User talk:Dsorgen

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Title changes in Contents

Dave, I currently have your update for The Stardust Voyages and the related publication delete on hold while I think about this. The problem is you made changes to the titles in the contents list to match what's in your copy of the book. The problem this creates is the title records are shared by other publications. For example, Birds Fly South in Winter is in both The Stardust Voyages and Galaxy Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 1971. If you change the title wording to fix The Stardust Voyages it will break the listing for Galaxy Science Fiction. Some stories, such as A Star Called Cyrene already had their own (non-shared) title record meaning that one would be safe to edit. Anyway, I need to think about the best way to proceed with this update.

BTW - I noticed with many of the titles you changed them by adding a date, such as "(A.D. 2117)" to the end. Is this part of the actual story title? Marc Kupper 23:15, 3 Jan 2007 (CST)

The dates were included in the titles in the copy I have. It seemed safe (apparently not) to include them. They may have been added to provide continuity; since, otherwise there really weren't any text bridges between the stories. It only makes sense (in retrospect) for a collection. Live and learn... I'm still relatively new at this. Hope I don't screw up more than "average".

Dave Sorgen 19:45, 4 Jan 07 (CST).

Thank you Dave. If you want to take a shot at fixing the titles here's the procedure.
  • Edit the publication
    • Count the number of titles you need to change and hit [Add Title] (at the bottom of the contents list) that many times.
    • For each title copy/paste the old data from the existing to the new/blank rows. You will need to copy/paste all of the pages numbers, titles, authors, dates, type, length, etc. At least you are lucky it’s a collection and you can just paste the author name a bunch of times.
    • Correct the new rows (changing title, author name, etc.) as needed. Do not make any changes to the old rows.
    • You may want to write a note to the moderator in the Notes field explaining what you are doing so they won’t wonder too much about what looks like a strange update.
    • Save the publication
  • Go back to the publication record (you don’t need to wait for the approval of the publication edit) and click “Remove titles from this pub” on the left sidebar.
    • Check each of the titles that you modified and then click [Submit Data].
  • Once the original publication update is approved then for each of the new titles search for it using Advanced Search in the Title Search section.
    • If one or more of your titles has more than one record then stare at them carefully and if they seem exactly the same then check those lines and click [Merge Selected Records]. See Help:How_to_merge_titles for more information about merging.
As you can see – the process is painful for now. There is some discussion for changes to help automate this
re: the social protocol for sending messages – What you did is fine. I tend to post questions in the ISFDB:Community_Portal as then the resulting thread stays in one place and is likely to be visible to more people rather than hopping back and forth between individual user pages. Marc Kupper 04:30, 5 Jan 2007 (CST)

A Hole in Space

Dave, I see you're adding content to this publication. There's nothing wrong with your submission, but I thought I might be able to save you a bit of work here. Two of the other three publications of this already have contents -- e.g. this one. If you display that one, choose "Clone Publication", you can create a new one with a lot less effort. The biggest time saving is in the short stories, though, and I'll explain why.

With the new stories you entered, the ISFDB doesn't know that these are the same stories as in the other publications. That means that after the submission is approved, you would have to go through Niven's stories and find the two copies of each short story title, and merge them together. You would do this by going to Niven's bibliography and choosing "Titles"; then you get a "Merge" button at the bottom of the page.

However, if you use the "Clone Publication" approach, you don't have to do this step -- cloning a publication assumes that every story (or essay) in the book is to be merged with the existing versions in the other publications of that book. The ISFDB will automatically merge all of them for you.

This doesn't always get you everything you want. For example, suppose one of the stories in your copy has a slightly different title. Maybe the existing publication has "$16,940.00" but yours is "$16,940". Then you would need to "Remove Title from Publication" after cloning, since the clone would create the wrong title. Then you could use the "Edit Pub" screen to add in the correct version of the title, and finally make that a variant of the original title. Still, cloning is almost always easier.

I've left your submission in the queue and will wait to hear from you what you want to do -- I'll approve it if you like, and you can manually merge the titles; or you can go ahead and clone and recreate the existing publication, and then delete the current version of the publication that's out there (since the clone will create a fresh copy of that publication).

I hope that helps. Let me know if anything isn't clear. Mike Christie (talk) 19:36, 14 Jan 2007 (CST)

Dave, I also held the last two subs -- the Nourse and the Haldeman -- for the same reason. Again, just let me know how you'd like to proceed. Mike Christie (talk) 19:39, 14 Jan 2007 (CST)
And also "The Barbie Murders". Mike Christie (talk) 15:49, 15 Jan 2007 (CST)
Hmmm... Looks like they all disappeared (I'm not the fastest worker in the world). Were they processed or dumped. I don't have the copies anymore, gave them away. I think I'm finally getting a handle on the "conversational process" here. Peculiar, but it works (sorta)... --Dsorgen 22:29, 22 Jan 2007 (CST)
Sorry, I should have posted a note here - I went ahead and approved them, since they were legal, and I wasn't sure if you were going to see my response. If you take a look at the publications, you'll find the ones you entered are there; the titles of the short stories probably still need to be merged, unless someone else has gotten to it. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk) 22:46, 22 Jan 2007 (CST)

A couple more notes on recent submissions

Dave, two things I noticed in some of your recent submissions. One is you've been deleting the "jvn" that is found in some of the Story Length fields. In fact this is intended to be there; I just realized it's not documented properly. That field is overloaded to mean several different things, and I'll change the help text to explain it. The "jvn" is short for "juvenile novel". You may also see "nvz" (I think) that means "novelization". I've approved your subs and put the "jvn" back in, but I wanted to let you know about it.

The other thing is that a couple of your entries have mentioned "data taken from <later> printing". Later printings do have useful information about earlier printings, but I wanted to make sure you understood that we do want to get a record of every single printing. So if you have a seventh printing, we would like to capture it, with its own publication date, in addition to using it as a data source to capture information about earlier printings. For some popular books such as "Dune" this leads to a great many publication records; that is the intention, though. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk) 21:59, 15 Jan 2007 (CST)

Citizen of the Galaxy

Dave, I approved your addition of Citizen of the Galaxy but am puzzled by the ISBN. Most Ace SBNs and ISBNs start with 441 or 0-441 while you have 447 which I had never seen for an Ace publication before. Could you please double-check this? Thanks. Marc Kupper 00:19, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

The "7" should probably be a "1". You have more experience in this area than I do. There was a nasty crease in the spine of the book. The result: the top of the "1" was stretched/flattened into an apparent "7". All the other digits were easily readable. Had to squint at that one. Sorry for the mistake. The next time I can't read it CLEARLY, it doesn't go on record.
I'll adjust this one accordingly. Dave Sorgen 21:05, 17 Jan 07
Thank you Dave. Usually when I can't quite squint something out I make notes on what data is available and/or will see if I can find the missing data on line. For example, I had a book where a former bookseller had wiped out the original price with a marker pen. I found a cover image on line and decided that the barely legible digits in my copy matched the on-line image and so went with that along with a note that the price was not legible but that it appeared to be $2.95.
Note - it's easier if you reply to things on your own talk page. What I do is to monitor Special:Recentchanges for pages on my watch list. When I post to an page such as yours mediawiki automatically adds the page to my watch list and shows up on Special:Recentchanges in bold. Once I no longer have a reason to watch your page (I don't have any pending conversations/issues) I'll unwatch the page.
Also, it looks like your signature is set to [[Dsorgen| Dave Sorgen]] and it should be [[User:Dsorgen|Dave Sorgen]]. Marc Kupper 21:39, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

Artist Roles

I like what you did with cover artist roles for The Snow Queen but unfortunately the idea does not work at present. For now I have been dealing with situations like this by adding the cover designer to the publication's notes. I went ahead and fixed the publication for now but also will file a feature request. Marc Kupper 00:26, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

Dropped jvn explained

Dave - please see User_talk:Mike_Christie#Re:_recent_edits_.28a_little_late.29 --Marc Kupper 01:44, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

Removing titles from a publication

You had asked: Moderator --> the four unpaginated items need to be removed from this version of the pub. What's the "easy" way?

