User:Ahasuerus

From ISFDB

Current status: Active. Please feel free to leave a message on my Talk page or, in case of technical difficulties, e-mail me at (user name:) ahasuerus (domain:) email.com.

Contents 1 Background 2 Current responsibilities 3 To Do List 3.1 Long Term 3.2 Data Cleanup and Scripting 3.3 Coding 3.4 Possible Additional Data Elements 3.5 Library Topics to search 3.6 Amazon categories to monitor 3.7 Amazon subjects to monitor 4 Recurring Activities

Background

I began helping Al von Ruff with ISFDB design in 1995. I also helped with the original ISFDB testing/data entry and provided bibliographic data for John Clute/John Grant (1949-)'s The Encyclopedia of Fantasy in the mid-1990s, but gafiated in the late 1990s-early 2000s. After re-emerging in mid-2005 and upgrading numerous SF articles on Wikipedia, I have been active as an ISFDB moderator, administrator and tester since moderator editing was enabled on May 1, 2006. I wrote the original ISFDB:Policy and created the Sources of Bibliographic Information page back in 2006.

Current responsibilities

As the only active ISFDB editor with direct access to the database server, I post weekly backup files, bounce the Web/MySQL servers and perform other maintenance chores as required. I also write data cleanup scripts and maintain User:Fixer, a data cleanup/import robot. Now that we have re-started Development, I also function as a tester and patch administrator. In my plentiful spare times I work on Verifying my collection of some 20,000 speculative fiction books and magazines.

