User talk:DESiegel60

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This is my talk page. Leave any ISFDB messages for me here. To keep discussions together in one place, easy to follow for their participants as well as others,

please use this procedure:

If you ask anything of me, create a new section at the bottom,
and watch this page for my reply.

If I ask anything of you, I'll write at your talk page; please reply there.

And when reverting spam, make sure you don't delete anything; thank you. -DES Talk 10:22, 18 Mar 2008 (CDT)


Contents

Welcome!

Hello, DESiegel60, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!--Rkihara 15:42, 23 Jan 2008 (CST)

Another techie! Welcome.--swfritter 16:51, 23 Jan 2008 (CST)

Doctor to the Stars

Added a cover image[1] is it correct? Thanks.Kraang 13:56, 24 Jan 2008 (CST)

Yes, that is the cover on my edition. -DES Talk 14:33, 24 Jan 2008 (CST)

In Search of Wonder

I approved your submission. There was a small error in the page count entry, which should be of the form roman+arabic numerals. For example, xxi+350.-Rkihara 12:05, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

Took another look at it and noticed that "Parnassus" needs to capitalized and "Pratt's" name is missing a "t" (entry for p.158)--Rkihara 12:14, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

Is the publication in question the 1967-03-00 version of In Search of Wonder? If so, then the price field could benefit from a dollar sign, i.e. "$7.00" as opposed to just "7.00".
Also, keep in mind that, as per the Help pages, we capture printing-specific (as opposed to edition-specific) data in Publication records. This is necessary so that we could record the printing-specific data elements like price, catalog ID and even cover art. It looks like this record may be for the 4th (1974-11-00) printing of the second edition, but the Year field is set to 1967-03-00, presumably the publication date of the first printing of the second edition. Ahasuerus 12:46, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)
I will correct the typos and entry errors mentioned above.
On the question of the date, yes, I am working from the 4th trade paper printing of the 2nd edition. Currently, we have only one publication listed. The title record lists the date of the 1st edition. If I change the date of this publication. we will lose the (IMO more important) date of the initial publication of the second edition. (Note that in this particular case I have good reason to think that there is no textual difference except price between different printings of the 2nd edition.) Should I clone the publication so that we have an entry for the first printing with the correct initial publication date, even though i do not have a copy to hand? Also, the copyright page lists a separate ISBN for the hc binding: should i create a publication record for the HC even though i don't have a copy to hand? If I close the pub, should i wait until AFTER I have entered all the detailed review records? Also, should I create an entry for the (further expanded) 3rd edition, which is listed on the publisher's web site with its contents, but which i do not have a copy of? -DES Talk 13:11, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)
Sorry, I have to run right now, so I can't give a detailed answer, but let me quote from a recent discussion that ran along similar lines:


That's right. To quote our Help pages:
For books, to identify the year, try to spot a statement (often on the verso of the title page) that says something like "Published in June 2001"; the copyright date is often misleading, since works can be reprinted. Look out for signs that this is a reprint; indications often include a series of numbers (e.g. "3 4 5 6 7 8 9") at the bottom of the verso of the title page; this particular string indicates that this is a third printing. If you know you are holding a reprint, and there is no way to date that particular publication, leave the year field as 0000-00-00. It is sometimes possible to find dates of reprints from subsequent printings which list all printings and their associated dates; if you enter a date from a source like this, include a note explaining your deduction. Note that we are interested in recording each different reprint of a publication, since there can be some significant differences between them, such as cover art, or price.
Not only do later printings can use a different price and different cover art, they can also use a different ISBN, a different introduction or, in many British cases, even a different imprint (!), so we really have little choice but to capture all data at the printing level as opposed to the edition level.
Admittedly, "0000-00-00" looks pretty ugly and messes up the display order on the Title page, so there have been some attempted workarounds, but no better standard has emerged so far. As Marc indicated above, what we really need is a new field for "printing number", but Al's ISFDB time has been very limited lately :( Luckily, there are various ways of identifying the date when an undated printing appeared, e.g. later printings will sometimes list the dates of all earlier printings. Ahasuerus 10:39, 22 Jan 2008 (CST)
OK, but for me it makes the data less useful. I'm not really interested in the dates of the printings (as usually they are not stated anyway and most of the dates I see in ISFDB are IMHO edition's dates); I'm more interested in recent editions and their contents. And having the edition's date displayed on the Title page (if the stated printing date is missing) and printing info in the note field is more useful for me. (BTW I believe even single printing can have multiple cover versions.) --Roglo 11:24, 22 Jan 2008 (CST)
Granted, in many cases printings can be almost indistinguishable, but consider these two printings of Alexei Panshin's Star Well. The first one appeared in October 1968, the catalog ID was G-756, the price was $0.50, the page count was 157 and the cover was done by Frank Kelly Freas. The second one was published in August 1978, it used an ISBN (0-441-78405-4) instead of an old style catalog ID, the price was $1.75, the page count was viii+211 and the cover was done by Vincent Di Fate. So here we have two books that are as different as any two paperbacks can be, yet according to the publisher they are two printings of the same edition!
When dealing with a later printing of an edition that we don't have on file, we usually create two separate Publication records. The first record is for the actual printing that you are verifying and it should be dated 0000-00-00 if you don't know that printing's publication date. The second record is for the first printing of the edition and is created based on the publication information found in the later printing, with the source of information clearly stated in the Notes field and the record left unverified. That way we capture as much information as possible and our users can get a pretty good idea of the history of that edition. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't work too well when the imprint was (deviously) changed in between printings, so it's not a rule but rather a guideline of limited applicability :) Ahasuerus 12:24, 22 Jan 2008 (CST)
More when I come back, unless somebody else steps in in the meantime :) Ahasuerus 13:41, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

Creating series "In Search of Wonder (Critical reviews)"

I'm looking at your submissions placing the Damon Knight essays into a new series titled "In Search of Wonder (Critical reviews)" I'm not understanding the reasoning behind creating the series, but as I'm not familiar with the previous incarnations of these essays (or further reprintings of them), I may not be the best person to handle them. (Perhaps just having them grouped together on Knight's author summary page might be a sufficient reason.) In any circumstance, naming the series simply "In Search of Wonder" should be fine. We only use extensions in series names if there's a possibility of a duplicate or to avoid confusion. If you decide the simpler name would be better, it would be easy to rename the series without having to change each entry. I'll go ahead and approve the submissions. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:59, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

The main reason for the series was to group them together on Knight's author page. Given the number of separately published essays that are listed for Knight, this seemed worth while. I am relatively new to ISFDB editing, and the parenthetical was just to try to make it clearer to people seeing the "series" just what these were -- confusion is unlikely. I will remove the parenthetical. Thanks. -DES Talk 16:04, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)
Great! Does the publication credit the original appearances of these essays, or are they mashups of several reviews published in various periodicals? Mhhutchins 16:08, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)
See my recent comments at ISFDB:Community_Portal#Damon_Knight. Some of the essays/chapters are pretty clearly mashups. Others probably appeared pretty much unchanged in previous publications, and some are stated to have been written explicitly for book publication. Those previously published have, in some cases, been revised, either for the initial book publication or for the second edition. There are some indications of which chapters are based on previously published content, but there is not detailed previous publication info in my copy at least. -DES Talk 16:15, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)
Oh, well. There goes my plan to wrap everything up in a nice package and tie a ribbon around it. Thanks! Mhhutchins 20:04, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)
On further examinatuion, there are detailed previous publication info available -- 2 pages worth. Every line begins either "Portions of chapter nn originally appeared in..." or "Portions of chapters nn, mm, jj, ... originally appeared in...", and many chapters are listed in multiple lines, clearly indicating that they are mashups. -DES Talk 20:15, 25 Jan 2008 (CST)

