User talk:Ahasuerus

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See User talk:Ahasuerus/Archive for discussions prior to July 2009.

PLEASE NOTE:

If you're writing to inform me that you've either added a COVER IMAGE or NOTES to any of my VERIFIED PUBS, please follow THIS LINK and add it to the bottom of the list. A link to the pub record would be appreciated. Once the pub has been reviewed, I'll remove your note from the list. Thanks!

Contents

database data fix needed.

Hi. User HellCold is getting a Python exception trace in the My Votes display due to a missing title. See ISFDB:Help_desk#My_Votes_page_has_an_error. Looks like title id 183093 is gone. I will log a bug on SourceForge and fix it, but deleting the offending record, which is useless anyway if the title's gone, should fix it quickly: 

delete from votes where vote_id = 6233 and title_id = 183093 and user_id = 8689 and rating = 9;

(You of course should need only the vote_id). Looks like this was an old title (judging by the ID). I see no sign of it in any of the recent backups. I will poke around in the ancient ones and see if I can figure out what the vote was for.

While you're at it, you might do: 

select count(*) from votes v where not exists (select * from titles t where t.title_id = v.title_id);

and see how widespread a problem it is. The back-up doesn't seem to have the contents of the votes table in it.

Thanks. --MartyD 11:07, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

p.s. I logged this as 2815724 and assigned it to myself. --MartyD 11:34, 2 July 2009 (UTC)
Offending vote record deleted and the total count of wayward votes is 14, so not too bad. Thanks for catching it, I'll comment on the main discussion page about the long term implications! Ahasuerus 01:04, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. If you want to delete them all: 
delete from votes v where not exists (select * from titles t where t.title_id = v.title_id);
No need to preserve them -- until title deletion is changed, it's easy to create test cases.... --MartyD 01:46, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
I tried that line and got a syntax error back. Shouldn't it be select vote_id from titles t etc? Ahasuerus 01:58, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, Oracle's SQL lets you have the alias, but MySQL does not. It needs to be: 
delete from votes where not exists (select * from titles t where t.title_id = votes.title_id);
You can use "select *" or "select count(*)" in place of "delete" to see what it's going to operate on. --MartyD 10:05, 3 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll play with it shortly. I have been under the weather the last few days, so things have been rather slow on my side. Ahasuerus 04:10, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

r2009-07 biblio/common.py 1.17, 1.18

I saw that you had tested my Navbar update. Don't forget that this was a blocking change for Marty 2 updates ago, so he forked and then merged. You will need to flag biblio/common.py 1.18 not 1.17 as r2009-07. Cheers - Kevin 12:43, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

Oh yes, that's the one being tested! Thanks for the reminder :) Ahasuerus 00:48, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Dynamic Science Fiction, August 1953

I added a cover to your verified pub: DNMCSCNCFX1953 --Phileas 18:39, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Ahasuerus 04:09, 4 July 2009 (UTC)

biblioholics site

Could I get edit access to your biblioholics site to preserve non-SF bilbios, such as that for Tony Hillerman, before deleting them from the ISFDB? -DES Talk 20:54, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Certainly! Which e-mail address should I share it with? Ahasuerus 04:09, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Siegel AT acm [dot] org please. That address already has a google account. Thanks. -DES Talk 04:31, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Done! Hopefully it will work since I have never used this functionality. These technology/communications thingies are popping up all over the place, I wouldn't be surprised if they came up with self-propelled carriages or remote viewing apparatuses next... Ahasuerus 04:36, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
It worked. What will they come up with next? Farspeakers? Thanks. -DES Talk 05:05, 4 July 2009 (UTC)
Hillerman offload done, see the page. -DES Talk 15:22, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Feature 2816520 and Feature 2807731

Just in case they look daunting - all the module changes are self-contained and independent, so pick as many or as few as you like. I just didn't want to split the feature too much (Wiki tables are a pain). BLongley 21:05, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

No worries, we'll get them all soon enough! :) Ahasuerus 22:15, 5 July 2009 (UTC)
Feel free to point out modules I've missed - if they're not already involved in another change, they're simple. Yes, it makes it difficult to know when a feature is truly, finally, and completely implemented, but we're working forwards in the meantime. BLongley 23:21, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels

I updated your verified copy of this title, adding notes and cover image, then did another primary verification. MHHutchins 23:49, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Everything, up to and including the catalog ID, matches, except for the gutter code on page 752, which reads M27 in my copy. A later printing, I assume? Ahasuerus 01:43, 6 July 2009 (UTC)
I'll add that gutter code to the pub's notes. Thanks. MHHutchins 02:08, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The Stolen Sun and Tramontane

You verified TSTLNSNTRM1979 which looks like a duplicate of THSTLNSNND1979 verified by Don Erikson. There is a difference between the two records in that you reported 1979-12-00 while Don has 1979-09-00. The September date is more likely to be correct. --Marc Kupper|talk 06:04, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm, yes, looks suspicious. I'll double check tonight -- thanks! Ahasuerus 15:33, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
It's September and I am not sure what I was thinking when I typed December. As always, I blame hobbits! Ahasuerus 05:51, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

SFBC edition of Earthblood

When you get a chance, could you see if there's a gutter code in your verified copy of this title? Thanks in advance. MHHutchins 05:35, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Let's see... Ah, yes, "H48" on page 253! Record updated, thanks. Ahasuerus 02:22, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Great! I've updated the SFBC listings for 1967 with the code. I think we've passed 75% in recording the gutter codes for the SFBC editions from 1958 to 1988. I'll check the exact figure later. Thanks. MHHutchins 03:28, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
Not yet, but close. Of the 953 pubs published from August 1958 through September 1987, we have recorded the first printing gutter codes for 678, slightly more than 71%. MHHutchins 04:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Guild America or GuildAmerica?