To Do List

Long Term

• Rconcile Mrs._Pepperpot
• Reconcile Richard K. Lyon
• Reconcile Charles L. Harness
• Enter Eva-Lis Wuorio's YA SF
• Reconcile Brian Stableford's recent (mostly POD) books with Great SF&F
• Pseudonymize Nancy Krulik/Nancy E. Krulik
• Russian vts - a more thorough pass, add pubs, etc
• Reconcile Cedar Fort SF
• Add User:Ahasuerus/SF Cozy Mysteries
• Reconcile Valerie Griswold-Ford with Amazon.com
• Reconcile "Cat of Nine Tales" (Amazon YA series, we only have #1)
• Reconcile Magazine:Thrills Incorporated with the checklist
• Reconcile Zumaya Otherworlds based on OCLC and http://www.zumayapublications.com/otherworlds/
• Set up vts for "Alex Archer" based on Mel Odom's Web site and other sources
• Investigate/reconcile Midnight Showcase
• Add missing O. R. Melling titles from her Web page
• Gunn/Listeners to NOVEL
• Clean up Ackerman's pseudonyms in Expanded Science Fiction Worlds of Forrest J Ackerman & Friends PLUS
• Clean up The Time Vault series (which it isn't, apparently) and Perry Rhodan in general
• Delete comic books published by General
• Enter The quest for utopia : an anthology of imaginary societies by Glenn Robert Negley and J. Max Patrick
• Check my Laumer copy for the spelling of Rick "Sternback"'s name
• Set up vts and pseudonyms for Ed/Edward J. McFadden (III)
• Add the rest of the Left Behind titles
• Verify Gulliver_Jones, Michael's covers and Reginald-1 re: the Atlan books
• Sort out Charles Phipps
• Check my ca. 1973 Galaxy covers for anything weird as per Michael's query
• Reconcile Leonaur's SF/F/ghost stories catalog.
• Check different versions of G. C. Edmondson's biography
• Find Authors whose real last name starts with a "de", e.g. "de Pierres", but whose "last name" field doesn't start with "de", e.g. "Pierres"
• Verify two magazines
• Sort out various "du boi" authors, delete non-SF
• Reconcile http://www.batteredbox.com/Pulps/index.htm
• Reconcile http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sword_and_planet
• Enter the contents of Island Dreams
• Check my copy of Great Science Fiction About Doctors and see whether there is a "The" in "The Man Without an Appetite"
• Reconcile the Black Cat press catalog
• "Kemsley Newspapers" in OCLC
• Ken Greenhall writing as "Jessica Hamilton"
• Add pubs to George Griffith titles
• Check Author ID 109697 ("Ursula K. LeGuin") in the backup file
• Reconcile Jayne Castle (including Ghost Hunters) with Amazon.com
• Clean up Ernest Bramah
• Search and destroy manga artists whose name includes "yu"
• Delete the 5 Korean manga artists whose name starts with "Park "
• Reconcile Henderson's occult detective stories
• Enter the contents of Michelle West's Speaking with angels (tp and hc) and reconcile with her Web page
• Add Stargate SG-1 9-11 titles
• Clean up Allen Thiher, a literary critic who has reviewed Kafka and other SF - most of his books are not SF-related
• Gillian Rubinstein, a prolific YA author, is underrepresented
• Reconcile Terry Denton's "Storymaze" novels (part fiction and part comic books) with Amazon.com and OCLC
• Sort out various Elfquest Reader's Collections on Amazon.com. Some/all are heavy on comics.
• Robert Weinberg's 1970s anthology series and OCLC
• Reconcile Basil Wells with http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/basilwells/index.html
• Enter the contents of John Collier's Presenting Moonshine from OCLC and create clones for other editions
• Set up the "The Secret Visitors" series by Willis Hall
• "Robert Morgan" - all/some novels part of a series?
• Set up vts for various Tolstoy/Tolstoi variants
• Reconcile "The World of the Lupi" universe and other Eileen Wilks books with Amazon.com
• Clean up Mel Odom, especially his game guides
• Clean up Wollheim's "Up There and Other Strange Directions" - wrong pseudonymous records
• Create a Publication series somewhere in the Wiki to document Columbia Publications' "Science Fiction Classics" from 1941-1942: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
• Turn all "John Coleridge" titles into vts of Eando Binder
• Verify my Astonishing issues
• Create a "secondary sources reconciliation" checklist
• Add Carole Nelson Douglas' non-genre works and the Midnight Louie complexities from Wikipedia once non-genre series display has been beefed up
• Reconcile with Christopher Moore's Wikipedia article
• Check my copies of Stuart Gordon's Time Story and The Other Log of Phileas Fogg as per thsi discussion on Marc Kupper's Talk page
• Review Christine Bernard and the 14 (?) Armada Ghost Books
• Clean up William Peter Blatty's bibliography: add pubs, clarify which titles are SF, link to Wikipedia
• Add pubs to "Richard Middleton"
• Check the apostrophe situation in Imagination as per the Rkihara/Swfritter discussion
• Change A. R. Long 's canonical name to Amelia Reynolds Long once we can delete pseudonyms
• Reconcile Michael Marshall Smith and his (primarily) non-genre pseudonym Michael Marshall using OCLC and Wikipedia
• Reconcile "Kevin D. Randle" with FF/OCLC
• Finish Keri Arthur reconciliation with Amazon.com and OCLC
• Add Matthew Hughes' non-fiction, collection contents and assign short stories to the correct series
• Add missing Kenneth Oppel books from Wikipedia and OCLC
• Experiment with deleting Author level pseudonyms using the method described here
• Post about Title publication dates when semi-pro and fan publications are involved
• Enter the Smallville YA series from Amazon.com
• Enter Brian S. Pratt's books from Amazon.com
• Review User:Ahasuerus/OldBiblios
• Finish linking Macmillan's Best of Soviet Science Fiction Series
• Merge "Richard Chizmar" and "Richard T. Chizmar"
• Post about changing the rules for reprints where the publication date is not specified
• Post about the Wolverton/Farland situation and related pseudonym issues; see Al's Talk page
• Finish Worldcat reconciliation for Nicholas Stuart Gray; additional sources of shortfiction dates?
• Physically verify all Destinies and New Destinies anthologies
• Physically verify the rest of the Man from U.N.C.L.E books once they are found
• Post about Unicode issues
• Fix Davis Bunn's pseudonym pointers and address the larger issue
• Post about the Frank Lillie Pollock situation.
• Experiment with Artist pseudonym handling. Identify any discrepancies vis a vis Author pseudonym handling and post the results
• Check the comic book version of George R. R. Martin's "Sandkings"
• Correct V. C. Andrews' bibliography to reflect the fact that half the books were ghosted.
• Create a project page for the LIAM project once the beta phase is over
• Update the Rules of Acquisition
• Review Community Portal discussions/archives and update the FAQ and policies accordingly