From the publication use "Remove Titles From This Pub" in the left navbar. In fact, for now, that's also how you change the titles in a publication in that you do a "remove titles" and then "add titles" (on the edit-pub screen) with the correct data. There is a pending add-feature request to allow editors to be able to just change a title in the contents and ISFDB will silently do the remove/add so that the original title record that's shared with other publications does not get modified. --Marc Kupper 21:20, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

Return to a held edit for Tall's "Stardust Voyages"

I replied to this on ISFDB:Community_Portal#Return_to_a_held_edit_for_Tall.27s_.22Stardust_Voyages.22 as it may result in policy clarification. Marc Kupper (talk) 16:57, 17 Mar 2007 (CDT)

The Best of Thomas N. Scortia

You submitted an update to 35890 The Best of Thomas N. Scortia where for the story The Stunning Science Fiction Caper you wanted to change the author from Gerald Macdow to "Thomas N. Scortia (as by Gerald Macdow)." I'm not sure what you are trying to get ISFDB to show. The publication currently shows this as

  • 118 • The Stunning Science Fiction Caper • (1957) • shortfiction by Thomas N. Scortia [as by Gerald Macdow ]

This means that in the publication the author is shown as Gerald Macdow and in ISFDB we show that Gerald Macdow is a pseudonym of Thomas N. Scortia. For a while I advocated having ISFDN display

  • 118 • The Stunning Science Fiction Caper • (1957) • shortfiction by Gerald Macdow (pseudonym for Thomas N. Scortia)

but apparently the format ISFDB uses is more familiar to bibliographers. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:43, 28 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Wilhelm's Children of the Wind

When you updated this publication, you changed the space provided for the title record (Children of the Wind: COLLECTION) into a content record (Children of the Wind: SHORTFICTION). This would remove the title record, creating a stray publication. When adding contents, do not change the first record. Start by clicking "Add Title" and continue from there. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:08, 28 Jun 2007 (CDT)

This publication was listed as a novel(incorrectly) so i changed it to a collection this should make entering the short stories easier. The first entry type is Anthology change this to Shortfiction when adding the titles. Hope this helps.Kraang 21:30, 28 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Yes, it's listed as a collection now (thanks Kraang). When Dsorgen made his edit, perhaps he thought it would save time since both had the same title. He changed the first content field from COLLECTION to SHORTFICTION. As Kraang said, now that it's a collection, you can add contents from the first field. Mhhutchins 21:52, 28 Jun 2007 (CDT)


Green Eyes

Dave the $2.95 price would be right for this Ace publication. Yours would appear to be a later printing. The best way to deal with this is to use the "clone this pub" in the edit box. This way you can add the date, price and artists without changing an existing publication. Also if the book only gives the 1st printing date and it just says 2nd printing(but no exact date) or a number line 2 3 4 for example than you enter the date as 0000-00-00 and put into the note section something like (Stated 2nd printing of 1984 Ace ed) or (Stated 2nd printing(per number line) of 1984 ace ed) as an example. Thanks for editing.Kraang 22:10, 1 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Expedition to Earth

Dave could you have a second look at this [1] and see if you missed any short stories. An easier way to do this would be to see if any of the other publications had the same content as yours than use the "Clone this pub" in the edit tools box, this way the titles get merged automaticaly. You can then change all the publication information to match your copy without changing any other pub in the db. But with the clone you can't change contents(titles & authors) just the page counts and story type. Thanks :-)Kraang 22:27, 3 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Leinster's "Exploration Team"/"Combat Team"

I have approved and massaged the Leinster collection that you submitted the other day. One thing that you may want to look into is the way the ISFDB software handles changes to magazines', collections' and anthologies' Contents section. Basically, any changes you make to individual stories in a collection will immediately affect all appearances of that story everywhere in the database. This is true with respect to stories' titles, authors, and dates. So when you wanted to change "Combat Team" to "Exploration Team", it would have changed the title everywhere else, effectively eliminating "Combat Team" from the database. Please take a look at Help:How to change a story in a collection for a more gentle way of handling these cases when you get a chance :) Thanks! Ahasuerus 13:28, 4 Jul 2007 (CDT)

HogFather

Dave it looks like you used the Canadian price on the back cover. The preferred price would be the GB pound price. If you leave me the pound price i can update you submission. Thanks!Kraang 20:06, 4 Jul 2007 (CDT)

The Languages of Pao

Hi Dave, I've already approved this New Pub, but when ever you add a Serial Number into the ISBN/Catalog # field, you must always put a "#" before any non 10 digit ISBN or the db will think that it is an ISBN and flag it as an incorrect ISBN. I have already taken care of adding in the "#", thanks for editing! CoachPaul 23:09, 7 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett

I approved this pub you submitted even though it had an ISBN that was 11 digits long. I tried removing one of the two "0"s that you had at the begining of the ISBN, but that gave me a "Bad Checksum" error which you will see if you go to the pub. Could you please recheck the ISBN on your pub and correct it when you get the chance. Thanks. CoachPaul 23:16, 7 Jul 2007 (CDT)

You're welcome. As a point of note, if I leave you a message here, you can just answer me here, as I tend to not only watch the Talk Pages of all the active mods and editors, but will most closly watch the Talk Page of any editor to whom I have just sent a message. CoachPaul 23:35, 7 Jul 2007 (CDT)

The Commodore at Sea / Spartan Planet

Your submission of this title is almost identical to a pub already in the database. Except for one number in the ISBN (and the lack of a date), they appear to be the same pub. I'll keep your submission on hold until I hear back from you. Mhhutchins 15:08, 8 Jul 2007 (CDT)

The difference in the two pubs was ONLY in the ISBN. I don't know if the old entry is correct. The one I submitted is correct as printed on the book cover (I checked it several times to be sure my eyes were reading it properly). Don't know if it's a new pub, ISBN correction or ISBN goof.

