ISFDB:Policy

Privacy Policy

See Privacy Policy.

Blocking Policy

Policy intent: Anything that helps make the ISFDB a more useful and more reliable bibliographic tool is encouraged. Anything that hinders this process is discouraged.

Specific policy guidelines that will be used by ISFDB administrators:

1. Spamming commercial information (gambling, porn, links, etc) will result in an immediate indefinite blocking of the user
2. Blatant vandalism (blanking, obscenities, nonsense, etc):
   • 1st offense: an immediate 24 block and a canned message posted on the user's Talk page ("chill and come back later")
   • 2nd offense: a block for one week
   • 3rd offense: an indefinite block
3. Personal attacks that are not obscene:
   • 1st offense - a canned warning on the user's Talk page
   • 2nd offense - a 24 hour block
   • 3rd offense - a week long block
   • 4th offense - an indefinite block
4. Behavior that is otherwise non-constructive or disruptive will be dealt with on a case by case basis.

Note that these are general guidelines and ISFDB Administrators are not bound by them. Particularly egregious cases may be dealt with more promptly while repentant sinners may be given another chance.

Ahasuerus 12:36, 10 May 2006 (CDT)

Biography Policy

When possible, the ISFDB will use biographies posted on Wikipedia. The ISFDB has a facility for adding a link to the Wikipedia article for each author from the author's database page. When such a biography is not available, a short, neutral, factual article, professional in tone, may be posted to a "Bio:" page. See Help:Contents/Purpose#Biographies for more on what is and is not appropriate in such articles.

Contents/Project Scope Policy

Definitions

Many of these have been linked to Wikipedia articles about the subject to give the reader a sense of what is covered by each particular genre.

1. Speculative fiction is defined to include:
   • Science fiction, including works:
     • set in a future that is now in the past
     • that deal with technological advances that were futuristic at the time they were published
   • Fantasy fiction
   • Alternative history
   • Utopian and dystopian fiction as long as it is recognizably fiction and not a treatise
   • non-genre speculative fiction
   • Fabulation
   • Magic realism
   • Slipstream
   • Proto-science fiction, including but not limited to:
     • Lost world tales
     • Fantastic voyages
     • Scientific romance
     • Pre-historic romances
     • Future war stories
     • The older the book, the more likely we are to include it even if it is borderline eligible. This is caused by the fact that there were relatively few works published prior to 1800 and by the difficulties with distinguishing between speculative and non-speculative fiction (or even fiction and non-fiction) when you are dealing with pre-1800 works.
   • The supernatural (with an inclusionist bias), including but not limited to:
     • Supernatural horror
     • Ghost stories
     • Gothic fiction with supernatural elements
     • Occult fiction
2. Speculative fiction is defined to exclude:
   • Techno-thriller, political thriller and satire works set in a future indistinguishable from the present (?)
   • Fairy tales with no known author (?)
   • Animal books for very young children, i.e. books for preschoolers which depict simple scenes from animal life featuring anthropomorphized animals
   • Comic books, manga, and graphic novels
   • Games, game guides and game paraphernalia -- but works of fiction based on games are included
   • Philosophical works of speculative nature unless written as a work of fiction (with an inclusionist bias)