In Search of Wonder variant titles

I see that you would like to create a variant title for In Search of Wonder and the proposed variant is In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction. As far as I can tell, the latter title record doesn't exist, so I assume you will add a Publication record to the new Title once it has been approved. Is that the plan? Thanks! Ahasuerus 21:02, 26 Jan 2008 (CST)

Yes, I think so. To be more specific, the physical copy I have carries this as a sub-title. I wasn't absolutely sure if I should create a variant title, or change the main title record. (On checking, the cover image on the publisher's web site shows the same sub-title, so perhaps the title record should be changed instead. See <http://www.nesfa.org/press/Books/Advent/Knight-1.htm>.) Please advise on the best way to handle this situation. -DES Talk 02:51, 27 Jan 2008 (CST)
We generally enter subtitles in the Title field unless they are trivial, e.g. "Mars: A novel" would be entered as "Mars", or designate the series that the book belongs to, e.g. "Breakaway: A Cassandra Kresnov Novel" would be entered as "Breakaway". In this case a quick OCLC search (are you familiar with our Sources of Bibliographic Information page?) suggests that Advent used the same subtitle as early as 1960, so it looks like there is no need for a variant title after all. I have deleted the variant title and changed the main title to In Search of Wonder: Essays on Modern Science Fiction, but left the publication titles alone for now so that you could practice on them :) Ahasuerus 16:45, 27 Jan 2008 (CST)
By changing the title record's title, all twelve reviews that were linked to this title disappeared. Well, not the reviews, but the links to them. I can't count the number of hours I've spent when entering reviews to make sure that they match EXACTLY the existing ISFDB title. And all it takes is the change of one character to wipe it away. When can we expect a better way of linking reviews to titles? Until then, should I even be concerned about matching titles under review, or just enter them as they're recorded in the publication (often wrongly) and forget about them? Mhhutchins 17:25, 27 Jan 2008 (CST)
Oops, sorry about the reviews! I knew something looked vaguely different after the change, but I couldn't figure out what it was :( I guess we should change it back for now and document the subtitle in the Notes field.
As far as proper linkage of reviews and serials goes, it's item 3.2 on Al's list. As you know, Al's ISFDB time was very limited in the second half of 2007 due to the move to Texas and other RL issues, but he seems to be much more available now and I see software changes occurring at least every week. My guess is that if his current level availability stays the same in the foreseeable future, he will get to 3.2 in a couple of months. Al is a very faster coder, it's just a question of finding enough time to do the work.
Once the software has been changed to link reviews directly, it will be trivial to create a list of all unmatched reviews and go from there, so I tend not to spend too much time on matching reviews at the moment. Of course, I rarely enter the kinds of review heavy magazines that you often work on... Ahasuerus 18:01, 27 Jan 2008 (CST)
Great news! I'll hold off on entering more review 'zines until that change is implemented. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:06, 27 Jan 2008 (CST)
I might note that this change broke about a dozen lexical links from magazine reviews of the book. Once the changes are instituted that will not be significant.--swfritter 16:54, 31 Jan 2008 (CST)
I am adding yet another review of the book and I notice that I did not notice that somebody had discussed the same issue. I am going to do as was suggested above and revert the title while leaving a note about the subtitle.--swfritter 15:20, 4 Apr 2008 (CDT)

There's No Fool . . .

I am not sure what title data existed when you made this submission. There is a publication for this title. Currently it is an orphan. It should be OK to put incomplete data in the pub as long as you make a comment in notes saying data hasn't been completely entered. Placing the title in the pub will require that it be merged with the orphan. It looks as though the collection title should have an "!". Also, ellipsis should be entered with spaces. If you want, I can quickly rectify.--swfritter 16:23, 27 Jan 2008 (CST)

So I suspect this has something to do with your lost edit. I've got the "Parodies tossed" story on hold because if you get the anthology entered we may not need it. Another vote for Firefox. I have lost virtually no data since I have been using it.--swfritter 18:17, 27 Jan 2008 (CST)
Yes, both of these were entered while the lost edit was in progress. The varients are those used in "Takeoff too!". -DES Talk 22:27, 27 Jan 2008 (CST)

Takeoff Too!

I have approved the Takeoff Too! submission and then changed "Into My parlor" to "Into My Parlor". Just to be on the safe side, is it "Ballade for Convention Lovers" or "Ballad for Convention Lovers"? Both are legitimate words, but typos have been known to happen :) Also, there was no length designation for "Psicopath". Is it a novelette? TIA! Ahasuerus 07:02, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

Thanks. It is "Ballade", not "Ballad" I will check the length of Psicopath, I suspect it is a novelette, probably near the border with shortstory. -DES Talk 10:26, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

Norman Matson's Enchanted Beggar/Flecker's Magic

I have approved the addition of the Flecker's Magic variant title, but rejected the proposed new publication for this title since it would have been added to Enchanted Beggar as opposed to Flecker's Magic. Unfortunately, once a new title has been submitted, we have to wait for it to be approved before we can add Publications to it :( Fortunately, OCLC had reasonably detailed information about the 1926 edition of Flecker's Magic, so I added it after the new Title was created. Thanks! Ahasuerus 07:28, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

I see I didn't understand that detail. I will refrain from trying to add pubs to a title or varient that has not yet been approved in future. Thanks. -DES Talk 10:28, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

Reviews in In Search of Wonder

I have approved the addition of 5 reviews to the [ second edition of In Search of Wonder], but I wonder if the title of the Howard piece is The Coming of Conan, or just The Coming of Conan and whether the Matson novel is Enchanted Begger or Enchanted Beggar? TIA! Ahasuerus 07:33, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

Thank you -- typos corrected. -DES Talk 10:35, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Typo corrections approved. I've taken the liberty of also correcting "inital" to "initial" in the notes. Can I interest you in a browser with a built-in spell-checker? It certainly helps me, as American is not my native language - it won't save us from problems like 'Kjwalll'kje'k'koothailll'kje'k, but every little help I can get is welcome! BLongley 16:46, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
I am not untested in foxfire, for multiple reasons. However i will make a point of using the ieSpell plugin which i do have installed.
I will also mentions something about your wiki posting which bugs me a little bit. When you edit a section, the edit summery is filled in by default with /* Section Title */. I notice that you often replace the text with a summary of your own, but leave the /* */ markers. When an edit is displays (in page history or the recent changes list or similar places) if the /* */ markup is present, the software assumes that this is a section title and generates a link which will take the viewer directly to the relevant section. If you replace the text, the like still looks valid, but goes nowhere useful. The best practice is to add a comment after the default summary, as I am doing in this post. Second best is to replace the entire summary, including the markup -- in such a case no link is generated. This choice is optimal for edits that start by editing a section, but add an additional section, or that affect multiple sections. Thank you -DES Talk 17:04, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
I'm always willing to learn! I have no Wikipedia experience and picked up the few Wiki skills I have from practices HERE rather than there. Yes, I have been replacing the text when we're off the original topic: it seems to generate useful information in the recent changes list. (Although people might be generating such in a different way that is more useful.) I can't see what you did in your post though that makes a difference - the "recent changes" entry still just takes me to your main page and I have to find this section. Or is that a follow-up problem from my practice? (Deliberately does NOT change the default in this case.) BLongley 17:25, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
I've tried a couple more Wiki edits since - adding the reasons AFTER the default /* */ seems to be the answer? (I guessed I needed the "-" too, but as it's come out "- -" I probably don't need that, right?) Is there a simple way to get the useful "->" link on new sections too? BLongley 18:32, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
(after edit conflict) So am I. If I know wikis a bit (I'm an admin over on Wikipedia) I don't know the ISFDB well yet. Replacing the text does give useful info in the changes list, but it can be even more useful if you add the text on the end instead: that indicates both what you were saying/doing, and which section the changes can be found in. In the recent changes list, there is a little arrow before many of the summaries: that is the link to a section heading. Note that it depends on a lexical match (Just as our review links now do) and so it can fail if the section title is changed, or if the section is deleted or archived off the page. Wiki markup in the section title can mess it up also, and I think that is what did it this time. But look in the recent changes list for my contribution of 19:23 today (just a few minutes ago) the one that is on User talk:Swfritter. Note the slightly different font between "Varient title from Takeoff Too!" and "ok" The first is the section title, the 2nd is a note indicating what I was saying in that section this time. Click the small arrow just before the section title and it will take you to the proper section. I hope the above is clear and helpful. -DES Talk 18:37, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
On new sections if you use the little "+" tab at the top, it will let you enter a new section (at the page end) and section title, adn the default summery will be filled in and you don't need to edit the whole page. Or you can paste in teh section title surrounded by /* */, just copy exactly, except for wiki markup not displayed. 18:37, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
And you are correct, the "-" is not required, and adding text AFTER the /* section title */ is excatly what I was trying to suggest above. Sorry for not being fully clear. -DES Talk 18:38, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Thanks for the help! We have got a few bad practices here - one that bugs me is duplicate section titles, for instance. Feel free to advise on using this place better! (Although you may have to be patient, we're definitely not as active as Wikipedia on the Wiki side - but they don't have a database to maintain first!). BLongley 15:18, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)
Of course the wiki is primarily a support tool here, while it is the main object in a place like Wikipedia. The DB is the main point here. Duplicate section titles can be a problem with the wiki software, even though they are legitimate and even pretty much required in some cases. The main problem is that a section-level link goes to the first instance of the section title (It does a lexical match, not a true link). The only way to avoid the problem is to make each section title unique within a page. -DES Talk 15:28, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Ursula LeGuin