--Dsorgen 16:01, 8 Jul 2007 (CDT)

I checked the ISBN that you provided, and it turned out to be an invalid number. Maybe the ISBN of the original submission was changed into a valid ISBN (without noting the invalid number). Because you can verify that the invalid number is the actual one printed on the book, I'll place a note to that affect on the record. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:24, 8 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Adam Link - Robot

Every reference to this book that I have found on the web lists it as a Collection with the short stories in it that you want to remove. Why do you want to change it to a Novel? CoachPaul 10:06, 9 Jul 2007 (CDT)

It looks like Dave is following up on this discussion :) Ahasuerus 11:30, 9 Jul 2007 (CDT)
OK, I went ahead and approved the edits but they changed the 1965 version to a novel and I see no sign of the 1974 version anywhere. Was the plan to make the 1974 version a novel while keeping the 1965 version a collection, or to turn them all into novels? CoachPaul 11:55, 9 Jul 2007 (CDT)
There, I think everything is done. I hope in the correct order. Sorry for the delay. The third printing of the book makes it clear (by labeling all the "stories" as chapters with titles) that this is a novel, not a collection. It may be a fix-up, but there it is. This seems to be a common problem with a buncha books. Sigh... Regards.
--Dsorgen 20:31, 25 Jul 2007 (CDT)
Oh yes, it is indeed a common problem. We have been thinking about adding a new type of "contents" entries that would list the stories that a novel is based on, but it's just a thought at this point. Ahasuerus 00:38, 26 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Tranvergence / Charles Sheffield

Don i've deleted the duplicate publication and updated the publication with your data. These types of double entries are more complicated to sort out(more than one step involved). Your second submission would not work because of the changes made by the deletion. If you find anymore like this point them out to one of the moderators and we can delete them quicker.Thanks :-)Kraang 23:02, 9 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Psychotechnic League

A couple of comments about the Psychotechnic League submission, which I currently have on hold. We already have the 1981 printing of this book entered, so it would be easier to use Clone Publication option rather than the Add Publication option. When you use the Clone option on a collection/anthology, all stories/essays are carried over, so you don't have to Merge anything after the fact. In addition, Cloning minimizes the probability of typos sneaking in, which is liable to happen at some point, e.g. this submission had two. (I know, I know, it was late :-).

Also, in your submission you wanted to change the Publication type from NOVEL to COLLECTION -- which is correct -- but you also wanted to overwrite the Collection title record in the Contents section with Sandra Miesel's foreword. That would have been an issue because a "Collection type" Publication has to contain a "Collection type" Title, otherwise the association between the two will be lost and they will not appear on each other's biblio pages.

Would you like me to approve this submission and then massage the data after the fact or would you like to create a new submission using Clone Publication for the sake of practice?

Thanks for editing! Ahasuerus 00:36, 11 Jul 2007 (CDT)

I went ahead and cloned a pre-existing Publication record for this collection, then added the page numbers and other printing-specific information from your submission. Finally, I rejected the original submission since it would have caused problems with the Collection Title record as per the discussion above. Could you please double check the end result to make sure that everything looks right?
Also, after massaging various Publication records for this collection, I realized that we have two Publications records that claim to represent the third printing of this book, the February 1985 Tor printing that you entered and a December 1982 Tor printing. Could you please check the date and the printing number in your copy? Thanks! Ahasuerus 13:35, 15 Jul 2007 (CDT)
OK, here's what I found: There are three printings listed on the copyright page of this book. They are:
  • First printing, June 1981
  • Second printing, September 1981
  • Third printing, February 1985
The last entry is the one I referenced and would seem to invalidate the 1982 entry. Who knows?
Regards: --Dsorgen 20:41, 19 Jul 2007 (CDT)
Thanks, I will zap the 1982 Publication record. If and when we run into one, we can always add it back in :) Ahasuerus 00:12, 20 Jul 2007 (CDT)

The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun and The Crash of Empire

Related to Ahasuerus' comments on Psychotechnic League are your proposed updates for The Best of Raymond Z. Gallun and The Crash of Empire where with both of them you wanted to make changes in the contents section. Please take a look at Help:Screen:EditPub#General_contents which covers some things we need to be alert to when making changes to the contents.

Probably the least-work solution for both of us at this point would be if I approve your update but then re-edit the part where you modified a title record in the contents to restore the original data, and also to do the add-title/remove-title thing. I won't have time to deal with this for a few days though and so will leave it in the queue. Ahasuerus, I accidentally switched Psychotechnic League as being held by you to being held by me. I had the record up to see if you were holding it for the same reason I'm holding these, saw that the record needed to be held, instinctively hit hold, and learned that the newer hold overwrites the old one. Marc Kupper (talk) 19:30, 11 Jul 2007 (CDT)

No worries, switched back :) Ahasuerus 21:02, 11 Jul 2007 (CDT)
Hmmmm, since I can't see the submission now (they're held), I can't see what I should be fixing. Perhaps it would be better if the submissions were just dropped for the time being. I can take a (better educated, more experienced) run at them later. Other than that, I don't know what to do with this.
--Dsorgen 20:53, 19 Jul 2007 (CDT)
I have volunteered to resolve this issue since Marc Kupper is currently busy. I think I have an idea as to what his concerns are but I want to look a closer look. It won't hurt to make the effort as it may be a good learning experience.--swfritter 15:46, 25 Sep 2007 (CDT)
The Gallun book appears to have had only one printing so I think you would have been safe to have used the existing pub that already had data. I have updated that pub but have a couple of questions. Does 'The Shadow of the Veil' have quote marks around it in the book? If it doesn't the title will have to be removed from the pub and a new title will have to be added and made a variant of the existing title from the original publication (see note on Crash of Empire). Does 'Return of a Legend' appear in your copy? If not this might a different edition otherwise it needs a page number. I will not reject your original submission until this issue is resolved. You can answer on your page.
The Crash of Empire. The Benford story - is the title on the title page of the story 'Seascape' or 'Pebble Among the Stars'? If you change title of the story here it will change the title of the story everywhere it appears. See this entry in Help on Changing Stories in Collections--swfritter 12:40, 27 Sep 2007 (CDT)

Birthright: The Book of Man

You submitted an update to Birthright: The Book of Man where you changed the type from COLLECTION to NOVEL plus added the note "Change in Type based on correspondence (email) with the author." I suspect the note was to the moderators that you wanted edited out but I'm wondering - do you know why this was marked as a collection? If it's ambiguous then it may well be helpful to update the note explaining this is more detail. The note may be nothing more than "This book may appear to be a collection but the author intends that be be a novel (source: e-mail with the author, July 2007)." Marc Kupper (talk) 19:30, 11 Jul 2007 (CDT)

They only thing that comes to mind re:collection vs novel is the way the contents page is organized. The entries are NOT identified as "chapters", but rather simply listed by title. If you saw it, this would make a LOT more sense. The chapters are only loosely connected. The intervals between them (in "novel time", if you will) can be quite large, on the order of thousands of years.

I could insert the text of the email if you think that would be appropriate. It wasn't terribly long. It may be better if it were inserted in the biblio page for the book. I'm still feeling my way around how things are done here. In the meanwhile, I'll alter the note as you suggested.
--Dsorgen 20:31, 19 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Best of C. M. Kornbluth

I accepted your update of this edition, but had to change the date to 1977-01-00 (your submission of 1979-01-00 must have been a typo, since you add a note that the pub date is January, 1977). Also, you might find it easier in the future to clone a previous edition if the contents are identical, and update the specifics of your edition. Then delete the edition without the contents. This saves having to type in the contents again, and saves someone from having to merge all of the newly created title records with the pre-existing titles. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:43, 12 Jul 2007 (CDT)

You are quite correct the date was 1977. I have NO idea where '79 came from. Good suggestion re: clone a "contented" version. Hadn't thought of it yet. Thanks... I wasn't aware that the content records were back-merged. It had occurred to me that it could be done, but would not necessarily be a "good thing" due to variations (e.g., corrections in content titles) in printings.
--Dsorgen 20:39, 18 Jul 2007 (CDT)
If there's differences between the two publications, use "Add Titles" for those that are different. Then, after the cloned record is accepted, go to the new pub and use "Remove Titles from This Pub" to get rid of the titles from the original pub that were different or dropped from the new edition. Mhhutchins 22:07, 26 Jul 2007 (CDT)

