User talk:Gilgamesh

Welcome!

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

• Help pages
• What the ISFDB Wiki is for
• ISFDB FAQ
• Help:Screen:EditPub#General contents - Warning and a note on how to update a publication's contents
• Wiki editing help - Tips on how to use the wiki-specific features when editing wiki pages.

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Marc Kupper (talk) 14:50, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Images

Hello - I approved your updates and addition of images. Three notes about the images.

1. The image link need to be to the image itself and not the wiki page for the image. From an image such as Image:MissionOfGravity1stEd.jpg you would click on the "Full Resolution" link that's just below the image. That will take you to the image file itself where you can get it's URL. (or you can right click on "Full Resolution" and select Copy Shortcut or Copy Link Location depending on which browser you use).
2. As you have probably noticed - we don't have the image scaling library installed meaning they don't display on the image's wiki page for now.
3. Image uploading is fairly new to ISFDB and uploads remind me that we need to develop standards in a couple of areas.
   1. I've noticed that most people are naming them using the ISFDB publication tag. Thus we will see an image file such as Image:RCTRSLNDNG1978.jpg and can translate that to the matching publication at RCTRSLNDNG1978. This also means we don't need to get creative in figuring out what name to use.
   2. While I love the full size scans you did I suspect we need to scale them to be no more than 500 pixels high or wide. The issue is copyrights and fair use. Amazon.com seems to have set a defacto standard of no more than 500 pixels though I have no idea if this has ever been tested in court. The law does not lay out specific sizes or percentages. What you have uploaded so far at 800 pixels looks fine but this is a heads up. I'll start discussions on the Rules and standards discussions page.

Here's the publication's you have updated so far. Could you also please verify then and mark them as verified? The link for this is at the bottom of the Editing Tools list at the left of the page.

• Peace
• Gene Wolfe's Book of Days
• The Castle of the Otter
• Mission of Gravity

Marc Kupper (talk) 15:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Images of more than 600 pixels (in the larges dimension) will not display on the wiki pages, until/unless we add the "image magic" library that supports dynamic down-scaling (and other features). Therefore I for one prefer to keep all images under 600 pixels in each dimension if at all possible. -DES ^Talk 20:12, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Titus Groan

I have approved the addition of the 1983 Penguin edition of Titus Groan, but I am not sure I understand the comment in the Notes field, "1974 reprint". Is this printing a reprint of the 1974 Penguin edition, perhaps? Ahasuerus 06:47, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks! Ahasuerus 16:49, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Spacecraft 2000 to 2100

You submitted this as a publication of Great Space Battles. Is this book Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 a re-titling of Great Space Battles? In that case we will need to set up a varient title. (See Help: How to record a variant title.) Or does it incorporate Great Space Battles? Or just what is the relationship between the two titles?

I have placed your submission on hold, pending your response. -DES ^Talk 13:52, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

From the wikipedia article, it looks as if Spacecraft 2000 to 2100 and Great Space Battles are two different books in the TTA series. Is that correct? -DES ^Talk 20:05, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Spacewreck

A couple of points on thsi submisison:

• We indicate subtitles with a colon, not a hyphen or dash. See Help:Screen:EditPub#Title.
• Is this actually a novel, as you have specified? The only description I could find, from a vendor, makes is seem to be a collection of short stories with lots of full-color art. Or is this actually a book of "collected art"? 98 pages is rather short for a novel, and the phrase on the cover "A Terran Trade Authority handbook" does not sound like a novel either, although who knows. -DES ^Talk 14:04, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia - these appear to be art books with some fiction, but watch out if the RPG books start appearing in the submission queue. BLongley 18:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

This could lead to an interesting use of multiple "coverart" records, too, as content. BLongley 18:20, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The submission is on hold, pending your response. -DES ^Talk 14:04, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Starliners - Commercial Spacetravel in 2200 AD

This has the same issues as does Spacewreck (and appears to be part of the same publication series):

• The sub-title should be separated from the title by a colon, not a hyphen
• Is this really a novel?

The first is a minor matter of form, which i would have just corrected (and let you know about for the future). But the second requires knowledge of the contents, and is more important. Please describe these books, so that we can get their category correct. I have put the submission on hold, pending your response. Thank you. -DES ^Talk 14:11, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Space Stuff: A Reply

Guys, as I'm a newbie I'm going to make some mistakes. That's my (dubious) qualification.

Anyway, what I did (and I shouldn't have..) is cloned the publication that was already there and didn't ensure all fields were completed correctly. I thought about that afterwards and I wanted to go back and view/correct my possible mistakes, but didn't know how.

So, what I think should be corrected:

• The colon thing for the subtitles as you pointed out.
• Spacecraft and Great Space Battles are different books.
• Spacecraft 2000 - 2100 AD should have a publication date of 1978 (I suspect I didn't enter it correctly).
• Regarding the content... Spacecraft and Starliners are really reference books as their names suggest. SW and GSB more like a collection of short stories, (though they could also be thought of as a reference books of a sort). I'm not sure how to classify them, though as 'Collections' might be the best bet.
• Interesting suggestion about the Cover Art thing. There are many instances of cover art contained in these volumes.

Regarding familiarity with the content, I don't contribute anything that isn't in my collection. On a related note, should I be verifying things once they are accepted??

Gilgamesh 10:38, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

As I held these, i will make the needed corrections, consulting you if I need to. In the current state of the software, once you submit an edit the is no way to change it except by waiting until the edit is aproved and re-editing, or asking a moderator to reject the edit, or to re-edit on your behalf. That is probably best done on the Moderator noticeboard, but could also be done with a personal msg to an individual moderator. The ISFDB software is complex (because the task is complex, with many possibilities) and not always obvious, nor is our help all that we might wish it to be. Feel free to ask for assitance, and to post when a task is unclear or the help isn't as helpful as you would like.