I rejected your submission to make Ursula LeGuin a pseudonym of Ursula K. Le Guin, but I may have been too hasty. I saw that the name Ursula LeGuin exists in the database, but there are not records under that name, which IMHO makes it pointless to create a pseudonym in order to link it back to the summary page for Ursula K. Le Guin. Are you in the process of entering a pub with a title which has Ursula LeGuin as the author? Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mhhutchins (talk • contribs) .

I recently entered a review of a work by Le Guin (in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Winter 1977) which gave her name as LeGuin (no space). That is how the name was spelled in the publication, twice. So that is how i recored it, but the pesud is needed to make the review link work, i think. -DES Talk 19:21, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Reviews are handled differently than pubs, in that corrections can be made when it's obvious that the reviewer provided the wrong title and/or author's name as part of the review. You can note the misspelling in the pub's note field, but provide the correct spelling and/or canonical name in the content field. I admire your attempt to make the review link to the pub, but let the pub be the anchor and the review be changed to link to it. Thanks. Mhhutchins 20:25, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Ok will do. I thought I recalled seeing her name spelled without a space elsewhere, but it seems there is no such in any pub recorded in the ISFDB. -DES Talk 20:44, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
There are at least four authors whose names I've learned to spell the same way regardless of how they appear in publications:
  1. Ursula K. Le Guin (note that the "L" and "G" are capitalized and the space in the last name)
  2. A. E. van Vogt (note that the first "v" is uncapitalized and the space in the last name)
  3. L. Sprague de Camp (note that the "d" is uncapitalized and the space in the last name)
  4. Lester del Rey (note that the "d" is uncapitalized and the space in the last name)
You'll find different permutations of capitalization and spacing but spelled the same. (Of course, if the spelling is different, you should create a variant.) Mhhutchins 20:57, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Pardon me, but unless I am misreading all the valid ISFDB records use "Le Guin" with a space and both caps. Are you sure that you said what you meant to above?
By the way, i have corrected the review entry. -DES Talk 21:01, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Yes, you're correct, there is a space. Blame on a case of temporary insanity. I've corrected my original posting just in case some unwary visitor sees that without reading this. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:20, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
29,273 edits and you claim temporary insanity?! Ahasuerus 21:25, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Yeah, what sane person would do all that without some kind of monetary reward?! Mhhutchins 21:41, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
And by the way there are a couple of early stories in Fantastic which use LeGuin. I was wavering between leaving it that way or using the legitimate name for the same reason that we enter "Merwin, Jr." whenever we see "Merwin Jr.". But when I changed the name to Le Guin the LeGuin record did not go away - it haunts me like the Furies. Now I may wish to join Jack as he attempts to make his way back to the island.--swfritter 21:46, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

(unindent) I think we should disregard any variation caused by the lack of a space or capitalization. I seem to recall that the system disregards capitalization. Also imagine the variants for DeCamp, De Camp, Del Rey, Van Vogt, etc. etc. And remember the hundreds of lines of discussion about the spaces between ellipses? Mhhutchins 21:54, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

I guess we could make Ms. LeGuin go away my giving her the name of somebody we intend to add to the system. I'll bet there weren't too many editors who left out the space after she became famous.--swfritter 21:58, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Unlike Series records, Author records disappear automagically once the last associated Title/Publication record has been deleted or reassigned to another author, so there is no need to do anything special about Ms. LeGuin :) Ahasuerus 22:47, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
She is out there without any titles assigned to her. I had also assumed the record would disappear when I reassigned the titles. But I did set up and remove a variant title relationship initially. This is probably similar to the case with Verification records. Even if you remove a verification from a pub the system still thinks there is one. Possibly the system checks for null data in other fields just to make sure it doesn't delete a record with valid data?--swfritter 18:29, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)
Seemingly title-less author records usually appear when there is a Review record that misspells that author's name. I can check to see what's up with this record later tonight. Ahasuerus 19:01, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)
It turns out that this misspelling is of very recent vintage. The last Author ID in the Sunday backup file is 109673 and the "LeGuin" one is 109697, so I can't check it until next Sunday night. Ahasuerus 23:09, 30 Jan 2008 (CST)
I presume it was created when I entered the review in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Winter 1977. That review used this spelling at least 4 times. -DES Talk 10:42, 31 Jan 2008 (CST)

Placing an essay into a fiction series

I'm holding your submission to place this essay into this series. I don't believe it will display properly or if it does, it will display two series on the author's summary page, one for fiction and one for essays. I'll do more investigating and get back with you. Mhhutchins 19:08, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Just as I suspected. The essay will not be displayed under the fiction series on the author's summary page, and an essay series will be created but will have no entries. I'll reject the submission. If you feel these should be displayed together you can present your case to Al, who might be able to explain the database's design and the limitations on series displaying. Mhhutchins 19:14, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)
Hardly a must-have item. It would be nice, when an essay is about a fictional series, particualrly when it is by the author, to be able to lsit it in the series in some way, but hardly essential, nor, i should think, a top coding priority. -DES Talk 19:28, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)
FWIW, the software tries to group related fiction and non-fiction titles (e.g. Star Wars non-fiction) together, but it doesn't do a very good job of it yet. I am sure Al will revisit this area at some point, but, as you say, it's not at the top of the list of priorities. Ahasuerus 19:35, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Hoskins - The Future Now

Thanks for prompting me to relook at this book. The title page is indeed as you stated "The Future Now: Saving Tomorrow". And in fact each of these entries are prefaced by a 1 or 2 page introduction by the individual authors. I'll likely need to consult one of the moderators on how best to fix this. TFRANK 23:21, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Well, if they are 1-2 pages long, then they fall under the following section of the Help pages:
Forewords, introductions, prefaces, afterwords, endnotes, etc. These should all be included; enter them as ESSAYs.
so ideally we would like to see these introductory pieces captured in some way. Do they have separate titles, by any chance, or are they completely untitled? Ahasuerus 23:41, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Grantville Gazette

I am assuming you meant to remove all page numbers. I know consecutive numbers as placeholders are discouraged for hardcopy books but I wonder if we should think about using them for ebooks. That was the only way I was able to keep the artwork together with the correct story in Jim Baen's Universe. No artwork here so it is not a big issue in this case.--swfritter 16:50, 31 Jan 2008 (CST)