Data Cleanup and Scripting

• Find all pseudonymous stories whose pseudonymous author is not set up as a pseudonym for the actual author
• Find VTs that are part of a Series
• Write a script to change "..." to ". . ." and submit the changes via the Web interface
• Extract the invisible author biographies from the database and post them on the Wiki for review
• Find all Titles whose Synopsis and/or Note fields contain %%, a remnant of the pre-ISFDB-2 days
• Write a script to cache cover scans
• Find all titles that differ from similar titles for the same author due to capitalization
• Replicate Contento's list of most frequently reprinted stories?
• Find all pubs whose Author IDs do not match the Author IDs of the associated master Title: Novel/Novel, Collection/Collection, Omnibus/Omnibus, etc.
• In each magazine issue, find all fiction titles whose title_title is identical - will help identify suspected Interior art titles entered as fiction
• Post a list of bad prices, starting with "None" and including the name of the Verifier
• Find all VTs whose title records are identical
• Find all Titles whose date is after the Author's death date
• Find all Publications whose Contents Titles have a date following the Publication's date (happens when Titles are merged)
• Find all orphaned Bibliographic Comments in the Wiki (happens when the associated publication changes)
• Find all Magazine Titles that have more than 1 Publication record associated with them
• Find all VT titles that are a part of a series; need to "serialize" their parent titles instead
• Find Titles that are VTs of themselves; find VTs that link different title types
• Find all Publications whose contents do not match the Publication type:
  • Anthology/Collection/Omnibus Pubs with 0 or 2+ Anthology/Collection/Omnibus Title records
  • Novel Publications with 0 or 2+ Novel Title records
  • Novel Publications with <100 pages
  • Publications with 2+ occurrences of the same Title ID
  • Publications with 0 Title records
  • Magazines and Fanzines with zero or 2+ Editor record
• Check Author names - canonical and legal - for formatting problems
• Check Titles and Publications for more than 1 capital letter in a row
• Find Reviews that have no matching Titles
• Find Authors and Reviews with no Titles; Awards pointing to Titles with no Pubs
• Find all Stray Publications belonging to Authors with no pseudonym pointer and no non-vt Titles
• Find identical Titles and Publications
• Find Titles and Publications that differ in insignificant details (time consuming)
• Find Titles without associated Publications
• Find Titles whose date precedes the first known Publication date for this Title

Coding

• Change "Anonymous" to "uncredited" in the error message
• Delete Pseudonym
• Delete empty Series
• Moderator warnings column in the approval screen:
  • Changes to Contents titles that will affect multiple pubs
  • Double spaces and missing spaces (e.g. "X.Y.Author") in author names
  • Irregular page numbers (ampersands etc)
  • Merging different title types, e.g. Essay and Collection
• Double quotes to single quotes: Edit Title, Edit Pub, Clone Pub (pub level only?), Edit Award (currently inactive). Change regular and advanced Author searches to display a warning when trying to search using double quotes
• Unhide container Titles during Publication editing?
• Bold submissions made by moderators to prevent accidental cross-approval
• Allow rejecting submissions that contain previously deleted Titles in the Contents section instead of the current error display
• Prevent the Series display logic from displaying variant titles
• Add a checkbox for "Change the title in ALL publications?" - may be tricky
• Fix the display of REVIEW entries in the Moderator screen
• Change the Storylen field into a dropdown list in Edit Title
• Make the software interpret YYYY as YYYY-00-00 and not 0000-00-00

Possible Additional Data Elements

• Printing number
• A new "fixup" relationship similar to the "Contents" relationship
• Separate catalog IDs and ISBNs to better support post-1970s books
• "Roles" for non-anthology/magazine editors, dust jacket designers, translators, etc.
• Separate city and publisher
• "True" series number vs. "official" series number to handle things like 16.1
• Multiple primary Verifiers
• Jvn and nvz (do it via tags?)
• "Bibliography of XYZ"
• Character names (requested on rec.arts.sf.written)