The Best of Mack Reynolds

Dave, you submitted a new Publication record for The Best of Mack Reynolds the other night. We already had 3 near-identical Publication records (probably based on Contento's record) for this book, so I folded them into one and added the page numbers and additional information from your submission. The only discrepancy between your submission and what we currently have on file is the introduction. Contento lists it as "Showing Off Reynolds" by Barry N. Malzberg while your submission lists it as "(Introduction)The Best of Mack Reynolds" by Mack Reynolds. Could you please check which one is correct? Once we are on the same page, I will go ahead and reject your submission so that we don't have a duplicate Publication record in the database. Thanks! Ahasuerus 12:40, 15 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Argh... I'm having problems with s-l-o-w access tonight. The intro had no other title than intro either in the TOC or on the text page. Since this is a first edition pb, it may have been changed in later printings.
--Dsorgen 21:03, 18 Jul 2007 (CDT)
How very mysterious! Let me check my copy when I have access to it on July 28-30 and see if I can puzzle it out :) Ahasuerus 10:37, 19 Jul 2007 (CDT)
Since I have the stuff on hand (i.e., book and scanner), would you like to see scans of the pages in question? Not a big deal. It might not hurt to see the cover page too. Let me know if you're interested.
--Dsorgen 20:21, 19 Jul 2007 (CDT)
Well, if you could post a scan of the cover, the title page and the table of contents, it would help, but only if it's not too painful. I will post a request on our verification board as well in case somebody else has a copy. Thanks! Ahasuerus 22:21, 19 Jul 2007 (CDT)


The Rim Gods / The High Hex

I accepted your update of this pub, but had to revert the changes you made in the cover artist field. Any thing placed in this field creates an artist with that name, with no linking to the main summary page of the artist's real name, e.g. "Frank Kelly Freas (The High Hex)" would become a new artist with that exact name, and there would be no linkage to Freas' summary page. I moved your credits for each cover to the note section of the publication. Thanks.

High Rise High-Rise

I approved adding High Rise under the High-Rise title record but am wondering if the publications without a hyphen should be filed under a variant title. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:30, 30 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Did some looking around on Abebooks and their cover images and it would appear that the title without the a hyphen is a variant. I've made High Rise a variant of High-Rise.Kraang 05:14, 30 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Shockscape

You had added a title note to Shockscape with the comment

Moderator: The title clearly shows "James Axler" as the author as does the title page. Attributing this to "Laurence James" seems to be a bit of a stretch. The novel does not appear as an entry under "James Axler".

This is an area of ISFDB I complained about for a long time and sort of have gotten used to. When you make a title record a variant title it vanishes from the pseudonym's bibliographic display. In this case we have

  • Title record 11883 - this is for Laurence James which is the author's real name.
  • Title record 188757 - This is a variant title of 11883 and is for James Axler. It contains the publication as that's written using the name James Axler.

If you look at Laurence_James bibliography you will see Shockscape with an "[as by James Axler ]".

If you look at James_Axler you will see the titles where the real authors have not been assigned yet. Ideally (if you ask me...) James_Axler would show all of the titles written as James Axler and perhaps with wording such as (written by Laurence James pseudonomously).

One way to get a list of all the James Axler works is to click on "titles" on the left which takes you to [2] and it looking at this it looks like the following could be merged

  • Crucible of Time
  • Deathlands Collectors Edition: Encounter
  • Gaia's Demise
  • Gemini Rising
  • Homeward Bound
  • Ice and Fire
  • Latitude Zero
  • Neutron Solstice

It's a bit of work I'm not willing to get into right now as you will also start spotting duplicate publications, etc. Marc Kupper (talk) 00:48, 30 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Alien Debt

In this case you could have updated the publication title. the change would only affect this publication. Less steps same result :-)Kraang 21:37, 8 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Gladiator-at-Law

Just a heads up that I have changed the spelling of Kornbluth's name from "Cyril M. Kornbluth" to "C. M. Kornbluth" in this Publication that you verified back in July based on my copy. I hope Bantam didn't publish two versions of the cover and title pages :) Ahasuerus 21:27, 5 Sep 2007 (CDT)

Ouch. That'll be a toughie on my end to check. I give books away as I read them and that one's long gone. I'll dig back into my written record and database of stuff I've read and see what's there.
Regards--Dsorgen 23:17, 18 Oct 2007 (CDT)


Farside Cannon

Added cover art to Farside Cannon, please check. Dana Carson 01:55, 20 Sep 2007 (CDT)

That's the cover I've got on the shelf...
regards--Dsorgen 22:35, 18 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Terry Carr's Best SF of the Year #14

Based on the note that you placed in the update of this pub, I changed the pub's title and made it a variant (even though it's the one and only edition of this title.) Thanks. Mhhutchins 20:16, 7 Oct 2007 (CDT)

This was a bit of a puzzler. The date (1984) was mentioned in the blurb, but not in the title. Methinks someone goofed. Oh, well.
regards--Dsorgen 22:32, 18 Oct 2007 (CDT)

The Pool of Fire

I investigated the proposed changes to the MacMillan Collier edition of John Christopher's The Pool of Fire and found that the existing record had been imported from The Locus Index. It looks like you happen to have a different, earlier version of the book. I ended up rejecting the submission and adding your version via cloning.

Also, you wanted to change the date of a Cherryh edition from 1985-00-00 to 0000-00-00 since there was no publication date stated in the book, but I found it cataloged in the Locus Index and added a note about the source of the date information to the record. Finally, I created a couple of Interiorart records based on your Notes about maps. Other than that, everything looks spiffy, keep up the good work! Ahasuerus 23:47, 7 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Cover art link to Amazon for Hal Clement's Star Light

The link that you supplied for the cover art of this new record did not come through. This has been my experience lately with Amazon links ending in LZZZZZZZ.jpg. Do you know of any other source for the cover art? Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:15, 9 Oct 2007 (CDT)

I found this image. Can you verify it with the book? Mhhutchins 23:19, 9 Oct 2007 (CDT)
That's the image. I hadn't intended to send any image link, it must have been a carryover from a partially delete cloned pub entry. Sorry 'bout that. Unless/until a permanent (i.e. under ISFDB control) image host is made available, I won't be doing image links. Depending on other sites for these links is setting up ISFDB for digital alzheimer's. ...and so it goes.
regards--Dsorgen 22:29, 18 Oct 2007 (CDT)
So true about the dependence on other sites' images. Who can say how stable these sources are? An astonishing number of the Amazon links don't work! That's why I'm in the same boat as you about creating image links. Mhhutchins 16:42, 19 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Holding off verifying pubs until your edits have been accepted

The moderator gets a warning that an editor is attempting to update a verified pub, so we have to go back to the record to see who originally did the verifying. Waiting until your updates have been accepted saves us that extra step. Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:24, 9 Oct 2007 (CDT)

That was an experiment to see what would happen (since there's no other way to find out). See, I found out. Running a train of updates on a single pub ain't a good idea. Whoda thunk it?
Regards,--Dsorgen 21:18, 17 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Gallun and Crash of Empire

You may have missed this entry. I actually found a copy of the Gallun book on my last round through the used book stores and fixed it up myself. My question about Crash of Empire still stand. You can look at the Proposed Update to refresh your memory.--swfritter 14:03, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Tech Info

I am a retired computer programmer and am also interested in the technical side. These two entries might be of interest to you. ISFDB Design Documentation and ISFDB Downloads. I haven't tried to get the web application running on my local but have been playing around with SQL. I also played around a little bit with accessing the data with Delphi.--swfritter 14:11, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)

