Rules and standards discussions

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For old discussions see Rules and standards discussions/Archive.

This page is for discussions about the rules and standards, such as whether certain kinds of publications belong in the ISFDB, or whether the help text defining capitalization should be modified. It also includes questions about interpretation, such as whether a SERIAL type can be used for sequences of short stories subsequently republished as a novel.

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Contents

ARC first printing, in or out?

I know ISFDB standards don't allow advance reading copies, but I've come across a situation that might lead to a discussion of exceptions. I have two copies of Kathe Koja's Bad Brains. The first is an ARC with a complete number line. The second was the first publicly available copy (she signed my copy at a local bookstore signing shortly after publication), but it's number line drops the "1", indicating a second printing. Is this an unusual situation or was it a common practice for Dell or other paperback publishers? I have a copy of her first novel The Cipher and it's also a second printing. There's a verified copy that matches mine but the printing isn't stated. MALloyd hasn't responded to his talk page in quite awhile, so if anyone else has a copy can you check its printing. Thanks. MHHutchins 02:01, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

I have never seen such a case, at least that I know of, but who knows what some publishers may have done. It does sound like a fair case for treating an ARC as the true first printing. -DES Talk 02:40, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
On what grounds would you assume that the book-signing would definitely be for a first printing? I know I have a 3rd printing of Douglas Adams and John Lloyd's "Meaning of Liff" from what I believe to be the first signing-tour - I presumed it was so much more popular than expected that it needed reprinting multiple times during the tour. I can't imagine a tour being canceled for being too successful if they can reprint fast enough... BLongley 19:08, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
True, some books have been reprinted 2-6 times within a few weeks of publication. Much depends on the pre-orders from the major retailers and distributors, so if there is a big spike in pre-orders right before publication I suppose it is even possible to run into a second printing on the first day of the book's availability. We are probably better off documenting the details of this case in the Notes field of the second printing's Publication record. Ahasuerus 22:02, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it's an assumption on my part that the book signing copies would be first printings, but I can't imagine that the second book by a relatively unknown author would have already gone into a second printing within weeks of publication (again, I admit, an assumption). All but one of the abebooks.com dealer that mentions first printings of this title also admit that it's the ARC. I've sent that bookseller a message to verify whether their first printing has the full color die-cut cover of the regular edition. There are more than a few listings that explicitly state 2nd printing. In the meantime, I've deleted the ARC and modified the note in the 2nd verified printing. MHHutchins 00:12, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
And after doing all that I checked Locus1:
Bad Brains (Dell Abyss 0-440-21114-X, Apr ’92 [Mar ’92], $4.99, 367pp, pb) Horror novel of an artist whose head injury exposes him to a strange and terrifying world lurking at the edge of human consciousness. Highly recommended (SW). Despite the copyright page denoting this as a second printing, this is actually the first after a large advance proof edition.
Guess I should have stuck with my instincts. MHHutchins 00:17, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
Good catch! I don't think I have ever seen an ARC counted as an official first printing, but the publishing world is nothing if not weird :) Ahasuerus 01:19, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
There are times when I suspect that there's a gnome in Zurich whose job it is to create bibliographic nightmares like this, just to keep people like us on our toes. At any rate, this is a new one on me, too. The closest I've ever come is noting from one source or another that a given book may be found as a first printing or a third printing, but not a second printing, as the second printing was done for, and distributed in, the Canadian market. ARCs are, to me, interesting collectible items, but have no bibliographic value as separate "editions". The only reason I'd question this approach is if I found one that had substantially different artwork than the finished product, but I've yet to come across one such. Jayembee 06:17, 2 November 2008 (UTC) Jayembee
The situation that I described above was highly unusual. Even so, we chose not to include a complete number-line printing, because it went against ISFDB policy concerning ARCs. The note in the first publicly available edition was enough to warn bibliophiles and bibliographers of the strange situation. MHHutchins 06:41, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Commenting on the first comment in this thread - I don't have a problem with someone adding/updating publication records based on an ARC as long as the notes clearly state it's an ARC. The ARC books clearly exist as "verifiable publications." I could see one reason for stating ARCs are not allowed is support the position that ARCs should not be sold/redistributed as the neither the publisher nor author gets paid for them meaning we don't want to encourage or support ARC redistribution. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:57, 15 October 2008 (UTC)
As long as we are on the topic, Baen books has fairly recently created something that they call an "e-arc". This is an ebook version of an unproofed, late but not final draft of a book, which they put on sale usually 1-2 months before the release date of the final version of the book. Since they sell this (typically for more than the cost of a pb, but less than half the cost of a paper hc, and more than the cost of a released individual ebook), and it is downloadable like their other ebooks, it surely exists in a verifiable state. Should such "e-arcs" (their term) be listed here? They will generally differ at least in detail, because the final copyedit pass has not been done on them, and in a few cases significant late rewrites have, i understand, occurred after the release of the e-arc. -DES Talk 19:54, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

[unindent] I believe all ARCs should be out, even electronic ones. I can't see why an "e-arc" should be treated differently. MHHutchins 06:41, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

The difference, in my mind, is that these "e-arcs" are actually being advertised and sold. The traditional arc was only distributed to reviewers and buyers fro bookstores and distributors, and indeed generally carried a large "NOT FOR SALE" notice. Fans only got these if they knew someone on the distribution list, or if someone on that list sold a copy in violation of agreement. But with Baen marketing these, arguably they aren't "really" ARCs at all, but separate editions. -DES Talk 12:31, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Since this is a bit separate from the ARC questions above, and has gone active qagain, I'm goint to copy this to a new thread below. -DES Talk 12:31, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Partial entries for non-genre magazines

I had somehow thought the policy was not to enter general fiction mags such as The Strand, The Saturday Evening post, Argosy, and All-story, and I have advised others to indicate first pubs in such places via the note field. But a discussion on User talk:Kpulliam has called this policy into question. I want to start a general discussion on this issue. To simplify things, i am copying here several comments originally posted on User talk:Kpulliam. -DES Talk 17:23, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Start comments copied from User talk:Kpulliam

Is there a particular reason that the early pulps are not included in the database? I am particularly interested in The Argosy, The Argosy Weekly, and The Argosy All-Story Weekly, but there are several other listed in the timeline here that do not appear in the database yet. Magazine:1920-1929

