to the page, it tells me "Login required to edit. You have to login to edit data" This is somewhat frustrating. ("reload" doesn't help.)

Earlier in the beta, some of our editors had problems with logging in, mostly due to the fact that we are using a rather old version of the MediaWiki software, but I thought they have all been resolved by now. I wonder if that period in your username is causing the problem? Could you please try to create a new username withour a period in it and try again? Ahasuerus 19:14, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Also, what is this all about? from trying to use the "dup candidates" button: 404 Not Found The requested URL /cgi-bin/find_dups.cgi was not found on this server. Apache/2.0.55 (FreeBSD) DAV/2 mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 SVN/1.4.2 mod_ssl/2.0.55 OpenSSL/0.9.8a mod_apreq2-20051231/2.5.7 mod_perl/2.0.2 Perl/v5.8.8 Server at isfdb.tamu.edu Port 80

If the URL isn't there, why is it a link? Geoffrey.landis 14:27, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)

The Dup Candidates button is relatively new, but it has been working fine for me and other editors for the last couple of weeks. I just used it on Heinlein's biblio and got the expected results. What do you see when you click on this link? Ahasuerus 19:14, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Moderator Schedule Page?

I will be going to a place with virtually no internet and plenty of alligators in about 12 hours. With luck, I will return to what passes for civilization by Thursday. I will make a note of it on my User page, but I wonder if we could use a "Moderator Availability" matrix? It may help explain queue length spikes, submission approval delays, etc. Ahasuerus 15:21, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)

If the queue is long then the moderators are not around. I've been mulling over ways to allow for automated approval as most of the submissions are "safe" and can be approved with no research and the moderators exist to deal with submissions that could lead to data loss. My own schedule is iffy - I'm around but can't spend a lot of time on ISFDB meaning I'll check in from time to time and deal with the queue as best as possible. Marc Kupper (talk) 13:06, 26 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Nominating Bill Longley for moderatorship

Ref: Moderator Qualifications#Becoming a moderator for the nomination process.

Nomination statement

I nominate Bill Longley (talk • contribs1 and contribs2) for moderatorship; he has accepted the nomination. Bill has 1933 edits as "BLongley" and 147 edits as "BillLongley" (due to login issues at one point) to date. Based on my experience with his submissions, Bill has mastered the Novel/Collection side of the application, although, as he points out on his Talk page, he hasn't had much experience with Magazines as of yet. Most importantly, Bill has been a meticulous and careful editor, resolving outstanding issues in a patient, methodical and amiable fashion -- see his Talk page. Ahasuerus 19:01, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Support

  1. Support, as nominator. Ahasuerus 19:01, 24 Mar 2007 (CDT)
  2. Support, has done lots of quality edits, is good at resolving issues and is responsive on his talk page. --Unapersson 03:26, 25 Mar 2007 (CDT)
  3. Support. Mike Christie (talk) 07:54, 25 Mar 2007 (CDT)
  4. Support - the more (mods), the merrier (or at least faster, more robust etc.). --JVjr 11:52, 25 Mar 2007 (CDT)
  5. Support - Bill is a careful and thoughtful (and prolific) editor, and would make a swell moderator. (Scott Latham 15:07, 25 Mar 2007 (CDT))
  6. Support - Excellent! Marc Kupper (talk) 21:57, 25 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Oppose

Comments/Neutral

  1. Comments I seem to be doomed to more work. :-/ Does nobody want to test the "Oppose" option? I even have to test the "Comments/Neutral" myself, it seems! ;-) BLongley 16:15, 28 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Nomination closed. I have promoted BLongley to moderator per the consensus. Mike Christie (talk) 22:31, 29 Mar 2007 (CDT)

OK, I've tried a few Moderatory things tonight, PLEASE DO let me know if I've done any damage. BLongley 16:03, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Rhondi (Vilott) Salsitz

