User talk:Marc Kupper

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Notice - Limited time on ISFDB

March-2007 - I’ve gotten busy with a project that is not giving me a lot of free time for things like ISFDB. My time here will be sporadic/limited for at least a month or two. Marc Kupper (talk) 16:59, 17 Mar 2007 (CDT)

December-2007 - Sadly, my unavailability continues and seems to have no end in site as I stagger from one project to the next. I even missed the main library book sale this past weekend. I used to have a little more time waiting to pick up my daughter after school but most recenty traded off with some other parents and now only read in short brief snatches with the pile currently

  • The Book of Brian Aldiss - I'm having a hard time with this collection as I'm not enjoying some of the stories but suffered though them hoping they get better. The current story though started out "strange" but is turning out fine.

A note to new ISFDB Editors

To send a note to me click on the word Edit that's at the top of this page then you would append your note to the bottom of the large edit box. Your note should start out with a line that has ==Title or subject==. Please remember to sign the note with ~~~~. Thank you.

Contents

Templates

To reply to this just click on the "talk" that is after my name. Thank you. ~~~~

Alan_Dean_Foster{{a|Alan_Dean_Foster}} [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?{{{1}}} {{{1}}}]
3412{{t|3412}}[http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?{{{1}}} {{{1}}}]
FLVMN1983{{p|FLVMN1983}} [http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?{{{1}}} {{{1}}}]

User_talk:Marc_Kupper/Archive

isfdb items

Managing/Merging Publications

I noticed your question on "The Morphodite". Here's my take on it, in case you're still looking at this. This one has a type of "pb", and a cover artist of "Michael Whelan", both of which are correct. They agree in all the other data. So I'd just merge the two of them; the merge will preserve the additional data. It doesn't really matter which one you make the target as all the links will be preserved. Hope that's useful. Mike Christie 08:13, 5 Nov 2006 (CST)
Keep in mind that we can't merge Publications; we can only merge Titles. If you find two Publications that have identical data except that one of them has additional data element(s) -- in this case "pb" and the cover artist -- you can simply delete the one with fewer data elements. Ahasuerus 14:12, 5 Nov 2006 (CST)
  • Thank you guys - Is a “diff” mechanism available within isfdb for publications? For example there are apparent visible differences between Morphodite publications 1 and 2 but I'd want to make sure of catching the difference I may miss when eyeballing the two pages. I can download the pages and diff them.
There is nothing within the ISFDB software proper at them moment, but it's fairly easy to download the whole MySQL database (see the Backups page) and then massage it any which way you want. So far, I have created one Wiki Project page for this kind of activity and more are likely to follow.. Ahasuerus 01:55, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)
  • Second - What's the process for approving changes in the New Submissions queue? There's one dating back to May by Grendelkhan and three that I have put in. Do I approve my own edits or if not then what, if anything, should I do?
This particular submission by Grendlkhan managed to break the ISFB software (as it existed 6 months ago) in various interesting and creative way. So much so that even Al couldn't delete it. Thus it remains in the queue, frozen in time. Normally, moderators create and then approve their own submissions within seconds, that's why you don't see many entries in the queue at any given point in time. But if you check the "Recent Edits" list, you'll find hundreds of items added or modified (or deleted) in the last few days. Ahasuerus 01:55, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)
  • Third - I had wanted to verify (physical) "The Morphodite" but saw that the publication date was wrong. The correction is in the New Submissions queue and assuming it's approved could I then verify the publication? The problem is I'm then verifying my own work (the edit to the pub-date) and ideally someone else would need to verify this. I could verify that the title, author, artists, etc. matched my book but the pub-date is now "mine" meaning one set of checks-n-balances is gone.
Well, ideally we would have multiple editors cross-checking each other's work, but I don't think it's realistic at this point in time :( Ahasuerus 01:55, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)
Agreed; and I'd add that anyone trusted to be a moderator can be trusted to verify their own subs. Mike Christie 06:04, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)
In theory, the Verification Flag can serve two different purposes. The first one is to confirm that the information comes from a reasonably reliable secondary or, better yet, primary source and not from a webbot slurping in dirty data from Amazon.com. The other purpose is to enable cross-checking and minimize the likelihood of typos, which, as we know, happen to all of us sooner or later. Given our current manpower limitations, we are using the Verification Flag primarily to address the first set of issues, but it's conceivable that at some point we may try to use it for cross-checking as well. One never knows :) Ahasuerus 11:28, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)

Publication Listing Audit Trail

This may be more of a wish-list item but I don’t see anything that states the source of a publication record and/or the fields for that record. For example, a publication added by a sysop based on a physical copy of a book should carry more weight than a record scraped together by one of the web-bots.

Hmm. Doesn't the verification flag serve this purpose? I know it doesn't indicate which fields came from where, but if there are discrepancies with a source, the publication biblio page can record it. By publication biblio page I mean e.g. this page, for this recent addition. I have used this a couple of times: here for example. These pages are linked from the "Bibliographic notes" field in the ISFDB page for the publication. Anyway, I think that's the closest we have to what you're asking for. Mike Christie 17:15, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)
I’m mainly thinking of “edit wars” where two or more people (or bots) believe they have the correct information about something. Right now when I look at a Publication Listing I can’t tell who or what created it and/or what its edits have been. I’ll often have a book, or information about a book, that does not exactly match what’s in a database. It then turns into a research project of tracking down who or what was the original source for the data and figuring out of there was an error or that I have a new/unique publication that can be added to the database. I could always put something in the notes explaining “this does not seem quite right” but that does not solve the original discrepancy. Marc Kupper 22:36, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)

Page Numbers

I seem to recall somewhere in the wiki a thing about collections and page numbers where I should not enter the page numbers unless they were stated. I can’t find that page at the moment and have a collection that has three stories but no table of contents. Marc Kupper 03:17, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)

Assuming the book is paginated, I think you're fine entering the page numbers. I haven't seen the page you mention about not entering them, but I can't see a reason not to. Mike Christie 06:04, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)
What Marc may be thinking of is the note in the Editing Guide to the effect that we shouldn't create artificial page numbers for Publications that do not have explicit page numbers. Also, tables of contents have been known to be in error, e.g. at one point I had a devil of a time finding a Frank Belknap Long story in "Unknown" because it wasn't listed in the table of contents. Ahasuerus 10:42, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)
That's correct - I had remembered something about “not creating information” wrt page numbers (or anything else). My book has page numbers but no table of contents and so will go ahead with filling in the page numbers in isfdb plus figure out where to file a comment about this in the wiki-help. Marc Kupper 16:55, 6 Nov 2006 (CST)

Moving Titles/Publications

I need to dig through the isfdb manual a bit more but spotted a couple of out-of-place records. On Isaac Asimov's page are “Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction Stories (Vol. 6)” (1981) filed under Novels and “Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Sf Stories #20” (1990) filed under Anthologies. Both of these belong in “The Great SF Stories” Anthology Series but I did not see how to move the underlying publications so that they get linked up with the Bibliography records that are already linked up with the series. Marc Kupper 11:01, 9 Nov 2006 (CST)

Trying to understand the # of pages field

isfdb wiki related items

I'm still struggling with how to do this. In the DAW List I'd like to be able to drop in notes about various items without adding a entire column for this. For example, with DAW UQ1050 (“Strange Doings” by R.A. Lafferty) it seems DAW’s first printing states “23456789” and there are no copies that state “123456789.” Ideally the Printing column for this book will just say “2nd” and also link to a footnote that explains why the table does not list a 1st printing. Marc Kupper 15:08, 7 Nov 2006 (CST)
  • Add a page for “new authors” that explains things such as setting up a wikipedia page that does not look like self-promotion and the purpose/role of ISFDB's author-wiki pages. Marc Kupper 22:51, 29 Nov 2006 (CST)