Thanks - Kpulliam 03:57, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Good question. Here's a link to the ISFDB:Policy#Contents.2FProject_Scope_Policy database content policy. Also check out the rules of acquisition. To be more specific in answering your question, if a magazine had a majority of speculative fiction content, then it can (and probably should) be included in the database. The magazines you list appear to lean more toward the adventure genre, although that may include specific works of speculative fiction. Those stories might have been reprinted later either in collections or anthologies, thus being included in the database, with a citation in the notes about their first publication. This is the ideal situation, but it would vary because we depend on individuals to enter contents. If you have specific issues of those titles and feel strong enough that they should be included in the database (and are willing to enter their contents), I think most of the moderators would allow the non-spec-fic content. Looking at my copy of Ashley and Tymn's Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Weird Fiction Magazines, I see that those titles are listed, but with a caveat: "Neither The Argosy nor All-Story was a science fiction or fantasy magazine, and yet they probably influenced the course of science fiction more than any other magazine either within or outside of the field..." Pretty strong endorsement, I might add. MHHutchins 04:43, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I don't personally have any copies of Argosy or it's follow-on publications, but there are some issues available online, notably 5 issues at the Internet Archive from 1922 (With Ray Cummings 'Fire People' which at the moment exists in the database but with zero publications listed which is what prompted the question to me in the first place) and a few more from the 1890s.
As above, it was the Ray Cummings entry Fire People and the magazine images at IA which started me wondering why the magazines didn't exist as entries. I've read the contents policy and I understand that the line must be drawn somewhere. But this line is very blurry. I've been using ISFDB as a look-up source for years, and I truly love the ability to provide updates when I find omissions, etc. This is one of those cases where because the magazine has been excluded (even in partial form) from the list of magazine indexes ISFDB Magazines that I was unsure how to get the info into the database. Kpulliam 05:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
There is a bit of history here. The original Rules of Acquisition (which are no longer accessible since most older versions of Wiki pages were dropped a few months ago to reclaim space) called for the inclusion of all non-genre magazines and anthologies as long as they contained any speculative fiction contents. We then quickly realized that if we entered all non-SF stories in Argosy, The Norton Book of American Literature, etc, we would end up with thousands of extraneous records -- and besides we don't support non-genre short fiction particularly well -- so we updated the Policy page to state that we should create abbreviated publication records for these books which would only include SF titles. That way we could still Verify them and perform other bibliographic operations.
Unfortunately, the Policy text was not very clear (my fault) and in many cases the original publication data was recorded in the Notes field as opposed to a separate Publication record. I know that I used Notes numerous times simply because it was faster and I figured I would come back to it and create a new record... some day. Over time, this approach has become more popular and I assume that some editors took it to be the standard since the Policy page could be read that way and the prevailing practice suggested this interpretation. We definitely need to clarify the Policy one way or the other, and I still think that abbreviated Publication records are a better way to capture this data to facilitate Verification, but that's something to discuss on the Standards and/or Policy page. Ahasuerus 12:31, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm quite happy with abbreviated publication records - they may even grow over time as we discover there was more than one SF story in it. One of the things that put ME off was the minimum requirements for Magazine entries: e.g. there's a couple of dozen notes saying that a story was first published in "The Strand" magazine of a certain date, but if you try and enter just the information we have you get a big "*** ERROR: No authors were specified" message. And I for one don't know who the Editor of a magazine that old was... still, if we can figure out what to do in these cases ('uncredited'? 'anonymous'? 'unknown'? 'dunno'?) and make searching for magazines a little easier (as basically you cannot find them via anything other than advanced search, or a link from the wiki which we probably won't have in these cases), it shouldn't be too difficult to convert notes to abbreviated publications (or 'stubs' as some people have been calling them). Whether we want to start 'proper' magazine wiki pages for such is a matter we should probably address sooner rather than later: maybe separate them out into another section like we did with Fanzines? I can search notes offline if people tell me what to look for - e.g. we have almost 600 "First Published" notes, but those won't always point to a non-genre magazine, they may have been written before we got the genre magazine, or may refer to a book - or even a newspaper. BLongley 20:22, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
If partial publication records are to be the way to go, fine, but at a minimum the db demands a magazine title (and I would hope it would be standardized), an editor (perhaps "unknown" will do when a name is not available), and a date, which really ought to be as accurate as possible. On sources, Project Gutenberg has a few issues of The Strand up, and more coming I think. Wikipedia lists the founding editors for both The Strand and Argosy, but not a complete list of editors for either.
If we are going to encourage partial entries for issues of general fiction (non-genre) mags, we really ought to agree on a few standards, and write up a "how to" for such entries. I am OK with either decision. -DES Talk 17:23, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

End comments copied from User talk:Kpulliam

(unindent) I don't find anything about partial magazine entries anywhere in Help:Screen:NewPub or Help:Screen:EditPub. RoA #1 clearly makes SF content published in English IN, "including works published within and outside the genre.". Nothing is said about non-SF works published alongside SF works. We need to make a decision, and once it is made, clarify the RoA and the Help one way or the other IMO. I don't feel strongly about the decision either way, but it would be better to be clear, i think. -DES Talk 17:23, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

The history of dedicated sf magazines begins with the April 1926 issue of Amazing Stories. With a couple of very minor exceptions the only other legitimate title that predates that is Weird Tales. Partial entries for magazines that are predominately non-genre should include no more than the minimum amount of date required by the system and only stories that meet our existing standards. There is no reason we should use any other than the current standards for non-genre material - only material by authors whose data is primarily fantastic should have any non-genre entries. Finding them - use either the generic magazine title as the editor name or something like "Argosy editors", "Blue Book editors", etc.--swfritter 18:47, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
I like that idea for finding them, and we seem to have done that for Playboy. We've a few Saturday Evening Posts to adjust already. Strand, Pearson, Pall Mall, London Magazine etc are still to create. For Collier's, we'd have to lose attributions for Walter Davenport and Louis Ruppel though - would anyone miss those? BLongley 19:14, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
If I understand Swfritter's comments above correctly, he is saying that even when we know who the editor of a non-genre mag was at a particular time, we should not enter it, but instead use "The editors of X" or some such? This seems perverse to me, although i could support using such a term in any case when the editor is not known. I can agree with his suggestions that when creating entries for issues of non-genre mags that include some SF, we include only the SF content (and clearly related art, I would add) and otherwise minimal meta-data. -DES Talk 19:34, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, neither Davenport or Ruppel are particularly noteworthy in an ISFDB sense, and I only found the names from Wikipedia and some other source I forget - it's not 100% certainly 'known' as these aren't primary verified. If you want to keep the names though, what do you suggest for making finding the magazines easier? A Non-Genre Magazine/Newspaper Wiki section would work but seems a lot of trouble for what may be one-off issues. BLongley 22:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
I think that we will find, that due to the inclusion of some popular authors (Doyle, London, Burroughs, etc, etc) that quite alot of the back issues of the primary magazines are going to pop up with at least one genre story (or genre related author). (I'm personally estimating 60-80% of the issues)Kpulliam 23:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Agreed, but for every magazine that published SF often, we're going to find one that only did it once or twice. And "genre related author" is probably a separate can of worms - we could end up with a lot of magazines added just to keep the Asimov and Clarke essays complete. BLongley 01:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
As to keeping only SF content, that is typically what we've done, e.g. here. So far the issue of artwork hasn't come up as these are all from secondary sources. BLongley 22:10, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
OK, after only a couple of hours of chasing down examples caused by ONE book, I've found examples of artwork: Moderators, see the submission for "Rogue, August 1962". That also shows the problems with finding new titles by accident, the Wilson Tucker story is not one we had already. And a new author: presumably it's SF as that whole issue was. BLongley 01:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I too like that idea for finding them. Personally... I was more interested in finding them from the authors bibliography. Starting with an author, and then attempting to find early publication records. (And in this case, my purpose was for searching out public domain items, for eventual inclusion into Gutenberg).Kpulliam 23:48, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
FYI: Robert H. Davis was editor for All-Story (January 1905-July 17, 1920, through several title changes until it merged with Argosy). Frank A. Munsey edited Argosy from December 9, 1882-November 27, 1886, succeeded by Matthew White (December 4, 1886-June 2, 1928, the "Golden Age" of Argosy). Other editors followed but the title's importance diminished. They're all listed at Phil Stephensen-Payne's Galactic Central. Add me to the list of supporters for actually crediting the editors by name. MHHutchins 00:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I see we have a Robert H. Davis here in his own right, so presumably that's someone notable enough to keep recording. However, I don't want people to NOT enter the magazines just because they don't know the Editor, so perhaps the significant non-genre magazines can get their own wiki page with such information on, where people can find such data? The rest can be left as swfritter suggested, IMO: or do you feel as strongly about editors for 'Continental Airlines Magazine', 'Cosmopolitan', 'Ladies Home Journal', 'Games Magazine', the 'Philadelphia Sunday Bulletin', the London 'Evening Standard', to mention just a few that we currently have notes for? 01:50, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
No, the line should be drawn somewhere. Perhaps we search for editors only if the periodical is a majority fiction magazine. That would rule out Playboy, Penthouse (and other men's magazines), Redbook, Good Housekeeping (and other women's magazines) (am I being delightfully sexist here?), and even Saturday Evening Post and Boys' Life. MHHutchins 02:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I suspect most of the "abbreviated publications" have been/will be created from secondary sources: so won't be verified, and therefore can be improved without too much questioning if somebody wants to add the Real Editor, price, publisher, binding, etc. So I'm happy if we start with a title, Dummy editor, date, and SF content: if some people want Real Editor then I think they can just update the dummies, and start a Wiki page so that it doesn't take hours to find that sort of detail for future entries. (Converting Real Editor to Dummy should be a big No-No, hence my asking about Davenport and Ruppel in advance even though it was me that found them.) The Wiki pages for such needn't be anywhere near as complex as the ones for Genre magazines - definitely no grids for all known issues, for instance. But they should cover the details that some people want recorded (which should be reasonable SF-based requests, not "which playmate appeared on the cover of that issue of Playboy?") and they should be easily findable. (I'm still thinking on the lines of a (small!) Wiki Section for Non-Genre magazines where people want a few rules for that title.) BLongley 03:43, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
As a 'line' may I suggest that you stick to what I already thought was the line Magazine:1900-1919. If it's worthy of being included in the magazines timeline ... then it is probably worthy of additional correct information. If it's truly a 'transient' publication of SF, then it isn't worthy of inclusion in the timeline. This way, if someone comes along and suggest an additional publication be 'upgraded' with researched editors, etc, if it is accepted, the timeline update can be part of that initial research? Kpulliam 03:11, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Magazine:1900-1919 and its siblings were an attempt to organize early magazines in a readable/helpful fashion, but their periodization was fairly arbitrary -- note that the 1909-1919 page discusses pre-1909 magazines as well.
Substantively, I had assumed that we would want to enter all editors when known, but I can see how adding another few thousand effectively non-SF Author records to the database could be problematic. Also, keep in mind that many early SF stories were serialized in newspapers, which may make it an even bigger headache. Ahasuerus 03:25, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

(Unindent) I've been trying to do some research along these lines to see what we end up with. The results for new publications like this can currently mostly be seen on the Submission queue: where I couldn't find an exact magazine I left notes on the title instead. I just picked the first Anthology to hand that mentioned original Magazine publications: unfortunately it was The Best of Sci-Fi No. 4 and so after a couple of hours of fairly easy research I got into the "Honorable Mentions". Which leads to new titles we don't currently have, e.g. 

