User talk:Anniemod/Archive-2018-2

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Vuelo de Cuervos

The magazine Vuelo de Cuervos errored out halfway through the last submission. I just added the missing records again -- could you approve it and see if it goes through? --Vasha 22:38, 1 June 2018 (EDT)

#6? It went through cleanly. :) Annie 22:40, 1 June 2018 (EDT)

Myon ruft Erde

Hallo Annie, please take a look to the new Bulgarian author. Thanks Henna 13:45, 4 June 2018 (EDT)

Got him, will take care of him. Danke! Annie 13:53, 4 June 2018 (EDT)

Author name correction

Please correct Aranazazu Serrano Lorenzo to "Aranzazu Serrano Lorenzo," thanks --Vasha 20:21, 4 June 2018 (EDT)

Done Annie 20:22, 4 June 2018 (EDT)

M Téllez edits

In case it is not clear-- all the edits I submitted to authors named Téllez were done with the purpose of changing the author's canonical name to "M Téllez." --Vasha 15:33, 5 June 2018 (EDT)

Hm? I am not sure I am anywhere close to them - the board is a bit full today. :) And notes in the submissions would have helped :) Will keep an eye for those when I get to them. Annie 15:46, 5 June 2018 (EDT)

OK got to them and approved them. Had to fix the language of the main author (is your default Spanish?:)) so it matches the pseudonyms and because the author seems to be writing in English. Annie 16:08, 5 June 2018 (EDT)

Thanks. And I used the merging trick you mentioned yesterday ... --Vasha 16:36, 5 June 2018 (EDT)

I know, I approved it :) Annie 16:37, 5 June 2018 (EDT)

Kidnapped für den Mars

Hello Annie, can you help me to create the pseudonym Павел Багряк? Thanks Henna 13:52, 8 June 2018 (EDT)

Yep, I will work on in a second. Thanks! Annie 14:04, 8 June 2018 (EDT)

I connected the dots temporarily but will be changing that in a bit to get the pseudonyms in place. Need to track down and read some more about this specific pseudonym (so I know how to variant exactly - I think that it will end up with a 6 authors in the "author field" but need to learn more about that). Will let you know when I am done. Thanks for bringing that one to my attention :) Annie 14:15, 8 June 2018 (EDT)

Author correction of the day

Hi Annie, could you change Miguel Angel Asturias to "Miguel Ángel Asturias"? Thanks again, --Vasha 19:31, 10 June 2018 (EDT)

Done. Thanks for adding notes in all the titles beforehand. Annie 19:33, 10 June 2018 (EDT)

"Посещение музея"

Hi, can you find when/where the Russian version of Nabokov's "Посещение музея" was published? The publication date 1939 is all over the web (as is the notation that it was written in October 1938), but with no further details. --Vasha 17:19, 12 June 2018 (EDT)

Well, FantLab says that this is the first book edition but most of them were published in the Russian immigrant press, with the story written in 1938 (from here). lib.ru confirms the 1938 and that the story was written in Paris. And then this gives the publication as "«Современные записки»" which is what we were looking for (and explains why the story could not have been written later than October 1938 (if I keep digging, we probably can find that it could not have been written earlier either). Except that we have a better date: "Современные записки" is available online and the story is on page 76 in volume LXVIII from March 1939 (the pdf). I'll craft a note explaining all this for the title record. Annie 17:38, 12 June 2018 (EDT)

Of course, if I had read the FantLab page for the story before going out and searching, I would have known to start looking for "Современные записки", v. LXVIII. Oh well - at least it was fun paging through the old issues of the journal to look for it in the 1938(typo in an article sent me there first) and 1939 issues :) Note fully updated, links added and so on :) Annie 20:19, 12 June 2018 (EDT)

Thanks for that! --Vasha 20:40, 12 June 2018 (EDT)

A shower of author corrections

Please see this discussion for a list of author names that need correcting --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 22:29, 12 June 2018 (EDT)

Can you get me a full list of what needs to become what. My only way to type an accepted or tilded character on this keyboard is to copy it from somewhere else - and if you can just write the new names here, it will be extremely helpful. Annie 23:08, 12 June 2018 (EDT)