Footnotes

<references/>

DAW verifications

Marc, let me know if there are any DAW volumes you are particularly interested in getting physical verifications of. I have scores of them; don't know how many but it's probably around 100, mostly from 1985 or before. I'm going to be focusing on magazine verifications but would be happy to dig out any particular volumes you're looking for data on, if I have them of course. Mike Christie 09:11, 9 Nov 2006 (CST)

Thank you for the offer Mike. I did some physical verification mainly so that people looking at the table now could see some of the patterns. I still have a few more rounds of data corrections plus a at least another 50 DAW books to physically verify but once that’s out of the way I’ll be happy to take you up on your offer. Marc Kupper 10:46, 9 Nov 2006 (CST)
I have some 20,000 SF volumes (starting with the first issue of Amazing Stories) in a secure undisclosed location. Unfortunately, I am thousands of miles away from them at the moment, so it will have to wait. Also, once I get back, it will be probably faster to go through the library sequentially rather than by publisher, but I do have a lot of DAW titles from the 1970s-1990s, so eventually it will all average out. Ahasuerus 11:31, 9 Nov 2006 (CST)

Typo in DAW list

Marc, just looked at the latest updates and noticed that the Witch World box set is spelled "Wolrd" in the list. Is that your typo or DAW's? Mike Christie 15:24, 10 Nov 2006 (CST)

Thank you Mike. That looks like a typo in Don Erikson’s corrections list. I fixed it for now as Don did not state that DAW had misspelled the title on their box meaning it’s probably his typo and not DAW’s. I also e-mailed Don to confirm that was the right choice. At the moment I’m doing a physical verification pass against the remainder of my DAW collection and once that’s done I’m going to go through Don’s remaining corrections, verify each one, and apply them to the DAW list itself. Marc Kupper 15:42, 10 Nov 2006 (CST)
A follow-up on this. Don checked the box-set and the error was in the corrections list which I've already updated. I finished physical verification of the DAW List against my collection last night and will start on verifying and applying Don's corrections. Marc Kupper 19:27, 12 Nov 2006 (CST)

isfdb - Isaac's Universe

A trip to the thrift store finds two books

  • Isaac's Universe / Volume One: The Diplomacy Guild
  • Isaac's Universe / Volume Two: Phases in Chaos

I decided to see how these got filed in isfdb

ok - I click on Phases in Chaos (Isaac's Universe, Vol. 2) and see that one publication is listed and that its ISBN matches by book. I click on Phases in Chaos (Isaac's Universe, Vol. 2) and then Edit This Pub. I change the following based on my physical copy:

  • Authors - "Martin Harry Greenberg" to "Martin H. Greenberg"
This sounds like an Amazon.com data problem. Half the time they omit the middle initial when it's present and the other half they ever so helpfully expand it. Amateurs! :) Ahasuerus 16:56, 15 Nov 2006 (CST)
  • Year - "1991-00-00" to "1991-07-00"
  • Pages - "-" to "273"
  • Binding - "tp" to "pb" (I had to pause and think about this one wonder if perhaps there was a tp edition but decided to change it as both the ISBN and cover price match implying that the original source for this record is wrong.)
That's a Dissembler/Amazon problem. Amazon records don't always tell you whether the book is a tp or a pb, only that it's a "paperback", and Dissembler is programmed to go with tp when it can't be sure. Ahasuerus 16:56, 15 Nov 2006 (CST)
There is a fair number of dead image links in the ISDB, but I am not sure how they got there. Perhaps Al might know more about it. Ahasuerus 16:56, 15 Nov 2006 (CST)

I save/approve the record and am surprised to see that the book is not on Martin H. Greenberg's author page. It turns out there is a title record but I don't want to edit that yet until I figure out if it's better to delete the title or change it plus I also need to figure out how to create a new series. Marc Kupper 16:37, 15 Nov 2006 (CST)

It's a bit of a pain to have to edit both the Publication record and the Title record when you are editing novels, but eventually you get used to it and change both records almost automatically when you are in the Publication Edit screen. Creating new series is easy, just enter the Series name in the series field of the Title record and if the Series doesn't already exist within the ISFDB, it will get created automagically. Ahasuerus 16:56, 15 Nov 2006 (CST)
Thank you – I’ve updated the title record but not created the series yet. I’d guess needing to manually edit the title is a small “gotcha” as title records can get created automatically when the publication was added but then do not reflect edits to the publication. Marc Kupper 17:41, 15 Nov 2006 (CST)

isfdb - Science Fiction Stories by Richard M. Elam, Jr.

I found a copy of Science Fiction Stories by Richard M. Elam, Jr.

Inspection of his titles shows a very similar title Teen-Age Science Fiction Stories (1952) with the differences being

  • Original publication was hc and I have a pb.
  • The title changed a little but that’s ok.
  • The sticky wicket is that my pb is missing one story/essay, "Trail to the Stars • (1950) • essay by Capt. Burr W. Leyson" that isfdb lists for the original hc. To add to the mess a little, the first page after the cover starts out with “Lantern Pocket Books are complete and unabridged reprints of titles in the series of thematic anthologies published originally by Lantern Press.” Contendo does show this extra story and while a scan of the TOC is not provided I'll believe the essay exists in the hc as stated by Contendo as the story page numbers are all offset compared to my pb edition.

The question is - do I enter this as an entirely "new" title or as a variant/reprint of the original title?

(note to self - image at Amazon)

1950s and 1960s anthologies were a horrible mess, dropping and adding titles almost at will :( I think the standard that we developed a while back was that any addition or subtraction of introductions, afterwords and other "essays" doesn't a new anthology/collection/novel Title make, but any messing around with the fiction content does. Let me repost this question on the Community Portal and see if my understanding is consensual. Ahasuerus 19:06, 15 Nov 2006 (CST)

Lovejoy

Hi Marc, thanks for the queries.

>Are they speculative fiction? It seems like a crime/mystery series and the only “sf” I could detect is that per the series summary “the main character has a preternatural gift of being able to infallibly determine whether any work of art or antique is genuine or not.”

Well, I probably should have said "supernatural" or "psychic" or "psionic". His talent isn't the *main* element in the books, but it's there. And is important to at least the two novels I own and have read. It's as if we had a series about a "psychic detective", which, of course do exist in fictional form. In both my books he's called a "divvie", short for diviner. In "The Sleepers of Erin" the first-person Lovejoy writes: "To antique deales a divvie is somebody almost magical. I can't even explain it myself. The nearest I can get is saying that something happens inside you when you come into the presence of a real antique. Maybe its love reaches out to touch you, that secret recognition each of us carries inside." An art forger makes a mistake with the forged paintings he's done and mixes them up with the real one. And sells the real one by mistake. "A divvie could never make the mistake Sid had, because a genuine Cozens -- a genuine *anything* -- shrieks and clangs and hums like a chime of cathedral bells. A fake just hangs there, a splatter of paint on paper rimmed by strips of wood....The odd thing is that a divvie like me quivers with these mystic emanations just by being in the same room as a genuine antique." Etc. etc. To me that's clearly speculative fiction. If, of course, one happens to actually believe in psychics, then I guess it isn't, hehe....