"Pick a name, any name, no, don't show me it, just point it at the camera..." ;-) According to here this lady is Emily Drake, Anne Knight, Elizabeth Forrest, Charles Ingrid, Rhondi Vilott Salsitz, R.A.V. Salsitz, Rhondi Vilott and Rhondi Greening. And maybe a few more by the time I finish typing. This site confirms a few names. Does anyone here have a preference for a canonical name, or any decent biographical info? We've got at least five of her pseudonyms already, no biographical data, and my Clutes have let me down. Locus does suggest a birthdate of 1949, that's it. BLongley 14:16, 25 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Her real/canonical name is Rhondi_A._Vilott_Salsitz and she has a variety of pen names for the various genre she writes in. I've e-mailed her before and she responds back quickly meaning it should be easy enough to confirm details. Marc Kupper (talk) 21:47, 25 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Thanks Marc! It would have to be THAT one, it's the only one where ALL publications are questionable. :-/ (First five look as though they should be R. A. V. Salsitz, last might have a missing "The" in the title and an extra "A." in her name.) I'll dump the references I've found into biblio notes, verify the one pub I've got, create the OTHER variant name, and AVOID this one, I think. I only have the book because of a former Unicorn-loving girlfriend... Still, I found the "About the Author" page before I threw it on the "To be disposed of" pile. BLongley 14:16, 26 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Oh, by the way - WHICH email works? And did you find out what the "A." is for? BLongley 17:47, 26 Mar 2007 (CDT)
I used the contact that's on http://www.magickers.com/ and she e-mailed me back from that e-mail. I wondered what the "A." stood for but assumed it's her personal business and never asked about it. Marc Kupper (talk) 14:16, 27 Mar 2007 (CDT)
OK - I thought a DOB question might be more personal (never ask a lady her age!), and I don't add email addresses anywhere without (sometimes presumed) permission, so don't really want to pursue it over a publication I'm not going to keep. (Nothing wrong with the book, just not my cup of tea.) Google shows people have discussed Pseudonyms here before, with her as a great example: we're not going to keep the questions secret anyway, so maybe the simplest thing to do is ask her to do her own biography - and maybe the bibliography? :-) BLongley 16:10, 27 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Unknown by Unknown

Moderators - how do you think this record was constructed?

480141 MakeVariant submitter: unknown, title: unknown
  • [1] shows
    • Proposed Make Variant Submission
    • Submitted by: unknown
    • HOLD Approve

This may be related to that at the very top of the moderator table it says

parse error on: Rudam Filomena & Greg & Rikki-Tikki & Barlow & the Alien 98529 57714

A title search for "Rikki-Tikki" finds

  • 187386 Filomena & Greg & Rikki-Tikki & Barlow & the Alien by James Tiptree, Jr.
  • 98529 Filomena & Greg & Rikki-Tikki & Barlow & the Alien by James Tiptree, Jr.

Marc Kupper (talk) 12:55, 28 Mar 2007 (CDT)

I'd guess this title was involved too... "Make Variant" of an already variant maybe? BLongley 15:58, 28 Mar 2007 (CDT)
I submitted a merge of 187386 and 98529 - that looked fine on the moderator page and they have been merged. I agree that it's likely it involves 57714. Hopefully Rudam will remember what he was trying to do. Making a variant where one already exists is handled well by ISFDB. Marc Kupper (talk) 17:16, 28 Mar 2007 (CDT)

First, there's a mod tool that will help you look at the XML data to help debug situations like this. If you change the URL from: 

   http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/mod/kv_new.cgi?480141

to: 

   http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/mod/dumpxml.cgi?480141

it will show the XML data as it appears in the database, without trying to parse the XML. In this particular case it was the Tiptree title above, but the ampersands in the subject line were not escaped. This caused an XML exception, which was "gracefully" caught and the app then exited.

I've repaired the record, and updated submitmkvar1.cgi and submitmkpseudo.cgi (which also failed to perform an XML escape). Alvonruff 08:06, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Thank you very much Al! Marc Kupper (talk) 22:15, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)
I just came across another way of generating these. I submitted a title update to link to the Wikipedia entry for "The Monkey's Paw", and got a Python error. "Aha, that apostrophe breaks things. Fair enough", I thought, "Let's try escaping that part of the URL manually". So I entered an "&apost;" instead and submitted it. That's when I got an Unknown by Unknown in the submission queue. Now you may have already spotted what I did wrong there - it's "'" not "&apost;" - but the error isn't particularly obvious even when looking at the xml dump, so watch out for it. BLongley 13:56, 12 May 2007 (CDT)