Do you use Firefox? The plugin ABC Tajpu is a superb way to set up keystroke entry for accented characters, and all sorts of other macros too. (I currently have it set so that if (for example) I type a and then press ALT+X, it changes into á.) Anyhow, the corrections are these:

* Menéndez y Pelayo

* Paul Valéry

* Suárez Miranda

* León Rivera

* Luis L. Antuñano

* Virgilio Piñera

* Tallemant des Réaux

--Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 23:18, 12 June 2018 (EDT)

Chrome on this laptop actually. I am sure that there are some plugins for it as well but I had not gotten around to them yet - still getting used to it. Which is why I am not working on Hungarian tonight - Spanish and Portuguese are level 1 in these characters; Hungarian is at least on level 12:)

OK - these are fixed. Because of how the system works, I had to set the language for all of them and as all of them seemed Spanish and I knew you were around and already have the information, I set them as such. Feel free to change the ones that are not (if any). Annie 23:34, 12 June 2018 (EDT)

Небесная кукла

Hallo Annie, I think this is a typo or wrong in the book. I think Небесная Кулу is correct. Please take a look Henna 09:49, 14 June 2018 (EDT)

You are absolutely right. The mistake happened when someone added this book and mistyped/had an auto-complete enabled. I corrected that and a few more things in this book. Thanks for spotting it! Annie 12:44, 14 June 2018 (EDT)

Thanks Henna 16:25, 14 June 2018 (EDT)

Запрещенный восстановитель

Hello Annie, the next question. I can't find this story. Here is the scanned text from the German copyright page:

Qriginaltitel:

Der Skaphandcr Ahasvers: Скафандр Агасфера

Aus dem Russischen von Norbert Randow und Werner Tzschoppe

Der verbotene Wiedererschaffer: Запрещённый восстановитель

Aus dem Russischen von Aljonna Möckel

Umschlag und Illustrationen: Werner Ruhner

Is the ё in the Russian title an OCR error like Skaphandcr and the correct title is Запрещенный восстановитель? In fantlab they variant the story with … Dr. Elliot, there is no Dr. Elliot in the story and the synopsis doesn't fit. The main actors are Dobis Duabis and his friend Muriel Gosk. Do you have an idea? Thanks Henna 13:53, 15 June 2018 (EDT)

Let me see what I can find out. If you had read the story, can you give me a 2 lines summary/synopsis of it? :) Annie 17:09, 15 June 2018 (EDT)

Dobis's uncle is disappeared, now Dobis is accused of murder. Muriel's grandfather created a "universal recreator" (Universalwiedererschaffer). They want to recreate the uncle with the machine.

I hope it helps Henna 06:36, 17 June 2018 (EDT)

Hm. None of the stories I know about matches this one - I will do some more digging. But it definitely is not the one FantLab believes it to be. And the original is definitely one of his Russian stories - he had not yet switched languages at this point. Annie 06:49, 17 June 2018 (EDT)

Comparing Henna's synopsis with FantLab's "annotation", it looks like they share certain plot elements: cloning and (alleged) murder. Perhaps Lomm rewrote the story for Verlag Kultur und Fortschritt? Ahasuerus 11:06, 17 June 2018 (EDT)

PS: The name of the uncle in the German translation is Chowr Linoj, the name of Muriel's Grandfather is Fartaris Gosk. There is no Fuller, Elliot or Pratt. Funny riddle, I'm curious what will happen Henna 15:34, 17 June 2018 (EDT)

A rewriting is certainly possible (although the elements are not that unique) so who knows. It may be an excerpt. It may be a wrong author (I am also checking the translation credits from Möckel to see if something will click there. I am even considering dropping a mail to the FantLab editor that deals with this bibliography to ask why the two stories were connected... Annie 18:02, 17 June 2018 (EDT)

FWIW, we had good experience with FantLab editors in the past. One of our contributors was able to leverage their expertise to unravel a number of mysteries. Ahasuerus 16:36, 18 June 2018 (EDT)

That had been my experience with them as well - I need to dust off my Russian and go and send a few notes (reading and writing in a language are two very different skills as anyone that speaks more than one language knows). Update to follow. :) Annie 17:00, 18 June 2018 (EDT)

They also have what they call "English forum", but it doesn't seem to get much traffic. Ahasuerus 17:09, 18 June 2018 (EDT)