Rules of Acquisition

1. In - Works of speculative fiction originally published in English, including works published within and outside the genre. "Published" is defined as published by/in:
   • professional publishers
   • small presses
   • prozines
   • semi-prozines
   • paper-based fanzines (note: software support added in early 2007)
   • print on demand (POD) publications
   • vanity publishers (note: policy liberalized with the rise of Amazon etc after 2000)
   • e-books with ISBNs (note: software support added in mid-2006)
   • audio books (note: software support added in mid-2006)
   • downloadable e-zines (periodicals in electronic format) which have been assigned an industry standard registration identifier (ISSN or ISBN) or have a history of containing reliably stable contents. Copying live webzine pages from the internet to a local computer does not qualify an ezine as downloadable.--swfritter 19:03, 24 Mar 2008 (CDT)
2. Debatable:
   • unpublished works by established authors, e.g. John_Taine's manuscripts? Or do we just mention them in their respective Wikipedia articles? On their ISFDB Wiki page?
   • newspaper publications??
3. In - Foreign language translations of speculative fiction works originally published in English. For now, this policy covers book length works only and doesn't apply to foreign language translations of short fiction and essays. Support for derivative works (sequels-by-other hands, collections and omnibuses that have no direct analogs in English, etc) may need to be enhanced.
4. In - Books originally written in English, which have only been published in another language (e.g. Kenneth Bulmer or {{A|Ansen Dibell).
5. In - English language translations of works of speculative fiction originally published in foreign languages. In these cases, we will also provide information about the original foreign language work.
6. In - Works of speculative fiction published in a foreign language which haven't been translated into English as long as the author's other works have been translated into English. This is done to make it easier for people who are interested in, e.g., Stanislaw Lem or Pierre Barbet to see a full picture of the author's work.
7. Debatable - Works of speculative fiction published in a foreign language which haven't been translated into English and whose author's other works have not been translated into English. Arguments for exclusion: avoid duplicating the efforts of foreign language bibliographers in a field where we can't realistically compete with them. (True? False? Revisit if/when we have foreign language editors with extensive expertise in the field who would be willing to merge their biblios into the ISFDB?)
   • Debatable - Works by otherwise ineligible foreign language authors which were only published in a foreign language, but which are part of an otherwise English language series. For example, there are numerous Russian language sequels to Conan. Also, foreign language sequels-by-other-hands to prominent works of SF that are otherwise ineligible, e.g. German and Czech language sequels to Jules Verne's works here.
8. In - Works about speculative fiction published in the English language and their foreign language translations.
9. In - Works (both fiction and non-fiction) which are not related to speculative fiction, but were produced by authors who have otherwise published works either of or about speculative fiction over a certain threshold (see below). This includes any non-genre works published as standalone books as well as non-genre short fiction, but exclude non-fiction which was not published as a standalone book. Thus, Poul Anderson's mysteries and his non-fiction book about thermonuclear weapons will be included, but Gregory Benford's and Robert L. Forward's professionally published scientific articles will be excluded.
10. Out - Works that are not related to speculative fiction by authors who have not published works either of or about speculative fiction over a certain threshold. This "certain threshold" is hard to define, but we need to draw the line in a way that would exclude Winston Churchill, who published at least one work of borderline speculative fiction. The goal here is to avoid cataloging everything ever published by James Fenimore Cooper, Robert Louis Stevenson, Honore de Balzac and other popular authors. Instead, we want to catalog their speculative fiction works only.
11. Out - Works unrelated to speculative fiction that are found in primarily non-genre publication that will be cataloged based on other criteria, e.g. a Norton anthology of 19 century literature or a Playboy issue that include a single speculative story. This is done to avoid having to catalog huge amounts of non-SF data.
12. In With Reservations - Individual letters to the editor published in magazines. Arguments for inclusion: some of the better and more useful print biblios include them; some of the letters were intrinsically interesting, e.g. there was a letter exchange between Philip Jose Farmer and Marion Zimmer Bradley in a mid-1950s pulp magazine that provided a significant amount of background information. Entries should currently be restricted to significant letters by well-known sf personalities. Letters may eventually be assigned their own Entry Type and existing titles will have to be modified manually.--swfritter 17:08, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
13. Debatable - Convention programs, guides, etc. We definitely want any convention-published "real books", but probably not the ephemera. What about the book length stuff that cons put out that doesn't have any fiction, but has a lot of related information?
14. Debatable - Academia-produced magazines. Can we realistically compete with, say, the SFRD?
15. Out - Web only publications such as webzines. The problem for us is that they are not durable; anything we index could change, be reorganized, edited, updated with new versions or revisions, and so on. In addition, the URLs are not likely to be durable. So for now web only publications are not accepted into the ISFDB.--swfritter 19:03, 24 Mar 2008 (CDT)
    • In - On a provisional basis, the Helix and Clarkesworld webzines have been added primarily because they received Hugo nominations, and Subterranean Online has also been added as an SFWA qualifying publication. Other webzines may be added based upon criteria yet to be determined, a primary one being the willingness of editors to update data in a timely manner.--swfritter 18:43, 28 April 2009 (UTC)--Kevin 05:48, 24 May 2009 (UTC)

(Originally compiled by Ahasuerus on 2006-05-04)

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