I'm a NON-retired programmer (currently called an IT Consultant, but still doing 50% programming) and am happy to help out with some tech stuff (mainly SQL, or getting MySQL running). I'm afraid the Design Documentation is horribly incomplete and out of date, but the Downloads are very useful for trying things out. (But still a bit out of date.) But feel free to ask for help, the worst thing that can happen is that I admit I'm just as clueless on that area! BLongley 14:19, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)
To be honest, the only person who really understands the application is Al, our founder-designer-programmer, and he is still mostly unavailable due to a move to another state and various family issues. Marc Kupper joined Al on Sourceforge at one point, but he has been mostly unavailable lately as well :( Wim Lewis has the ISFDB running on his home PC and has been known to create various interesting SQL queries, but his ISFDB time is very sporadic. Other folks (see above) run MySQL queries from time to time and I write data cleansing scripts in my plentiful spare time, but it's mostly spur of the moment stuff. Ahasuerus 21:48, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Dolphin Island

I have reviewed the proposed changes to the 1987 Ace edition of Clarke's Dolphin Island. According to the Locus Index, this edition does exist, so I took the details of your Berkley Medallion submission and created a new Publication. Please take a look at it to make sure that it looks OK when you have a chance. Thanks! :) Ahasuerus 15:57, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Looks OK to me (you could quibble whether or not the last page should be included or not in the count, but since its numbered, in it goes). I'm glad that Locus agrees with my eyeballs and bookshelf that this edition exists. I'd be rather <snort> nonplussed if it didn't. Not to mention, it would be hard to explain....

Regards--Dsorgen 21:08, 17 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Report on Planet Three and Other Speculations

Re: Report on Planet Three and Other Speculations, we already had the contents of the UK edition on file, so I cloned that Publication and used the data from your submission to populate the page numbers and other fields. I then rejected your submission -- that way we didn't have to merge the newly entered titles with their pre-existing counterparts.

Also, please keep in mind that all Nonfiction Publication records have associated Nonfiction Title records just like all Collection publications have associated Collection Titles, etc. You don't have to worry about them when entering new Nonfiction publications since they are created behind the scenes automatically, but when you are entering Contents level data in an existing Nonfiction publication, it is important not to overwrite the pre-existing Nonfiction Title record by accident. If you do, the Publication record will no longer be associated with any Nonfiction Title record and won't be accessible to the users. The Clarke publication that you worked on was particularly treacherous because of a pre-existing Nonfiction-Collection mismatch. Thanks! Ahasuerus 21:19, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Is there some nice, concise reference anywhere that explains/lays-out what entries generate what records or could clobber pre-existing records? It seems a bit of a waste to have to discover all this by trial and error. I expect I could go thru the code, but that doesn't seem like a really good idea or productive use of my time. Sigh... and so it goes...
--Dsorgen 21:11, 17 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Red Iron Nights

I see that you are adding the second printing of the 1991 Penguin/Roc edition of this book. The submitted year is 1991-00-00 and the submitted Note says "2nd printing of Sept 1991 edition." How confident are we that the second printing was printed in late 1991 as opposed to, say, early 1992? Ahasuerus 22:21, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Good question. The year should have been cleared. The numberline indicated the second printing, but there was no date for other than the original. Must have missed clearing it, good catch. I usually try to "clear" the date just before I type the printing info in the comments block. Must have just gotten myself out of sync.
--Dsorgen 20:32, 17 Oct 2007 (CDT)
Thanks, fixed :) Ahasuerus 20:45, 17 Oct 2007 (CDT)

The Reluctant King (and omnibuses in general)

Hi, I just approved your change to The Reluctant King (making it into an omnibus). There are a couple of things I tidied up afterwards. One is that when you change the type of the publication, you generally need to change the type of the corresponding title record as well: in this case, there was a title record for The Reluctant King which was still of type NOVEL but needed to be OMNIBUS. This is easiest if you do it via the "edit publication" page, which lets you edit the publication record and its associated title records at the same time.

The other thing is that you can list the contents of an omnibus in the same way you list the contents of a collection or anthology --- just use "add title" and add records of type NOVEL with the appropriate title/author, and if necessary go back and merge them with the title records of the independent novel publications as well.

When you view a publication, ISFDb will hide the title record corresponding to the publication itself, and only show the records corresponding to its contents (if any). This seems to confuse all the new editors (well, it confused me). WimLewis 00:12, 14 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

Is this the image for your verified pub? BLongley 15:48, 15 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Yup, dat's da one.
--Dsorgen 20:26, 17 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Dorsai Spirit

I just finished some work on this one so i have a better ideal about its makeup. This is one of those that falls into the grey area. The novel/collection/fix-up is a combination of two short stories with linking material [3]. Does your copy have these titles in the content or is it without titles? Also I found a listing for a 1980 5th edition on Abebooks so I cloned the original pub and added a note before I approved the update :-)Kraang 21:49, 17 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Ahasuerus and I discussed this a few months back: it's been archived from my talk page, but here's what it said at the time:
I originally approved the Sphere edition of The Spirit of Dorsai as a Novel. However, looking at the contents of The Dorsai Companion it would appear that we are better off changing The Spirit of Dorsai to a Collection since both stories that it collects have been reprinted in various places. What do you think? Ahasuerus 23:47, 17 Mar 2007 (CDT)
Yes, seems wise - I wasn't aware 'Amanda Morgan' had been reprinted, it didn't seem worthwhile to make it a collection if only 'Brothers' was. The linking material is nothing special. BLongley 09:18, 18 Mar 2007 (CDT)

Don Rodriquez: Chronicles...

Hi, I changed the price from "40p" to "£0.40"[4] , we use this as the standard for new British pounds and pence(post 1970). The old British(Pre decimal) would be entered "5/6" which would be 5 shillings and 6 pence or "5/2/5"(5 pounds, 2 shillings and 5 pence). "-/6"(6 pence). "20/-"(20 shillings) :-)Kraang 22:07, 19 Oct 2007 (CDT)

I'm just glad I didn't have to make change for that...
regards--Dsorgen 22:44, 19 Oct 2007 (CDT)

The Deadly Streets

I've approved the pagination of The Deadly Streets but you put a 'delete' against the NONGENRE entry. I don't think we actually want to do that as it's the only link to the title record: normally we'd have it as a COLLECTION record matching a COLLECTION title, but I think NONGENRE aren't really intended to have contents. 05:31, 20 Oct 2007 (CDT)