>I saw the author links and boilerplate series description on several of the updates you sent through. That’s already been commented on but I’m not sure if you did the new-publications or just left them in. I suspect it would be better if a series could have a notes/description field but for now I have been putting put /description in the series' bibliographic notes wiki (Series:Lovejoy).

I was putting the same description into each book's Notes because I couldn't find a single spot in the Author area where I could do it. On in the Series heading. Remember, I'm very new to this and don't know many of the tricks yet.

>I noticed the title of book #2 is Gold from Gemini in the USA and Gold By Gemini in the UK but before putting in a variant title let’s see if we should have this series in ISFDB at all. Marc Kupper 01:04, 3 Jan 2007 (CST)

Yes, I was going to put the US edition in as a Publication, once the UK edition had been set up correctly. Since I'm not a moderator, I have to wait for the first edits to be approved before I dare to make a second one -- I'm afraid that by making a second edit I would inadvertently create a second entry for the same New Book, which I did with my very first edit a week or so ago.... Best, Hayford Peirce 11:50, 3 Jan 2007 (CST)


Ignore this - I need to run and am parking this half edited stuff here for now

>I noticed the title of book #2 is Gold from Gemini in the USA and Gold By Gemini in the UK but before putting in a variant title let’s see if we should have this series in ISFDB at all. Marc Kupper 01:04, 3 Jan 2007 (CST)

Yes, I was going to put the US edition in as a Publication, once the UK edition had been set up correctly. Since I'm not a moderator, I have to wait for the first edits to be approved before I dare to make a second one -- I'm afraid that by making a second edit I would inadvertently create a second entry for the same New Book, which I did with my very first edit a week or so ago.... Best, Hayford Peirce 11:50, 3 Jan 2007 (CST)

That brings up that we need to beef up the ISFDB resources/help pages though it’s something I don’t have time for at the moment. In this case I would have added both the US and UK publications and once they are approved to go back and make one a variant of the other (in that case it’s a UK writer but I think the USA title came out first? It’s quite easy to swap the variant title relationship around in case we guess wrong so don't sweat too much on that detail.). In other words, we need to explain better how to best do some multi-step operations, how to deal with what to do if you realize immediately after hitting [submit] on something that you need to correct a detail, etc.

Edison's Conquest of Mars

I am still chasing that wascally wabbit, but there is a good chance that I will get to this submission in the next 8-12 hours. If not, it will still be there waiting for you late tonight :) Ahasuerus 06:11, 8 Jan 2007 (CST)

P.S. Also, please note that I have put submissions 180691 and 180701 on hold since the changes have to do with DAW's internal numbering scheme and I figured that you would want to review them before they go in. Ahasuerus 06:14, 8 Jan 2007 (CST)

Thank you. I need to run for a couple of hours but will take a look at the DAW items when I get back. Marc Kupper 13:59, 8 Jan 2007 (CST)
Sorry I didn't get to that reply yesterday. My ISFDB time is rather sporadic at the moment, hopefully it will improve in a few weeks. Ahasuerus 01:47, 9 Jan 2007 (CST)

The Maker of Moons and The Wall of Serpents

I think the confusion lies on what a novel was and what it is now. These two works were collected in a Lin Carter anthology "great short novels of fantasy".

Early in the twentieth century was not unusual for novels to be quite short, i.e. if you look at The Makers of Moons on Amazon it is a mere 60 pages.

Neither of these are short stories that got expanded to novels, so the title refers to one work which is why I merged them. I would treat Moorcock's Behold the Man novella and novel and two separate works as the latter was greatly expanded.

The classification, whether they should be considered novels or novellas, can easily be decided afterwards when an accurate word count is known, but they represent a single title.

--Unapersson 14:48, 10 Jan 2007 (CST)

Hero as Werwolf

Mark, I see that you rejected my edit to Gene Wolfe's "Hero as Werwolf", and that furthermore it's now been typed as a novel. I originally entered it as a chapterbook, with contents of "The Hero as Werwolf" (i.e., the short story of that name), which is the only content. When I viewed it yesterday, I noticed that the chapbook listed contents of "Hero as Werwolf -- chapterbook" AND "Hero as Werwolf -- novelette". I assumed I made some error in creating it, and tried to delete the (apparently) redundant chapterbook from the contents. I now understand that there are circumstances where listing the work itself as contents makes sense (as you said, a novel with an introduction). But I don't think it does make sense in this case, or for most chapterbooks, which only contain a single story or essay. Under the current model (as I understand it), the only options are to either not include the story as contents (which means that the chapterbook publication won't appear as a pub for the story, which is what happened with the Le Guin chapterbook [1] and the story it contains [2]) or to display fairly confusing contents in the book, which is what we have with the Wolfe book (e.g., it's extremely hard to parse just what is meant by "The Hero as Werwolf" being listed twice in the contents). So I think the bug is not that the parent shouldn't be deletable so much as the parent shouldn't necessarily be displayed.Jefe 16:04, 10 Jan 2007 (CST)

Brian Aldiss Re:Starship

Marc, i have the 1st printing should i edit the placeholder record or clone it and make a new entry?Kraang 20:44, 29 Jan 2007 (CST)

I replied to this at User_talk:Kraang#Brian_Aldiss_Re:Starship --Marc Kupper 22:35, 29 Jan 2007 (CST)

Moorcock/DAW question

Marc, can you answer a DAW question for me? I was about to enter Moorcock's "Warriors of Mars" and "Barbarians of Mars", which I have in the Compact pb editions from 1965. The title listings, here and here each show a DAW edition dated 1965. This is obviously nonsense, but I was wondering if there were any DAW editions at all that you know of. If not, I'll overwrite these with the Compact data; if so, I'll leave them and change the dates to unknown. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk) 08:07, 30 Jan 2007 (CST)

--Marc Kupper 16:27, 30 Jan 2007 (CST)

Messiah at the End of Time

Marc, I was massaging Moorcock's Messiah at the End of Time and changed the title of the 1978 DAW edition to include the subtitle -- see is http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?124001 . This information comes from OCLC, so it's possible that it's incorrect and I wanted to let you know because it's a DAW edition. Thanks, Ahasuerus 13:47, 1 Feb 2007 (CST)

I replied on User_talk:Ahasuerus#Messiah_at_the_End_of_Time --Marc Kupper 14:15, 1 Feb 2007 (CST)

Rictus Two

Mark, I've responded to the other moderator, too, but quickly: Rictus Two of 1994 was a hard-copy magazine. And I accidentally sent the first submission before I was finished; then, when it was still in the "pending" file later last night, I re-did the submission so that it was complete, and sent it again. My boo-boo. I was going to wait until it got "published," (not knowing about the other complication) and then add the other items through editing, but at any rate, the longer submission is the right one. Bill 07:07, 2 Feb 2007 (CST)

I replied to this at User_talk:WmDCissna#Rictus Marc Kupper (talk) 12:57, 2 Feb 2007 (CST)

Re:The Ugly Little Boy

Marc, i went back and had a look at the title, my intention was to only change the asimov/silverberg novel which was an expansion of the 1958 shortstory by asimov. The title is now listed as a novel & all the 1958 shortstory listings have changed to the 1992 asimov/silverberg collaboration, this was definitely not my intention."sorry" Can you fix it, i'am hesitant to tinker and make things worse.Kraang 16:28, 4 Feb 2007 (CST)

I replied to this at User_talk:Kraang#The_Ugly_Little_Boy Marc Kupper (talk) 19:04, 4 Feb 2007 (CST)