Can you check your copy of The Reality Disfunction by Peter Hamilton is published by Guild America Books or GuildAmerica Books? It came up during this discussion. Thanks. MHHutchins 02:07, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

The stylized logo on the spine and on the title page can be interpreted either way, but the statement at the bottom of the title page clearly says "GuildAmerica Books". Ahasuerus 02:12, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

SFBC edition of An Alien Light

Can you check your copy of this pub and see if it carries the "Book Club Edition" slugline at the bottom of the front inside flap of the dustjacket? I'm trying to narrow down when this practice stopped. I have a January 1988 pub that has the slugline and a July 1988 pub that does not. Yours being a March release will help narrow it down further. Thanks. MHHutchins 01:09, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Slugline confirmed and Notes updated with the SFBC catalog ID from the back of the dustjacket. Ahasuerus 02:58, 20 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks a bunch. That narrows it down to April or May 1988 as the first month without the slugline. (Kevin verified a May pub without it.) Of course, it's possible it depends on which printing plants were being used. MHHutchins 15:55, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

CrossTIME Science Fiction Anthology

Any idea why Dissembler and Fixer haven't picked those up? There seem to be several, going back a few years. Was there a ban on "Reading Fee" competitions or suchlike? BLongley 20:05, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Hm, I am not sure, but I will check Fixer's Amazon-specific database tonight and see what's up. He is hoarding dozens of thousands of records that we still don't have in the main database, but so many of them are marginal (library bindings etc) that we may be better off asking him to concentrate on library catalogs first. Either way, at the current rate of development changes, it will probably be a couple of months before I can get back to Fixer... Ahasuerus 20:12, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
No need to fix Fixer yet - I can add them manually if necessary, contents would be needed anyway. I just wondered why something so blatantly labelled with a "let me in!" type title wasn't here. Or maybe it was once. BLongley 21:00, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
It turns out that all 6 anthologies are in Fixer's internal database, they just haven't been submitted yet. As far as I can tell, there is nothing ineligible about them, it's just that the publisher is not very well known. They do list contents level data at their Web site, which is a good thing, but I wonder why they only list the first 5 anthologies while Amazon.com/UK list 6? Perhaps the 6th one was never published... Ahasuerus 07:57, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
In which case, there's four sellers I shouldn't trust. :-( BLongley 19:01, 25 July 2009 (UTC)
Another set of anthologies of interest was LDSF - we only had the second. Fortunately the Mormons seem to be getting as organised as us. BLongley 19:01, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

The Best of John Sladek

Do you happen to be near or conveniently close to your copy of this title? There's been some uncalled-for merging of the parodies and I want to know if the credits in your copy actually match the record. (I've a strong suspicion they don't.) Those parenthetical author credits in the titles look strange. This is prompted by some submissions that want to create variants. I want to make sure that the records currently in the db are correct before going to the trouble of creating variants for titles that may not exist. Thanks. MHHutchins 05:17, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

This Sladek collection is rather convoluted, but luckily the data apparently hasn't changed since I entered it. As the Notes field says:
Except for the first two parodies of Poe's and Wells' works, "The Parodies" section that starts on page 165 attributes the authorship of the included parodies differently in the table of contents and on each title page. The former has the vowels in the names of the parodied authors replaced with asterisks. The latter gives made up names that are listed here in parentheses. The title of the Poe parody is "The Purloined Butter...*dg*r *ll*n P**" in the table of contents, but "The Purloined Butter. A Story by Edgar Allan Poe. Revised and Abridged by John Sladek" on the title page. The title of the H. G. Wells parody is "Pemberley's Start-Afresh Calliope...H.G. W*lls" in the table of contents, but "Pemberley's Start-Afresh Calliope or, The New Proteus by H.G. W*lls" on the title page.
I believe we discussed the best way to enter this mess back in 2007 and decided to go with the current approach, but we can certainly revisit it if there is a better way. (I'll just need to buy more Aspirin tonight! :-) Ahasuerus 12:18, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I personally feel that adding those author credits to the title make it difficult for a reprinting to be established as a true variant title. Take for example "Solar Shoe-Salesman". Even though it's shown as "Solar Shoe-Salesman...Ph*l*p K. D*ck (Chipdip K. Kill)" in the record of my verified copy of Light Years and Dark it actually appears as "Solar Shoe-Salesman by Chipdip K. Kill" with John Sladek as the credited author. I can't recall if I verified the pub without realizing the titles were different, or if the titles had later been merged. Let me think about how to approach this title (along with two other parodies reprinted in the same anthology.) In the meantime, I'll keep the submissions on hold. It appears that the stories were first titled with asterisks replacing the letters in the names of the authors parodied, but reprinted later with the authors' names also being parodied ("H*g* G*rnsb*ck" became "Hugogre N. Backs".) Thanks. MHHutchins 13:55, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Sure, that's an understandable concern, take your time. For what it's worth, I can post a few sample credits later tonight when I am reunited with my library. Ahasuerus 14:25, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
I think I was the one that challenged them last time? I have The Steam-Driven Boy and Other Strangers and can check that in Unapersson's absence. (I must find time to go and Primary Verify all the books that I was beaten to when there was only one option, before I find all five now available are taken.... I want to be able to use ISFDB to generate my ownership list.) BLongley 18:59, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
It would be a useful feature, but Verification Sources are probably not the way to do it -- unless we implement a lot more sources :) Also, since we are limited to SF and SF-related material, any list based on our database alone wouldn't work for collections unless they are limited to SF and books about SF. At some point we may want to consider integration with LibratyThing, which seems to be well positioned in this area. Ahasuerus 19:26, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
The problem with Librarything is "Enter 200 books for free, as many as you like for $10 (year) or $25 (life)." 200 doesn't cover the "A"s. :-( I just want my own data back, at no cost. (Usually, I'd actually want paying if I gave them that much effort or data.) I don't particularly care that ISFDB won't tell me I already own all Desmond Bagley, Alistair MacLean, Ian Fleming, Ellis Peters, etc, books. It's the obscure SF stuff that I'm searching for I want. BLongley 20:32, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Well, it would certainly be a useful feature in a number of scenarios, e.g. when looking for a story in your collection or shopping at a brick and mortar bookstore, but we'll need to figure out the best way to implement it. Perhaps we could add an "I own this book" check-box in the Publication screen which would only appear if you are logged in? We could then let our users run queries or full blown reports against this new table, e.g. "Find all book length Titles that I own, along with any VTs and display it in printable/downloadable format" or "Give me a list of Pubs that I own which include the following story". (Naturally, we would automatically pre-populate the new table from the Verification table at patch installation time.) Ahasuerus 20:46, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
That would be nice, and i could see it tying into a recommendation system if we get more votes on file. I could also see "Find all full-length titles by Author X that I don't own." -DES Talk 20:54, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

