User talk:Glenn.Skinner

Welcome!

Hello, Glenn.Skinner, 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
• Help:Getting Started
• What the ISFDB Wiki is for
• FAQ
• Wiki editing help - Tips on how to use the wiki-specific features when editing wiki pages.
• Wiki Conventions - How things are usually done on this wiki.
• Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki

Note: Image uploading isn't entirely automated. You're uploading the files to the wiki which will then have to be linked to the database by editing the publication record.

Please be careful in editing publications that have been primary verified by other editors. See Help:How to verify data#Making changes to verified pubs. But if you have a copy of an unverified publication, verifying it can be quite helpful. See Help:How to verify data for detailed information.

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! --MartyD 03:31, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

The Heir of Khored

Hi, and welcome. You did a very nice job with your first submission. The only thing that needed to be different was the cover image link. We don't allow links to images hosted on sites that have not granted us permission to do so (displaying the image places a load on their web servers). The Penguin Group site is not among those, so I switched the cover image link to point to Amazon, where we do have permission. The final result is here.

To answer your question about placing it in the proper title series, after the above submission was accepted, you would have needed to go to the title record and edited that to supply the series information. Someone has already gone and done that for you, though, so it is now appearing in the series.

One minor comment: Your note quotes the statement of printing in the book as giving the date "June, 2014", but you provide a date that includes a day (2014-06-03). Since the book does not provide the day, you should either omit the day in the date (using "00" instead of "03") or you should state in the notes where you got the publication date (e.g., "Publication day from publisher's website", or whatever is appropriate). The source for anything not from the book itself should be cited in the notes.

I hope that's helpful. Please see the links above for more information, and ask if you have questions. Thanks, and thank you for contributing. --MartyD 03:43, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the Amazon vs. Penguin image link distinction. Speaking of image links, when might it be preferable to scan the cover of one's copy rather than supply a link? If one can't find a link from a permitted site to use, Is that the way to go?

The June 3rd date did indeed come from the publisher's web site. I'll know to point that out in the notes next time.

Finally, I've noted very few references to e-book editions when browsing through the database. For example, Jane S. Fancher has several books available only in that format (published through Closed Circle Publications) that aren't listed. Are there issues with e-books that preclude their listing?

-- Glenn.Skinner 23:40, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

For images, it's sort of up to you. Some people dutifully scan every cover they have (if ISFDB doesn't already have a scan, or in rare cases if the existing ISFDB scan is poor quality or incomplete -- e.g., someone might replace a front-only scan with a full cover scan when there's wrap-around art). Some people scan only the covers where there's no good cover on Amazon, et al. A benefit of having the scan uploaded is that the cover link will not go away, which sometimes happens with links to other sites. If you do choose to upload scans, see Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki. Dimensions, file size, and licensing are very important details to follow.

E-books are definitely acceptable, and we have quite a few. Details about in/out can be found at ISFDB:Policy#Rules of Acquisition. Feel free to add anything falling within those guidelines that you know is missing. If you are unsure about whether something should be "in" or "out", you can ask the community at large at ISFDB:Community Portal. --MartyD 11:46, 12 July 2014 (UTC)

No True Way: All-New Tales of Valdemar

Thank you very much for adding the contents for this anthology! As you weren't sure about it, I have changed the dates of the individual items to match the publication date for the book (no big problem since they were editable within the publication editor for that's their only publication so far). Thanks again for contributing. Stonecreek 06:02, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

After submitting my change adding contents, I noticed a discrepancy for one of the authors: Kristen Schwengel. I’m reasonably confident I entered the author name as “Kristin Schwengel” (note the difference in spelling in the first name), but somehow it ended up with the other spelling.