Jules Feiffer, The Lonely Machine, Playboy, December 1962
Robert S. Malcolm, A Free Fall, Free for All, Gent, August 1962
David Newman, Three Fables for the Atomic Age, Esquire, April 1962
John Novotny, Snug as a Bug, The Dude, November 1962
Leonard Wibberley, The Man Who Lived on Water, Saturday Evening Post, 28th March 1962
Gahan Wilson, Horror Trio, Playboy, June 1962 - which also contains an Arthur C. Clarke essay "From Lilliput to Brobdingnag" and "The Tryst" by Jules Feiffer.

I believe these should all be IN, assuming Judith Merril got the credits right: but it's now half past four in the morning and I've been looking at just one book's worth of data (and discussing it here, of course) and realise that this is not going to be a quick task, whatever we decide. BLongley 03:43, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

(A bit off-topic) I just took a look at "The Best of Sci-Fi No. 5" (aka "The 5th Annual of the Year's Best S-F") to see how much trouble the NEXT book will give me tomorrow (or sometime - I acquired 60 other books today, I suppose I don't HAVE to do this next), and see that the UK edition explains the abbreviations used - and then omits the section where the abbreviations ARE used entirely. Anyone with a book like that with the same sort of credits can see how far this topic can take us though. I could read the entire book faster than I can track down the original publications satisfactorily. (And may well do so.) BLongley 04:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
If we know the editor and want them to be listed we can enter their name and also the magazine name as editors. We need a simple mechanism to link to and find the magazines. Expecting people to add to a magazine wiki, or even create one, for a single story is too much work to require. I think we are mostly in agreement about non-genre being out and remember also that there is no way to designate a story as both shortfiction and non-genre.--swfritter 12:42, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Bill said above "So I'm happy if we start with a title, Dummy editor, date, and SF content...". I would also be happy if we start with that. If the "real" editor isn't known by the person doing the entry, fine. But while we would, in effect, have a rule against entering the non-sf content of such magazines, there would be no rule against anyone who had a reliable source entering the correct magazine editor, and such metadata as price and page count. As for searches, i would think that searches by the author of the SF content would be the most common, and those should work with no special work. If people really want to find all examples of, say, Argosy and see what is entered for them, we could always create a publication series for all such magazine issues. Whether a wiki page would be worth creating and maintaining I'm not sure, but creating one would be easy enough. Are we approaching a consensus here? The points which people seem to agree on are:
  1. It is acceptable to make partial entries of issues on non-genre magazines (or collections?) where speculative fiction was published, particularly ones where such fiction was first published.
  2. Such entries should not include content entries for non-genre content in the same publication.
    Perhaps a note indicating that the entry is known to be incomplete would be a good idea.
  3. It is acceptable to make such entries with minimal metadata: Publication title, Publication date, and a dummy entry for the publication editor such as "Argosy Editors".
  4. When entered from a primary source, or determined from a reliable secondary source, it is acceptable but not required to enter additional metadata, including the actual editor's name.
  5. The issue of how best to search for such publications should be considered, but need not hold up data entry.
Are we in fact in agreement on the above? Does anyone have other items to add? Are we ready to consider modifying the RoA and the help in line with the above? -DES Talk 15:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
The magazine editor series method will work. Might be a good project to find all the magazine editor records that are not in a series. Of course, we still have a lot of magazines, mostly the minor ones, that don't have editor records.--swfritter 16:31, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Should we also mention that it is still acceptable to enter the data in the notes for the title? I would rather have the data there then not entered at all. There are also cases where it would require a fair amount of research in order to determine the actual issue in which a story appeared and the notes are the only logical place for partial information.--swfritter 16:31, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Guinea Pig #1 in this editor series.--swfritter 17:19, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
I think notes are always acceptable: I'm not deleting them when I add the stub publications either, using both is fine by me. There's at least one of my example submissions where I could only find Magazine name and year. However, can I point people at The Fiction Mags Index? It's a very useful resource for this sort of thing, although it does have the problem of unstable URLs. BLongley 18:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
In the meantime I'm quite happy to continue with the guidelines above and see what problems turn up. I'm sure there's a few guidelines we will want to add: e.g. "put year in full, '90 doesn't give enough details when we have magazines from 1890 and 1990". BLongley 18:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Will anyone object if I write up a new help page based on the above, and add links to it from some of our existing help pages? -DES Talk 18:26, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Not me. I might note one other issue that occurs a few times in the current database but will become more common if sf content from older mags is entered. Many of the stories in the old magazines were published as serials and it was not unusual that these were of novelette and novella length. If they were later reprinted they were likely to be printed whole. These cannot be merged so I guess the only way they can be documented is in the notes.--swfritter 15:53, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
Go ahead. I'm eager to see how many guidelines my submissions have broken already. (Nobody's given me any feedback on the ones on the queue.) BLongley 17:47, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
Response to David: yes, please rewrite the help pages, as I believe we've come to a consensus (hurrah!) And a response to Bill: Stop boo-hooing :-) I really like what you've done (something that I'm not able/willing to take on myself.) Nothing I've seen has broken any rules (even the "Editors of..." credit isn't that bad.) AFAIC, let 'em through to join their fellow records. MHHutchins 18:09, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
If anyone wants more entries to play with or to bump rules against to see how they work, a lot (but not all) of Bleilers "Science Fiction: The Early Years", Short story and book index up to 1930 is available at Google Books, I haven't talked myself into buying it yet.... kpulliam 18:30, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
Looks good to me. I know I did at least entry with a note about first pub in Blue Book so I'll dig that one out and add it. Dana Carson 22:48, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I've approved the "Playboy" and "Saturday Evening Post" entries as those are the most common. Go check, and add comments to the talk page for the Help that DES is going to add. I still feel we're going to encounter problems, so I haven't done any merges yet. If this is a mistake, I want to take some of you down with me! ;-) BLongley 00:49, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
The couple of playboys I looked at looked fine. And now I have an excuse to look for old playboys on ebay... Got to verify those pubs and input page numbers. Hehe kpulliam 01:12, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Just spotted one thing... Do we want the 'Editors of' marked as a pseudonym of 'Unknown'? Isn't that going to cause problems if we ever want to 'upgrade' one of these magazines series by adding the known editors? kpulliam 01:18, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
Is the consensus to go with "PUBLICATION EDITORS" or "EDITORS of PUBLICATION", and is the appropriate lastname "PUBLICATION", "EDITORS", or "LAST WORD OF PUBLICATION NAME"? I was going to enter a couple of Boy's Life and I ran into a previous entry. Boy's Life that went with "ED of PUB" with lastname of "Life". What do you folks suggest? kpulliam 00:31, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