700,000 ebooks from Barnes & Noble/Fictionwise - some must be s-f

Includes free books imported from Google Books. The ebooks are not available at Fictionwise yet. It looks like even the free Google Books will have ISBN numbers. I don't see anything that would identify genres so our robot might have a little problem digging out the s-f. I think the Fictionwise editions will be available in even more formats than B&N.--swfritter 15:40, 29 July 2009 (UTC)

There are various ways around this problem, e.g. you can use OCLC's xISBN service (500 records per day per free account) to find related ISBNs for ISBNs that we know are SF. It's not particularly pretty and it'doesn't proved as many data elements as we would like, but hey, it's free! :) Ahasuerus 17:13, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
"ISBN-13: 2940005412188"? That's going to give Marty headaches.... :-( BLongley 18:43, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
See FR #2823239 Support for 979- ISBN-13s. -DES Talk 20:31, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Exactly my point. "Bookland" has gone from 978 prefix to that and 979. 294 is something completely unexpected. BLongley 20:37, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Oops, i mis-read that. well we may need to support 294 also -- once we support anything beyond 978, we can probably just have a table of valid prefixes. -DES Talk 22:02, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Bizarre. Created a B&N account to get free ebooks. You have to enter a credit card number; they charge a penny to your credit card and then credit it back. Guess I will wait to see how the Fictionwise site is going to work. Can't imagine the credit card companies are going to to thrilled about this checkout method.--swfritter 21:36, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
Oh they'll love it. B&N pays a transaction fee on that penny. Their FAQ says they do this as a way of identifying your account for future reference. But it also means your card is set up for automatic payment. possibly making it more tempting for you to actually buy things from them in future. -DES Talk 22:02, 29 July 2009 (UTC)
It's possible that they do not even process the credit card number. I think their software probably uses the credit card number for DRM purposes. That's how ereader works. Actually a better method than mobipocket which is device dependent. Amazon is even worse because pubs can only be read on a Kindle - they can't even be read on a computer.--swfritter 16:43, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I think they do process it, as their FAQ appears to warn readers to expect the transaction. As I understand the matter, processing a transaction (or a hold) is the only way for a merchant to confirm that a credit card number is actually tied to a current, valid account. -DES Talk 17:03, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

FR 2797936

I had a look at your changes, and they're fine as far as they go. However, I think you should also consider "jvn" and "nvz" - and definitely look at all the odd things we do with Omnibuses. BLongley 19:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Good point, I will spell out "juvenile" and "novelization", although eventually we will presumably want to move them to separate fields. As far as Omnibuses go, there are quite a few permutations of "/1,2", "/2-5", "/4,5,6", etc. Is there a more human-friendly format that we could use that you had in mind? Ahasuerus 19:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I've no special plan. We live with it in the summary pages anyway, so it's possibly not a problem, although it would be nice to have a general improvement throughout. BLongley 19:50, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
There's an oddity with some Serials too: not in the code, the data. Look at "The Fairy Chessmen" and "Frankenstein" for instance: the full title is used in the Storylen field. Is this some sort of legacy practice? BLongley 19:16, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Hm, they look like conversion artifacts (from the ISFDB-1 days) that need to be cleaned up manually. Ahasuerus 19:26, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

Bug 2818651

I'd pass this one though. BLongley 19:27, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

"Pass" as in "approve" or as in "skip"? :) Ahasuerus 19:29, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
As in "approve". Your changes for Bug 2818279 and FR 2803247 both approved too. BLongley 19:45, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Thanks! Ahasuerus 20:25, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Fixes for Bug 1743274 and Bug 1950102 look OK too, but you're a bit inconsistent in the error message font size. Not enough reason to stop the change though. BLongley 20:57, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
I'd have a look at common/SQLparsing.py 1.21 too, but for some reason Sourceforge wants me to remain at 1.15. :-( BLongley 21:19, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Do you have a "sticky" date or revision associated with your copy of common/SQLparsing.py, by chance? If so, you should be able to override the stickiness by using the command line CVS client and typing "cvs update -A SQLparsing.py". Ahasuerus 21:45, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
That worked, thanks! BLongley 22:12, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
As to the fix: it's a bit inconsistent. "No awards found for Michael Resnick" for Awards display rather than "Pseudonym. See: Mike Resnick" on "Summary", "Alphabetical", "Chronological". BLongley 22:12, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
That's how it works on the live server as well -- the fix was limited to fixing the apostrophe bug. Another bug report, perhaps? Ahasuerus 22:28, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Maybe a feature request - I've got no requirements document to check against, so it can't be a bug. ;-) BLongley 23:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Stopping the big purple errors when you try something like [1] is more of a priority, I think. BLongley 23:01, 30 July 2009 (UTC)
Bug 2830005 "Award biblio doesn't redirect pseudonyms" and Bug 2830017 "Award biblio page displays data for wrong author" (it's not as bad as it sounds). Ahasuerus 01:35, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Medusa's Children