Library Topics to search

• Alien abduction -- Juvenile fiction. 180 2008-04-13
• Alien abduction -- Fiction. 1450 2008-04-10
• Alternative histories (Fiction). 18579 2008-0413
• Androids - Fiction 2841 (2341?) 2008-0426
• Animals, Mythical -- Juvenile fiction. 5160 2008-04-13
• Anti-Utopias. 21 2008-04-14
• Apocalyptic fantasies. 931 2008-04-15
• Area 51 (Nev.) -- Juvenile fiction.
• Area 51 (Nev.) -- Fiction. 521 2008-07-12
• Artemis (Greek deity) -- Juvenile fiction.
• Astral projection -- Fiction. 1233 2008-04-24
• Atlantis -- Fiction. 3198 2008-04-21
• Atlantis (Legendary place) -- Fiction. 10399 2008-04-22
• Cartoons and comics -- Fiction.
• Dragons -- Fiction. 49582 2008-04-23
• Dystopias 22075 2008-04-25
• Dystopian fiction 15 2008-04-25
• End-of-the-world fantasies 206 2008-05-01
• End of the world -- Fiction. 10677 2008-05-04
• Epic fiction.
• Extrasensory perception -- Juvenile fiction. 3409 2008-04-28
• Extrasensory perception -- Fiction. 9793 2008-04-28
• Extraterrestrial anthropology -- Fiction.
• Extraterrestrial beings -- Fiction. 16341 2008-04-28
• Extraterrestrial beings -- Juvenile Fiction.
• Fairies -- Fiction. 30974 2008-04-27
• Fairies -- Juvenile literature.
• Fantastic fiction. Python
• Fantasy Fiction. Python
• Fantasy fiction, American -- History and criticism. 10248 2008-07-13
• Ghosts -- Fiction 41536 2008-04-16
• Ghost stories Python
• Ghost stories, English History and criticism. 1242 2008-04-28
• God -- Proof -- Fiction.
• Hades (Greek deity) -- Fiction.
• Haunted Houses -- Fiction. 13437 2008-05-07
• Horror fiction Python
• Human-alien encounters -- Juvenile fiction.
• Human-alien encounters -- Fiction. 17974 2008-05-05
• Human evolution -- Fiction. 2787 2008-05-08
• Imaginary creatures -- Fiction. 1488 2008-04-17
• Imaginary creatures -- Juvenile Fiction.
• Imaginary places -- Fiction. 5998 2008-04-17
• Imaginary wars and battles -- Fiction. 17958 2008-04-30.
• Interplanetary voyages -- Fiction. 18983 2008-04-29
• Interstellar communication -- Fiction.
• Jinn -- Juvenile fiction.
• Jupiter (Planet) -- Fiction. 1745 2008-04-10
• Life on other planets -- Fiction. 60090 2008-04-30
• Magic -- Fiction. 5927 2008-05-08 Partial, needs Pyhton
• Magicians -- Fiction.
• Manned space flight -- Fiction.
• Monsters -- Fiction.
• Monsters -- Juvenile fiction.
• Mythology, Greek -- Juvenile fiction.
• Mythology, Greek -- Fiction.
• Nanotechnology -- Fiction.
• Occult Fiction 57120 2004-04-18
• Poseidon (Greek deity) -- Fiction.
• Psychic ability -- Fiction.
• Rejuvenation -- Fiction.
• Robots -- Fiction.
• Saturn (Planet) -- Fiction
• Science fiction. Python
• Science fiction -- Authorship.
• Science fiction, American.
• Space and time -- Fiction. 29302 2008-04-26
• Space colonies -- Fiction.
• Space ships -- Fiction.
• Space warfare -- Fiction.
• Star Trek fiction.
• Talismans - Fiction
• Time travel -- Fiction.
• Titans (Mythology) -- Juvenile fiction.
• Utopian fiction
• Vampires -- Fiction
• Voyages, Imaginary. 49213 2008-07-12
• Witches -- Fiction. 26935 2008-05-09 Partial, needs Python
• Zeus (Greek deity) -- Fiction.

Amazon categories to monitor

• Books › Romance › Fantasy, Futuristic & Ghost
• Books › Romance › Gothic
• Books › Romance › Time Travel
• Books › Romance › Vampires
• Children's Books › Ages 9-12 › Series › Fantasy & Adventure
• Children's Books › Ages 9-12 › Series › Horror
• Children's Books › Ages 9-12 › Series › Science Fiction
• Children's Books > Literature > Fairy Tales, Folk Tales & Myths > Greek & Roman
• Children's Books › Literature › Fairy Tales, Folk Tales & Myths › Stories
• Children's Books > Literature > Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery & Horror > Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Magic
• Children's Books > Literature > Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery & Horror > Spine-Chilling Horror
• Children's Books > Literature > Science Fiction, Fantasy, Mystery & Horror > Superheroes
• Children's Books › Series › Fantasy & Adventure
• Children's Books › Series › Horror
• Children's Books › Series › Science Fiction
• Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › Dark Fantasy
• Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › Ghosts
• Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › Erotic
• Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › Occult
• Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Horror › Vampires
• Literature & Fiction > World Literature > Mythology > Children's Books > Greek & Roman
• Teens > Literature & Fiction > Adventure & Thrillers (a lot of SF)
• Teens > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy
• Teens > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Horror
• Teens > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

Amazon subjects to monitor

• Fantasy fiction
• Romance - Fantasy
• Romance: Gothic
• Romance - Gothic
• Romance - Paranormal
• Vampires

Recurring Activities

• Archive the Community Portal
• Archive Short Term projects
• Add monthly consistency passes to Short Term projects