Another Strange Submission

Here's another odd one. The submission says

  • 481981 ON HOLD (Marc Kupper) MakePseudonym 2007-03-28 21:43:45 Kraang C. Gross
Proposed Make Pseudonym Submission
Pseudonym [Record #74271] Parent Author [Record #141422]
C. Gross
Submitted by: unknown
HOLD Approve

I'm assuming Kraang submitted a Make Pseudonym with a parent # of 141422 and that the code did not validate it but let's see if Al can figure out the XML blob. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:26, 28 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Marc I had a look and the title # is right the authors name is Charles Gross. Did my submitter ID not turnup? Also a couple of times i've gotten a different edit page, giant logo, different format, these edits seem to vanish. Is this the monitors page?Kraang 20:35, 29 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Kraang, the list of new submissions has a summary view and you click on a record to see the details. With your submissions the summary looks ok but the details page is a mess. When an editor creates a submission it's packaged into something we call an XML blob. There's code on the editor's side to create the blob and code on the moderator's side to decode and display it. For two recent transactions something went wrong and either the blob has an invalid format or the decoder code is not set up to recognize something in the blob. Once Al gets back he can inspect the blobs and determine what needs to get fixed.
The giant logo and different format is related to an intermittent error where the web server is not delivering the biblio.css file. This is the style sheet that tells how the ISFDB web page should look and when it's missing the results can be disconcerting. I'm not sure if something is going wrong with the server or if it's a software fault but I have been seeing a number of malformed submissions lately. There will be title merges where one of the titles is missing, the blown up submissions that are listed here, and some other strangeness. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:15, 29 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Using the handy-dandy XML dump shows
<MakePseudonym>
<Submitter>Kraang</Submitter>
<Subject>C. Gross</Subject>
<Record>74271</Record>
<Parent>141422</Parent>
</MakePseudonym>
The XML looks ok other than the Parent record # is far out of range and caused the moderator display-details page to show a white blank for the Parent Author name instead of the usual green background and for the submitter name to be displayed as "unknown". I did a "Make This Author a Pseudonym" using Charles Gross as the parent name. The resulting blob is
<MakePseudonym>
<Submitter>Marc Kupper</Submitter>
<Subject>C. Gross</Subject>
<Record>74271</Record>
<Parent>26554</Parent>
</MakePseudonym>
That displays ok and I approved it. I then did a second "Make This Author a Pseudonym" with a Parent # of 141422 and was able to replicate Kraang's sbumission and the resulting detail-display. Kraang, I'll assume you entered Charles Gross and that something blew up badly in the author record # lookup. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:34, 1 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Hayford Peirce novel, The Spark of Life, in Russian

Hi! A while ago, when I first started inputting some info here, I made a clumsy attempt to put in the Russian edition of Napoleon Disentimed. Someone almost instantly corrected my fonts with the correct Russian info and cyrillic fonts. So there is apparently some Russian database that some of the members of this project can tap into. I've just remembered that just about 2 years ago I got a $400 check from Wildside for a Russian edition of my novel The Spark of Life. I wonder if there's any way anyone here can dig up any info on the Russian edition? Aside from banking their sale money, I doubt if Wildside knows anything more about it.... Thanks for any help you can offer! Best, Hayford Peirce 19:04, 29 Mar 2007 (CDT)