Scanned in an image for [this] and added some notes. ~Bill, --Bluesman 22:45, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll check the book later tonight. Ahasuerus 23:42, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
Everything matches except for the fact that the gutter code (J14) is on page 182 rather than on page 183, which I assumed was a typo and adjusted. Ahasuerus 05:26, 8 August 2009 (UTC)
Good catch. Typo 'twas... ~Bill, --Bluesman 16:08, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Serial Title Parsing

It looks as though parsing somewhere after the "(" stops.--swfritter 16:38, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I believe the "lexical match" logic stops after the first left parenthesis. Ahasuerus 17:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

In that case it will make it much easier for me to process something like this where serial episodes also have a separate sub-title. Will the conversion process also work the same way?--swfritter 16:38, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

The current approach, at outlined by Marty on Talk:Development this morning, is to use the same "everything up to the first left parenthesis" logic. There are 115 Serial records that do not have "(Part ..." or "(Complete..." in the title and we will need to review them manually: 
select title_title from titles where title_ttype = 'SERIAL' and title_title NOT like '%\(Part%' and (title_title NOT like '%\(Complete%');

I hope it is also a known bug that serial episodes do not sort correctly from the title display as linked above. That is one ugly listing.--swfritter 16:38, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Hm, no, I don't think it's a known bug. It looks like the lexical match logic sorts all matching Serial records based on the title and not on the date. Chances are that the new VT-based approach will address this, but I'll create a bug report just to be on the safe side. Thanks! Ahasuerus 17:57, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
A number of those oddball serials are in Jim Baen's Universe. As above they have subtitles and the number of parts is not listed and probably not even known at the time the first episode is printed. The latest fixes are quite welcome since I will now be able to go back through those issues and sort things out.--swfritter 19:38, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
But no book publication so no VT situation for Baen's Universe. It's kind of tempting to think about about linking parts of serials with no book publication to a master title with type serial, something that would be doable now. It would certainly create a much cleaner bibliographic display.--swfritter 20:04, 9 August 2009 (UTC)
Especially in a case like this where the author had two serials running at the same time.--swfritter 17:54, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
I wonder if it might be easier to handle this case with two Series? A parent title when there is no book publication might suggest to a casual observer that the Title has appeared in book form, especially if it's a Novel. Ahasuerus 18:49, 10 August 2009 (UTC)
Tried it. Serials do not show up in a series display on biblio pages. See "The Man Who Was Two Men" on Ray Cummings page. See also "Around the Universe" which shows up in the serial section which I think would reduce the possibility someone would confuse it as a novel entry. I'll put this one on the back burner for now. I am trying to limit myself to about two hours a day and am not up for another extended discussion over a fairly simple issue. It would probably take forever to get an opinion as to what date should go in the placeholder: date of first part, last part, 00 for the month, or an average of the months, or the date of the middle part.--swfritter 13:34, 11 August 2009 (UTC)
Not to prolong any discussions, but it would be relatively easy to add Serial(s?) Series to the biblio display, if that would help the situation any. --MartyD 10:55, 12 August 2009 (UTC)
Don't worry about it for right now. There is not a huge amount of data involved and most of it is ancient. I would actually prefer the VT approach and may eventually suggest such an approach. Thanks.--swfritter 12:37, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Escape to Tomorrow

Added a cover image to [this]. ~Bill, --Bluesman 16:06, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

And to [this] ~Bill, --Bluesman 16:32, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

And to [this] ~Bill, --Bluesman 16:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

And to [this] ~Bill, --Bluesman 18:45, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

All 4 confirmed, thanks! Ahasuerus 19:09, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

Serials - Always a new problem

The placeholder variant title for Manna actually had an award linked to it. Any way to get that to the actual title? I did a preliminary attempt to merge and did not notice that it was an option to retain the award linkage.--swfritter 14:27, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Awards are somewhat up in the air since Al was in the middle of polishing the new Award Editor page(s) when his availability took a dirt nap. I'll try a couple of merges on my local system tonight and see how it goes. Ahasuerus 14:40, 13 August 2009 (UTC)
Something I could have tried on my local install - if the update to Fedora 11 had on my old notebook had gone well.--swfritter 15:37, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Stations of the Nightmare - Cover and questions?