When you have a copy of the publication, do please verify once your edits are approved. Also feel free to verify any publication record for which you have the book/magazine and for which the data is correct and complete, even if you didn't enter it. (If it is incorrect or incomplete, please fix it first, of course.) If the book is one you expect not to have access to in future, plese use "Primary (Transient)" verification. You can also use "Primary (Transient)" as a "me too", to confirm an existing verification with which you agree.

Thanks for your contributions, and everyone needs time to learn this system. -DES ^Talk 13:48, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

I have now made all the edits I think are needed (and that I have data for), including adding some other publications of these books, and adding them all to a series: Terran Trade Authority. All of the various titles and publications can be reached from the series link. Please check them, and add such further information as may be appropriate, and verify what you can. Additional contents for Great Space Battles would be helpful. -DES ^Talk 22:35, 17 October 2008 (UTC)

Iceworld

I added the Pub= parameter to Image:ICEWRLD1953.jpg‎, to get the link from the wiki image description page to the db pub record. Please add this to images you upload in future if you can.

Please don't forget to notify the verifier of your additions to a verifed pub.

Thanks for your contributions. -DES ^Talk 02:41, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

The Robot and the Man

I have approved/massaged The Robot and the Man and had a few questions/comments:

• Is there a "Foreword" by Martin Greenberg in the book?
• I removed the following note: "The dating of the individual stories may be inaccurate. Years are inaccurate and there is no mention of months in the book itself. Those listed here may be sourced from elsewhere." Keep in mind that the copyright pages that you find in books typically use the copyright year for each story. Copyright dates are not always the same as the year/date when the story was first published since copyright can be secured before the story was published or it may be renewed later, so it's quite unreliable. Our month information generally comes from other publications, so you can click on one of the story titles, e.g. "Self Portrait" by Bernard Wolfe and you will see that it first appeared in Galaxy in November 1951.
• You wanted to change John D. MacDonald's "The Mechanical Answer" to simply "Mechanical Answer". If you check the story's history, you will see that it first appeared in Astounding as "The Mechanical Answer", so what we want to do in this case is to create a variant title rather than change the title since changing the title would change it in all other publications. This is a well known "gotcha" in our design and we have documented the "safe" way to make these changes in Help. As Help:Screen:EditPub#General_contents points out:

When you are viewing or editing an ISFDB publication record, the data in the upper part of the page is from the publication record and the data in the Contents section is composed from ISFDB title records. ISFDB has one big "gotcha" in that if you make changes to anything in the Contents section -- other than the page numbers -- you will be updating the original title record which can be referenced from multiple publications. Thus, ISFDB editors should keep in mind the following points:

1. The Page field for each title listed belongs with the publication record and can be edited without affecting other publications or author bibliographic displays.
2. The data for the remaining Content fields (Title, Date, Entry Type, Length, and Author) is stored in ISFDB title records. If you make any changes to these fields please be aware that these changes will be affecting all publications that reference these titles and you will also be affecting what’s displayed in the author bibliographic displays.

A general rule of thumb is that if you need to make a change to a title or author name, no matter how minor, then you should use the [Add Title] button and set up the new title record which matches what's in your publication. You can then remove the old/incorrect title record using the “Remove Titles From This Pub” option which is available from the publication display screen.

If you need to change an attribute which is about the title, such as the Date, Entry Type, and/or Length fields then you normally make the changes without going through the add-title/remove-title route. However, please be aware that your changes will be visible in all publications and author bibliographies which reference the title.

We also have a separate page at Help:How to change a story in a collection which describes the same concepts in greater detail and gives step by step instructions on how to make Contents changes. If you have any questions, please post them either here or on the ISFDB:Help desk and we can discuss them further. No worries, it's the biggest "gotcha" that we have and one that all new editors run into eventually :) Ahasuerus 02:14, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

The Robot and the Man

Yes, there is indeed a foreword by Greenberg.

Thanks for putting us straight on that other stuff. It's a nightmare being a newbie here, you mods must have a fulltime job correcting newbies and numbskulls alike... Hats off to ya.

The Mixed Men

After reviewing the The Mixed Men submission, I approved the submitted changes to the Publication record. However, I didn't approve changing the Title record from The Mixed Men to The Mixed Men: An Interstellar Adventure since that would have affected all editions of this novel -- see the section immediately above for details.

I suppose one way to handle it would be to create a Variant Title for The Mixed Men: An Interstellar Adventure, but I am not sure we want to do that either. After all, "An Interstellar Adventure" is a subtitle and although we don't have a well defined policy re: subtitles, this one seems to be fairly generic and not something that we would typically include in the Title record. If you think that it makes sense to include the subtitle in the Title in this case, we can discuss the issue further on the Rules and standards discussions page. Thanks! Ahasuerus 05:04, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Storeys from the Old Hotel

Added page numbers to the contents of your verified pub SFTOH1992 and added the introduction which also meant adding "xviii" to the page count. Cheers! ~Bill, --Bluesman 06:21, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

Endangered Species

Added notes to your verified pub NDNGRDSPCS1990 re: first PB edition and number line as well as the $C price.--Bluesman 06:45, 22 December 2008 (UTC)

The Dawning Light

Hi Gilgamesh, thanks for the cover image[1]. I've moved the LCCC# to notes. The "ISBN / Catalog #:" field is only for the ISBN or the publishers cat# such as ACE's "#F-143" for example. We also put "#" before all non ISBN's so the data base recognizes it as a non ISBN number. Thanks for editing!Kraang 02:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

The Dawning Light

Apologies, cheers.