One Million Tomorrows

Ah, I see! I was about to leave a question on Blongley's page about this submission, but it looks like everything is already taken care of. Thanks! :-) Ahasuerus 20:10, 4 Feb 2007 (CST)

Yes, it happens reasonably often. You see a submission and say "Hey, I have special expertise in this sub-field, I should be able to do a good job!" and then it gets approved before you get a chance to get to it :(
One word of caution, though. Just because you have read all or almost all works by a particular author doesn't necessarily mean that you have run into all the bibliographic permutations and problems that this author may present. For example, I have read almost everything by Keith Laumer, so when I came across the 1984 reprint of "Once There Was a Giant" (in a Tor collection), I nodded and set it aside. It was only by accident that I picked it up again later and when I began reading, I did a double take. It turned out that once he semi-recovered from his 1971 stroke, Laumer rewrote (and completely ruined) one of his better stories. I went back and started comparing other story versions and it turned out that a number of them were messed up in the 1980s when they were reprinted. Or, to use a Bob Shaw example, there were two versions of two of his collections -- which goes to show that the work of a genre bibliographer is never done :-) Ahasuerus 22:23, 4 Feb 2007 (CST)
According to my catalog, I own 30 Shaw books. I don't have "Dark Night in Toyland", "Galactic Tours", "Killer Planet" or his fanfiction, but the rest should be there, at the secure undisclosed location, including variant editions like "The Peace Machine"/"Ground Zero Man", the two versions of "Shadow of Heaven" and the two versions of "Who Goes Here?". Unfortunately, my catalog simply states that I own one hardcover and one paperback edition of "Cosmic Kaleidoscope", but doesn't specify which editions they are, although it does make a note of the 1976/1977 divergence. I should be able to sort it out some time around 02/17 when my geospatial coordinates briefly interstect my library's coordinates.
For now, I suggest we go with the data found in Contento, which suggests that the three stories in question are not related. Blongley has confirmed that the UK paperback reprint followed the original UK hardcover version and Contento claims that the Dell paperback reprint followed the Doubleday version. And then I'll do Verification for the editions that I own later in the month, unless somebody gets to it first. Sound like a plan? :-) Ahasuerus 00:29, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)
I'm painfully aware that we will never run out of bibliographic permutations. Three separate stories sounds fine for now and if needed we'll compare notes once you have physical access to the books. It looks like my Bob Shaw collection pretty much overlaps yours (29 books, some duplicates, missing the same stories and fan-fiction you are missing plus missing a couple more). Marc Kupper (talk) 02:15, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)
I'll go ahead and add/verify mine, too; I do have "Dark Night in Toyland", and at least one chapbook; I have less than y'all -- about 22 items -- but between us we should be able to make a good dent in his biblio. Mike Christie (talk) 06:31, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)
Sounds good. I have changed the Variant Title to "(revised, USA 1977)" for now. Ahasuerus 06:37, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)
FYI, I have now entered all my Bob Shaw, except for the chapbook which I can't lay my hands on right now. Mike Christie (talk) 22:46, 5 Feb 2007 (CST)
I've finished a first pass of verifying my Bob Shaw books and was happy to see that between Mike Christie, BLongley, and my collections that we're at 100% coverage of publications for several titles. Marc Kupper (talk) 05:28, 8 Feb 2007 (CST)
I've done the paperbacks that were filed in order, but I think I must have a few more misfiled away elsewhere, as there didn't seem to be enough. I think there's an SFBC hardcover or two to do and I used to have "Serious Scientific Talks" around as well, but that means tackling the spare bedroom and I'm still not done with the living room and dining room bookcases yet. BLongley 12:20, 16 Feb 2007 (CST)

Arrows of the Queen

Marc, unfortunately I haven't got a copy of this book. I have used the "Look Inside" in Amazon. There are some scanned pages of 18th printing. The cover art is credited to Jody Lee (I assumed that the same name variant was in a 1st printing).

BTW, I have got the DAW Books Catalog for 1996 with a monthly schedule. Could these data (especially reprints) be put into database or the Publisher:DAW list? I cannot verify that these editions really happened.

A.kesrith 04:53, 16 Feb 2007 (CST)

DAW Books

You asked if I had the following: Elric of Melnibone (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?12117) The Tides of Kregen (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?48577) Renegade of Kregen (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?27815)

Sorry, I don't have the books. Info was taken from a listing in a fanzine that I was entering into the database. Mhhutchins 17:51, 2 Mar 2007 (CST)

Serials

Reminder to self to finish documenting this User_talk:Scott_Latham#Date_changes

and Editing:Merging_Authors... Marc Kupper (talk) 12:39, 8 Mar 2007 (CST)

Andromeda Gun

Hi Marc. Its mentioned on the copyright page as SBN 425-02878-X, getting tired and forgot to mention it. Also had three edits in a row rejected a new first, still thinking that over. On another note i've not entered the Daw books i sent you into the ISFDB. Except for coll. and anth. Should i bother or will they eventually turn up when you integrate the data?Kraang 23:34, 14 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Where’s José?

This is a note to myself as someone entered a pub for Philip José Farmer but the é is actually two characters, an e followed by a ??? which is not a ’ (character 0146). Marc Kupper (talk) 15:58, 2 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I was able to chase down who entered the publication and looked at the XML blob. The name was entered by Dcarson as Jose&#769; which displays as José Character &#x0301; or &#769; is an acute accent that's zero width and apparently is designed to overlap on top of the previous character. There's also a grave accent character (&#x0300; or &#768;) that looks like è. Anyway, it's just one more thing to think about in terms of cleaning up the database. Marc Kupper (talk) 17:22, 2 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Please DO go research this and suggest improvements: e.g. "World of Â" and "The Hag Sèleen" have been nuisances recently. BLongley 18:56, 2 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Sorry about that. Not a major user of unicode. Ascii, hollerith, baudot, those I understand. For things like that I open the character palate and click on whatever looks right :-(. Dana Carson 00:24, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)
No problem guys - It's been a "fascinating" and ongoing experience. Any time I start to think I understand this stuff I suddenly discover how little I know. I never used baudot but as it happens, I have a project in the queue where that will come up and used to be able to read hollerith and paper tapes though am long out of practice though had an e-mail exchange yesterday Bill Contento about the original punch-card version of his book list and if/how it was different than the current system.
Bill, could you please explain how, where, or why "World of Â" and "The Hag Sèleen" have been nuisances? The  can be entered with numeric-0194 (hold the ALT key down and enter 0194 on the numeric keypad), and è is numeric-0232. Marc Kupper (talk) 19:28, 5 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Then that's the sort of thing that we should be documenting.
1) Have a look at titles starting 'The Hag S' and see the other two methods people have used to enter this title - no notes to explain if they really are like that, but I suspect not.
2) Some of the Null-A publications use just a capital A but do have notes saying there was a bar over it, so probably 'Ā' - should we assume people CAN and SHOULD always use the correct character now? I'm not confident enough to go 'correct' a title I haven't got. On covers, I think I've seen the A with a macron, a tilde and a circumflex, and some foreign versions have slightly non-standard tildes too... I'm sure there's a mathematical convention for the correct representation, but generally I don't know how anal people are getting over variants now. :-/ And funnily enough, a simple apostrophe seems to cause the ISFDB to think you're changing a field even if you're not! BLongley 13:26, 6 Jun 2007 (CDT)
There are a number of issues.
  • While many of these characters can be entered into titles/author names without a problem there also a bunch of them that do cause problems in that they are not in the 8-bit character set. I have not installed ISFDB at home yet and so don't fully understand what is failing and am in a hurry and so can't dig up links to existing examples.
  • The title/author searches need to be improved so that it knows about the decorated letters, a search for e should match é for example. (in ISFDB it does but there are some decorations that don't match).
  • Documenting how to enter stuff. Google says there are 174,000 pages that mention how to enter the characters and so it's a popular subject. Marc Kupper (talk) 14:01, 6 Jun 2007 (CDT)
I HAVE installed the ISFDB database at home, and the number of warnings I got made me very aware that I probably didn't choose the best character-set options. :-/ Still, I won't be running searches in Cyrillic, so I doubt I've lost too much data I want.
The searches could do with some improvement, agreed.
And yes, "entering funny characters" is a popular subject, but a lot of the answers will be Windows-only, and assume certain code-pages, character sets, language settings and maybe even fonts. If we do go for "lowest common denominator" then we need to go back to ASCII and document the conventions for representing accents - oh, and annoy all us Brits that enter prices in "£" and would probably have to go back to "L". (Which would actually HELP in our linking to Amazon.co.uk, I see.) I think we can raise the bar a bit higher than that, but HOW high we can raise it is the question - the oldest data here IS from ASCII-only days, but I (and I suspect many other editors) haven't installed language-support packs for everything we might encounter on the web - because it STILL wouldn't mean anything to us if the "?????? ??? ?????" was properly represented in Cantonese or Japanese or Cyrillic. For me, the happy medium might be to cover all common Western characters, but only if the search improves its matching.
There's no hurry on an answer, we'll be busy with the easy titles for ages yet: but eventually we'll have to cope with such problems or just become AN Internet Speculative Fiction Database and leave the complications to others: I see there's already a DSFDB (Deutsche Spekulative Fiktion DatenBank), and sometimes it's just easier to get someone to arrange reciprocal links. :-/ BLongley 14:55, 6 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Re: Exterminator