Morning! This. [2]. Please check this cover image as I became a little confused with the discussion at Willem H.'s. [3]. I do have a different issue and I believe you told me something that is contrary to what I see in this novel. As I read the copyright page the stories were printed serially, no mention of changes. My problem is why add Part 1, Two, 3, and Four. I thought Book 1 etc was not any good, so what makes part, and irregular number spelling work out? The parts are even differentiated by font from the actual story title. I think in this case the parts add nothing, especially as they were dropped for the last story. IMO is of course not a rock but it does seem very odd. Thanks, Harry --Dragoondelight 13:44, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Good questions! I will check the book tomorrow and get back to you then. Ahasuerus 01:47, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
OK, I have the book here now. The first thing that we need to address is the fact that the cover claims that this edition is the "first publication in novel form". I have looked into it and there is no consensus among bibliographic sources re: whether the stories were rewritten for book publication. The Locus Index lists the second printing as a novel and doesn't mention the constituent stories while the original Contento index lists it as a collection. Clute/Nicholls lists it as a collection without any comments, which implies that the stories were reprinted without any significant changes, so I decided to keep it as a collection rather than change it to a Novel. I have updated Notes with the sources of my information.
The second issue is, as you noted, the fact that the individual stories are listed as "Parts", which is how they originally appeared when the stories were published in Roger Elwood's Continuum anthologies in the early 1970s. The publisher was presumably happy to keep "Parts" in the story titles to make it look like the customer was buying a novel rather than a collection of linked stories, although the spelling was changed from Roman numerals words "One", "Two", etc to Arabic numerals in a few cases (sloppiness, I assume). Since the stories originally appeared with the word "Part" in the titles -- I don't have the Continuum series, but that's how they are listed by OCLC and Contento -- I figured that I should keep "Parts" in the titles of the original stories. The question then was whether I should:
  1. drop "Parts" in the titles of the stories in the book publication and create VTs that way
  2. enter the titles exactly as they appeared in the book, i.e. using Arabic numerals, and VT them that way
  3. merge the titles with the originals and not worry about it
I didn't like option 1 since it implied that the titles in the book didn't have the word "Part" in them, so it was a coin toss between options 2 and 3. In retrospect, it may have amounted to a lot of hair splitting, but it seemed like a fascinating problem at the time :) Ahasuerus 21:48, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
I think both Mike Hutchins and I have the "Continuum" books, if hair-splitting is needed. I think Mike verified the Star editions and I just followed his lead - but that was back in 2007, when the rules seemed SO much simpler! BLongley 22:06, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Well since you have a connection to why "Parts" are used, why not just note that it was a continuation from the original source (even if it was poorly done)? Since you have it as it is now, tracking the 'oddities' of the "part" presentation is probably more important than making them cue up to a rule which does not necessarily serve the best purpose in this case. Thus, thorough notation of the "part" parentage explains it best? This would make futute editors aware of the oddities. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 22:33, 15 August 2009 (UTC)
Good point, Notes updated, thanks! Also, the original titles used the words "one", "two", etc rather than Roman numerals as I wrote at first -- sorry, a bit under the weather at the moment. Ahasuerus 23:34, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

The Wildings of Westron - added cover/interior illustration credits/notation

Afternoon! This. [4]. I added a cover image, illustration credits and notation after matching my copy to your ver. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 20:47, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed and approved, thanks! Ahasuerus 21:01, 15 August 2009 (UTC)

Warriors of Day

Scanned in an image for [this] and noted the artist's signature is on the cover. ~Bill, --Bluesman 16:23, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Well spotted, thanks! Ahasuerus 16:28, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Night of Delusions

Scanned in an image and expanded the notes for [this] ~Bill, --Bluesman 22:34, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed/approved, thanks. Ahasuerus 00:29, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Book of Andre Norton

Scanned in an image and expanded the notes for [this] ~Bill, --Bluesman 00:22, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Dying Inside

Scanned in an image for [this] ~Bill, --Bluesman 18:33, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Beyond the Imperium - Added cover image

Afternoon! This. [5]. I added a cover image after matching my copy to your ver. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 22:44, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

That's the one, thanks! Ahasuerus 22:50, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Convergent Series (Niven) - add cover

Afternoon! This. [6]. After checking my copy to your ver, I found and added this image [7], which matches mine. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 21:11, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Approved, thanks! Ahasuerus 22:42, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

The Path of Unreason - add cover image/start page

Morning! This. [8]. I added cover image [9] and start page after matching my copy to your ver. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 13:25, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed/approved, thanks! Ahasuerus 16:29, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Merges

Thanks for doing those Dickson merges for me. I did plan to do them once the approval went through. --MartyD 19:19, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, that reminds me that I still need to create FRs based on the Community Portal discussion earlier this month :) Ahasuerus 19:35, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

The Biggest Game

Just found this variant of itself - I think we've lost a "Keith Woodcott" variant there. You seem to know how to search past submissions, can you tell how this happened? BLongley 21:37, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

The "submissions" table is part of the full 5Gb backup file that I download nightly and then purge every week to create our "externally available" backup file. I'll restore the full backup some time tomorrow and see what I can find... Ahasuerus 21:56, 1 September 2009 (UTC)
I'll be rebuilding the backup file tomorrow and will check the submissions table before I drop it. Ahasuerus 19:23, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Nelson (S.) Bond's Exiles of Time

I just handled a submission that removed the middle initial from the hardcover of this title, and check to see how the paperback was entered. The cover doesn't include the "S" in the name, but does the title page? Thanks. MHHutchins 05:07, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

There is no "S." anywhere in the book. I updated the pub when I cross-verified it, but somehow managed to miss the lack of the middle initial :( Ahasuerus 13:48, 2 September 2009 (UTC)
Fixed, thanks. Ahasuerus 19:32, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Added cover artist

I added cover credit for verified [10] from the book THE ART OF RICHARD POWERS by Jane Frank and made a note of it.Don Erikson 21:39, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Ahasuerus 19:32, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Unauthorised Tarzan

Found covers for the series, all verified by you. BLongley 15:20, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, confirmed! Ahasuerus 19:21, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Home From the Shore

Expanded the notes somewhat for [this] ~bill, --Bluesman 06:37, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Added cover credit again

I added cover credit for verified [11] from the book THE ART OF RICHARD POWERS by Jane Frank and made a note of it.Don Erikson 19:31, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Earth's Last Citadel

I added a cover image you your verified pub RTHSLSTCT1977. Thanks. ~Ron --Rtrace 05:49, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

That's the one, thanks! Ahasuerus 05:52, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

All Hallows 43

Thanks for setting me straight on that. For some reason it doesn't look like any of the SHORTFICTION entries that comprised the rest of the issue (up to about page 300 or so) made it to the final listing. Do I need to re-input those? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sdtullis (talk • contribs) .