I was following what i understood to be current policy, not placing page numbers where none are included. If there is good reason to use placeholder page numbers in such cases, I have no objection. -DES Talk 09:01, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)
I think the consensus is not to use placeholder page numbers for paper based publications (we discussed it extensively when some editors tried to get creative with Ace Doubles), but I am not sure whether we have talked about the impact of this decision on e-books yet. Speaking of Grantville Gazette, you submitted a change to "Preface (Grantville Gazette II)" from Collection to Anthology. I have changed it to an Essay instead since I figured "Anthology" was just an accident. Is that right? Ahasuerus 18:21, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)
Yes, that should be an essay. I think you will find a later submission from me changing it to an essay.
Yes, I ran into it shortly thereafter. All fixed now, thanks! Ahasuerus 19:02, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)
As to page numbers, I don't feel strongly, but perhaps "page numbers' that are really section numbers (with a proper note) would be sensible for ebooks. I won't insert any until there is something approaching a consensus in favor, however.
I note that on Eric Flint's bibliography page, the Grantville Gazette volumes show up in a different place from the 163x novels, even though on the series page all are grouped together. This seems odd to me, I presume it is just how series work at present?-DES Talk 18:39, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)
Yes, that's how it works for now. The display logic for the Summary Bibliography page has been Al's primary development area, so in many ways it's more advanced than other pages' display logic, but on the other hand it can be a little flaky because it's on the bleeding edge of technology -- such as it is in our case :)
In other news, I have approved Grantville Gazette III, but I wasn't sure if the Note field was complete and whether "Submissions to the magazine (Grantville Gazette III)" was an Essay or Short Fiction (and whether "magazine" needed to be capitalized). Similarly, there seems to be a quote missing in the Note field for Grantville Gazette V. And going back to Grantville Gazette II, does the title of Enrico M. Toro's serial consist of all capitals since Episodes 2 and 3 are not capitalized the same way? I have also changed the price of Grantville Gazette VI from "$6" to "$6.00" and capitalized "is" in "Grantville is Different". Thanks for all the submissions! Ahasuerus 19:02, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)
Thanks for the corrections. i will double check and adjust any that still need it, as several probably still do. (for one thing they all need the series data entered, as that can't be done when entering a new or cloned pub.) The title of the serial as printed was in ALL CAPS, but it probably should be regularized as there seems no particular reason for it to have ben so -- I enterd it by copy and paste.-DES Talk 21:32, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)
"Submissions to the Magazine" is an essay explaining what a would-be writer must do (and avoid) to make a submission th the Grantvilel Gazette and have a reasonable chance of its being accepted, including Flint's strictures on the use of characters. It now appears in every issue of the gazette, apparently in identical words. i will adjust accordingly. -DES Talk 21:32, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)
If there were a default secondary sort by title when there are no page numbers I would not have used page numbers for Jim Baen's Universe. It really is not necessary unless there is a reason - and the reason for doing it should be documented as I did on the Wiki page. Sometimes stories are grouped by theme or for some other reason.--swfritter 19:11, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)
Thanks. The only reason here would be to preserve the order from the original ebook, which is perhaps valid. -DES Talk 21:32, 1 Feb 2008 (CST)
Grantville Gazette VI is showing a bad checksum on the ISBN: is it really an ISBN shown on the pub? The Baen site says "DOI:1011250016" but I don't know what a DOI is. BLongley 14:15, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)
the downloaded copy I have says "ISBN-10: 1011250016" on the copyright "page". Several of my downloaded ebooks show a "DOI" number insted, which i think stands for "DOcument Identifieer" -- no according to doi.org that is a "Digital object Identifier". It appears to be a system like the ISBN system, but for any and every digital object. Baased on what is said at doi.org, and the other GG books, 10.1125/0016 has the form of a valid DOI, but doi.org says that that DOI is not registered. (All DOIs start with "10." and include a slash.) DOI's do not have the same kind of invariable checksum that ISBN's do. There is a lot in the doi.org FAQ comparing DOIs to ISBNs -- it might be worth reading, particualrly if other ebooks start using DOIs. In the man time., I am going to change this to #1011250016 since it isn't a data entry error, isn't a valid ISBN, and apparent;y isn't a valid DOI either -DES Talk 17:37, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)
Thanks for checking! I'll read up on it (eventually), but you might want to make this new problem more widely known at the Community Portal - a whole new STANDARD classification is going to confuse a lot of us that don't do e-books. :-/ BLongley 18:10, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)
The worst of it is that at least some of the numbers Baen is using with the label DOI appear not to be valid, registered DOIs. There is apparently a fee for registering a DOI, it appears to depend on what sort of DOI is registered for what purpose. doi.org explictly suggests that ISBNs or ISSNs could be used as parts of DOIs. ARRGH! -DES Talk 18:16, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)
When something gets too awkward, take a break and do something different. Avoid the complexities and just go find cover-art for your books, have a stab at one of the bibliographic projects, or a data clean-up project, verify some books you're sure about, go bug an editor that's doing something wrong, or even switch off the computer and READ a book for once! Life's too short to get het-up over some issues, we'll fix them eventually. We've had too many editors burn out, I'd rather see some chill-out for a bit and come back! BLongley 18:32, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)
Understand, and will do. The rest of my response was on cover art, so i am starting a topic on your talk page. -DES Talk 18:42, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)

In Grantville Gazette VII should the Assistant Editor's Preface be an Essay instead of Shortfiction? Dana Carson 04:21, 3 Feb 2008 (CST)

Yes that was an error. i have submitted a fix. Thanks. 10:16, 3 Feb 2008 (CST)

Ian Fleming

Just a reminder that the binding code for hardcovers is "hc" as opposed to "hb". As far as LCCNs go, we generally enter them in the Note field. The Catalog ID field, when there no ISBN was used, is reserved for the catalog ID that appear on the cover and was usually found on paperbacks in the pre-ISBN era. No worries, I have already made the changes :) Ahasuerus 00:18, 4 Feb 2008 (CST)

Field of Dishonor

I know it's only an excerpt, but surely it's David Weber (single 'b') in this pub? BLongley 14:59, 7 Feb 2008 (CST)

SDorry. Thanbks for catching this. fix submitted. i guess I just wanted to grtill the man. ;) -DES Talk 15:05, 7 Feb 2008 (CST)
No problem, thanks for fixing it! I'm not a big fan of excerpts on unnumbered pages (they seem too much like the adverts that often follow) but there are known exceptions: e.g. here I haven't found all the remaining chapters. So if they're there, I like them to be correct rather than creating Stray Authors. BLongley 16:07, 7 Feb 2008 (CST)
Obviously, stray authors are a Bad ThingTM, as are typos in data entry. I thought that the policy was that excerpts were to be entered. I will gladly entre or not enter them in future, i don't greatly care. Is ther any consensus on this? Note that the previous, unverified, version of this pub had a page count that was too high, even counting the unnumbered pages. i suspect it came from publisher or amazon data. -DES Talk 16:11, 7 Feb 2008 (CST)
The policy was questioned: see here. Like many other policy discussions, it petered out unresolved. :-/ I currently record pagination for the main work, and add a "+n" suffix to pagecount if there's anything after the main work I feel is worth recording: which is rare. Apart from "Starfleet: Year One" the only other examples I can think of are when the excerpt turned out to be a complete short story from a forthcoming Collection, and when the excerpt was from something we wouldn't normally have the full version of, as it's Non-Genre. Feel free to restart the discussion though! BLongley 16:33, 7 Feb 2008 (CST)