Correct Russian word for German "verboten" or English "forbidden" is "запрещённый". Exactly with "ё" letter, transliterated: "zapreshchyonnyy". See article in wikionary-ru(shortened English version wikionary-en). However, in Russian publishing tradition, "ё" replaced by "е" often. In the past for reduce cost of typesetting (or what is right term for typographical set of letters?), and now because key with "ё" located too-o-o-o fa-a-ar on computer keyboard and people too lazy to reach it. In most (in almost all) cases native readers understands meaning correcty. When difference between letters is very important for meaning and in different sorts of the children books, dictionaries, class- study- tutorial books, in official pesonal ID documents uses "ё". Some more you can read in Wikipedia. Hope it was useful. --Zlogorek 08:41, 25 July 2018 (EDT)

Demchuk's The Bone Mother

I've got a question regarding David Demchuk's The Bone Mother, which you have verified. We have it listed as a novel, and its Shirley Jackson nomination in the novel category supports this. The cited notice in Locus' Books Received describes it as a "Fix-up novel/collection told through linked horror and fairy-tale stories". One of those stories, "Dragoi", has received a long list nomination for a Sunburst award in the "Short Story Fiction" category. The book itself is also nominated in the "Adult Fiction" category, which can include collections. I also found this Worldcat record which lists the individual contents. My question is whether we would want to consider converting this to a collection. This would allow us to enter the nomination for the story. Alternatively, we could maintain the book as a novel, and add the story without it being contained in a publication record, perhaps adding both it and the novel to a series and noting the relationship between the two. I'll leave the decision to you as the only verifier. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 10:22, 17 June 2018 (EDT)

I just pulled the book from the shelf - had not read it yet. From a quick look through it, it feels like a collection more than a novel - despite it being called his first novel and the lack of table of contents - each "chapter" has its own narrator (or so it feels) and I do not even see an overarching narrator. I'll convert it to a collection and add notes about the decision.Annie 17:06, 17 June 2018 (EDT)

Thanks! I've added the nomination to the story. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:35, 17 June 2018 (EDT)

Remixt, Volume 1, Issue 7

Hello, I was wondering of which grounds you did accept the submission for this issue. Is this webszine downloadable? Is this webzine making authors eligible for SFWA membership? Are the included texts shortlisted for a major award? Thanks. Hauck 15:54, 18 June 2018 (EDT)

A Rhysling nomination 1 and Rhysling nomination 2 for content from 2016. Annie 15:59, 18 June 2018 (EDT)

Yes but such nomination is only valid for the nominated text itself and allows to enter it and its containing publication but not the whole webzine. In the ROA the "unit" is the text so It has been shortlisted for a major award refers to it only and not the adjacent texts. I'm going to delete the non-nominated texts. We probably don't want all the poets that publish their speculative fiction only on the web to clutter the db with their ephemera. Note also that in these Kangaroo courts days where any moderator is liable to face a popular jury for a misdemeanor, you can see how easy it is when you're chain-moderating to misinterpret a rule and be the target of the less implicated members of our community. Hauck 03:37, 19 June 2018 (EDT)

You cannot have it both ways. Your reading of this specific rule makes for the weird situation that a poem that happens to be in the issue with the nominated one is included while another one from the same author in the same journal is not. The way it is written, the only eligible part is the one that is nominated - not the whole webzine issue (as a publication) - the same way a SF story does not make a non-SF magazine suddenly eligible. And yet, we already have 2 issues from it completely entered (so we have those poets that publish only on the web and are not nominated for anything). So yesterday the choice was between removing the non-nominated poems from the 2 issues we have or treating the whole webzine as eligible. I am much more prone to opt on the side of inclusion when there is a way to justify it than to keep things out so that's what I did.

So, no, I did not misinterpret a rule because I was chain-moderating or whatever - I actually made a conscious decision to include it. If you deleted the issue, you should also go and cleanup the rest - otherwise this whole house of cards called "we really do not include webzines" sound a bit... inconsistent - if you get lucky to be published in an issue with a big name/good work, you suddenly get your story/poem included. Annie 13:42, 19 June 2018 (EDT)

I probably wasn't clear enough. The rules are "the only eligible part is the one that is nominated" (we're OK on this), but in order to do this, we should enter the container (the issue in this case) a bit like what we do with nongenre containers that includes one spec-fic text, such container containing only the eligible text (it seems we're also OK on the interpretation of the rule as it's written). This doesn't explain why you accepted the submission for an issue outside our ROA (as it does not contain an eligible text), that you made a conscious decision is nice but your decision went against our rules. In fact I've nearly zero interest in the matter (even if I'm usually on the "prone-to-exclude" side), I was just trying to show that we all make decisions that can easily be shown to be "against the rules".