Fixes

I think you're setting new turnaround records.... I still had the Ward Moore summary up displaying the old behavior; refresh, and MAGIC! --MartyD 02:10, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't start worrying about it until you see a fix deployed before you submit it :) But I do need to take a break for a day or two. Sleep would be nice. Ahasuerus 02:17, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
Sleep. The bugs and missing features have been there for years and will still be waiting for you tomorrow. --MartyD 02:21, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

New SF line from Manga publisher

I was adding some new Japanese authors and discovered VIZ Media LLC[12] which in the past only did comics and manga now has an SF line[Haikasoru]. Found one of the books today at Indigo and the spine uses "Haikasoru". Amazon listed the publisher and not the line name. Here's the mention on Wikipedia[13]. They only have four or five books now, but if it takeoff we could miss a lot. Can we add them to the search bot and not draw in all the manga?Kraang 03:30, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up! Fixer wasn't aware of this publisher, so he wasn't blocking it, but Dissembler may be blocking it when Al runs periodic Amazon.com scans. It's probably best to leave Al a message on his Talk page, which I believe he checks from time to time. Thanks! Ahasuerus 03:54, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

recent changes to Help:Screen:Publication -- primary verification

In your recent edit to Help:Screen:Publication, in addition to several very helpful changes about what a pub record includes, you changed ("primary" means the publication itself) to "Primary" verifications are done against a physical copy the publication. One reason why the word physical was not used in the previous version, or at least why i didn't change the existing text, was the possibility of making primary verifications of an ebook. Ebooks, of course, are not "physical" in the same sense that paper publications are. What do you think of "Primary" verifications are done against an actual copy of the publication. plus adding a link to Help: How to verify data? -DES Talk 19:03, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Sure, that makes sense. I didn't think of e-books because, well, I suppose because I hardly ever use them. I am sure one of these days I'll check out all of these 21st century gizmos :) Ahasuerus 19:21, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Foreign Language Support

I read the note you placed on my talk page concerning the merges that I've been doing of the records from Ernesto Veggeti's Italian and French language submissions. Do you have a suggestion about what we should be doing in the meantime with these submissions? Or perhaps it might be best to ask him to hold off until full support for foreign language work is implemented? These entries have taken up so much of my time lately that the thought that it all might be for naught makes me slightly nauseous. I wouldn't want to discourage Ernesto, because I appreciate the effort it takes to enter these pubs, especially for an editor that doesn't have English as his native language. (He's more communicative than many English-speaking editors!) I personally feel these entries add much value to the database, and hope that they can be fully integrated. I will accede to any procedure that you, as senior administrator, feel would be best for the database. MHHutchins 06:49, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Keep in mind that Ernesto keeps his bibliography in a database and he knows how to export it to a text file, which we could then use to create submissions via the Web API at our leisure. The only reason we haven't done so yet is lack of programmer time, but if manual data entry has become a chore, it may be worth considering.
Perhaps we should ask Ernesto how many magazines he still has to enter. In the post linked above he mentioned that he planned to do 20 a day for 90 days, so that would add up to 1,800 magazines and we have only done 219 so far. If we have another 1,600 issues to process, then the Web API method becomes much more attractive. That should also make User Preference/beefed up language support less urgent and give us time to do them right. Ahasuerus 16:00, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
We've actually integrated more than 400 issues, and I think the total number would be closer to 3000. Urania has more than 1500 alone. Some of the other periodicals only contain a single novel and appear to be more like a publication series than a magazine. Those might be easier to enter as novels. MHHutchins 19:32, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
That's pretty common in certain European countries where publishers have a consistent numbering scheme for catalog IDs, so they become more prominent in the minds of readers and collectors -- think the original DAW numbering scheme on steroids. It also means that a book may arguably belong to two "publisher series", e.g. when Wilson Tucker's Time Bomb was published by Ullstein, a German publisher (as Zeit-Bombe), the publication statement was "Ullstein-Bücher Nr. 3140", but it was also a part of the "Ullstein 2000" SF series. Oh well, we'll sort it out when we implement Publisher Series. Ahasuerus 19:58, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
I can't see that it will be all for naught, we're building the relationships between English titles and Italian reprints and recording the Italian titles in notes: there will still need to be a further step in associating the Italian titles but hopefully when the data is here then the work can be spread around rather than having it rely on one submitter. (And one moderator! MHHutchins) But I'm not sure what Foreign language support is planned - are we going to have variant titles for shortfiction that can be suppressed via user preferences, or something more drastic?
That's the general idea, but the details are yet to be worked out. I have a laundry list of issues that we need to address before we can do it (well). Ahasuerus 19:58, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
I'd be quite happy to switch off the original French titles when looking at Jules Verne for instance. (And the French have probably metricated "20,000 Leagues" into "111,120 kilometres" by now anyway. ;-) ) BLongley 19:04, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Suppressing original (as opposed to translated) foreign language titles may not be easy or even desirable. Take a look at the first Alice title on Kirill Bulychev's page -- what should the software use as the canonical title if you suppress the original Russian title? Ahasuerus 19:58, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
As far as I'm concerned, "Any". "First English" would do so long as I can see the other English titles too. BLongley 20:18, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
Well, it would be possible to find the first English Title and make it the de facto canonical title on the fly, but it may require quite a bit of additional coding. Would you also like to have untranslated foreign language originals suppressed if the user deselects "original language" in User Preferences, thus limiting, e.g., Pierre Barbet's bibliography to 7 English Titles? I can see how it could be useful once we enter the rest of Barbet's (numerous) titles, which may make it hard to find English translations. Ahasuerus 21:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
And see my comments on Paleo - sometimes the Foreign titles are more English than the English ones, and I'd hate to buy them on that basis alone.BLongley 20:18, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
That's certainly a legitimate concern, but the good news is that we will be assigning a language code to all Titles as part of our improved foreign language support, so these things will become more obvious. Note that it doesn't have to be an English title to be misleading -- Lem's Solaris is known as Solaris in German, French and English and there is currently no way to distinguish between different translations. Ahasuerus 21:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
I leave the problems of multi-lingual European's choices of languages up to you, I'm going to stick to English when I use the database, and however much I like the author I think I'm going to give up on completing bibliographies when they're translated. I did start on Edmund Cooper translations but rapidly ran out of patience. BLongley 20:18, 30 September 2009 (UTC)
There are a few different target audiences here. The first one consists of people who know multiple languages "well enough to read fiction for pleasure". There are quite a few people who belong to this category in parts of Canada/US, northern and central Europe, Israel and a number of other places. The second target audience consists of authors, academics and fans who are interested in all' works by certain authors, including translations -- see your Edmund Cooper example above. Finally, there are completists who want the database to be as complete as possible even if they can't benefit from it personally. (Completist bibliographers? Shocking, I know!) Ahasuerus 21:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Avoiding apparent self-variants