I've changed "delete" to "ToTitle:" - this might make it clearer why I left it there, and is a sort of pointer as to why there's no USUAL Title Hyperlink shown. BLongley 05:44, 20 Oct 2007 (CDT)
I suppose that's fine. I have no way of knowing if it makes sense in the db implementation. The "delete" entry was simply to clean up the TOC. Sigh, maybe I'll have to read up on the implementation after all. Can you give me any pointers on what would be a good tech starting point (i.e., not the "help" files)? The help is well intentioned but scattered over the official help system, moderator's personal pages and the various other wiki areas. Makes it "difficult" to find one's way around (if you get my drift)...
Regards, --Dsorgen 21:28, 20 Oct 2007 (CDT)
Well, we have Al's ISFDB Design Documentation page and the Database Schema article. The former is incomplete, but the latter is a pretty good representation of the relationships within the database. You can also download the last posted ISFDB backup available over on the ISFDB Downloads page and load it into MySQL. The latter takes about 10 minutes to install if you follow my instructions found on the same page. Ahasuerus 22:18, 20 Oct 2007 (CDT)
I too recommend playing about in MySQL. I don't share Ahasuerus's enthusiasm about the Database Schema article, I find it doesn't add much more than you can find out for yourself looking at the raw database, although it does point out some of the known faults, and points at some other features that may turn up eventually (e.g. translations). What it really COULD do with is a more detailed explanation of what pub_content records need to exist to make things hang together, along with an explanation of when you can and when you can't see them via ISFDB itself. It's these often-invisible records that cause a lot of our headaches - e.g. the missing EDITOR records or not having a title of the same type as the publication. It doesn't help that the title type isn't shown on the pub_content record, but I suppose that's a natural side-effect of normalisation. But that's where I'd start for these sorts of problems. Fortunately, the other big headache (pseudonyms) is pretty much separate database-wise and can be left for another day of hard-thinking. BLongley 06:59, 21 Oct 2007 (CDT)
I've posted some info about publication contents and some of the problems we encounter here - it's a bit messy as I started from the database contents side but ended up from the what-you-see side, but hopefully it's a useful start. BLongley 09:47, 21 Oct 2007 (CDT)

The Course of Empire(a weighthy tome)/The Tyrant

Your page count for this pub[5] was "6664". Did you mean "666" or "664"?Kraang 20:19, 21 Oct 2007 (CDT)

I did the update for The Tyrant[6], does it look ok?Kraang 20:40, 21 Oct 2007 (CDT)
Yup, looks fine. Don't know where the 6's came from. The 501 you entered is correct. I could claim that touch-typing on a laptop doesn't work well, but that would be a fib... and so it goes.
regards --Dsorgen 21:11, 21 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Turn the Other Chick

I noticed some differences between your recent update of Turn the Other Chick and the hardcover edition:

  • Is Frankos' story "A Late Symmer Night Battle" or "A Late Symmer Night's Battle" (or "A Late Summer Night['s] Battle")?
  • Cover art: Foust or Faust? The Amazon images show the same illustration, so I assume it's the same artist as the hc ed.

Just checking whether these are typos, genuine variants, or what. --WimLewis 23:12, 24 Oct 2007 (CDT)

1 - "...Night's..." is correct.

2 - Faust is correct.
--Dsorgen 21:19, 25 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Thanks! It looks like "Faust" might be a printing error or pseudonym; I've contacted the verifier of the hardcover pub about the short story title. --WimLewis 00:57, 29 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Let the Spacemen Beware! / The Wizard of Starship Poseidon

Correct cover? I'm told there was only one printing of an Ace double under the same reference number. BLongley 07:10, 28 Oct 2007 (CDT) Also here. BLongley 11:37, 28 Oct 2007 (CDT)

That's them. I Have them right here in my hot little hand...
--Dsorgen 23:22, 28 Oct 2007 (CDT)--Dsorgen 23:19, 28 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Lord of the Fantastic: Stories in Honor of Roger Zelazny

I have approved your submission of the mass market paperback version of this book and merged all Titles with their pre-existing counterparts when applicable. I then cloned the Publication record and created the trade paperback version of the book using the Locus Index as the source of page numbers. Everything looks fine at this point, but could you please double check if Andre Norton's story is "The Outing" or "The Outling" (as per Locus)? TIA! Ahasuerus 07:01, 29 Oct 2007 (CDT)

You have been one BUSY beaver! Norton's story is, in fact, The Outling. Time to get the eyes checked or the typing knuckles greased (coming up on my 5000 character checkup). In either case, thanx for the work and the catch.
Regards, --Dsorgen 21:53, 31 Oct 2007 (CDT)
Thanks, fixed! :-) Ahasuerus 23:22, 31 Oct 2007 (CDT)

John Twelve Hawks's The Traveler

According to OCLC, this paperback reprint was published in 2006 and ran to 496 pages. I have added the date, but could you please double check whether the page count is 480 or 496? Also, I used OCLC to add the publication year (1980) to the NEL edition of Side-effect as well as to create a bunch of other publication records for this book. Ahasuerus 23:29, 2 Nov 2007 (CDT)

The last numbered page in the book is 480. There are no text pages after it. There are no roman numeralled(?) pages at the beginning of the text either. Looks like OCLC's got this one wrong. Happy to check it out... --Dsorgen 22:27, 3 Nov 2007 (CDT)
Very interesting! I wonder if OCLC has a different edition? Let me poke around and see what I can find... Ahasuerus 00:36, 5 Nov 2007 (CST)

Futures

Your Verified pub is showing up twice, I believe because it has two ANTHOLOGY entries in it. Do you know how to fix this, or would you like me to do it for you? (It's not just a case of deleting one, so ask for a full explanation if you're not SURE you know how.) BLongley 14:02, 4 Nov 2007 (CST)

I diffed these and found that they had the SAME rec#. ...and stopped major edits at that point. The duplicate rec# should be impossible.

The upshot is that I don't know how to get rid of just ONE of them. I'd like to know. Fire away.
Regards. --Dsorgen 21:07, 6 Nov 2007 (CST)
Well, what I do is just get rid of both and put ONE back. Here's what I did:
Step 1: change the pub-type to Novel, this allows extra ANTHOLOGY or COLLECTION contents to show up. I always like to do this as there may be more problems than you can see so far.
Step 2: Use "Remove Titles from this pub" to delete one of the extras: it'll give you a nasty warning at first, and in this case removes both anyway! 
Select items to remove from: Futures

WARNING: Unable to locate the title reference for this publication.
Removing titles while in this state is dangerous. Check to make sure the publication type is correct (collection, novel, anthology,
etc.). Then come back and remove the title in question.

TITLES:

    * Futures, ANTHOLOGY , Peter Crowther
    * Futures, ANTHOLOGY , Peter Crowther
    * 181 - Making History, SHORTFICTION , Paul McAuley
    * 109 - Reality Dust, SHORTFICTION , Stephen Baxter
    * 267 - Tendeléo's Story, SHORTFICTION , Ian McDonald
    * vii - The Infinite Frontier, ESSAY , Peter Crowther
    * 1 - Watching Trees Grow, SHORTFICTION , Peter F. Hamilton
Step 3: Add an ANTHOLOGY record with the same Title, Author and Year as the Pub itself, and in the same submission change the Pub Type back to ANTHOLOGY.
Step 4: as this had other publications and we've just created a new Anthology title, Advanced search to find the other Anthology for "Futures" by "Peter Crowther" and merge them. BLongley 13:00, 7 Nov 2007 (CST)
Note that Kraang has suggested that Cloning the pub may deduplicate, but I haven't tested that. (And then you still have to delete the old one, and in this case reverify the new one - something I can't do on somebody else's behalf.)
Finally, for people that aren't approving their own edits yet, it might be wise to add a temporary pub_note in Step 1 to explain to the Approver what your intentions are: you can remove it again in step 3. BLongley 13:00, 7 Nov 2007 (CST)
Please do check the publication again, and let me know if you have any further questions. BLongley 13:00, 7 Nov 2007 (CST)
Most interesting. I should have thought of just deleting them both and having at it de novo. The second part of step one is intriguing. Why would extraneous content appear when the type is switched to NOVEL? It would seem that it would be hidden, not revealed.
It's because when everything looks "right" to the ISFDB display software, it "helpfully" hides the records it thinks you shouldn't be messing with. When it looks wrong (Pub type and title type mismatch) then it can't be so clever. BLongley 13:20, 12 Nov 2007 (CST)
Also interesting is the merge part of step 4. What, exactly, gets merged and what remains? I am just not clear on the concept. I've seen a number of pubs that should probably be either merged or one of the set deleted. Based on my experience, I'm not too sure that the dif function actually works as advertised either (stuff appears that, as far as I can tell, IS identical) which, of course, shouldn't show.
You're confusing pubs and titles there. A title (like 'Futures' here) can have several publications, and yes, sometimes identical duplicate publications get entered. Sometimes the identical publications are held under identical but separate title records.
But the difference is that with a Publication, you just delete the spare one(s), with Titles you merge the spare title in so its child publications get grouped together. Here's a simple example: say that we have the first two editions of a novel, and somebody enters the first one again as a brand new publication, without using "Add Publication to This Title". We end up with two titles (with the same name) and three pubs, two of which look identical in name, date, price etc: 
Firstedition1      points to        OverallTitle1   
Secondedition1     points to        OverallTitle1   