[unindent] I think we came to a consensus of "Editors of ...". You won't need to create an author record, so you don't have to worry about which word is the lastname. The system will set up to author data record and "Life" would be this "author's" lastname. (Look at this author record.) Keep in mind that the publication is titled Boys' Life (note the placement of the apostrophe). MHHutchins 00:44, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Someone with more experience than me might want to run a search for "Editor" in authors and change a few things around. I count 12 of 23 as not conforming to this standard and one of them Argosy Editors was one of the test subjects above done as PUBNAME EDITORS with lastname of EDITORS. That's why I wasn't sure we had reached consensus yet. Thanks!kpulliam 01:07, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I went with "Editors of" rather than "The Editors of" in the end as it saved my fingers a bit. I've adjusted the ones I entered with a "The" now. I haven't messed with existing entries. The lastname is a minor issue, only really important if you're searching for an author via the author directory rather than simple name search. If someone cares, I'd suggest "Editors" for them all so we can find all such easily, or Magazine name if that's the way people think of them. But there's no rush to fix those, as Mike says, the system will assign something anyway. BLongley 02:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
A couple of oddities I did note: The Saturday Evening Post Reader of Fantasy and Science Fiction is currently by "uncredited". There WAS an entry by SEP editors, but it was a duplicate with no contents. It might be a good idea to make this by "Editors of The Saturday Evening Post" to keep it with the magazine entries, but then we need to clarify the rules for unknown editors of Anthologies. (We've only been dealing with magazines here, I think.) There are similar anthologies by Playboy editors which are credited to them as such, so that should probably be addressed anyway as we're already breaking a rule. BLongley 02:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
The other is a bit trickier: I DID find a genuine SEP (I think) Editor name, and left it in notes so I can't find it now. :-/ However, using such instead of an "Editors of" entry makes searching harder: even using it AS WELL AS an "Editors of" means we split up the entries and anyone searching for SEPs in general would have to search all the "Editors of The Saturday Evening Post/Real Editor Name" versions. When it's such a forgettable person as this one was, I'd prefer to leave it in notes: however, we could make such a person a variant of the "Editors of The Saturday Evening Post" name if that's all they're notable for. (Maybe a certain editor would indicate an increased likelihood of SF entries, for instance.) If they're more notable in ISFDB terms, then the magazine probably needs promoting to a more prominent status - not Magazine Wiki, but maybe Fanzine Wiki. As to making Editors variants of "Unknown" - I've never understood why that's been done before, so can't recommend doing it now. Can anyone explain the history of such? BLongley 02:16, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I like the idea of making the few real names, variants of "Editors of" unless / until they get promoted (and if promoted, some of the work is already done). It seems like an all inclusive idea. kpulliam 02:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I tried it with one example and it looks OK so far. As we can't undo pseudonyms at all easily though, I'm loath to try it with any more prolific editors just yet. BLongley 13:33, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I would not make this more complicated than it needs to be and would definitely avoid pseudonyms. The key data in these pubs are the stories and not the editors.--swfritter 16:01, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
The consensus I spoke of was based on the current discussion about the future creation of stubs for non-genre magazines. Your count is somewhat misleading and only accurate if you discredit the pronoun "the" before "editors", otherwise only 6 of the 23 fall out of the format. And one of those 6 is a legitimate author name used as a byline in many publications ("The Editors"). In any case, those credits were created before the current discussion, and a search easily brought up the records, even for "someone with more experience". :) MHHutchins 02:12, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I knew that the discussion was about the future... but with only a dozen records... now is probably the best time to try and clean them up, before people start looking for examples and follow the wrong example. (I almost used the Argosy entry as my template, as an example). No Biggie. kpulliam 02:42, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Good eye. Have might my entry consistent. Even more important is to start putting the pubs in editor series so we can easily find them.--swfritter 16:01, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I've just tried this. It seems an awful lot of edits just to be able to use "http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?24776" instead of "http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Editors_of_The_Saturday_Evening_Post". What advantages have I missed? BLongley 16:44, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Also note that I have started a section on the Magazine Page to link to the non-genre series. Strictly a trial run - open for suggestions.--swfritter 16:01, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
Well, looks like Bill likes the idea. The other thing I would suggest we think about doing is to merge the editor records by year.--swfritter 16:47, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
I'm still ambivalent about the idea of editor series for non-genre magazines, don't count that as "support" or "liking the idea" yet. I just tried them and stopped when I thought "what has all that work given me?". Which is "nothing", so far. Your suggestion of "merge the editor records by year" looks useful in the same way that it is for normal magazines, which is for when author pages get too big, I think? I'll count that as an advantage, but if a non-genre magazine gets that big then we probably shouldn't be treating it as non-genre, IMO. I note your comment "I would not make this more complicated than it needs to be" - well, variants are a bit complex for our average editor, and I'm happy to drop "Louis Ruppel" entirely. (I'm not sure Mike or DES are though.) EDITOR records ARE complicated - I think if you did a poll of current moderators half would admit they don't fully understand them, and if you polled active editors 90% or more would admit no clue. There IS an advantage, yes - thanks for pointing it out - but only in extreme circumstances. If there's other benefits I've missed, please state them: but at the moment I can't support the idea for small groups of publications. Just telling people what to do when there's a magazine worth recording, but the submission checks prevent such, is a step towards more data. Add too many rules and we just won't get people adding it. BLongley 22:17, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

(unindent) To answer Bill's question about the history behind creating vts for "unknown", I believe the primary reason was to get "house names" to display correctly. For example, take a look at Alexander Blade's bibliography. At this time we have two essays by unknown pseudonymous authors which are credited to Alexander Blade. Parenthetically, one of them is in a verified 1989 publication, which makes me wonder if we may be able to identify the real author? In any event, the way the bibliography is currently displayed, it looks like "Alexander Blade" was a real person whose name was also used by a dozen writers. Once we set up vts for the two outstanding essays, the page will change to say "Pseudonym: See [list of authors here]", which is presumably what we want to happen. Does this make sense? Ahasuerus 16:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Not really. The thing that makes him look like a real person to me is "Used These Alternate Names: Henry S. Lewis". I suppose if we hadn't identified any of the real writers or had that alternate name then he might look real too: but just setting the Legal Name to "Unknown" or "House Name" would indicate the nature of the name just as well as a variant does, as far as I can see. I thought the real reason might be something along the lines of "let's make it easy to find all unknowns in case anybody wants to work on those in particular". BLongley 17:05, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
"Used These Alternate Names: Henry S. Lewis" was just someone's attempt to set up a pseudonym except that it was done backwards and now we are stuck with it until Al adds the ability to delete pseudonyms. As far as setting the Legal Name to "House Name" goes, well, it would be functionally equivalent, but as far as I can tell our users don't always notice such things, which is why we added "Pseudonym: See [...]" in the first place.
As an aside, there have been requests to display "all Titles published as by a certain pseudonym". This information is currently available under "Titles", but it's not easy to find and perhaps a new highlighted link next to the "Pseudonym: ..." line would be useful. Ahasuerus 18:15, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
True: it took me months to find, Mike admitted such too, and we've only just explained it to Don. BLongley 18:54, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

(inindent) Help:Entering non-genre magazines is now in somethinng like a complete state, although far from graven in stone. Please comment at Help talk:Entering non-genre magazines (as several people already have, and thanks much). I think this represnets something close to a consensus, but i would like cofirmation and suggestions for improvement. -DES Talk 05:53, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Please see Help talk:Entering non-genre magazines‎#Editor names, where I have tried to lay out the options on whether and how to use actual names as opposed to "Editors of Mag Name". -DES Talk 16:00, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Doubles again

I have moved this high traffic thread to Rules and standards discussions/Doubles and shortfiction --Marc Kupper|talk 00:39, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Doubles again, redux

I am also one person who favors a fairly strict definition of "omnibus" and since doubles are being recorded as omnibuses, IMO the definition of omnibus must be considered in dealing with doubles.

IMO an omnibus should be limited to publications that: a) include two or more novel length (over-40,000 words) works, previously separately published, and remaining reasonably distinct in the combined publication; or b) include one or more novel-length works plus one or more anthologies or collections that were previously published in book form, and that retain their contents as a unit, and retain a separate title and identity; or c) two or more novel-length works that are presented with separate titles and identities, and at most one work of short fiction (a bonus story), where one or more of the novels has not been previously published, or has been published only in serial form.