To avoid cases in which a VT parent and child become identical in both author and title, now that all title changes go through the Title change code, rather than the edit pub code, would it be possible to:

  1. Have the edit title code could check if the title is a VT or the parent of a VT, and
  2. if so, whether the change would make the parent and child have identical titles and authors.
  3. If this occurred, the editor or the mod, or both, could be given warnings/notifications.

I am consulting you on this before even logging it on SF as a feature request, because I'm not sure if it is technically feasible, and if it is a problem either with coding or performance. -DES Talk 19:32, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

It's probably doable, but there are concerns about legitimate variants. "The Hounds of Tindalos" has four Collections under that name at the moment, but some might have valid reasons only explained in notes. Warnings yes, rather than an outright ban. But explaining why it's possibly not advisable to merge is not necessarily easy. (Different notes are not uncommon - one may say do not merge A with B and the other will say do not merge B with A.) BLongley 19:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
I suspect that the easiest way to implement a safeguard like that would be to add a moderator warning to the approval screen. Ahasuerus 04:19, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Improper deletions

I just made a foolish error. I was working on the ISFDB:Missing Editors project, and i found a number of entries that were basically just a title and a date, no contents listings, no name of an editor, etc. So I deleted them, with a deletion reason of "no useful content". Then I wondered just why there were so many of them, and I did a google search of isfdb.org for the name of the next one on my list to delete. I found that it was listed as a publication for a work of shortfiction. It seems that if there is a missing editor record and a single content item on a magazine, the content item is not displayed (or sometimes is not, i haven't tested for all possibilities), but is shown if you edit the pub record.

Before I noticed this i had deleted 17 magazine record that I probably should not have deleted.

Can you restore these from backup? They are the items listed as "Deleted" on ISFDB:Missing Editors: i.e. pub record numbers 57982, 58193, 58918, 58919, 58920, 58921, 59109, 59455, 59456, 59493, 59494, 59495, 59536, 59616, 59617, 59618, and 59619.

If this is not feasible, i can probably restore most of them from cached google searches, but that would be less solid.

I apologize for the trouble. -DES Talk 00:54, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

No worries, mistakes happen! Let me restore the last backup and pull them up... Ahasuerus 00:58, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
OK, I have restored the backup locally and found the reason why these Titles were not displayed. The Publication Listing script doesn't display the Contents section if there is only 1 "non-Cover Art" Title associated with the pub. It works well for Novels and contents-less Collections/Anthologies/Omnibuses, but it doesn't work for Magazines without an EDITOR Title. Let me see what I can do about restoring the data... Ahasuerus 01:08, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. -DES Talk 01:37, 11 October 2009 (UTC)
All done, I think. There were a few non-genre essays by Arlan Andrews, bu I doubt that he is prominent enough to record his non-genre articles published in non-genre magazines. Ahasuerus 03:01, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

The War with (or Against) the Yukks

In my copy of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Galaxy the copyright page and the table of contents have this story as "The War with the Yukks", making it the only pub with this variant. On the story's titlepage however it's "The War Against the Yukks". According to the rules (help:screen) we should take the title from the heading on the page where the work begins. Is it ok if I change the title? (and add a note of course) Thanks, Willem H. 18:08, 18 October 2009 (UTC)

Good catch! We may want to check with the other verifiers first, though. Ahasuerus 20:11, 18 October 2009 (UTC)
I'm OK with the change! ~Bill, --Bluesman 20:13, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
I submitted the title change, after asking Swfritter about the first publication here. Also notified Bluesman. Thanks, Willem H. 20:04, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Forgot to add a note about this. Will have to wait until the first edit is approved. Willem H. 20:15, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Both submissions approved, all yours! Ahasuerus 20:36, 19 October 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. Note added and titles merged. Willem H. 20:43, 19 October 2009 (UTC)