I think they looked the book up on http://www.sigla.ru - I did a search for Искра (Spark) by Peirce, Hayford and found
Author: Ремарк, Эрих Мария (I assume this is the translator)
Title: Искра жизни : Роман / Эрих Мария Ремарк; Пер. с нем. В.Котелкина
Imprint: Москва; Харьков : АСТ; Фолио, 1998
Marc Kupper (talk) 03:11, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)
ps - I just looked up the English pub and it's a 2001 book meaning that's another "Spark of Life" by someone else.
There's a Russian edition of Napoleon Disentimed but I can't find a Spark of Life that's yours.
Small world - I just went to http://www.wildsidepress.com and they are featuring an SF anthology I noticed in the library the other day. Marc Kupper (talk) 03:49, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Sorry, but the Author is Erich Maria Remarque :-) and the Title is his Spark of Life; the translator (V. Kotelkin or possibly Kotelkina - I'm not sure whether this is female nominative or male genitive they seem to use often in listing translations) is listed at the end of that line.
In this case the translator's name is "V. Kotelkin". The reason that the posted record uses the genitive form is that "Пер. с нем. В.Котелкина" stands for "Tr.[anslated] from Ger.[man] [by] V. Kotelkin". Although irritating, this form of attribution is reasonably unambiguous. Things would be much worse if they used "Пер. В.Котелкина", which could stand for either "Tr.[anslator] V. Kotelkina" or "Tr.[anslated by] V. Kotelkin". I am sure we will run into these issues at some point :( Ahasuerus 13:55, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)
My Russian is weak and I have no experience in using Sigla (which is also rather slow currently); looking up Hayford Peirce as author seems to give only results outside Russia. Googling gave me the Cyrillic transcription of the name (Хейфорд Пирс) as well as an older (? the website itself seems continuously updated) bibliography of translations (http://bibliograph.ru/Biblio/P/PeirceH/PEIRCE.html ) but there is no page with the name and the Russian word for "spark" (the first one in the Title above); cutting the first name to the initial gets just static from Pierce Brosnan :-) There are many bookseller websites listing Napoleon Disentimed (Наполеон вне времени), but it's always just that one book.
So I'd say that if there was a recent translation of The Spark of Life, it was quite well-hidden. For deeper digging, I'm afraid we'll have to rely on Ahasuerus, or ask elsewhere. --JVjr 05:49, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Unfortunately, the Russian language bibliographies that we link to are not indexed by author, so this kind of research can be rather time consuming. Ironically, Sigla.ru, even though it is based in Moscow, is better at finding English language records since it doesn't have to worry about transliterations, competing encodings, etc. As free implementations of Z39.50 go, it's not bad, but it has its share of bugs and suboptimal design decisions. To get full blown Z39.50 search capabilities -- which we may want to at some point -- we will have to buy Bookwhere or write our own search engine. Ahasuerus 13:55, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Many thanks, guys, for all the work you've put into this! Sorry that it turned out to be so inconclusive. The easy explanation is that the book hasn't yet been published in Russian. Which seems strange to me, since they *did* pay me that money a little over two years ago. I know from bitter experience how strange the publishing world can be, particularly the delays in publication, but *most* American authors are complaining about how their novels are being published in Russia *without* permission and/or payment, and here I am complaining that they've paid me but haven't published the book.... Thanks again! Hayford Peirce 11:29, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)
A cursory review of the same sources that Jan used suggests that the book is yet to be published by a major Russian language publisher, although it's possible that some semi-pro folks did it as a side project. All I see is Napoleon Disentimed and a couple of stories published in the SF/F magazine Esli (If) in 1997-1998. Ahasuerus 13:55, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Thanks for the additional info. The shorts were obviously rip-offs, since I knew nothing about them until just now. SFWA published a list of ripped-off authors a couple of years ago and I looked for myself there but didn't see any mention. Oh, well, life is too short to try running down 50 ruples from some (probably) vanished Russian crooks.... Hayford Peirce 16:45, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Oh, they are still around and remain the 800 lb gorilla of Russian magazine SF. I don't think there would be any harm in asking them about their June 1997 and June 1998 issues. The former contains "Ekspress Rudnyj Shar", i.e. The Ore-Ball Express (pp. 3-24, tr. Arkady Kabalkin) and the latter contains the mysteriously named "Posrednik" ("Intermediary", pp. 93-139), which was a collaboration with David (M.) Alexander, so it is either Best of Breed or Finder's Fee. Click on the 06/98 cover and you'll see that the two of you were the main attraction :)
There has been a concerted (and intermittently successful) US/EU effort to clean up copyright messes in China, Russia, SE Asia and a few other places over the last decade, which has apparently had some effect on the Russian book market. Esli's e-mail address is info@esli.ru -- let us know how it goes if you decide to give it a shot :) Ahasuerus 23:23, 30 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Gazillions of thanks for all this info! I'll talk it over with Dave Alexander, who, fortunately for me, in his day job is a 100% certified lawyer. I can probably sweet-talk him into handling this issue for both of us. I'll keep you posted on what happens.... Thanks again! Hayford Peirce 11:31, 31 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Nominating Michael Hutchins for moderatorship

Ref: (http://isfdb.tamu.edu/wiki/index.php/Moderator_Qualifications#Becoming_a_moderator) for the nomination process.