These standards would mean that any omnibus would include at least one novel-length work of fiction; any publication that did not would be an anthology or collection. These standards would mean that any omnibus would contain multiple works of short fiction only as part of a previously published anthology or collection; any publication that did not would be an anthology or collection. These standards would mean that some ACE and Tor doubles would be omnibuses, and some would not. If that last point is too unwelcome to others, i could support a special exception for the historical ACE doubles only: they could contain two novellas or one novel and one novella, and still be considered omnibuses. The Binary Star publications, as described above, seem more like anthologies to me than omnibuses anyway. The Tor Doubles I'm less sure about, it would be desirable to treat them alike, but not IMO as important as the ACE doubles: there are far fewer of them, and thy don't play nearly the same role in the history of the field. -DES Talk 20:02, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm against strict standards but rather use guidelines and try to find appropriate fit between what the books appear to be, what ISFDB can do, and personal opinion on the part of the editors/moderators involved. The guidelines give guidance so that we tend to operate in a consistent form.
I don't like the 40,000 word definition for novels as we don't know the word length for nearly all stories and it's difficult to get an exact count. Thus, I use a more easily verifiable standard that if a story is published as a book with it's title/author "headlined" on the cover and title page then it's a novel. If a story never appears as the "headline" then it's not a novel. The length of the work is not a factor and it also means that works that never appear in print (mostly electronic works) are not novels. If someone's willing to vanity press an empty book they have created a novel. If a work is usually short then this can be mentioned in the title notes and also the storylen field can be set.
While we have long had a storylen field the value input here has always been entirely subjective and as far as I know, has never been based on an official source. For example, I don't think anyone has ever gone down one of the awards lists and noted citations that this story was entered in the nv, na, nt, ss, or vi category for a judged event. We have some support for those stories that win awards but I'm not aware of effort to make sure the storylen values for those titles match the awarded category. The only time I pay the slightest attention to an editor's changing the storylen is if then go from something to sf or whatever the default is when a storylen is not defined. When entering and verifying books I copy/paste the contents into a spreadsheet that then parses and tells me if any storylens should be adjusted. The spreadsheet estimates the storylen values based on the page count.
I believe we are in agreement on what an omnibus is with one exception which is that as both the double and dos-a-dos formats "headline" story titles and their authors that automatically tends to make the stories "novels." It's not an absolute thing for doubles and but dos-a-dos publication has a stronger case for classifying a story as a novel. Marc Kupper (talk) 21:03, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually i have adjusted storylen fields based on actual wordcount. Any time I enter an ebook publication, i download the texts and check actual wordcounts on all contents, and adjust the storylengths according to our announced standards. Similarly, i have used the published word counts from the Vance Integral Edition to adjust the story lengths of many of Jack Vance's works. I hadn't thought of comparing with award nomination lists, but it now seems like a very good idea to me, and I'll probably do at least some of that. And when i am unsure, but have the actual publication in front of me, i frequently do physical counts on a sample page, and multiply by pages printed to get a pretty accurate word count. I don't buy the "headline" argument at all. If we followed that rule, than anything listed as a "complete novel" in its serial publication should probably be a novel. The length rules in Help:Screen:EditPub are not worded as "guidelines" but as clear-cut hard and fast "definitions" and i treat them as such. Granted we can't always get exact wordcounts, but when we can, we should follow them, IMO. And we can get counts in far more cases than you might think. -DES Talk 21:23, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
I have been sitting on the fence re: this issue for a long time. As I wrote back in July:
  • Currently, we use a very simple and inflexible categorization system, which is based on an objective criterion, i. e. the number of words in the text. Of course, counting the words is only possible when you have access to the publication, but once you have done it, there can be no disagreement whether the text in question is a Novel or a Novella, which at first glance is a Good Thing.
  • Unfortunately, this lack of flexibility sometimes leads to situations where we violate the Principle of Least Astonishment. For example, a faithful application of our rules would change many YA books to Novellas (or even Novelets!), which is presumably not what our users expect. Similarly, many older novels like The Trouble with Tycho -- which were first serialized in the 1940s-1960s and appeared as standalones in the 1950s-1970s -- would become Novellas which is again probably not what our users expect.
I am still torn on this issue, but I definitely don't think that it would be useful to call 6 page stories published as standalone chapbook "novels", which I recall Marc experimenting with at one point. That would just absolutely slaughter the Principle of Least Astonishment :)
On the plus side, we can always find works of short fiction published as standalones with a simple script and adjusts them later on, perhaps even automagically. I am usually more worried about proposed band-aid solutions that do permanent violence to the underlying data.
As far as comparing our short fiction categorization data with the categories used by the Hugo and Nebula crowds goes, it's a useful project, but we have to be careful. Their current guidelines match ours, but I seem to recall that their standards have changed over the years and, besides, they have been known to move borderline works from one category to another on a case by case basis. Other awards use very different criteria, e.g. World Fantasy Awards have categories for Novellas and Short Stories, but not for Novelets, so everything over roughly 25 pages is a novella in their world. Ahasuerus 22:25, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Ahasuerus wrote a faithful application of our rules would change many YA books to Novellas (or even Novelets!), which is presumably not what our users expect. - The rule writers are smarter than us as the rules already have at Help:Screen:EditPub#EntryType under NOVEL "If you know something has been independently published as a novel, it is safe to mark it as a novel." :-)
I tend to give more weight to this latter criteria over the 40,000 word criteria as it's easy to verify. At present there are no easy methods for getting an accurate word count for most of the 321,809 titles in the database though we could do use the page count method to narrow that down to a list of shortfiction titles that are 100 or more pages and also a list of novel titles not published as novels of the same name that also are less than 100 pages.
DES wrote: anything listed as a "complete novel" in its serial publication should probably be a novel - The headline in that case is the magazine title and not the "complete novel" it's featuring. The help already discusses that "complete novel" on a magazine cover is not evidence that the story over 40,000 words. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:58, 30 September 2008 (UTC)


(unindent) Someone PLEASE split this thread, it was started as a nice simple discussion about Ace Doubles, and how we actually achieved consensus for Months (if not quite a full Year), and could we now update the help without any further disagreement? Note that I wasn't proposing any CHANGE to what we actually HAVE. Just what other Doubles might be IN. BLongley 23:25, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

"Binary Star series" are obviously OUT as too controversial. "Omnibus" is a separate issue - you can argue about the content categories as long as you like, fixing an OMNIBUS status for DOUBLES will not affect the content lengths at all. Two "Books" might define an Omnibus, two "Novellas" might, a "Collection" as one half might - that's irrelevant though. We have the opportunity to agree on DOUBLES. If we can agree on that (as we seem to have done last year) then people can go back to arguing about whether the CONTENTS are right. BLongley 23:25, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

What's the point/question? You said we have consensus about something on Ace doubles and for some reason you say "Binary Star series" are obviously OUT". What are these in and out of? Marc Kupper (talk) 23:47, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
I linked to the original article at the beginning of this one, and that points to the Help pages that disagree. The one that was suggested for update was The FAQ for dos-a-dos books such as Ace Doubles Binary Star have been established as NOT being dos-a-dos, I understand? That would make them out. BLongley 18:20, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
But we don't really have consensus. I agree that we should change the help to better match what we are doing, and/or what we now agree we ought to do in future, and that the various help pages should be consistant. We agree on much of what should be done on doubles. But the help pages are going to contain instruction on how to enter a double, adn that is either going to say that all doubles will be omnibuses, or that soem will be soemthign else. It will also say either that all content items in doubles will be recorded as novels, or that some will be recorded as novellas. Unless we agree on which of those things the help will say, we don't have consensus to change the help. Those are the points at issue above, so they are all relevant to the question of changign the help on doubles, and so this thread can't usefulf be split into doubels and otherstuff. It could be split into Novels (what are they?) and Omnibuses (what are they?) but both would need to be settled before the help could be changed. -DES Talk 00:49, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
I should add that I don't understand what Bill means by some kinds of doubles being IN, and others being OUT. In and Out of what? -DES Talk 00:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
The help under discussion was for "How does the ISFDB deal with dos-à-dos books such as Ace Doubles, and Tor Doubles?" and it already does say that they're all Omnibuses, and that they will contain Novels or Novellas as appropriate. It doesn't contradict the word-length definitions of such, and in most regards reflects the current state of Ace doubles: it's titles and authors that need fixing to match the current practice. Given the complications with Binary Star, and the fact that they're not dos-a-dos, it seems wise to leave what's covered as is. BLongley 18:38, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually i have a suggestion. Can we change the help to cover my points 1 & 3-6 above, and state that ACE doubles can be entered as omnibuses no matter what the length of their contents, but that doing so is still under discussion for any other doubles. It would also state that listign items in a double as "novels" if under the 40,000 word limit is still under discussion, and does not have uniform approval. Would doing this handle the ares where we do have consensus, and allow further diuscussion of the points where we differ? Will that work for everyone? -DES Talk 01:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm fine with 1,3-6 except
  • #4 - the bit about "or of the anthology when two ...".
  • #6 - When I do doubles I add a note to documents both the authors and artists as ISFDB does not maintain the order reliably.
A couple of my doubles are either anthologies or collections and so if someone's constructing a help page then you might as well add notes about these. I wished someone had linked to the help articles that are under debate rather than "'as according to help' (if you read a certain section of help)" as I already thought this sort of stuff was in the help. Marc Kupper (talk) 09:45, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Since I am the 'Tor' Transgressor, My thinking came from pb to the page length criteria. That caused me to 'double/triple' think the issues. Sorry but the 'backtracking' extends to other areas such as the Ace Perry Rhodan series. Word length should never trump common db user perceptions. Title to novel is his most common usage point.
1) First admit that 'Doubles' are a publisher grouping of stories, basically to get the smallest novels and larger novellas into a marketable state. 2)State that all publisher doubles (not author(s) duology sets) be stated as dos + omnibus at all times irregardless of actual word length. Adding page counts and cover artist separate crediting to make it easier on the user. 3) Limit the page determinations for category to the contents area. Parse this so the 'db user' knows that novel is per publisher criteria at the category selection area, while novel, novella, short story are parsed at the title entry (in notes) and content area in the classical way and even then not by 'Awards' commissions, etc. Note the variances in the notes field (title & specific entry) as much as possible, but do not let them 'reshape' the classification as the publishers have done for their publishing purposes.
3) is the important factor of this discussion. If I am right this method generates the least confusion for the db user, not always necessarily for the moderators and editors. The db user cannot be expected to parse the finer points as he is looking for general data and the researcher db user should be expected to understand the rules easily enough, though he will undoubtedly have even more ways to subdivide each type of novel, novella, etc I am sure ISFDB does not want to go there.
Sorry that this is muddled, but this seems to be basically what is needed. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 12:50, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, by the way, I use a spreadsheet that allows the user to enter a fairly small amount of data from relatively random pages to get an estimate. It did not get a great deal of applause from the people I showed it to but it seems to be relatively accurate. And back to this discussion, Ace Doubles should probably have their own type but the current solution is quite acceptable.--swfritter 22:34, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
It looks like this. Keep it simple - allow the editor some discretion when determining whether a book with a word count less than 40k should be classified as a novel. There are just too many special cases to be able develop any concise and acceptable definitions. For shorter pieces of fiction those awards that use the same word count standards as we currently do (Hugo, Nebula) are significant.--swfritter 23:02, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Techie-bit alert