As for your advice to delete the rest, be rassured, it was already done when you wrote this, I'm not someone who eschews such tasks. You're trying to give lessons in cleaning to the wrong person and perhaps the only one (apart from you) and before that the sole one that used to exploit every day the cleanup reports. Hauck 02:29, 20 June 2018 (EDT)

(unindent) Herve, so what exactly is your issue with me - we haven't even crossed paths on the site too often lately as I am knee deep in cleanup? Apparently this whole thread has nothing to do with a call I made (and everyone has an iffy one once in a while) and you are using it to show me something (and you even said so twice). If you have something to tell me, go ahead and do that. Annie 02:56, 20 June 2018 (EDT)

Your offer to help

Thank you ever so much for offering to do some of this cleanup: I am already damned tired of repeating the same keystrokes over and over yesterday. (Do you have a higher tolerance for that?) Here are two lists: First, ones that just need the LTF identifier added.

OK - these are done :) Annie 23:41, 19 June 2018 (EDT)

Second, ones that need the identifier removed from notes and added to extIDs. In a few cases the link in the notes may be wrong, but the ones on the list are right, I checked.

OK - this group is also done :). Annie 00:39, 20 June 2018 (EDT)

Bless you, Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 14:49, 19 June 2018 (EDT)

When it needs to be done, it needs to be done :) I've actually found a pretty comfortable position for this kinds of edits that does not stress my wrist and my back and between the LCCNs and the DNB ones (and some others), I have the external identifiers moving down to a science. No need to get me the ones that are already in Notes - I am working through them via Advanced Search but will do the ones above from here (thanks for checking them). I'll add these to my list for the evenings - depending on how my day goes, they should be done in a couple of days. Annie 15:01, 19 June 2018 (EDT)

You are speedy :-) One last list: a few random records, created by other people, I found while doing a last search for any of my own records I had missed. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 00:17, 20 June 2018 (EDT)

Done! Annie 19:23, 20 June 2018 (EDT)

I am confused about this last list? Some are already done, some do not have an LTF IDs? Annie 00:19, 20 June 2018 (EDT)

Those were ones that mentioned LTF but didn't link to it. So they need to have the correct ID found and inserted where appropriate. I figured that since they weren't my work, I would leave them to you, the expert at editing other people's records. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 00:26, 20 June 2018 (EDT)

These won't be the only ones - people misspell things a lot. I will take care of them - probably not today though. Feel free to figure them out :) Annie 00:30, 20 June 2018 (EDT)

(unindent) OK, all those are done :) Annie 19:23, 20 June 2018 (EDT)

Author name correction 6-30

Zoltan Komor should be Zoltán Komor. I don't know whether the publication for the poem has an accent but everything else is from a collection which does. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 17:18, 30 June 2018 (EDT)

Apparently the poem also carries it. Changed. Annie 17:21, 30 June 2018 (EDT)

Actually, FictionMags is not a good source for finding out exactly what's in the magazine. He uses standardized forms of names. (I don't know of any source that's as exact as this DB; some WorldCat contributors are, but you can never be sure which ones!) --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 17:25, 30 June 2018 (EDT)

Not in this case. This is the ONLY Poem from this author in the whole DB there, there is no reason for this to be written this way unless it was like that in the magazine. There is nothing to standardize against. So chances are good enough that the accent was there to start with. When there are multiple publications, I'd agree but in cases like that, it usually matches :) Annie 17:32, 30 June 2018 (EDT)

Yeah, you're right :-) --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 17:34, 30 June 2018 (EDT)

Der Doppelstern

Hello Annie, there are three new Bulgarian stories from Ljuben Dilow. Please take a look, and sorry for the hassle Henna 15:44, 3 July 2018 (EDT)