Nomination statement

I nominate Michael Hutchins (http://isfdb.tamu.edu/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Mhhutchins) for moderatorship; he has accepted the nomination. Michael has more than 2,000 edits (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/topcontrib.cgi) as "Mhhutchins" to date. Based on my experience with his submissions, Michael has mastered both the Novel/Collection side of the application and the Magazine side, including fanmags, often the most difficult to do. His strong suit is his attention to detail, and drive to ensure that absolutely all of the contents of a publication is entered. Michael has been a meticulously careful editor, resolves issues in a patient, methodical and friendly fashion, and in my experience, never makes the same mistake twice. (Scott Latham 12:55, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT))

Support

  1. Support, as nominator. (Scott Latham 12:55, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT))
  2. Support. Yes, please, before I go cross-eyed approving his edits :) Ahasuerus 13:08, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT)
  3. Support. Lots of quality edits, and is responsive on his talk page. BLongley 13:22, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT)
  4. Support per nom. Mike Christie (talk) 17:24, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT)
  5. Support Yes, please add Michael asap. I'm also thinking we need to make sure to revisit the idea of color coding moderator submitted entries (assuming we ever get the free time to do this...). Marc Kupper (talk) 21:51, 2 Apr 2007 (CDT)
  6. Support Throwing my hat in the ring late, but a definite yes from my point of view. --Unapersson 14:38, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Oppose


Comments/Neutral


Nomination closed. I have promoted Mhhutchins to moderator per the consensus. Mike Christie (talk) 15:02, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Simon Raven

Raven was well-known in England as a semi-comic, semi-satiric novelist and man of letters more or less in the tradition of Evelyn Waugh. Apparently totally unknown in the States, however.

According to the OCLC catalog, there were some American reprints in the 1960s-1980s, but he is not exactly a household name on this side of the pond. If he is anything like Waugh, though, I may give him a try some day :) Ahasuerus 00:35, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

He wrote a number of novels that have apparently supernatural elements, most of which are eventually explained as being non-SF, although sometimes the explanations are more ridiculous than the SF element. I used to read him and reread him but haven't for a number of years now. Does anyone here know anything about him? I still have many of his books, including his 10-book series "Alms for Oblivion". If you think it's worthwhile, I could probably try to start rereading him for the umpteenth time with an eye to entering any pertinent info in the database. (He is in the database, but only with a single short story.) Hayford Peirce 22:33, 4 Apr 2007 (CDT)

When you say that "most are eventually explained as being non-SF", are we talking about effectively 100% along the lines of Scooby-Doo's "Oh, look, a ghost! Er, never mind, it's just another crook..."? Or is there some SF residue left at the end of some stories? If it's the latter, then we can certainly catalog the series, but if it's the former, then it will probably remain unlisted along with other "faux specfic" books. But please don't let this stop you from re-reading the series :) Ahasuerus 00:35, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)
My recollection is that most of them turn out to be John Dickson Carr thingees -- the apparent vampire really isn't. But a *couple* of times there may be actual supernatural stuff that isn't explained away, particularly in a couple of books that don't belong to the "Alms for Oblivion" series. I guess I'll just have to start rereading them when I have a (long) moment. Anything that fits the SF criteria I'll put in.Hayford Peirce 13:20, 7 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Nominating JVjr for moderatorship

Ref: Becoming a moderator for the nomination process.

Nomination statement

I nominate JVjr (talk • contribs) for moderatorship; he has accepted the nomination. JV has over 2,400 edits to date, and has been involved in the project since early November of 2006: here's his first edit on the wiki. I haven't moderated all that many of his submissions myself, but what I've seen has been reliable work, and I am confident he can moderate his own submissions -- no small consideration given how prolific he is. He is also a thorough communicator, and I believe he would be effective at working with other editors to resolve any issues that come up in his moderation. Mike Christie (talk) 12:58, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Support