I got curious and looked up both variations of the author. I discovered only one other story listing the “Kristen" variant as author: “healing in White”, appearing in the “Finding the Was And other Tales of Valdemar” anthology. I have a copy of that anthology and checks for mentions of that author in it. The table of contents lists the “Kristen” variant. However the story proper, the page headers for the story, and the “About the Authors” section at the end of the anthology all use the “Kristin” variant. So I’m reasonably confident that “Kristen” is a typo that has propagated into an author entry in the database that ought to be merged with the entry for “Kristin Schwengel”.

How should I proceed? I think I have adequate permission to correct the entry for “Spun Magic” (the story I added to the contents of “No True Way”, but the help pages say that a moderator needs to do the author merge. (During the merge process, “Spun Magic” also ought to me moved under the “Mercedes lackey’s Valdemar” heading rather than standing alone under the “Shortfiction” heading, as it does now.) Glenn.Skinner 21:33, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Empire & Ecolitan

I accepted the submission to add this record but changed the publication date to "0000" which is displayed as "unknown". We don't use the copyright date as the publication date, so we use "unknown" for publications which have no stated publication date, unless we have a reliable secondary source for the date. It's also not likely that this was published in 2001 since ISBN-13s didn't exist then. BTW, can you confirm this ISBN? It comes up as a different title on both Amazon and on WorldCat. Thanks for the checking. Mhhutchins|talk 04:24, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

I didn’t think the date was 2001, either. I edit pages so infrequently that I forgot about using 0000 as an unknown date. Thanks for fixing that part. The ISBN is as I gave it. I’ve downloaded the copyright page.: (Perhaps doing so was a faux pas. If so, feel free to remove it.)

By "confirm", I didn't mean prove, just confirm (by yes or no) that the data you've provided matches the data in the publication. (I'll delete the file, and place a note on the record about the ISBN being assigned to another publication.) Thanks for responding. Mhhutchins|talk 01:42, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

The Way into Chaos

Hello Glenn, I've changed this, the title from In to in--Wolfram.winkler 15:58, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

The Twisted Path

Hello, I've approved your submission but had to make some changes to conform to our standards:

• changed type from NOVEL to CHAPBOOK (as the text is a novella) and a CHAPBOOK is a one-story-of-less-than-novel-length-text-collection (I'm quite creative today) and added corresponding SHORTFICTION record.
• regilarised publisher to this already existing one that has books by Connolly.
• transfered data about titles series at shortfiction level (due to the first item of this list).
• deleted number of pages (it's meaningless for an ebook).
• transfered some data that was in the "Notes to moderator" field (that would disappear after submission) into the publicatio Note field (here they will stay).
• uploaded a scan as we're not allowed to deeplink tt the specified website.

The result is here. Thanks for contributing and don't worry, entering CHAPBOOK is always complicated the first times. Hauck 06:01, 25 February 2018 (EST)

I was looking for some alternative to NOVEL to use, but it didn't occur to me that CHAPBOOK was appropriate.

Sorry about the cover image link. I could equally well have used an Amazon URL for it, but figured that if Amazon was ok, Kobo would be as well.

As for the Twenty Palaces series itself, the novel Twenty Palaces is a later-writen prequel to the novels currently numbered 1-3 in the series's listing. Is there a convention for handling prequels (such as giving them the index number 0)? Glenn.Skinner 17:49, 25 February 2018 (EST)

IIRC you can even put decimal values in the field but 0 is acceptable. Hauck 03:19, 26 February 2018 (EST)

Got it. Glenn.Skinner 22:54, 5 March 2018 (EST)

The World of the Queen's Thief Collection

I approved your addition. I moved the comment about the conversation into the pub notes so it's clear to future reviewers. I also added the date and ISBN from kobo.com and the ASIN from Amazon. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:43, 14 June 2020 (EDT)

The World of the Queen's Thief Collection [re]submission

Hi. I have this submission on hold. It looks like a duplicate of this record, which I assume came from the submission JLaTondre was commenting on immediately above. Can you explain what you were trying to do with this submission so I can point you in the right direction? Thanks. --MartyD 07:32, 28 June 2020 (EDT)