My original thought was that it's a single-edit fix per pub, and such an ANTHOLOGY is picked up easily with SQL like: 

select p.pub_id, p.pub_tag, p.pub_title
from pubs p, pub_content pc, titles t
where p.pub_id = pc.pub_id
and pc.title_id = t.title_id
and p.pub_title = t.title_title
and p.pub_ctype= 'ANTHOLOGY'
and t.title_ttype = 'SHORTFICTION'

and we don't have to go check whether there's any other publication contents. For a COLLECTION type, there's probably hundreds or thousands of collections named after one of the constituent short-stories. Not sure about OMNIBUS type, I'll run some queries and see how often we get those collisions. BLongley 19:02, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, it seems that as of the last backup I loaded we have 137 Anthologies with a same-name shortfiction content record already. We have 1479 Collections with a same-name shortfiction title/author content (as I suspected). Only 3 Omnibuses with the same problem, so maybe that would be easiest for the workaround if people like it. Of course, I could spend more time writing more comprehensive SQL (my quick solution doesn't check authors, count other contents, etc.) but a standard publication note for anything we use this workaround for wouldn't add much complexity. BLongley 19:32, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
Bill - this thread got lost and I'm not sure what you are proposing other than you are reporting on anthologies and collections that have the same title as one of their contained stories. -Marc Kupper|talk 19:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
It relates directly to the suggested workaround(s) in the "Chapter Books yet again" thread immediately above (at the moment). That seemed to end with an agreement that as Chapterbooks are fundamentally broken at present we'd try keeping the Shortfiction as Shortfiction, but put them in a temporary "container" title type that's a bit more stable. However, as it's planned to be only a temporary fix till we get something else that pleases everybody, it's best to use a workaround that is going to be easily found and converted later. The statistics show that although a single-content "Collection" might look most reasonable in the mean-time it'll be difficult to find ones used for Chapbook-evasion purposes alone. "Anthology" is better, Omnibus better still. Of course, in this particular case people went with the multi-step "Magazine" solution instead so the discussion died out. BLongley 20:16, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Musicals

A new editor just entered Weird Romance: Two One-Act Musicals of Speculative Fiction. Seeking to confirm it, I found that, according to OCLC at least, the same publisher also issued another SF musical libretto under the same ISBN, and I have duly entered it: Gorey Stories: A Musical Entertainment. I don't think there is any question that these are IN, both are written and published works of SF, or appear to be from secondary sources. But there are some questions about how to record them. User:Jayembee recorded the first as a collection, and since there are separate entries for the two acts, which are based on different printed stories, this seems reasonable. I recorded the second as a novel, although perhaps it ought to be a chapbook or a collection: It is said to be based on 18 short stories by Edward Gorey, but I don't know if those stories have been treated as separate mini-plays (which would probably make this a novel) or if this is a sort of musical fix-up; I rather suspect the latter. There is also the question of author listings: Should the authors of the stories on which these musicals are based be listed as authors here, or not? I could make arguments either way. OCLC lists them as authors, and so did User:Jayembee (who may well have a physical copy of Weird Romance), so i followed suit. Still, a general policy may be a good idea in case this situation comes up again. Of course Implementing Feature:90164 (based on) would help a lot with this, but I'm not holding my breath. -DES Talk 17:30, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Jayembee here. I found the wiki. I'm slow, but I CAN be taught. First off, yes, I have a physical copy of the book I was working off. I see that I haven't verified the entry yet. I shall do so. As for crediting the authors of the original work, in the case of the second act ("Her Pilgrim Soul"), Brennert is the original author, so the question's moot. But for the record, the title page of the book reads:

Weird Romance

Two One-Act Musicals of Speculative Fiction

Music by Alan Menken Lyrics by David Spencer

"The Girl Who Was Plugged In" Book by Alan Brennert and David Spencer based on the story by James Tiptree, Jr.

"Her Pilgrim Soul" Book by Alan Brennert based on his original story

It really seemed wrong to not list Tiptree as a co-author of the first, since at the very least, she was responsible for the plot (I've never gone back and compared the script with Tiptree's story to see how much dialogue is taken directly from Tiptree; I should do that, if only for my own curiosity). For the record, while the script refers to "Girl" as "Act I" and "Soul" as "Act II" - which suggests that the musical is a single work - the subtitle of the work refers to them as two one-act musicals, which suggests that they be treated as separate works. That and the fact that they come from separately previously-published stories was the reason why I felt it should be entered into the ISFDb as a collection. Jayembee 08:56, 2 November 2008 (UTC) Jayembee
Well, we don't seem to usually credit the original Script-Writers for novelised TV shows except in notes, and even the book of the film of a book by someone else doesn't lead to a co-author credit. We seem to have Once More with Feeling here already though so maybe musicals are an exception. Or maybe they're not - I see no Rocky Horror of any kind here, and Little Shop of Horrors looks a bit too short to be a valid entry. I can see a slippery slope here: doe anyone want me to enter "Spock in Manacles"? I'd be quite happy to enter it, or my favourite musical. BLongley 20:20, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
If the script or book of a Musical, or for that matter of a TV show, is published in print (or as an ebook i suppose) It seems to me pretty clearly in. We do have "Phoenix Without Ashes" which is the script for a TV episode. (As for Return to the Forbidden Planet, it seems to be in print in pb form. Assuming it is in fact SF, I would enter it if I had a copy.) -DES Talk 21:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
It is SF - Laurence Olivier Award winning SF even. (And that is a significant award. I've held it, and could easily use it as a lethal blunt instrument.) That book is actually more tp than pb but at least is more script-like than some other books based on the show, which are just the songs with keyboard and guitar arrangements. The songs are an integral part of the plot, but so are William Shakespeare's The Tempest and the original Forbidden Planet film. As I say, slippery slope... still, we're sliding down it. I see that under current practices Belaboring the Obvious probably now gets in for its audiobook excerpt. We never had problems like this when I was an ISFDB trainee... :-/ BLongley 22:19, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Return to the Forbidden Planet is most definitely SF. I saw it during it's original West End production. Anyway, I was going to say that maybe the original script-writers of novelized TV show episodes or films (or original authors of stories they're based on -- like "Arena" in Star Trek 2 being a 3-way collaboration of Blish, Coon, and Brown :-)) SHOULD be given a co-author credit. But then, as the Trek example shows, that could open a can of worms. At least we don't have the Thunderball mess to deal with (aside: I'm rather surprised, though, that neither Live and Let Die nor Moonraker - or the novelization of the film version of the latter - are in the database)
As a counter-example, perhaps, there's the case of I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay, in which Asimov is presented as co-author, even though (as far as I can see) he is only responsible for the original stories that Ellison adapted, and didn't have any hand in writing the screenplay itself. Jayembee 08:56, 2 November 2008 (UTC) Jayembee
Whether to grant the authors of the works adapted a co-author credit is another matter. I am working from secondary sources here, or from the the submission of an editor who has not yet found the wiki, so i can't say with assurance if such credits were given on the publications themselves. All I can say is that the secondary source (OCLC) gave such credit. -DES Talk 21:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
We've got a lot of rework to do if we start giving co-author credits for authors of an otherwise non-enterable version of a work, that get credited in the later entered versions. (Does that make sense? I basically mean that we could go back and massively increase the number of books co-written by Joss Whedon, Gene Roddenberry, etc, and even introduce some like "Constance M. Burge".) I'm not against such - it might keep me busy this winter. It does make us look a bit more visual-media orientated than I think we usually are though. BLongley 22:19, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Anyway i wanted to call attention to what I had just done, and get opinions on whether it was a good idea or not, in the matter of the author credits. I also wanted to draw some attention to the somewhat odd (though not unheard of) situation of two quite different books with the same ISBN, at least according to OCLC. -DES Talk 21:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Different books with same ISBN shouldn't happen, but I have seen it elsewhere. All we can do is note the collision and cross-reference - it's rare to be able to say which one is "right". BLongley 22:19, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