Hi marc. Contento lists its first appearance in 1971. This is a variant title of A Bad Day for Vermin(Galaxy Feb 1964)Re: Contento. Have also found several web sellers who list the contents of this publication & there list agrees with Contento. :-)Kraang 22:13, 4 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Replied at User_talk:Kraang#The_Exterminator Marc Kupper (talk) 22:53, 4 Jun 2007 (CDT)
No my next to edits will do that. About the dates , i've been updating Laumer with the help of Ahasuerus and we have been setting the variant titles to there 1st appearance. There are about eight more that are reversed. And your right the date were it first appears makes more sense. The other way it appears as if they they were published at the same time.Kraang 23:07, 4 Jun 2007 (CDT)

EndVwc

I see that you have welcomed User:EndVwc. As far as I can tell, it was yet another handle used by some bot crawling our Wiki. It always uses the "UllUll" user name pattern, where "U" is an uppercase letter and "l" is a lowercase letter. The bot seems to be pretty harmless when it's not corrupting Talk pages that contain ampersands, but it's trivial to roll them back. Which seems to suggest that we are still some years away from the Singularity :) Ahasuerus 01:07, 9 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Well behaved bots are welcome. :-) Thank you, I'll keep an eye out for this one. Marc Kupper (talk) 13:04, 9 Jun 2007 (CDT)
It looks like this bot (or its evil twin) is not as harmless as it originally appeared to be. It has been spamming commercial links for the last few days. Thankfully, it only spams a few times per day, so it doesn't take much to roll things back. I'd hate to force new editors to go through a confirmation process, but "if this goes on" (or rather getс significantly worse), we may not have much choice in the matter :( Ahasuerus 16:26, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Yeah, I noticed the Van Vogt Vandalism and Vociferously Voiced Various Vitriolic Verbs... not Virtually, of course. Thanks for the Whack-a-Mole activity. BLongley 17:18, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Actually, it DOES seem more active now: 
# (diff) (hist) . . m ! Author:S. M. Stirling; 22:44 . . UvpJg0 (Talk | block)
# (diff) (hist) . . mN ! Talk:What's New from 2004; 22:43 . . DnvHxk (Talk | block)
# (diff) (hist) . . m ! Magazine:Fantastic Story Magazine; 22:43 . . PujJvw (Talk | block)
Tips on blocking welcome, I've not tried it yet. BLongley 18:02, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)
User:EndVwc seems harmless with only the rather mysterious changing of a single %20 into a space but also not changing other things on the page. Maybe it was a test-bot. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Combating_spam offers suggestions but I don't know how many of those are available in MediaWiki 1.4.5 which is what ISFDB is using. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:37, 11 Jun 2007 (CDT)
As far as I can tell, the bot first crawled and downloaded the whole Wiki. The crawler program was somewhat buggy and glitched on %20 and ampersands, but didn't affect us otherwise. BTW, the reason it crawled all links first was (presumably) to create a list of pre-existing link since many Wikis prevent newly registered users from creating new pages. Then it started spamming.
Al has suggested that our options are limited to "captchas" and moderated registration. I don't know if MediaWiki 1.4.5 supports either, though. Ahasuerus 00:21, 12 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Night Walk by Bob Shaw

When you verified this pub http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?NTWALK1967 back in February, you removed the Cover Art credit of Frank Frazetta. The cover is definately Frank Frazetta, it's one of the prints he has for sale on his website. http://www.frazettaartgallery.com/gallery/prints/10_spiderman .jpeg CoachPaul 11:48, 12 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I didn't mean for the picture to show up on the talk page, how do I put a url on the page without it printing? I just added several spaces before the .jpeg, but there must be a way to do it and keep the url intact. CoachPaul 11:54, 12 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Do you mean the link intact but not as an image, or just as a readable URL like http://www.frazettaartgallery.com/gallery/prints/10_spiderman.jpeg? BLongley 12:58, 12 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Both ways are useful, thank you. CoachPaul 13:21, 12 Jun 2007 (CDT)
On the Frank Frazetta credit – thank you for spotting the cover on Frank Frazetta’s web site. I’ve updated the publication record to credit Frank Frazetta and added a citation.
My general philosophy for publication records is I try to document as objectively as possible what the publication states. If something is in an obscure spot I note where I found it. If I enter something that’s not stated or apparent then I explain my reasoning (deriving an ISBN from an SBN for example) and to cite sources when possible. In this case the “source” for the Frazetta credit was ISFDB itself and so I had noted that but as it was too self-referential I had also removed Frazetta from the main coverart credit. The goal is if someone has a copy of the publication that they should be able to agree that what’s stated in ISFDB matches their publication. If it doesn’t then either it’s a different publication, I overlooked something, or I made a data entry error.
As for images - As you noticed, ISFDB's wiki has "hotlinking" enabled where if you enter the URL of an image it pops up right there on the page. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a way to control the size of external images. You can control the size of internal images uploaded to the wiki (uploading is not enabled for ISFDB), position them, etc. As the hotlinking results are not always desirable I often wrap the URL in square backets, [URL] and we have [3] where it just shows a number like a footnote reference.
Like the plain [URL] wrap you can follow the URL with a space and text as in [URL text], and it will display the text as a link. For example, 10_spiderman.jpeg or www.frazettaartgallery.com/gallery/prints/10_spiderman.jpeg. I think it's a bug with this (old) version of mediawiki but it looks like if you have [http://URL http://URL] that it "hotlinks" the image. I get around this with [http://URL URL] where I drop the http:// for the second part of the [link]. I agree it's all rather painful and is something that I don't do often enough that I need to stop and think about how to do it again.
The last method means you enter the full URL twice which can look ugly in both the wiki-edit and when displayed and so I often use either [URL] or [URL single word]. I wonder if there's a way to get rid of that arrow thing that's to the right of the external links. Marc Kupper (talk) 17:16, 12 Jun 2007 (CDT)