Magic's Pawn

I had your submission of the fourth printing of Mercedes Lackey's Magic's Pawn on hold for a couple of hours while I was researching the book's history. According to the Locus Index, you were quite right and the first printing appeared in 1989-06-00 as opposed to 1989-04-00 and I have corrected the Title record accordingly. However, your comment that "copyright page says "First Printing June 1989" but the number line indicates that this is the 4th printing" raises another question. Publishers often leave the date of the first printing on the copyright page when they reprint books, so there is no contradiction between that statement and the number line and it's OK to simply state "4th printing as per the number line". Also, the Locus Index lists the fourth printing as published in 1990-07-00, so I have incorporated that information in the record as well. When you get a chance, could you please a look at the end result and verify it? Thanks! Ahasuerus 18:33, 8 Feb 2008 (CST)

I have verified, but added a note indicating that this copy is a source for the date of the first pub of this edition. I also added a note indicating an additional catalog number that appears on the cover. Thanks. -DES Talk 18:55, 8 Feb 2008 (CST)
Thanks, approved. DAW is one of those annoying publishers that don't provide the information that we want, e.g. the dates when their later printings appeared, but add the data that we could do without, e.g. multiple catalog IDs to confuse everybody. Oh well, we just have to do out best to capture each individual publisher's insanity :) Ahasuerus 19:05, 8 Feb 2008 (CST)

Variant title dates on Lord Dunsany stories

Approve a few of them but realized that you might not be aware that the parent and variant titles for short fiction should all have the first date of publication. I often clean them up after I have linked them so that may also be your plan. I have some on hold temporarily.--swfritter 20:35, 11 Feb 2008 (CST)

I created the first set, and failed to set the individual dates of the shortfiction items, because I hadn't yet done the research to fix them. The second set was created via the clone tool, which doesn't let me set dates. After that I thought it was better to make the vt links first. i wasn't sure if that would authomatically set the varients to the same dates as that of the parenrs (and i was careful to set as parent the record wioth the correct original date, as far as i could). If further clean up is needed, I will do it as soon as the vt links are approved. is that an acceptable way to proceed? -DES Talk 22:41, 11 Feb 2008 (CST)
An autofix would be nice but any implementation would probably take a fair amount of testing. Maybe someday. Will approve. Your strategy should resolve the dates.--swfritter 23:16, 11 Feb 2008 (CST)
Thanks. -DES Talk 23:36, 11 Feb 2008 (CST)

The Gods of Pegana

I have approved the project Gutenberg version of The Gods of Pegana, but I wonder if it would have been faster to clone the pre-existing publication? That way we wouldn't have to merge 20+ Title records. Or did the Project Gutenberg folks use so many variant titles that it would be a nightmare to sort them out vis a vis the original publication? Thanks! Ahasuerus 14:09, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)

No, I missed the pre-existing publication. I looked thorough the Dunsany bibliography page for titles that were in PG and not in the ISFDB. I missed The Gods of Pegana because it was not under "novels" but instead in the series section. I should have checked more carefully. No harm done, but it would have saved some work on entry, plus saving the merges -- all 32 of them if every short work has a pre-existing version. Ah well, enter and learn. -DES Talk 14:31, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)
Ah, I see! Yes, it's easy to miss a Title hidden deep inside a series, especially if the author is prolific. That's why I usually use the browser's Search functionality to look for a (likely) unique substring. That way I am not thwarted by minor misspellings, missing articles, etc. Ahasuerus 14:48, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)
In future, I will either do that, or use the advanced search dialog.
I am doing the needed merges even now. Some of them are actually VTs anyway, which would have been a bit of a pain after a clone (add, make vt, drop). -DES Talk 14:58, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)
Thanks, everything has been approved! And yes, when an edition of a collection has a lot of vts, it's often easier to manually enter a new pub as opposed to cloning and going through the motions to get everything right. Ahasuerus 15:31, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)

"Droozle"

I have approved the addition of PG's version of "Droozle", but then I had to remove the cover image URL: 

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23148/23148-page-images/p070.png

because I was getting a big yellow "Please do not inline Project Gutenberg images" warning that overlay the publication record. I assume directly linking to PG's images is a no-no? Ahasuerus 15:28, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)

P.S. Ditto Beck's "Vanishing Point" and 
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23868/23868-h/images/001.png
Ahasuerus 15:30, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)
I thought that was ok. I did it in another recent case -- oh I seee you caught that one too. I won't do it again unless I check and confirm with PG and with you or other mods that it is OK. -DES Talk 15:34, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)

Introduction (The Gods of Pegana)

The Introduction (The Gods of Pegana) is a fictionalized intro? One of the ones where the author explains how the manuscript came into his possession or such? Dana Carson 16:44, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)

Yes, sort of. It reads, in full:
Before there stood gods upon Olympus, or ever Allah was Allah, had wrought and rested MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI.
There are in Pegana Mung and Sish and Kib, and the maker of all small gods, who is MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI. Moreover, we have a faith in Roon and Slid.
And it has been said of old that all things that have been were wrought by the small gods, excepting only MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI, who made the gods and hath thereafter rested.
And none may pray to MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI but only the gods whom he hath made.
But at the Last will MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI forget to rest, and will make again new gods and other worlds, and will destroy the gods whom he hath made.
And the gods and the worlds shall depart, and there shall be only MANA-YOOD-SUSHAI.
I would call that fictionalized. The "preface" is in a similar vein. -DES Talk 16:57, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)
And yet again an author stands on the line between definitions. Fiction makes sense although it could be called otherwise. Thanks. Dana Carson 04:33, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

Tales of War

In Tales of War, are there two essays called Anglo-Saxon Tyranny? Dana Carson 04:30, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

No, that was an entry error, The second one should have been an essay "Memories". I haave submited a fix. Thanks for catching this. -DES Talk 08:58, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

Dunsany's Tales of Wonder eBook

I'm holding your submission updating this pub, because of the use of numbers as story placement. I believe there were discussions in the past about this subject and that the final decision was that they not be used. But this being an eBook makes a difference. Since the "pages" aren't numbered to begin with, I can see the advantage of placeholders. Any other editors or moderators out there have an opinion on the matter? I'll start a discussion on the community page. Mhhutchins 10:49, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

I was under the imperssion thst they were discouraged, but allowed when there seemed good reason. Might I suggest that the best place for this discusion is at Publisher:Project Gutenberg#Pages fields or at Publisher talk:Project Gutenberg? -DES Talk 13:17, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

Manybooks

It wasn't really germane to the discussion but the guy who runs Manybooks seems to have a particular interest in sf. When generating the tags I check both the blogs for both sources and have yet to see a Project Gutenberg sf title that didn't appear with in a few hours on Manybooks - and they are usually easier to spot on the Manybooks blog because cover art is commonly a part of the entry. I don't know what platform you use to read them but Manybooks certainly has a plethora of formats. I generally use mobipocket on my Palm T/X. Plucker just isn't as usable. Nice to have Gutenberg titles entered in a more formal manner than just the use of tags.--swfritter 15:44, 14 Feb 2008 (CST)