Not a hassle at all. I just closed the /ul that was left opened (and the page looked a bit weird), I'll go find the parents for these stories ASAP. Will come back to ask if I cannot find something :) Annie 15:46, 3 July 2018 (EDT)

All have transliterations now - I had to fix one of the names as you had the Russian name and not the Bulgarian one (Двойная звезда vs Двойната звезда). Thanks again for finding the parents so all I had to do was to do transliterations :) Annie 15:54, 3 July 2018 (EDT)

Gae͏̈tan Dorémus

Hi, I've got a question. I'm working sometimes with an Apple notebook. And every time here the name of Gae͏̈tan Dorémus is not clearly to read. Seems there is a problem with the character e͏̈. Since you told me about Romanian and t- and s-cedillas maybe You know what kind of problem there is. My smartphone also shows the e͏̈ character wrong: only with one dot above. I tried different codes but can't solve the problem. BTW on this user talk page the character is correct. --Zapp 14:57, 5 July 2018 (EDT)

That's an encoding issue and it is correct here only because the html parser can recognize and render properly. When you edit this message, do you see the umlaut on top of Gaëtan's e or next to it? Here are the two versions next to each other (yours/mine): Gae͏̈tan/Gaëtan (look in edit mode - in the "view" mode they look the same; when you edit, they don't). The HTML renders them the same (as it is supposed to be) but the way the e-umlaut is written is different in both cases. Do you see them differently?

What is the default encoding in your browser? Annie 15:04, 5 July 2018 (EDT)

Both variations of Gae͏̈tan are to see for me on this talk page correctly in view and edit modus. So it is in edit modus of the author's page but not in view modus. Curiuosly on my personal computer the view is correctly. I use the Firefox browser on both devices. The default encoding is standard. I tried every one that is possible, but no success. --Zapp 15:17, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

If I put Your edit version of Gaëtan into a publication edit field, it says "Pseudonym submitted: Gaetan" without umlaut dots. --Zapp 15:25, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

See

The first one is how yours shows up when I edit (in all instances - including this last message - see where the umlaut is?); the second is how mine does (this is on Firefox - I can try on Chrome tonight). I see the same in "View Page Source" - can you try to do that and see if you will see it differently? Annie 15:27, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

And you are right - there is something weird going on with Gaëtan Dorémus - I just tried a submission and it lost the dots. Looking at the author page itself, the e-umlaut is rendered as "e& #847;& #776;" (spaces added after & so it does not render). So looks like something is off. I will ping Ahasuerus to see if we can discover something. Annie 15:33, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

Let me take a look... Ahasuerus 15:38, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

It looks like 847 was the culprit -- it's an invisible Unicode character known as Combining Grapheme Joiner. Now that I have removed it, hopefully things should look better. Normally I would assume that it was introduced via copy-and-paste from another online source, but perhaps it was something added by Apple-specific software. Ahasuerus 16:07, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

Congratulations, You solved it. Now it looks good even for my MacBook. Thanks to the specialists. --Zapp 16:19, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

Glad to be able to help! Ahasuerus 16:31, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

Can you look at this and this (I will kill them as soon as we can finish investigating). Annie 16:22, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

The first one contains 847 which is why it registers as a new author name. The second one doesn't and looks OK. Ahasuerus 16:30, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

I forced it there to see how it will behave :) Annie 16:33, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

Is there something you can do on the software side to mitigate the problem? Or set a cleanup report for this character? Or we can just ignore it for now I guess... :) Annie 16:22, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

The submission creation process runs all user input through a special filter. The filter replaces certain characters with certain other characters, converting or deleting all kinds of weird Unicode characters. I could modify the filter to remove 847, but I'll have to test it first to make sure there are no unforeseen side effects. Ahasuerus 16:30, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

Not critical - it was just a thought. Annie 16:33, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

It's certainly a valid point. I have created Bug 706 to document the issue. Ahasuerus 16:37, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

Thanks for looking at it. Is it ok to nuke the two submissions? :) Annie 16:33, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

Please go ahead and reject them. The submissions will remain in the submission table if we ever need to re-examine them. Ahasuerus 16:37, 6 July 2018 (EDT)