Changes to your verified pub Two Views of Wonder

This pub. Faulty Register credit to Joe Gores instead of Joseph N. Gores. Also, changed all stories to publication date of the anthology. Of course, some of these have been reprinted since so I could not change them from within the pub. Oh well, the trade-off is worth it. Thankfully I already updated a ton of pre-50's mags with the unfortunate exception of Weird Tales.--swfritter 15:47, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

I must admit that I have found the new inability to mass-change dates in a Magazine or Anthology a bit of a pain, when the magazine was entered with year-only, or the Anthology was the first paperback and we need the hard-cover edition. It seems less of a concern with Collections, but at times I do wish for a "I know what I'm doing!" over-ride. BLongley 21:27, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
We could create a cleanup project to do 2 things:
  • Write a script to find all magazines with "January", "February", etc in the title and no month data in the Year field. The script would either correct the dates automatically or create a Web page for humans to review first.
  • Write a script to find all Titles which have no month data (YYYY-00-00) and first appeared in a YYYY-MM-00 or YYYY-MM-DD pub. The script would then change the Title dates automatically. Ahasuerus 03:31, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

New image site and associated FR

If you have a chance, please have a look at ISFDB:Community Portal#Another source link for images (amazing site!) as I think a code change is needed to credit this site properly. -DES Talk 20:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up! I have been very busy lately, but I should be able to get this (and a few other things) deployed this weekend. Ahasuerus 22:25, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Noting that caused me to create FR #2885005 Image site table, but this is hardly top priority. -DES Talk 20:56, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Is it a duplicate of FR 1962009, perchance? Ahasuerus 22:28, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
Oops. I did look for a duplicate before logging but missed this. I've marked the new FR as a dup and closed it. -DES Talk 22:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)
I notice that we have several categories in the SF traker for FRs that affect various interface elements, but none for FRs that involve changes to the db structure. Perhaps we should. -DES Talk 22:42, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Drinking Sapphire Wine

I added the frontispiece and a note to this verified pub. Thanks, Willem H. 13:47, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed, thanks. Ahasuerus 23:53, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Valley Beyond Time

Scanned in an image for the first printing of [this], shown [here] and by your description in the notes of the second printing, seems to be the same for both covers. Didn't add it to your verified record so you can check first. ~Bill, --Bluesman 21:13, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

Confirmed and added. Also updated pub Notes to explain that the title as it appears on the cover of the second printing is free of the zebra stripes. Wonder if they were able to save money by excluding the stripes?.. Ahasuerus 23:51, 31 October 2009 (UTC)
An unfortunate byproduct of relatively low-res scans (moire effect). I can get rid of them by doing a higher-res scan and then increasing the compression which still brings the file in under the 150kb limit but doesn't re-size the image to below 600pdi. Need some specific software. See posting down a few... ~Bill, --Bluesman 19:40, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Twilight Zone

Can you have another look at what Reginald says about this? The second story is not credited to La Salle. BLongley 19:42, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

Will do! I have noticed a few errors in Reginald's coverage of Badger and other downmarket UK publishers from the 1940s/1950s. It was a poorly researched area in the 1970s when he published his first volume. Ahasuerus 19:53, 2 November 2009 (UTC)
Sorry, forgot to check earlier :-( Here is what Reginald says: "Twilight Zone. Badger, London, 1959, 158p, Paper, Coll. [includes a short story, "Point of No Return", by Max Chartair, pseud. of John Glasby]." Ahasuerus 03:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
Is it really a collection if there are different pseudonyms used within it that only after research all turn out to be the same person? BLongley 21:33, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Well, sometimes it's a magazine, as in Supernatural Stories, No. 75. When the choice is between a Collection and an Anthology, I suspect that both options have potential for confusion :( Ahasuerus 03:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)
Title page is for La Salle, so the Max Chartair content could be considered a small bonus to a La Salle Novel. BLongley 21:33, 7 November 2009 (UTC)
Hm, yes, I suppose it could be seen as a bonus story. There may be a benefit to keeping the container Title a Collection to help distinguish between the two versions (which is what Reginald did), but it's a toss-up. Ahasuerus 03:11, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Image 'stitching'

Saw this comment on Bill Longley's page:" In many cases, you have to download the scanning/OCR'ing/etc software from the manufacturer's Web page. There are also many free programs that will kindly re-size images for you if that's all you need to do. Ahasuerus 01:57, 14 November 2009 (UTC) "

Any ideas of software (for a MAC) that will enable stitching images together so I can fix all the ACE Doubles separated ones? Tried that site but everything seems geared to a PC. Thanks! ~Bill, --Bluesman 19:36, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, Bill, I am afraid I am as Mac-illiterate as the next guy :( Ahasuerus 22:07, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
(Just so I can be "the next guy" - ) I don't know either. But I'm tempted to buy a Mac as a Christmas present to myself, so may have some opinions by next year. In the old days I had as many bad experiences with Macs as I did with Windows NT ("Sad Mac" and "bomb icons" versus "BSOD") so it's taken a bit of time to get over the memories, but I'm tempted to try again. Anything to avoid more packing or unpacking.... BLongley 23:07, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Moderatorhoodshipdom

No more math quizzes!!  :-) --MartyD 21:00, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

See, there are side benefits after all! :) Ahasuerus 21:49, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
I'd forgotten we'd introduced such - I was blackjacked long before that feature came in, I think. It might be useful to make that an option even for moderators, as I could probably do with such a check at times when moderatorialising seems an easier option for de-stressing than sleeping or eating... BLongley 23:48, 20 November 2009 (UTC)
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