Thanks to you both for the pointers, discussions, etc. I think PG books as separate entries is a good idea, so we may get a general guideline on that sorted out. As I'm running out of space in this house I may have to resort to e-books for a while myself, it's nice to know where to go for them! It'll give me something to read while waiting for all the OTHER issues to get resolved. :-/ BLongley 16:01, 14 Feb 2008 (CST)
Alternatively, you could get another house! Ahasuerus 16:15, 14 Feb 2008 (CST)
I don't actually own THIS one... and as the lease expires in 4 days, I may have to sort out more space rather sooner than I want. :-( BLongley 16:59, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)
Ouch! Just remember what they say in the military: "Three moves equals one fire", so make sure you have plenty of empty boxes and enough time to fill them! Ahasuerus 17:10, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)
I have seen that remark credited to Samual Pepys, who surely was in a position to know the disruptions created by both. Good luck with your move. -DES Talk 17:23, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)
I've not yet lost a book in a move - OK, I've misplaced a few temporarily (for a few years), but never totally lost one (that I recall). I don't actually intend to move but it might be forced on me. If so, then I'll panic for 28 days or so or whatever the eviction process actually takes. My sister and her husband have a 5-bedroom house for the two of them, maybe they'd like a 2-bedroom 3-library house for a while? BLongley 17:52, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)
  • I wasn't aware that manybooks specifically concentrated on PG's SF output. I still think that the stability, including mirroring, and accessibility of PG merits direct inclusion. I normally use either the ASCII or HTML format from PG, either read online or downloaded to a PC. I don't personally use a pocket reader or similar device, although many people do. Some but not all of the newer PG editions are including indications of the page numbers in their HTML versions -- i entered one into the db yesterday. I agree that the current discussion is a good thing. -DES Talk 17:02, 14 Feb 2008 (CST)

Milton Rothman

FYI, the contents of Rothman's Heavy Planet and Other Science Fiction Stories is available in the 2004 Locus Index :) Ahasuerus 16:09, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)

Thanks, contents entered. -DES Talk 17:01, 17 Feb 2008 (CST)

Roy Rockwood and Co.

I see that you have been entering the "Roy Rockwood" titles, something that I have been planning to do for some time, but my Rockwood collection (1910s-1920s reprints for the most part, no first editions) is incomplete and hard to get to. I'll verify my copies at some point, but probably not until I take a break from my travels.

For now, keep in mind that there was a sporadic edit war on the Stratemeyer Syndicate-related Wikipedia pages a couple of years ago, apparently an extension of an earlier flame war on some Yahoo Group. I remember undoing lots of POV edits that eventually deteriorated into straight vandalism from IP editors or, more likely, one editor using some kind of IP anonymizer. I haven't checked the state of those pages in a couple of years, but it's possible that some of that vandalism still persists. Sometimes I check the pages that I created or expanded in the early years of Wikipedia and sigh when I see how much they have deteriorated :( Ahasuerus 20:51, 18 Feb 2008 (CST)

I have been entering entirely from Project Gutenberg, and worldcat/OCLC data, I have no physical copies of his work at all. I have not been taking any position on which works attributed to this name were actually written by which human beings, which i assume is the most contentious issue. The current Wikipedia page seems to be in reasonable shape. Thanks for the heads up. -DES Talk 21:06, 18 Feb 2008 (CST)
I seem to recall that the edit war was at a higher level than pseudonym attribution. Something to do with what sub-series (Tom Swift Jr. or Tom Swift IV?) belonged to what series and whether certain external links should be included or omitted. The Roy Rockwood page does seem to be OK, though. Ahasuerus 21:12, 18 Feb 2008 (CST)
Ah I see. Well I've only been including series info from PG or OCLC, mostly PG. I saw mention of a bunch of external links alleged to be spam. that is not likely to be a problem here, i think -- the wiki doesn't have the readership for anyone to bother, and links in ISFDB entries would need moderator approval, which is unlikely for spam. -DES Talk 21:15, 18 Feb 2008 (CST)

Gulliver of Mars

BTW, in case you missed the discussion on Al's Talk page, your Gulliver of Mars submission is still on hold because an attempt to approve it results in an error and a new partially filed record. Hopefully, Al will sort it out in the foreseeable future. Ahasuerus 23:16, 18 Feb 2008 (CST)

Yes, I had noticed that, thank you. It isn't causing me any problem. If the best way is to reject it and start over, so be it. -DES Talk 23:20, 18 Feb 2008 (CST)
Well, Al hasn't commented on it yet, so I am not sure if he still needs the data to investigate the problem. I have just reported another Python error, so perhaps he will comment on them en masse. Ahasuerus 23:29, 18 Feb 2008 (CST)

Tom Shippey

I have approved the addition of Tom Shippey's picture since it is hosted by his academic site and I doubt that it will cause Saint Louis University bandwidth problems :) Still, if we are going to link to some types of sites without first securing their explicit permission (which I assume we don't have in this case), we probably want to update our policy. I wonder if it is safe to say that all .edu and .gov sites are OK? Ahasuerus 14:32, 24 Feb 2008 (CST)

I assumed that an author's picture, hosted by that author's site, would be normally permissible, as it would be unlikely to cause bandwith problems, and that explicit permission was more important when a site would be the source for multiple images. But if you think better, I won't insert such a url again without seeking explicit permission from the site. -DES Talk 16:01, 24 Feb 2008 (CST)
I think we got burned with Wikipedia images a while back -- we had no idea what the WP policy was and were quite surprised when the issue came up -- so we may have overreacted a bit by requiring that we get explicit permission from all sites that we link to. Let me post this on the Standard board and see where the discussion may lead us. Ahasuerus 19:53, 24 Feb 2008 (CST)

Brin1

Just an FYI that User:Brin1 has been unavailable for months now. I don't have any Intezones in my collection (well, hardly any), but perhaps somebody else over on the Verification page may have a copy. Ahasuerus 12:21, 3 Mar 2008 (CST)

Fine, i will ask there. Thanks. -DES Talk 12:51, 3 Mar 2008 (CST)

Anne McCaffrey's "Talents"

Just a note that I accepted your additions to Anne McCaffrey's "Talents" universe this morning, but then I had to go back and make some changes. It turned out that we had two similarly named series, "Talent" by McCaffrey (part of the "Talents Universe") and "Talents" by Douglas Hill. Since your changes assigned a number of McCaffrey titles to "Talents", I moved them to "Talent", then changed the name of Douglas Hills' series to "Poisoner" (the preferred name according to his Wikipedia article) and then changed the name of McCaffrey's series to "Talents".

No worries, this is a fairly common problem with identically or similarly named series. I have been trying to come up with a script that would help us search for suspect "mixed up" series, but haven't had much luck. There are so many shared worlds today that a series consisting of 6 books by 4 different authors is no longer unusual... Ahasuerus 23:54, 17 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Thanks. I will try to be careful about such matters in future. ARRGH. -DES Talk 01:04, 18 Mar 2008 (CDT)

"Cross Children Walk"/"The Dead"

Just double checking that it wasn't a typo and you really meant to make "The Dead" (1992) by Esther M. Friesner into a variant title of "Cross Children Walk" (1999) by M. John Harrison and Simon Ings? Thanks! Ahasuerus 01:26, 18 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Uh no, I meant to make Cross Children Walk by Esther M. Friesner a variant of Cross CHILDREN Walk by Esther M. Friesner (which should probably be listed as being by "Esther Friesner") I must have made an error somewhere in clicking and/or copying IDs. -DES Talk 01:56, 18 Mar 2008 (CDT)
That's what I figured :) It's rejected now, so we can try again. Ahasuerus 08:51, 18 Mar 2008 (CDT)
Done. -DES Talk 09:59, 18 Mar 2008 (CDT)
Looks much better, thanks! Ahasuerus 14:03, 18 Mar 2008 (CDT)

isfdb.moderators mail

Hi David - If you'd like to be added to the isfdb.moderator's mailing list then please shoot me an e-mail via my Google home page. Originally the mailing list was set up during the last spammer attack as a mechanism for non-moderators to contact the moderators when they got locked out of the wiki. More recently it's been used with ISFDB was down. Marc Kupper (talk) 04:24, 19 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Responded by email. -DES Talk 07:51, 19 Mar 2008 (CDT)

His Majesty's Dragon

BTW - if you have a publication I assume you know about primary verification? Marc Kupper (talk) 16:20, 19 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Yes, I was waiting until the submission was approved to verify. If you will chack, you will find I am primary verifier on soemthing over 100 records -- not much by the standards of those who have been on longer, of course. -DES Talk 16:58, 19 Mar 2008 (CDT)