Firstedition2      points to        OverallTitle2
If you merge the titles, then one of them goes, but the publications under it get moved to the right parent. It doesn't really matter which title record is kept, so you can end up with 
Firstedition1      points to        OverallTitle1   
Secondedition1     points to        OverallTitle1   
Firstedition2      points to        OverallTitle1
or 
Firstedition1      points to        OverallTitle2
Secondedition1     points to        OverallTitle2   
Firstedition2      points to        OverallTitle2
NOW it becomes clearer we have a duplicate Pub: the Diff Publications tool would show Firstedition1 and Firstedition2 as identical, and it would invite you to edit or delete one or the other. If they're really identical, delete one. Or edit one to make it clearly different, e.g. if you know that one of them should be the first Hardcover edition and the other the first Paperback. So you could end up with: 
Firstedition1      points to        OverallTitle1   
Secondedition1     points to        OverallTitle1
Or 
FirstHCedition1    points to        OverallTitle2
FirstPBedition1    points to        OverallTitle2
Secondedition1     points to        OverallTitle2
Is it clearer now? BLongley 13:20, 12 Nov 2007 (CST)


Sigh... So much to learn, so much crap, so much confusion...
regards --Dsorgen 20:40, 11 Nov 2007 (CST)
Almost forgot, checked the pub as "fixed". Looks just fine.--Dsorgen 20:45, 11 Nov 2007 (CST)
Thanks. BLongley 13:20, 12 Nov 2007 (CST)

Maps and illustrations

Hi, one of the things you can do is add the maps and illustrations in as interiorart. Just go to the content section and click "add title". In title box put in (Map)The Clone Republic [7]and artists name in author box. Change entry type to interiorart and submit. :-)Kraang 22:03, 6 Nov 2007 (CST)

Yep, I know about this one. Sometimes putting in 40 or 50 illustrations & maps just seems tedious to the point of "what the hell". I always try to note that they exist (as you noted), in hopes that I'll return to them eventually or that some other poor schmuck will put them in first. In which case, hoorah for him/her. When there is one map or illo, I pretty much handle it. Unfortunately, a LOT of them appear prior to the numbered pages or in other odd locations (e.g., ahead of the title/copyright pages). I guess I could leave the page entry empty, but it would seem SO lonely.
Regards --Dsorgen 20:28, 11 Nov 2007 (CST)
Just noting that there are map('s) or illustration('s) as one entry would be fine. You could then put into notes a mention about the number of maps or illustration. Reference to there exact pages is unnecessary. Its the link to the artist that important. Also when you manually enter short stories they need to be merged. You can use the "Dup Candidates" in the editing tools. Thanks :-)Kraang 21:00, 11 Nov 2007 (CST)
Have a crack at Fritz Leiber [8]. Only pick matching types and if you get a big yellow warning don't submit. Use the buttons to chose any conflicts like date , series, notes, story type(ss,na,nt) and so on.Kraang 21:14, 11 Nov 2007 (CST)

The Flight of the Horse

I examined your submission of the 8th printing of Niven's The Flight of the Horse and decided t clone a pre-existing printing instead. Please take a look at the results when you get a chance to make sure that nothing was missed. Also, could you please double check whether the title of "Leviathan!" is spelled with an exclamation point on the title page? I suspect that the TOC dropped it, something that many publishers seem to do. TIA! Ahasuerus 22:42, 17 Nov 2007 (CST)

"Horse" looks Ok. The "!" is used both in the TOC and title page. --Dsorgen 21:18, 28 Nov 2007 (CST)

Omega Cage

Is the title The Omega Cage or Omega Cage? Thanks :-)Kraang 21:14, 18 Nov 2007 (CST)

"The" is appropriate. It appears on the cover, spine and title page. --Dsorgen 21:21, 28 Nov 2007 (CST)

There Will Be War

Approved There Will Be War, noticied that there are several reprints in it. I assume you'll merge those. While you're at it you might want to also see if you can fix There Will Be War which is a variant that seems broken by J. E. Pournelle. Ditto merges for There Will Be War, #04: Day of the Tyrant Dana Carson 00:23, 20 Nov 2007 (CST)

There's a whole raft of problems with this series (altho not NEARLY as bad as the Wild Cards "matrix" novels). When I get organized (some time in Jan), I'll revisit this stuff. --Dsorgen 21:23, 28 Nov 2007 (CST)

Pullman's The Amber Spyglass

Dave, could you please check if there are xii (12) pages prior to regularly numbered pages in the copy of The Amber Spyglass: His Dark Materials Book 3 that you have just updated? I have added them based on OCLC's data, but you can never be too careful. TIA! Ahasuerus 21:56, 20 Nov 2007 (CST)

pages xi and xii exist as contents pages. There are pages before them, but they are NOT numbered in any fashion. There's one page of quotations, a blank page or two and the usual copyright and title pages. Whether there are actually xii pages or not depends on how you feel about counting those as "pages" in the book.

--Dsorgen 21:28, 28 Nov 2007 (CST)

Rankin' The Brightonomicon

I have approved your submission of Rankin's The Brightonomicon, but since the publisher was Gollancz, I wonder if the price was in dollars or pounds? Could you please double check? TIA! Ahasuerus 22:09, 20 Nov 2007 (CST)

It looks identical to mine. Gollancz were an Imprint rather than a Publisher by then, so I've clarified my edition as to that, and a little more as p405 is questionable as well. But there's no indication of a US price on mine, so if there is an identical-looking US pub we'll probably need notes as to country of printing too? BLongley 14:35, 21 Nov 2007 (CST)
The price (6.99) is pounds, not $$; so, not a US pub. Picked up this copy at "The Book People" in Austin, Tx. There was a US price sticker glued on the book, but NOT printed on the cover.
Page 405 contains (and I Quote)
'Nice work, Rizla.'
'Thank you, Mr. Rune."
Which would appear to be part of the book (if not that, what?)
So, how's that?

--Dsorgen 21:36, 28 Nov 2007 (CST)

Oh, it's part of the BOOK, I'm just not sure it's part of the STORY. (Leaves it to someone else, Robert Rankin is complex enough anyway...) BLongley 16:04, 29 Nov 2007 (CST)
Hm, the price is still stated $6.99 in the record above... --Roglo 09:28, 5 Jan 2008 (CST)

Binder Pseudonym in The Weird Ones.