(Unindent) I think we've got a few issues here, it might be worth separating them out fast. 1) SF musicals printed in book form - I suspect OUT if they're just songs, IN if they have the plot? 2) Co-credits for the authors of media versions, or only if they wrote it before it got a media version before a book version? (Obviously co-credited if the book co-credits them as authors.) 3) Duplicate ISBNs - I think all we can do is as I stated above, but I'm open to suggestions if people think there's a way of distinguishing the "correct" one. BLongley 22:19, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree that these are separate issues. In fact, i'll create sub-threads for them. -DES Talk 22:58, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

SF musicals printed in book form

If these are nothing but song books, I agree that they should be OUT. But if they have significant text beyond song lyrics (novelizations, sort of), or dialog as a printed script would or some combo, then i would say IN. Actually I'm rethinking the first. We already have SF poetry collections, so a book of song lyrics, provided that the lyrics are SF, should probably be IN, but I'm less sure of it than a true script or libretto or "book". -DES Talk 22:58, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, let's confuse the issue even more. I'd be inclined to say that song books from SF musicals should be in if they they are simply published lyrics. If they are actual music books, that is contain sheet music, then no. Then again, I see that Swann's The Road Goes Ever On is included, so... Jayembee 08:56, 2 November 2008 (UTC) Jayembee
Ok, submitted but immediately held this and cover image is here. Other background here. The next slippery step is to allow Filk songbooks in ("Yay! Bill gets four more credits in ISFDB! And then I can push for Award entries for such, and get one of those too!"). We've already got people slightly misusing "POEM" for filks in certain C. J. Cherryh, Leslie Fish and Mercedes Lackey books. (Less important standards discussion - capitalisation of BECCON.) BLongley 23:27, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, what is printed in the Cherryh and Lackey books are the lyrics to filks, which are poems, or at least verse, by any definition i can think of, and many of Kipling's poems were apparently written to fit popular music hall tunes of the day ("The Liner She's a lady" I've heard sung to a period tune) and we have some of them on record. Verse, whether constituting lyrics or not, included in a professionally published SF work, seem to me clearly IN, and "Poem" fits them better than "Shortfiction", IMO. Filks, and filk songbooks, are a step down towards amateur levels, but then we already include fanzines and self-published books that perhaps have sold 2 copies. If we include them, I'm in, as I was the editor and publisher of the MSU Tolkien Society Song Book, vols 1-3 (Singer's and Musician's editions). I still have copies, too. On the rest of this, my opinions are up-thread, i won't repeat or expand on them, for once. -DES Talk 23:47, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
I think we have discussed POEM or ESSAY use/misuse for "SONG" entries before (probably numerous times in fact) and I find I use POEM more often. SONG might be nice if we have the musical arrangements to go with the lyric. (But then we'd get complaints about whether a piano or guitar arrangement was enough, and why don't we credit the arranger(s)...). So long as there's words, and they're SF, I'm inclusionist. I have no idea how my published filks would be categorised really: one I'd count as OUT as computer-related only, another OUT as only related to another filker (although a filker that is a fictional character in some major fantasy books), the award-winner might be out as it's a filk of a filk of a Comic-book story, and the last is so unmemorable I can't even remember what it was about. But the overall song-book might be in, despite my contributions. I sing in the Key of Z and it sounds like L - but I apparently write nice words at times. BLongley 00:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
FWIW, I have been using POEM as a substitute for SONG as well since songs are generally works of fiction and making them Essays seems rather counter-intuitive. I always enter filk pieces as POEMs when I encounter them in magazines and anthologies (not that it happens very often), but sheet music books seem to be a step too far. Ahasuerus 01:22, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Co-credits

The case I originally raised was a co-credit for the author of the conventional story. For example, if the script for the Peter Jackson LOTR movies was to be printed, should J. R. R. Tolkien get a Co-credit? All of the plot and much of the dialog is his, after all. In any case, if the printed book co-credits a "based on" author, the answer is easy. If it merely has a credit "This musical based on the stories of Joe Doaks 1905-1972" for a 1997 work (so Doaks clearly did not contribute to the musical itself) then probably only a credit in the notes? -DES Talk 22:58, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Co-credits to the creators of movies or TV shows in the novelizations thereof is a different matter, although related. Probably just in notes unless credited as a co-author on the title page? -DES Talk 22:58, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Again on the slippery slope, and with the example above: we don't have the "Spock in Manacles" fanzine by Kate Davies. The Fanzine is probably in if we could find it, after recent changes, the entry in "The BECCON Plays" is certainly credited. Date issues might ensue. I assume "Musical Arrangement" and "Producer" or "Director" credits and cast-lists are out, however famous the names are. (Yes, Lionel Fanthorpe did appear in his own musical, and you might have heard of some bloke called Geoff_Ryman appearing as Spock. Presumably in manacles of some theatrical sort.) BLongley 23:43, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Duplicate ISBNs

split off from discussion in the prevuous section: "Musicals"

Not much to do except note them, that I can see.

The most extreme case that I know of: the 44 volumes of the "Vance Integral Edition" (we have the first 13 or so listed in the db so far) use exactly 2 ISBNs, one for the volumes issued in 2002, one for the ones issued in 2005. They were only sold as a complete set, you see, so only one ISBN was needed, they thought. -DES Talk 22:58, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm in favour of claiming all SF-related ISBNs. Not so keen on applying an overall ISBN to each individual book. BLongley 00:19, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
The OCLC entries list an ISBN for each book in the VIE. It just happens to be the same one, over and over. Since it was never for sale at retail through any of the usual outlets, none of them needed a unique code. Makes life harder for us, and for other bibliographers, of course. -DES Talk 03:30, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Quite often specialty publishers, e.g. Phantasia Press will place the same ISBN on both the trade edition and the deluxe edition. Is the deluxe edition a truly separate edition, or is it simply a boxed and signed version of the trade edition? I chose to create separate records for each. Sometime I need to check and see which edition our ISBN links lead to. MHHutchins 06:49, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I have been using Michael's approach as well since it makes physical Verification easier. Also, keep in mind that a publisher may claim on the copyright page that other editions exist, but for various reasons they may never appear. Ahasuerus 01:16, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Baen's "e-arcs": IN or OUT