The Gland Men of the Island

Just a heads up that we have 4 different records for "The Gland Men of the Island" at the moment. The 2 "Max Afford" variant title records can be presumably merged, but the first two are both canonical titles and we will need to pick one of then as the "real" canonical title: 

The Gland Men of the Island 	SHORTFICTION 	1931 	Malcolm R. Afford
The Gland Men of the Island 	SHORTFICTION 	1931 	Malcolm Afford
The Gland Men of the Island 	SHORTFICTION 	1931 	Max Afford
The Gland Men of the Island 	SHORTFICTION 	1931 	Max Afford

Ahasuerus 17:03, 21 Mar 2008 (CDT)

I was attempting to establish "Max Afford" as the canonical name of this author -- my research indicates that most of his work was published under this name. However, this particular work appears to be attributed in one publication to "Malcolm R. Afford" and in another to "Malcolm Afford". I do not know of any actual publication of this particular work attributed to "Max Afford". I understand that all variants ought to link to a single canonical author/title. I am not sure what the best way to handle this particular case is. We could make the "Max Afford" variant (which may never have had an actual publication) canonical and make the other two variants of it -- there is some precedent for this. But perhaps another way would be better. i solicit your advice. -DES Talk 17:29, 21 Mar 2008 (CDT)
We seem to have got two "Malcolm R. Afford"s recorded as variant names of "Max Afford" already - I'm not sure how easy that will be to fix. :-/ Generally, I think capturing more verified data before deciding on a Canonical name is better - e.g. I'm leaning towards one Dave/David [B.] Mattingly at the moment, but even with around 100 titles recorded for one variant and 200 for another I'm not keen to make the decision too early. BLongley 19:38, 21 Mar 2008 (CDT)
There is the difference that Mattingly is still alive and can produce more work. There is alo the difference that the number of works by him within our rules of inclusion is much higher. That said, what would you advise doing at the moment? -DES Talk 19:46, 21 Mar 2008 (CDT)
Record everything you know about Max/Malcolm [R.] Afford and his publications you can. THEN we can sort out the canonical name, and then the titles. Deciding these too early is often a pain to undo - but fortunately, as you point out, Afford is unlikely to complain if we get it wrong. ;-/ But having such a mix-up when we have only four titles recorded strikes me as over-zealous variant-recording at the moment. BLongley 20:01, 21 Mar 2008 (CDT)
I believe the key thing to remember is that we can undo a Variant Title relationship with a few clicks while we can't undo a Pseudonym relationship at all at this time (although there is an outstanding request for this capability). Once we have set up a Pseudonym relationship, we are pretty much stuck with it unless we want to make that Author's page fairly ugly. This is why some of the pseudonyms look as strange as they do, e.g. A. R. Long's bibliography should be clearly moved to Amelia Reynolds Long as soon as we can do it cleanly. Hence Bill's preference for doing a lot of research before we dig ourselves into a hole :)
As far as Malcolm/Max Afford goes, the "Max" record is already slightly messed up since "Malcolm R. Afford" is listed twice as a pseudonym, something we can't change at this time as per the comments above. To answer your specific question, if we decide to make "Max Afford" his canonical name -- and a quick OCLC search found 39 records for "Max" vs. almost nothing for the other versions, so it's a pretty safe assumption -- then it would be fine to use the canonical name for the canonical title even though the story in question may have never appeared that way. After all, it's the only way to keep everything written by the author on the same page. There are a couple of minor display issue with some variant title permutations, but, thankfully, nothing serious. Ahasuerus 20:49, 21 Mar 2008 (CDT)
I see. I didn't realize that pseudonyms were so intractable, i presumed that any time that there was a valid variant title due to an alternate form of an author's name, it was a good idea to create a corresponding pseudonym record. it seems that this is not so. I will keep this in mind in future. -DES Talk 01:16, 22 Mar 2008 (CDT)
The only ISFDB records that can't be undone at this point are Pseudonyms and Series. The latter can be emptied and rendered effectively inactive, but they can't be deleted. Also, once a series has become a part of a superseries, it can be moved to another superseries, but it can't be turned back into a standalone series. We can get around these limitations by using dummy series names like "Bogus Series Name - to be deleted" and dummy superseries that contain only one series, but it's a pain and I hope Al beefs up these areas at the first opportunity. Ahasuerus 01:55, 22 Mar 2008 (CDT)

"Triggerman"

Just checking that the 1989 appearance of "Triggerman" was credited to "Jesse F. Bone" (as per the Locus Index) as opposed to the submitted "Jesse. F. Bone". Thanks! Ahasuerus 21:16, 21 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Yes the extra period is a typo, I have submitted a correction. -DES Talk 01:13, 22 Mar 2008 (CDT)
Looks like Marc approved it right away, so we should be in good shape :) Ahasuerus 01:56, 22 Mar 2008 (CDT)
Yes, I have now submitted the changes to put the varient into the relevant publication. -DES Talk 02:01, 22 Mar 2008 (CDT)
Thanks for calling this to my attention. -DES Talk 02:02, 22 Mar 2008 (CDT)
Sure thing! I approved the last couple of submissions, but then I noticed that we had two "Jesse F. Bone" Author records one file. The first record had one space between "F." and "Bone" while the second one had two spaces. These cases are particularly hard to detect since proportionate fonts tend to compress multiple spaces into one for display purposes. I went ahead and merged the two Author records using Advanced Search, then set up a Pseudonym relationship between "J. F. Bone" and "Jesse F. Bone". I think we should be all set for now.
P.S. It may feel like the more you learn about the ISFDB application, the more quirks you find, but you are actually getting close to the bottom of the barrel :) and at this rate you should be getting close to self-sufficiency in a few weeks. Again, thanks for all the work on the data and the Wiki! Ahasuerus 02:14, 22 Mar 2008 (CDT)
I actualy think that I am getting the hang of it. I have been using the Moderator link to look at my submisisons, and other people's, as thy look to moderators, but not, of course, to approve any. I have rejected a couple of my owm submssisons when I noticed data entry errors of my own. Thanks again. -DES Talk 02:42, 22 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Submitting CHAPTERBOOKS

One thing to keep in mind is that there are two ways to create a CHAPTERBOOK Publication record. If the story in question already exists in the ISFDB, then you can simply use "Add Publication" to its title. If the story doesn't exist in the ISFDB, then it gets tricker since there is no "New Chapterbook" navbar option. If you use the "New Novel" option and change the Pub Type to CHAPTERBOOK, the software will create a CHAPTERBOOK Publication records and an associated CHAPTERBOOK Title record. The former is OK, but the latter is a known bug since Title records are not supposed to be CHAPTERBOOKS. It's not a big deal since I regularly search for CHAPTERBOOK Titles and change them to SHORTFICTION, but it's something to keep in mind :) Ahasuerus 01:42, 23 Mar 2008 (CDT)

What then is the proper way to add a chapter book for a work not previously listed. Is it to start with a novel, change type, and then after the submission is approved to change the type of the content record to shortfiction? Or is there a better route? -DES Talk 02:50, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I am afraid there is no better way at the moment :( Just keep in mind that it will have to be a two step process regardless of how you do it. Multi-step processes tend to be prone to error and confusion, especially when you can't approve your own submissions, so it may be safer to add a quick note explaining what you are doing. That way the approving moderator won't be wondering why you are submitting a 45 page "novel" :) Ahasuerus 05:14, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I understand. Thanks. -DES Talk 12:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Masters of the Fist

Your update to publication 21682 is puzzling.