(Unindent) As you may have noticed, CoachPaul, Marc does tend to add a lot more detail than many other editors or Mods. Which is fine - there's been many a time I've seen his version of a publication I own and verified, and found that he's noticed something I hadn't, so I go back and double-check mine and add some more info. MY general principle is to "always add more data" - I don't necessarily try to do it all at once though. I'm not coming at ISFDB with a "Let's start with my Douglas Adams and finish with the Roger Zelazny" - I know that I'll probably have gone through my collection four or five times before I get all my own publications recorded to the level that the best editors do (in their own ways), by which time we'll probably have added a few more criteria to squeeze out of a publication (e.g. I can foresee "Imprint" becoming a subset of "Publisher" as a subset of "Publishing Company" at some point.) The downside is that I'll probably never get rid of a book I've worked on in case someone later asks me to verify the font-changes on a title-page when we finally try and standardise what a title is, what a sub-title is, and what a series designation might be. BLongley 19:29, 12 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Anyway, back on topic: One thing I do, and it seems Marc might not always do, is that I don't remove information when I'm working on a publication, I just add notes to say what I can't verify. I seem to be particularly BAD at recognising cover-artists for instance, or even finding out where a credit might be hidden. (I'd probably done 200 pubs before I realised a particular British publisher typically put the artist credit in 6-point type right next to the spine, where it would be obscured after a few readings by sheer spine-wear.) So MY recommendation is to add even negative-sounding notes - e.g. "price clipped from my copy, don't recognise the artist and couldn't find the credit" while accentuating the postitive, e.g. "ISBN, publisher, date and price are good" - and in cases like this, making sure secondary or even tertiary sources of info are listed in the notes. I'm tempted to ask for "Verification from a later edition" to be included as an option, but then again some copyright pages I've seen are horribly unreliable and some bibliographies even worse - and artist's publications worst of all - so "Notes, notes and more notes" it is for now. BLongley 19:29, 12 Jun 2007 (CDT)

(Marc - sorry to use you as an example again, but it's as an example for the rest of us to work up to, and it's meant in a positive way, OK?) BLongley 19:29, 12 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I don't mind an example, good or bad, being made of me. :-) Bill, you have a good point but I'm still not sure what the "best" course should be. In this case I had looked for the artist credit, could not find it, and so added a note explaining that ISFDB credited Frank Frazetta but I could not verify this. It seems like what's needed is a way to flag individual fields as "unverified", "unsourced", or even "suspect". I have a feature request in mind that when a publication gets verified that all of the related title records (cover artist and things in the Contents list) also get flagged as [verified] much like the pubs are and that edits to these title records would get flagged. I had this in mind when I removed the cover art credit as I did not want the publication listing (on the title display) or Frazetta's bibliography to state "verified that he did the artwork". I guess I could have added a new artist named "Frank Frazetta (uncredited)" and made that a pseudonym of Frank Frazetta. Even now that we have a citable source for Frazetta I could make the artist name "Frank Frazetta (secondary)" as the artist credit is coming from a secondary source and not the publication itself. It seems anal but I'm trying to have the publication records be clear on what's physically stated vs. what data is "citable secondary" and "source-unknown / unable to verify."
A hack like that would work well for cover artists but a similar area where I remove information is publication dates. Amazon often lists publications with a full YYYY-MM-DD on-sale-by date where the physical publication may only note the YYYY or YYYY-MM. I usually set the ISFDB record so that it matches the publication and often add a note explaining the date that's stated vs. the ones found in the original ISFDB record, Locus, Amazon, etc. Yesterday I made an exception to this with HRMHDDXLRL2007 which is a new book that does not state the publication date but all three English Amazon sites agreed on a date. Ideally I'd want to date this publication as 0000-00-00 (stated first printing), 0000-00-00 (stated printing date), 2007-00-00 (stated copyright), 2007-05-29 (Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.ca), and 2007-06-12 (physical verification).
I don't know if you ever try to add or correct publication dates on Amazon, but when I did I found out they CANNOT handle vague dates like '1979-07-00' or '1978-00-00' - although they say they're planning to do so in future. So all Amazon data is suspect, IMO. Unfortunately some editors do like EXACT dates where possible - but we don't know if they're exact and accurate, or somebody just put a '1' in the day because they were forced to. I tend to leave the date alone but Note what the pub tells me. In the meantime, should we ask Dissembler to put notes in about the source of Publication date? BLongley 14:12, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Usually with Dissembler the Titel is so badley speled that it's easy to tell what the source of its record is but yes, that seems like a good idea in that Dissembler should note both the date and source. I was dealing with Dissembler submissions the other day and found myself hunting down the source for nearly all of its submissions so that I could better understand what was being submitted. For example, audio-book editions would have the narrator as a co-author, pub-type as "unk", etc. and so it helped to be able to view the source record to correct the Dissembler's submission.
Yes, I noticed things like that - Saturday's submissions I presume? I'm not sure how many awkward titles were left for us (Al apologised for leaving them, but I LIKE the research it involves, it gets me away from my own library for a bit). Dissembler doesn't do well on Audio Books or RPG stuff it seems, and I've already asked why Dissembler picked up on the Third titles in Trilogies without noticing the first two. I've still got three (new-to-me) authors to check still. BLongley 16:27, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)
I agree that Amazon's data is suspect but what I find myself doing more of these days and capturing and just documenting the data as usually there is some rational/valid reason for the data. For example, Penguin Books (which owns a million imprints) often uploads a new printing date when they change the price but the date is not stated in the publications. It's becoming a useful data-point to me in that a publication may state "First printing March 1990 / some number line" but be dated "2005-11-13" on Amazon implying that the last price change for that ISBN was in 2005 and then it's a matter if figuring out what the price was at that time.
With that in mind - I used to add/correct dates on Amazon but no longer do as ISFDB is better and also that I'm finding the original publisher-provided dates to be useful. Dates entered by eCommerce dealers (where the pub often has an ASIN and the image is on Amazon's ec1 site) though are often garbage and so treat them with extreme prejudice.
I've also gotten away from updating Amazon as I'm finding that the eCommerce dealers no longer list pubs under existing records and instead create a new record (with a new ASIN) as they can list the book at a higher price because they are no longer competing with other dealers. Amazon reacted to this by no longer returning all records in search results (they look and if something looks stale it's not included in the search results) meaning if I update an Amazon publication the odds are the record will eventually be stale and no-one will see it. I believe, but have not tested/proven that uploading images and/or reviews will lock a record in the active list. I still upload images and link to them as so far Amazon has never deleted a record. They just never reference it in search results and/or links from other pages but the raw data/images remain. Marc Kupper (talk) 15:54, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)
Yes, the Amazon stuff is getting pretty bad: I think I'll stop uploading stuff against an ASIN and stick to ISBN linked stuff, where possible. Some of the searches I've done on a title return ASIN entries for a SET of publications being sold off, or a magazine where they've added every notable author to the title. Useless entries: but I'm not paid to correct Amazon. (OK, I'm not PAID to correct entries here either, but here I enjoy it and with Amazon I get annoyed with some of their policies.) BLongley 16:27, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)
BTW, which British publisher typically put the artist credit in 6-point type right next to the spine? Marc Kupper (talk) 13:18, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)
I first noticed it on 1970s Panther paperbacks by E. E. 'Doc' Smith (the Orange Spine editions). I spotted a Chris Foss credit on one of my less battered 'Skylarks' and having noticed that one went back and found three more on some of the more worn publications. It's not consistent - sometimes Chris Foss got a more normal credit at the bottom of the back-blurb, without being rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise, shrunk, and moved to the edge: sometimes he didn't get a credit at all but I suspect it's the same artist. I check there regularly now, but on most of my publications, if there's anything in that spot it's "Printed in the USA" or "Cover printed in the USA". BLongley 14:12, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)
I've just noticed another "try and hide the artist credit as best you can" attempt: Gerald Grace almost escaped notice as it's again small type against the spine. (Rotated 90 degrees clockwise this time though, and near the top of the spine rather than the bottom.) BLongley 16:27, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I'm going to jump back in on "Night Walk" and Frazetta here, I have a very fine copy of the book, and I can clearly make out his signature on the cover. I can't make out every individual letter unless it's with a very bright light and a magnifying glass, but to someone like me who has been a fan of Frazetta for over 30 years, the signature is unmistakable. It was the signature which caused me to look on his website for further proof. CoachPaul 16:58, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)