Tables in Notes

The mechanics of tables I have no problem with. It's variable formats between rows (or maybe nesting of tables or mixing text and tables) to allow for alternating translation text rows with sets of title rows, while maintaining a proportional balance in column sizes and reasonable row density. Which probably means using parameters (which I suspected but didn't know I shouldn't use). And while I have been playing around using a copy of the title page's HTML source to get a reasonable look, it doesn't tell me what Notes allows or how it handles it. Updating a real title record and waiting for moderator approval to see how it looks and repeating frequently as I get the hang of it (assuming a moderator who is that tolerant of crap showing up if I mismatch tags) sounds time-consuming and annoying to others. Hence the request for suggestions. What I'd really like is a better formatted Translation table on the title. But until we address translations, this ad hoc approach will suffice. I guess I'm prototyping the new Translation tables within the limited capabiities. And just one quick question about the BREAK template: What shows up on the displayed page to indicate the break? I'd like to include a comment prior to the break explaining about translations and what an editor needs to do to access the translation information. ../Doug H 09:10, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

Example of BREAK, example of table :)

One thing to worry about with tables is how they show up on smaller screens (including phones). Even if you make it proportional, it is virtually unreadable if you have more than a couple of columns. So I would actually propose a nested list instead, with the language being the most external identifier, then for each translation either a separate list or a list in an entry... If you build it in your wiki page, I will be more than happy to get it into the notes (if you do not want to worry about technical mistakes and what's not). Alternatively, build it in wiki altogether, link it from the page - just keep in mind that the wiki does not get archived the same way as the DB (which is why we are breaking the connections) - but if it is too complicated, we still have the wiki as a backup - we treat it as any other external site. Annie 10:11, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

Interesting that your BREAK example has a table that uses parameters on the td. I'll try some things and get back to you. Thanks. ../Doug H 12:50, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

Yeah, I know. I was looking for it actually - when really needed, something like that can be done - the idea is not to have too fancy html everywhere but there are exceptions :) Annie 12:53, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

The big problem with allowing arbitrary HTML in notes is security. A hacker can create a submission with an embedded script which will try to download malware/viruses to your computer. The most recent round of security enhancements implemented defenses against this type of attack, but they are only in effect for users who use modern browsers. If you are using something like Internet Explorer, you are still vulnerable. We need another round of security enhancements which will prevent Evil Things from being injected into submissions, which will probably mean migrating to BBCodes. BBCodes are not as robust as native HTML, so complex HTML will stop working after the migration. Ahasuerus 13:40, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

That's a shame, but it makes sense. Back when I was new here, and didn't have a good idea of what would make sense to do, I copied the table of contents of some nonfiction books into notes using rather fancy list formatting. You have my permission in advance to delete those if you find them. I will delete them myself if I can remember where they are, but I don't recall them all. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 14:49, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

There are cleanup reports like this one that look for invalid or unsupported HTML in notes. Since I saw only 1 invalid note this morning, chances are that your notes (assuming that they used unsupported HTML) were regularized a while back. And yes, security can be a pain as anyone who has ever locked himself out of a car can attest to :-\ Ahasuerus 15:25, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

There is that. BBCodes can be annoying but they are safe. :) Annie 15:16, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

Maybe use a subset of wiki markup? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:02, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

There are a few problems with MediaWiki markup. First, it includes a subset of HTML, which we are trying to get away from. (The way our software is designed makes HTML particularly difficult to sanitize since all submitted data goes through multiple iterations of escaping and unescaping.) Second, the non-HTML part of the MediaWiki markup language is not nearly as straightforward as BB Codes. The latter is trivially converted to HTML on the output side. The former requires special processing software.

OTOH, BB Codes are not completely problem-free either. We have 166 notes with embedded "[s]", which is a common BB Code. We'll need to either change the affected Notes or use "[del]" instead of "[s]". Ahasuerus 16:43, 10 July 2018 (EDT)

Fixer -- finalizing the process

Thanks for working on Fixer's unruly brood! I have spent the last few hours reforging the FAQ which you created a few weeks ago into User:Fixer/Public/Instructions and I think we are getting close. I have also extracted the non-moderator component of Fixer instructions from Help:Screen:Moderator and moved it to Help:How to work with Records Built by Robots. That way both Help:Screen:Moderator and User:Fixer/Public/Instructions can link to the same Help page.