First three entries copied from the ARC thread well above, as the topic has driftend and goe live after a lapse. -DES Talk 12:33, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Baen books has fairly recently created something that they call an "e-arc". This is an ebook version of an unproofed, late but not final draft of a book, which they put on sale usually 1-2 months before the release date of the final version of the book. Since they sell this (typically for more than the cost of a pb, but less than half the cost of a paper hc, and more than the cost of a released individual ebook), and it is downloadable like their other ebooks, it surely exists in a verifiable state. Should such "e-arcs" (their term) be listed here? They will generally differ at least in detail, because the final copyedit pass has not been done on them, and in a few cases significant late rewrites have, i understand, occurred after the release of the e-arc. -DES Talk 19:54, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I believe all ARCs should be out, even electronic ones. I can't see why an "e-arc" should be treated differently. MHHutchins 06:41, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
The difference, in my mind, is that these "e-arcs" are actually being advertised and sold. The traditional ARC was only distributed to reviewers and buyers for bookstores and distributors, and indeed generally carried a large "NOT FOR SALE" notice. Fans only got these if they knew someone on the distribution list, or if someone on that list sold a copy in violation of agreement. But with Baen marketing these, arguably they aren't "really" ARCs at all, but separate editions. -DES Talk 12:33, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I guess the key issue here is that these "ARCs" are not exactly "advanced reader copies", at least not in the sense that the term is usually understood. As long as they are sold to the public, you could argue that they represent just another (albeit raw) Publication of the Title. Hm, maybe we need a new term for them? Ahasuerus 01:12, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
That was more or less my thought. no new term springs to mind, however. -DES Talk 02:18, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
This begs an even deeper question. Why would an author allow an unedited version of a novel to be sold at all? Has all integrity flew out the window in order to get a few extra bucks? Jeez, what's next? Hawking your wares out of the trunk of your car on the corner of an abandoned strip mall's parking lot? MHHutchins 04:37, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
$15.00 and apparently you don't get a copy of the final product. The process does allow input to the author from the readers. They are only available for purchase for a limited time - although they can still be downloaded if already purchased. As long as there are not multiple versions of the "e-arcs" I think they are valid.--swfritter 15:11, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Non-Roman characters in titles

This pub of Autumn Angels includes the introductory essay "The Phi Psi Omega of A B C" by Ellison. It also includes the note "The title of Ellison's introduction uses the actual Greek letters for "phi", "psi", and "omega" rather than spelling them out in English". Now we could enter this as "The Ψ Φ Ω of A B C". But should we? It would be rather hard to search for. That probably wouldn't matter much with an introductory essay, but might matter if such characters were used in the title of a work of fiction. Opinions? -DES Talk 14:36, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Somehow use variant title? one of which would not be in a pub.--swfritter 14:59, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
That would work. In line with our usual rule, I suggest that the version with the actual characters should be the parent, and should be in the actual pub, at least in this case? -DES Talk 15:20, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
That's the way it is most likely to be listed elsewhere so that makes sense.--swfritter 16:05, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Roglo and I played with non-Latin-1 character sets back when he was cleaning up Stanislaw Lem and I was trying to add foreign language sequels to well known English language series. It didn't work too well in the context of the Author field, but Titles were mostly OK. There were some strange ramifications, though, e.g. do a regular Title search on "42" and review the first three records. Also, if you go the Variant Title route, pseudonymous Titles become even more convoluted than they currently are, but not insurmountably so.
My suggestion would be to pick a few sample Titles, change them in accordance with this proposal and see how it works. Ahasuerus 16:55, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
Done for this case, see the links above. -DES Talk 17:22, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

Novelizations

Based on the discussion above, do we want to replace the highlighted words in Help:Screen:EditTitle:

  • nvz - Novelization - Indicates that this story is a novelization of an earlier shortfiction. Note that this code is not available when editing the Contents section of a publication but you will see it when editing title records.

with a movie, TV show, game or other media [work?] to reflect the current usage? Ahasuerus 01:28, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I could go along with that. Do we want to include the case of expansion of a short fiction work to novel length as an alternate use for this code, or use it only for the media->novel case? -DES Talk 02:16, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the help pages should be changed as Ahasuerus suggests, and no, it should not include the expansion of a shorter work into a novel. IMHO. MHHutchins 04:30, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
I've never used it for expansion of short fiction, only for books based on other media. And not often then - e.g. despite re-doing over 50 Doctor Who books yesterday (for foreign prices and covers) I didn't feel up to adding Wikipedia entries at title level for them all (although I suspect they're all there), and even the few I did I forgot to put 'nvz' on. I totally agree with Michael on help changes. BLongley 19:23, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Help changed. -DES Talk 19:54, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Seems a bit quick, but that may be the only way we'll ever change things nowadays. Talk too long and we go nowhere. BLongley 23:21, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Anyway, while the iron is hot I've adjusted Starfleet Academy. I suspect the next question is whether the "Wikipedia Entry" at title level should be used for links to a Wikipedia article that doesn't include the NOVEL that's here. But if that's worth talking about, please split it out as a separate topic or we'll just get the current help change reverted. (Same if you want "excerpts" recorded better than I did there, or any other issues. Small, bite-size topics please!) BLongley 23:21, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Actually, looking at that, where does "nvz" help anyone anyway? I don't recall seeing it any time apart from title edits. BLongley 23:25, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
"nvz" and "jvn" were implemented way back in 1995 because John Wenn was using them in his bibliographies and we just followed his lead. I think we displayed this information in Summary Bibliographies for a while, but the current code doesn't display them just like it doesn't display our ancient Author biographies which are still buried in the guts of the database. Shouldn't be too hard to make the abbreviations reappear, though. Ahasuerus 01:39, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

New Infinities and Byron Preiss (Concept copyright publishing?)

This. [1] . When I verified this publication the notes tell it all. New Infinities is not a publisher, but holds copyright material used in the book. They may have even hired Ace to print and distribute their books. New Infinites left logos on covers and spines, but again seems to be a 'jobber' for Trigee Enterprises Corporation (A Gygax after TSR event). I do no wish to list New Infinities as a publisher and wondered if New Infinities should be tagged as not being a publisher. Byron Preiss fits the same mold. Do you want it to say ACE / New Infinities or just be noted. Do we give publisher credit for 'Concept' copyrights? I also did Cyborg Commando #1, before I realized the strange relationship of New Infinities. #2 is at hand and it matches #3 my example. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 21:39, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I would document what is stated on the front cover, spine, back cover, title page, copyright page, etc. I personally consider the "publisher" to be what's stated on the bottom of the title page and so if I had a publication that used New Infinities there then that's what I use. FWIW, here's a New Infinities / Berkley Publishing Group book. I also would consider them a "Publisher" as it seems they performed many of the roles associated with publishers. Book manufacturing is only a small part of it. For example, I don't think DAW Books has ever manufactured books and yet most people would consider them to be a publisher.
As for the concept copyright - You can document it in the notes. We use the author/edit credit that's stated on the title page as the author/editor of a publication. When I see that the copyright is in someone else' name I document that. For example, I recently verified this. -Marc Kupper|talk 03:56, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. I usually put the copyrights in for someone may find them useful. I enjoy thinking the why. I always put it in if it is not the author or even if the author uses a variant name. Your publisher example would fit into the same scenario and when I do my Gygax's I'll cross check for New Infinities, etc.
In the Cyborg Commando series, the title page is no help. Nobody is there. The copyright page lists Ace and New Infinites for their identity & logo copyrights, but none are specifically to the book. New Infinities sprinkles it's logos and gets them on the front and spine. Trigee, owner of New Infinities, gets a copyright credit but it's placement could very well be for the Cyborg Commando series itself or just maybe the book. Ace is on the spine.
The problem then is of definition. Ace does not claim the book. New Infinities owns it's trademark, but does not specify a claim to the book. Berkley group distributed the product to the book trade. Trigee owns the copyright to 'Cyborg Commando'.
Top of copyright page reads thus. Chase Into Space (over) (spacing) A Cyborg Commando(tm) Book (over) (spacing) Copyright 1988 Trigee Enterprises corporation. All Rights reserved.
Problem then is who? It is like a group of lawyers were able to take and not take all creit for everything and nothing. How should it be displayed. Trigee, New Infinities, Ace. With the imprint publishers how? Trigee / Ace, Ace / Trigee, Ace / New Infinities, New Infinities / Ace, Trigee / New Infinities / Ace. Trigee + Ace + New Infinities since none are parts of the other? Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 16:58, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
Since they are using an Ace ISBN Ace should definitely be in the publisher name meaning it's probably "New Infinities and Ace Books" (or Ace Publishing if it's a book done before Charter bought them). -Marc Kupper|talk 06:22, 5 November 2008 (UTC)
I did not think of the ISBN publisher angle. Since Ace Books has the history and ISBN, and New Infinities may well be (probably is) already in the wind. I think Ace Books and New Infinities. If someone had to get records on the book, Ace would be the place I would start. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 13:18, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Standards discussions

(Moved to Talk:Rules and standards discussions#Recurring topics.) -DES Talk 00:07, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, folks, now I can go back to working on User:Fixer and not feel guilty. Or at least less guilty :) Ahasuerus 01:40, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Anthologies with no stated or known editor

Should an anthology which combines several novellas by different authors, with no stated editor, and no secondary source info indicating an editor, be credited as a joint work by the authors, like