If your copy is cleaner than what I posted then you could e-mail me a copy and I'll replace the image on my site. I'm not familiar enough with Frazetta's signature that I could look at it under a magnifier and say it was definitely "Frazetta." That's why my original publication note had "The cover artist is not credited and the signature is impossible to distinguish. Prior to verification the ISFDB record credited Frank Frazetta. I looked throughout the book for a credit and tried to see if signature could be interpreted as "Frazetta" and decided to leave this as "uncredited" for now." I've updated the publication notes for NTWALK1967 to reflect your identification of the signature. Marc Kupper (talk) 19:37, 13 Jun 2007 (CDT)
I can never seem to remember to do this when I can, but I'll do my darnedest to do it tomorrow. CoachPaul 22:55, 24 Jun 2007 (CDT)
No hurry at all - I've got many things on the fire meaning for now I'm giving things very short units of attention and then moving on. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:10, 24 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Thought Queue

These are random notes pulled from other talk pages on things I want to pay further attention to with an eye towards towards improving the documentation and/or code so that ISFDB data does not get overwritten without sufficient research into if the orignal data was wrong.

Jurassic Park from User_talk:MA_Lloyd#Jurassic_Park

You want to update publication 164381 and to change

  • Year from 1999-00-00 to 1991-12-00
  • Price from $7.99 to $5.99
  • Note from "18th printing." to (blank)

I'm not sure why the existing publication record is not marked as "verified" but I believe it's accurate and should not be overwritten. If you have a copy of an earlier printing that is $5.99 then you should clone the existing record rather than overwriting data and to edit the clone. Since 1980 it's been common for publishers to keep the same ISBN as they reprint at a higher price meaning we will have multiple records in ISFDB for the same ISBN.

For example, Amazon.com 0345370775 has a Look Inside that shows a 24th printing for $7.99 and using this I cloned the publication you wanted to update and created 200157.

In general the rule is we should not need to overwrite information that's already in ISFDB though we often add data. For example, a publication my be stated in ISFDB as 1991-00-00 and your copy is 1991-12-00 in which case it's ok to "fill in the blanks." The only time I overwrite is if I can prove that the existing data is flat out wrong. Even in that case I often leave a publication note explaining what I overwrote and why so that if someone else comes along with the original source that created the incorrect data they can either chose the clone the record or update the notes.

One area that generally is safe to just overwrite is the page count as the count noted on Amazon is nearly always wrong (sometimes by hundreds of pages but usually about 10 pages too high as publishers count all of the pages including the unnumbered stuff that's before the story. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:11, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Is this a uniform policy? Avoiding overwrites by adding new publications with small differences in data seems to be getting a handful of rejections on the grounds the entry is already in the database.--MA Lloyd 10:13, 25 Jun 2007 (CDT)

The goal is one publication record per printing of the book though at the moment ISFDB does not have a printing number meaning the printing # is kept in the notes field for now. The project is complicated by the fact that editors generally will not have physical access to all editions meaning they will need to make "best judgment" calls on if an ISFDB record matches their publication or if they should add a new record. The rules I listed above are to help make this "best judgment" call. There are times when you can determine with a fair degree of confidence that something in ISFDB is wrong (or is a duplicate record) and should be deleted or overwritten. Sometimes I can't prove it's wrong as it's hard to find evidence of absence, particularly on the Internet where data gets copied from one site to the next. Again it's a judgment call and I've often added bibliographic notes explaining the research I did and the results (or lack of) trying to pin something down.
One thing I want to avoid would be “edit wars” where for example, one person enters a publication with a price of $7.99, and another has a $5.99 copy of the same publication, and figures whoever first entered the record is wrong and overwrites it. The verification system helps with this but often records are entered but not verified as the data is from a secondary, though presumed reliable, source.
You had written “…getting a handful of rejections on the grounds the entry is already in the database…” That’s not a problem – when I see a cloned pub I just check that it’s syntactically correct (formatting of the yyyy-mm-dd, currency symbol in front of the price, etc.) and either approve or approve/edit to correct any syntax errors. When editors update publications, as you did with Jurassic Park, I will hold them and research if significant fields are getting changed. Filling in the blanks is ok – changing fields other than the page count results in the publication getting held so I can understand if in fact the original data was wrong and should be overwritten. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:09, 25 Jun 2007 (CDT)
I wanted to clear this off the submission queue and so went ahead rejecting the original submission and in its place cloning the original publication record to create JRSSCPRKVH1991 which has the data you wanted to edit into the original record. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:56, 2 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Split Infinity From User_talk:Don_Erikson#Split_Infinity

1) One of your edits updates the 1982 printing to create your December 1985 printing. There appears to be a 1982 edition, e.g. someone is selling one here so we want to keep that. I'll approve the edit and clone it back to the 1982 one. 2) A couple of times you've mentioned a map in notes. These can be entered as "Interiorart" entries. (The other example is Justaposition). BLongley 14:23, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Yes I should have used the clone tool. I try not to change someone else's entry unless it's an obvious mistake. And often not even then. I have to tell myself "Don't assume". I mean I'm already enough of an...aaa...you know. Don Erikson 19:57, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)


Verification from User_talk:Animebill#Verifications

I started to write this as a reply on a user's talk thread but it was turning into a novella. It does seem like work is needed in the verification help but I want to sleep on this as I don't like it when the help pages turn into long legal texts.