  • The date is 1989-02-00 and you did not change that.
  • You changed the note from
First Baen Printing: February 1982"
"Printed in the untited States of America"
"A Baen Books original"
No number line present, no other printing date shown; Appears to be first printing; Cash register reciept shows purchase in May 1989
to
"First Baen Printing: February 1982"
"Printed in the untited States of America"
"A Baen Books original"
No number line present, no other printing date shown; Appears to be first printing; Cash register reciept shows purchase in May 1982
Did you intend to also change the publication's date or what's the source of 1989-02-00 other than Amazon.com?
  • Is that "First Baen Printing: February 1982" statement correct? I just did a search on AbeBooks for Masters of the Fist 1982 and found nothing. It seems to be a 1989 publication which also fits in better with the author's publication history on ISFDB.
  • I added a cover image from Amazon though have no idea if it's correct.
  • Did you edit the publication key at some point? "89MastersofFist" is a hand created key and usually we only hand-edit them for magazines. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:00, 25 Mar 2008 (CDT)
DES dropped me a note on my talk page and my response is along the same lines as yours[2].Kraang 19:47, 25 Mar 2008 (CDT)
Thank you - I went ahead and approved the submission and re-edited the record to change the name of this country from "untited" to "United" (though it does not always seem that way) and also fixed the spelling of "reciept." David - you'll still need to edit the publication as I believe the "1982" dates should be "1989" (nearly all of the stories first appeared after 1982 too) but presumably you had reason for changing the date you noted for the receipt from 1989 to 1982 in the edit that was on hold for a while.
Do you use Firefox? That has a spell checker built in and will underline things in red and save you from obvious typos and the need to re-edit things. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:31, 26 Mar 2008 (CDT)
  • I must habve been working too late on this one. T he correct date is 1989, as everythign syas, the 9 somehow changed to a 2 in my head. it was not a typo so much as a "thinko" I somehow gor the wrong though imn my head and it stcuk there. Thanks for querying this. I have submitted the correction. -DES Talk 02:52, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

"The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays"

I tried approving "The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays", but it caused a Python error, so I will drop Al a line. Also, is "Foreward" really spelled that way on page 1? Thanks! Ahasuerus 04:06, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

Argh, another python error. I will check the spelling. -DES Talk 02:46, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

"The Lady or the Tiger"

Unfortunately, one of your submissions is currently broken and will have to be resubmitted -- I must have merged its parent title before I got to it :( You can see the XML here because, as a moderator, you have access to the dumpxml.cgi script. Everything else looked good except for one other submission, which was missing a ">" in the HTML in the Notes field and wouldn't display correctly, but I was able to fix it manually.

I also fixed a bunch of typos in Notes, but as long as they are limited to Notes and stay out of the data fields, it's not a big deal. I had a harder time with our Francophone contributor, whose Notes were in Franglais. I assume we will eventually get submissions in Swahili, Surzhyk, etc :) Ahasuerus 05:32, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

old submission rejected, new one made. Thanks for alerting me. -DES Talk 13:22, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I see that submission 963418 is on hold, and on looking at it I see the error, it has type "anthology" rather than type "chapterbook". I will correct this. -DES Talk 15:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I have submitted a revised version of the publication entry. Should i reject the incorrect one, or is that not done when you have it "on hold"? -DES Talk 15:25, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Done and done! :) "Anthology" is the default choice when Adding Publications and in a few other forms, which causes occasional issues :( Ahasuerus 17:20, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Oh yes - only this week I had to fix two pubs: an occasional search for Title "Introduction", Title-Type 'ANTHOLOGY' seems worthwhile as it catches a lot of people not changing the first entry's type. BLongley 18:07, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
As far as "On Hold" goes, it's just a flag indicating that a moderator is investigating the submission or communicating with the submitting editor, so it shouldn't be approved by other moderators. Sometimes a moderator notices a problem submission (or a bunch of submissions), but doesn't have time to massage it and/or communicate with the submitting editor, so he puts them on hold and leaves a message on the Moderator Noticeboard so that other moderators could clean them up. On rare occasions a moderator will see something unusual in another moderator's submission (if it stays in the queue long enough) and put it on hold as a kind of "Hm, maybe we should talk about this first" kind of message. Finally, if the submitting editor hasn't found the Wiki yet and one of his submissions needs to be rejected, then it's important to include a link to the editor's Talk page in the rejection message, which will, hopefully, point the editor in the right direction. Ahasuerus 17:20, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

R, Clayton as Pete Bogg - submissions on hold

Do you know of any source that credits this pseudonym? I can't find it in Rock, Robinson, Tuck, Day, AKA, or either of the bibliographic comments for the authors. I presume that you are working on the variant project and did not make the original assignment.--swfritter 20:37, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Correct, i have been simply accepting the relationships already existing in the database. From the bibliographies, the relationship looked plausible -- the two authors both wrote primarily science essays, on a similar range of subjects, published in the same set of magazines, at about the same time. That is not, of course, proof of a relationship. Since these are all essay titles, Worldcat or other general bibliographic titles are unlikely to help.
Should I do more research before creating variants in such cases in future? Thanks for catching this issue. -DES Talk 21:12, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Don't worry about it right now. Hopefully some current editor has some information. I will put something out in Verification. Probably a good idea when doing pseudonyms in the project to check whatever references you might have access to - aka always being available. Unfortunately, if the original assignment is in error we have no way of removing it.--swfritter 23:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
Ok will do. For me that pretty much mean refs available online. Thanks. -DES Talk 13:42, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
My inclination is to approve and make an entry in bibliographic notes stating that the source of the attribution is unknown. If this were a more significant author it might be worth a little more investigation.--swfritter 23:01, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
I Think that is what was done, but the submisison has not been on hold for several weeks. -DES Talk 23:39, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Approved the submissions and noted in bibliographic notes for both names that the source is unknown. But, of course, these submissions bring up another issue that is quite common in magazines. When the magazines were first added the month was usually set to 00. When a variant is created the date will carry over. Eventually someone will edit the magazine and change the date to a form with the correct month which means the variant pair titles will be out of sync. I usually try to remember to change the dates before doing the pseudonym thing. The web API (hurray!, hurray!) could be used to resynchronize such titles but there are cases where variant titles should have unique dates - an example being a story that is republished in a significantly different form but in that case there should be some kind of modifier in the title to indicate that it is abridged, lengthened, etc. I think we would be safe in doing an update of variant pair titles with exactly the same titles and the same year. The web API might also be of use in fixing up the mags that have a 00 month. Please don't shy away from the magazines. These data inconsistencies will likely be resolved in some sort of batch mode.--swfritter 20:18, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
I have not been shying away from magazines -- i have done several issues of Whspers, one Galleio, and a couple of Asaimov's. My personal collection is rather light on mags, so i haev mostly concentrated elsewhere, that is all. -DES Talk 22:24, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Flight of the Bat

I've put this on hold, have a look, I think you will see an obvious error. :-)Kraang 02:56, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Oops. Thanks for spotting this. I have rejected it and re-submitted, more correctly this time. -DES Talk 03:01, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Moderator?

Your bibliographic prowess has attracted the attention of the ISFDB moderators, and they have decided to ask you if you would like to become a moderator. Would you like to become a moderator? If so reply here, and we will begin the nomination process. There is a Moderator Qualifications page. Alvonruff 20:59, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I have reviewed the Moderator Qualifications page again just now (I first read it some time ago). I think that i can handle the requirements at least reasonably well, and can make a positive contribution to the project as a moderator. Yes, I would like to become a moderator, and I hope that the various users will agree that I would be an asset in that role. Thank you for considering me.
Note that in order to grant me admin privileges on the wiki my mod flag was actually turned on some time ago, with the understanding and agreement that I would not use it to approve submissions until and unless confirmed as a moderator, and I have not. However, i have reviewed what submissions on the moderator page look like, and when I spotted an error in my own submissions (and once when a mod spotted an error), i have rejected them and re-submitted in corrected form. I think that this will enable me to start working as a moderator with less to learn than I otherwise might have had. -DES Talk 21:28, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Mountain Magic

I see that I you verified Mountain Magic a few days ago, so I wonder if you may be able to double