  1. Support, as nominator. Mike Christie (talk) 12:58, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT)
  2. Support. I have seen quite a few of his edits, and they're good quality and often in complex areas. --Unapersson 14:23, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT)
  3. Support Prolific and wide-ranging, he should join the general fun! (Scott Latham 15:15, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT))
  4. Support Suits me fine - he's obviously got his head screwed on the right way, judging by recent conversations. He can do the Magazine Submissions I daren't touch. ;-) BLongley 15:23, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT)
  5. Support but only if Jan promises to keep his sentences under 30 words when responding to editors :-) Ahasuerus 15:28, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT)
Careful - he might make the words longer to construct shorter sentences! And one would conjecture that we are collectively unanimous in eschewing polysyllabic verbiage? ;-) BLongley 17:20, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT)
  1. Support Marc Kupper (talk) (testing brevity) 00:35, 9 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Oppose

Comments/Neutral

Actually, I don't dare touch magazines either - or at least I don't have reasons to do it much. I'm not a magazine collector, and magazines aren't prone to glaring duplicities of either titles or publications, which is what I concentrate upon. (Well, except that most issues of Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine have an entry both as a magazine and anthology, see Kristine_Kathryn_Rusch. What to do with that?) But I gather it's not that different from anthologies, if one steers away from EDITOR entries.

Ahasuerus: Willco! Or at least try, that is, unless something happens that would prevent me from it, I can't guarantee anything, I have this problem you see... I guess. Using the period more often. Is the way. No matter whether I feel. A comma or at most semicolon would be much better. Stylistically and logically. "I'm a living stream of consciousness," Škvorecký puts it in The Engineer in Human Souls. --JVjr 18:53, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Is there a process for double support? :-) Here is a second potential moderator willing to challenge the conventions of the moderation nomination process! (Which so far have been "find a victim, gang up on him with multiple supports from the overworked, throw him into ISFDB Moderator slavery") ;-)
Seriously, I think this is another plus point. We're not trying to find slave-masters or nit-pickers to reject stuff: we're trying to find people that will do their best at what they know best, question the undefined or unfindable, and leave the rest alone (IMO). A good sense of humour helps. BLongley 19:23, 5 Apr 2007 (CDT)


Nomination closed. I have promoted JVjr to moderator per the consensus. Mike Christie (talk) 14:41, 10 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Community Portal overload?

The other day we had about 35 substantive (and 5 cosmetic) Community Portal edits over a 24 hour period. Given the limitations of the Wiki technology, is it getting hard to keep track of the changes? Is the model approaching a breaking point? Do we need to consider moving some of the discussions to a different Wiki page the way we did requests for verifications earlier? Do we need a real message board for general discussions? How many of us would have technical problems with our backup Google board? Ahasuerus 03:06, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)

I'd strongly prefer to keep to the Wiki approach, but I agree the CP is getting overloaded. I think a moderator noticeboard, as someone suggested a while back, would be a good idea. Suppose we have the following topics:
  • Verification requests
  • Moderator noticeboard
  • Rules and standards discussions
  • Help desk
  • Community portal
The first one is already well-defined. The second would be where an editor needs to get the attention of a moderator for any reason; or also for discussions about moderator issues, though of course the debate is open to everyone. The third would be for discussions such as the regularization debate. The fourth would be "How do I do X?" in any form; the last would be whatever's left over.
If we adopt some such approach, I think one thing necessary to make it work is for us all to remove sections in the wrong place and move them to the right place, leaving a note on the editor's talk page about where they've been moved to, and possibly also a link under the edited section here, though that would clutter the page. That would get people in the habit of going to multiple places, and using the watchlist and recent changes list.
I think we have to remember that the number of edits isn't going to go down; all we can do is organize them better. The wiki system does have organizational approaches we can use -- we just have to implement them and stick to the rules.
If we like this approach, let's go ahead and create these pages and move any discussions from here that appear to be active over to those pages. We'd also need to expand the note at the top saying "You may also want one of these pages". Mike Christie (talk) 08:39, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT)
I think that Mike's approach makes sense and that we should implement it ASAP. (Scott Latham 11:50, 6 Apr 2007 (CDT))
The main problem I have with this approach is that it pretty much forces everyone (editors and moderators) to continuously check multiple pages for potential updates (possibly in the middle of the page and even in the middle of a thread) or to be looking at the

6 January 2009