I am presently using verifications in the sense of "this information matches the primary source (e.g., the book or magazine) that I am holding in my hand" no matter whether I entered the information or not. Please let me know if this is no longer why we are using verifications.Animebill 21:32, 28 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I'm unsure what you mean by "no longer using verifications." But otherwise everything you state at the beginning of your note is correct. Make sure that every field that has already been completed matches the book in hand. Then complete any missing data. Submit, and wait for moderator to accept. Then check the final version before verifying the Primary Source. Some editors verify before the final edits are approve, which throws up a red (actually yellow) flag to the moderator that changes are being made in a verified publication. That's why I personally prefer that the editor waits until his final submission is accepted. Thanks for contributing. Mhhutchins 21:38, 28 Jun 2007 (CDT)
In the discussion page on verifications there were two reasons proposed for verification. One in the sense I stated above and another in the sense of "I verify your submission". In this sense, I would not verify my own submission, but only those of others. That is what I meant. Animebill 21:49, 28 Jun 2007 (CDT)
It's ok to verify publications you have added or updated. Related to this is if you have a publication and it's already been verified by someone else it's also ok to double-check the publication. If you find a discrepancy you would contact the original verifier to sort things out. One of the items in the feature request queue is to add support for multiple verifications so that if I come along with a publication that matches one you already verified then I could also mark it was verified. It'll increase confidence that the data is accurate and increases the pool of people known to likely have a copy the publication handy in case there's a question about the contents. Marc Kupper (talk) 13:10, 3 Jul 2007 (CDT)


It's ok to verify publications you have added or updated. Related to this is if you have a publication and it's already been verified by someone else it's also ok to double-check the publication. If you find a discrepancy you would contact the original verifier to sort things out. One of the items in the feature request queue is to add support for multiple verifications so that if I come along with a publication that matches one you already verified then I could also mark it was verified. It'll increase confidence that the data is accurate and increases the pool of people known to likely have a copy the publication handy in case there's a question about the contents. Marc Kupper (talk) 12:58, 3 Jul 2007 (CDT)
Is the "discussion page on verifications" page ISFDB:Verification requests? I'm just trying to locate the exact item you are commenting on. Help:Screen:Verify has an empty talk page and so that must not be it.
In summary - If you have a copy of the book in hand you can do the primary verification regardless on if you were the one that added or updated the publication record. If someone else comes along with the publication there's nothing to stop them from double-checking what they see against what you verified. If there is a discrepancy then they will contact you and the two of you would sort out if it's a human error or misunderstanding or perhaps will discover that the other person has a slightly different publication in which case they can clone your record and, if needed, to add notes explaining the differences.
The basic assumption with verification is that if something is stated in the ISFDB record then that's exactly what's in the publication. For example, if the ISFDB record says Richard Powers did the cover then the publication should have a cover artist credit for Richard Powers. If the publication does not credit Richard Powers then you'd need to at least add a note explaining that the ISFDB record credits Richard Powers but you were unable to find evidence of this. ISFDB's data tends to be correct and so if Powers was credited it's quite likely he did the cover. You could remove the cover artist credit and add a note that the ISFDB record credited Richard Powers but you were unable to locate a credit or signature to confirm this. That way there is at least a record that it's possible/likely Powers did the cover. Someone may come along with a secondary source, such as the artist's web site, and confirm that, yes, he/she did the cover in which case you'd add a publication note explaining the secondary source(s) for the cover artist credit.
Related to the assumption that if something is stated in the ISFDB record then that's exactly what's in the publication is that sometimes people will verify partial listings. For example, the publication may be a collection but the list of stories (or perhaps just their page numbers) has not been entered. Someone can mark the publication record as "verified" if what's stated in ISFDB matches their publication though ideally they would also then add the list of stories and include that in the verification.

Nader Elhefnawy

Marc,

Regarding the 'fair use' of Nader Elhefnawy's review, you're right. I'll go back and fix that immediately. Also, I obviously never wrote "Rebellion on Venus' in 1932, and have a god-awful lot more stuff out there verifiably published, particularly 'Journey to the Center of the Earth ' (www.ttapress.com/Journey.pdf) I will come back and update the bio as needed, many more projects in the works. Just wanted to touch base with you. This is an incredible thing you folks are doing and I appreciate your help. Best,

Edward Morris


(later)

For some reason, I'm not being allowed to edit the Author: Edward Morris page when I go back into it. I have a very strange version of Explorer, long story. If possible, you folks can whack that whole Nader Elhefnawy article and just put "A review by Nader Elhefnawy is available at [URL]" just like you said. This computer really needs replaced. Once more, I apologize. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dante3000 (talk • contribs) .

The Great SF Stories 8 (1946)

Did you massage my edits to this pub? None of the edits I made to either the Notes field nor the Title field seem to have taken place. CoachPaul 17:33, 27 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Never mind, that was an edit from the day before that you approved. The hiccup the db underwent earlier today must have eaten my edit as the one I made is nowhere to be found. CoachPaul 20:53, 27 Jun 2007 (CDT)
It's very surprising for the DB to loose an edit. There is a bug where the title notes field gets into a mode where edits to it are dropped into a black hole. I just got back home but will pull the update log in a bit. I to remember adding the note about "Conqueror's Isle or Conquerors' Isle." I don't remember doing the note about the hyphen. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:07, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)
I think that it was lost when ISDB went down for about one minute at the same time as I tried to submit the edit, and I was sent to a page that said MYSQL down. It happened to me once before while I was entering a really big Anthology. It's why you will usually see me enter new anthologies/collections is several parts now instead of all at once. It's not as hard on the old bp when you lonly lost 10 minutes of entries as opposed to about 45 minutes worth. CoachPaul 18:31, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)
A puzzle - the only recent submissions regarding THGRSTRS111982 are
  • 561089 - You added the contents, plus one note about the hyphen, and for title 58093 you set the page # to "Please Remove"
  • 561097 - I must have approved your update and here did the remove-title (normally if an editor puts something in the page # field indicating they want the title removed I do it on the spot)
  • 642253 - I added the second note about "Conqueror's Isle or Conquerors' Isle."
I did this by looking at the XML blobs - tying dates/times to these will requite more work which is a small PITA but the event chain matches my personal recollection.
I have never seen ISFDB loose an entry. If you get a red MySQL error then wait for ISFDB to come up (check on another browser window) and then hit retry on the first window. The submission should go through. Marc Kupper (talk) 19:30, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)
The pages you link to above seem to be moderator only pages so I can't view them, at least not yet. I'll try the Refresh button next time, because if I hit the Back button, all of the work that I typed in has disappeared. CoachPaul 19:36, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)
You might want to consider the Firefox browser. "Back" seems to keep all your precious work - I know I've used it to create the OTHER editions of the one I'm entering. BLongley 19:42, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)
That's right, Firefox's support for JavaScript (which is what allows "Add Title" and other buttons on the submission form to function) is considerably more robust than what Internet Explorer has to offer. Firefox has other advantages, e.g. somewhat better security and better support for various protocols like SVG, as well. Ahasuerus 19:47, 30 Jun 2007 (CDT)
That's good to know about the "add title" and JavaScript as I was going to put in some front end field validation/correction that uses JavaScript and was wondering if all ISFDB users have it enabled. Marc Kupper (talk) 23:10, 2 Jul 2007 (CDT)
It's easy to test by disabling JavaScript under Tools and clicking on the "Add Author" button. As far as the assumption that all ISFDB users have JavaScript enabled, I know for a fact that some users (as opposed to editors) don't. They have posted on r.a.sf.w. to the effect that they consider ISFDB's minimalistic design (no flash, no Java, etc) a big advantage. We do have a few places in the display/search code that uses JavaScript, but there is always a fall back position. For example, if you have JavaScript enabled and search for "Zelazny", the software will find one matching Author record and redirect the search to Roger Zelazny's Summary page. If you do not have JavaScript enabled, you will be given a list consisting of one (selectable) Author record and a big "WARNING: Javascript not enabled. Unable to redirect." message. Ahasuerus 12:33, 3 Jul 2007 (CDT)
CoachPaul - I'm sorry - I did not know that non-mods could not see the XML blobs. I have a secondary non-mod ISFDB account but keep forgetting about it when I have questions about how things work for regular editors.
Yep - I love the Firefox "back" and abuse it a lot plus doing kewl things like Ctrl-Back or Shift-Back. Just last night I did a bunch of similar edits to some Wikipedia pages via the back button and resubmitting with new form names. Note