"Iron Man" in your verified pub has been changed so that Otto Binder is the only pseudonymous author. Virtually all of the Binder stories published after 1939 (and many between 1936 and 1939) were written by Otto only.--swfritter 19:24, 17 Dec 2007 (CST)

Best SF 2

Right cover? BLongley 08:57, 5 Jan 2008 (CST) And Here? BLongley 13:30, 17 Jan 2008 (CST)

Out of the Mouth of the Dragon

I have updated your verified publication

  • Added image
  • Added comment "The printing date is not stated and the date for this ISFDB record is from copyright." If the printing date is visible somewhere could you please let me know where it's found? Thank you. Marc Kupper (talk) 15:27, 19 Jan 2008 (CST)
Welcome back, Dave! :) Ahasuerus 22:59, 23 Jan 2008 (CST)
I don't think he's back per the contributions log. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:04, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Judging by his submissions, he is definitely back from his travels (hope they were enjoyable!) However, as I recall, Dave tends to check the Wiki once a week or so. I assume he will comment on this discussion eventually :) Ahasuerus 22:45, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)
Arg. I let the note from a previous editor stand; since I couldn't find the date either. I don't use the copyright date, but since it was already there I didn't edit it out. --Dsorgen 22:48, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)
Generally if I'm unable to verify information that was was already in an ISFDB record I'll make a note of it. This seems to happen most often with cover artist credits and I have a boiler-plate note that I use:
  • The cover artist is not credited nor is a signature visible. However, prior to verification this ISFDB record credited /artist-name/. The source of this credit is unknown but is assumed to be accurate.
That way someone looking at the record will be forwarned that the credited artist was not explicitly stated and that it may be not be accurate.
I don't mind using a copyright date as the printing date but only do it in cases where there are other clues that point to that it's quite likely that the date will be correct and always add a note explaining the source of the printing date. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:53, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

"Eric Dinger"

Thanks for fixing the "Eric Dinger" typo! Thankfully, the way the software works, it automatically deletes the Author record once the last associated title/publication has been deleted, so there is no need for manual intervention :) Ahasuerus 21:56, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

I'll have to keep that "feature" in mind. This isn't the first typo like this I've found and could have put it to use. Wouldn't have to create moderator notes.--Dsorgen 22:45, 29 Jan 2008 (CST)

Dianne/Diann Thornley

I have looked into this issue and it turns out that "Dianne Thornley" was merely a misspelling of "Diann Thornley", so I have changed all occurrences of the former to the latter instead of creating a pseudonym. I will leave the submission on hold for now since the display looks a little flaky now that the other Author record no longer exists and I would like Al to take a look at it before I reject it. Thanks! Ahasuerus 20:13, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)

You are correct in identifying the misspelling of the name. I had intended to go back and attempt to remove the incorrect name after (I hoped) linking the titles (via pseudo) to the primary record. Didn't see any other way to do it. Please delete the submission. --Dsorgen 22:36, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)
Well, the safe (but time consuming) way to handle this issue would have been to manually change all affected Publication and Author records from "Dianne Thornley" to "Diann Thornley". The quick (but dangerous) way to do the same thing would have been to click on Advanced Search and enter a search string in the second form, i.e. the "ISFDB Author Search Form". Once the entered search found both versions of the name, in this case "Dianne Thornley" as well as "Diann Thornley", you could merge the two Author records. However, please be very careful with Author merges -- merging similarly looking pseudonyms like "Robert Heinlein" with their respective canonical names ("Robert A. Heinlein") may destroy dozens of hours worth of work if the moderator doesn't catch it approval time.
As far as Pseudonyms go, at this time there is no way to delete Pseudonym associations (it's on the list of things to do), so it's important to make double sure that the relationship is correct when creating Pseudonyms. Thanks for all the submissions! :) Ahasuerus 22:53, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)

The Year of the Quiet Sun

I have approved your submission of The Year of the Quiet Sun even though it is almost the same as the one that I verified back in November. The only difference is that my publication has a different catalog ID, which, upon closer examination, looks like a typo on my part. Just to be on the safe side, I will keep both publications on file and double check mine when I am reunited with my collection on February 16. Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:17, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)

How Few Remain

I have approved the 1998-06-00 mass market paperback edition of How Few Remain, but could you please double check that it is not a later printing? $7.99 is a bit high for 1998. TIA! Ahasuerus 23:24, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)

Interesting indeed. The number line id's the book as a first imprint and the text on the CR page states: "First Mass Market Edition: June 1998)", but the price IS $7.99 (from both the spine and barcode area). Strange. Happy to oblige... --Dsorgen 20:55, 4 Feb 2008 (CST)

Waldrop's Strange Monsters of the Recent Past

I will be accepting your submission updating this edition, but I wanted to let you know about some changes I have to make in order for it to "fit" into the database. When you added the content record for the introduction, you overwrote the existing title record, that part of the pub record which links the pub to a title which is linked to an author which is linked to the database. When you update certain types of pub records you may notice the first record (the title record) has been filled in. If you wish to add more contents, simply click the "Add Title" button and start adding new contents. Never overwrite an existing record. That creates a stray pub, meaning it's not linked to any title, and it won't be displayed in the listing of pubs with that title. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:51, 5 Feb 2008 (CST)

I just noticed that you overwrote the title record for the collection which constituted one of the titles of this "omnibus", not the title record of the omnibus itself. So disregard what I said above. (It still applies, just not in the present situation. Mea culpa. Nevertheless, it's not a good idea to overwrite an existing content record.) IMHO, this isn't really an omnibus (both the collection and the novella were previously published as separate books), but is more closer defined as a collection. I'll make that change. Sorry about the mix-up. Mhhutchins 16:59, 5 Feb 2008 (CST)

Pan Sagittarius

Your new printing is showing a bad checksum, can you double-check please? BLongley 17:20, 5 Feb 2008 (CST)

Yup, that's the number (0425-02659-7). Actually it's the SBN prefixed with a "0" as taken from the copyright page. There's no other place it's shown. The serial number for the book is "N2659" which also appears on the spine as "425 02659 095". Hmmmm... --Dsorgen 20:09, 6 Feb 2008 (CST)
OK, added to the list. Might it be 0425026590? That works at Amazon UK and Biblio.com, if few places else. BLongley 15:15, 9 Feb 2008 (CST)
Not unless what's printed in the book is incorrect (always possible). I checked the copyright page VERY carefully. Sounds like it's probably a misprint. --Dsorgen 20:42, 10 Feb 2008 (CST)

War of Honor

Approved War of Honor but my hb has no mention of Baen as a author. Is there a intro or such that I missed or was added in your copy? Dana Carson 23:22, 5 Feb 2008 (CST)

I just checked my copy of the Ebook, and there is no credit for Jim Baen as a co-author, nor is there any intro or similar text which he might plausibly have written. I don't recall any such in the hc edition, which i have read, but have no current access to. -DES Talk 10:13, 6 Feb 2008 (CST)
Hmmm... I don't remember ADDING that entry. It's possible it was already there. I can't look at what I submitted, but suspect it wasn't Baen as an author, probably just some additional detail. Just glad I didn't verify it. How embarrassing. By the way, my copy (plopped here on the desk right now) also does NOT include Baen as an author (cover, title page, spine or elsewhere). How does one go about correcting the goof? Regards, --Dsorgen 20:17, 6 Feb 2008 (CST)
Just edit the pub and blank the undesired author. I just submitted a fix for this one. -DES Talk 20:29, 6 Feb 2008 (CST)
Thanks, folks, I have approved the change and it looks like we are all set