The process as described in User:Fixer/Public/Instructions#Process looks like it should work, but the last bullet point:

If it turns out that some listed ISBNs are not eligible for inclusion in the ISFDB database, move them and their data to User:Fixer/Public/Rejected

may be no longer relevant after the last round of software tweaks. When Fixer creates a Public sub-page, he moves the exported ISBNs to "Queue 4". When the development server is re-synchronized, the approved ISBNs are deleted from Fixer's queue. Anything that remains in Queue 4 is ipso facto a "reject". Fixer ignores the ISBNs in Queue 4, so they are effectively invisible for our purposes.

Based on your experience with the "Public" pages, can you think of any other uses for User:Fixer/Public/Rejected or do you think we can we nuke it? Ahasuerus 18:41, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

I've been slacking on the latest list - the daily job required a lot more attention in the evenings last week than usual:) Annie 19:00, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

No worries, life happens! Ahasuerus 21:15, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

I've been keeping an eye on your edits - they look great. I think I was so much into the process that I could not step outside of it. :) Annie 19:00, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

I find that technical documentation takes at least 3-4 passes to get things right. The first pass typically consists of dumping everything remotely relevant on paper (or what passes for paper these days.) The second pass is when things get organized. Then you take a break, let things settle down and come back later to make sure that the layout makes sense to new users. Ahasuerus 21:15, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

True :) Annie 21:45, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

If they are technically considered rejected (so Fixer won't serve them again) then we probably do not need the separate list. The only reason to keep it would be to have some visibility on what Fixer finds that is not ours - which may allow us to make its algorithm better - but we can do that in other ways as well -- and it will simplify the process. Annie 19:00, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

If we want this information at some point, Fixer can always generate a Wiki-formatted report of ISBNs in Queue 4. Granted, Queue 4 includes everything that has been uploaded to the Wiki and hasn't been added to the main database, so it includes all of the outstanding ISBNs as well as the "rejects". At the moment Fixer has 726 ISBNs in Queue 4. Ahasuerus 21:21, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

Figured as much - so removing the step should be fine. Maybe replace the line with "If the title is not eligible for addition as per our ROA, just delete it from your list. If you are not sure and cannot find any information one way or another, just return the ISBN in its original list" Annie 21:45, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

Done! Ahasuerus 22:03, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

I think we should add a "I do not want to/I cannot deal with this" page where editors can return ISBNs that they would rather not work on (due to lack of knowledge in a language or due to the subject matter - not everyone would be comfortable adding erotica for example. Or add some language to tell editors that it is ok to return back ISBNs (and not just discard them if they are eligible but just not something they want to work on). Annie 19:00, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

We definitely want to encourage editors to return ISBNs to the main pool if they don't expect to address them quickly. I have run into this issue a number of times: you find a promising new publisher and get excited, then you realize that most of its output is not what you thought it would be. I can see editors grabbing a publisher-specific page and then realizing that it wasn't what they wanted to work on.

That said, I don't think we necessarily need to create a new "I do not want to/I cannot deal with this" page. As long as editors grab contiguous chunks of data and don't mix ISBNs from different publishers, authors and months, it should be easy to move "stuck" ISBNs to their original pages. Ahasuerus 21:28, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

Works for me - if it becomes a problem, we can always revise that part of the process. Annie 21:45, 14 July 2018 (EDT)

(After sleeping on it) It occurs to me that one possible issue with not having a "Rejected" page is that we would be asking potentially inexperienced editors to decide whether an ISBN is within the scope of the project. Ditto with possibly cancelled ISBNs. On the other hand, a single "Rejected" page could become unwieldy once we have more than a few hundred rejected ISBNs.

I am beginning to think that it may be better to implement a compromise solution: ask the participating editors to move rejected ISBNs back to the Wiki pages where they originally came from, but put them in a "Rejected" sub-section at the bottom of the page and add a brief explanation. That way we would have a usable audit trail. What do you think? Ahasuerus 12:36, 15 July 2018 (EDT)

That will make it very hard to collate and figure out a pattern (in case an editor consistently rejects a certain type of books). Maybe make a /Rejected page for each editor (as opposed to each batch). We can clean these monthly (or even less often - unless someone is working on a weird publisher or author, there aren't that many rejections usually - not in controlled lists. The monthly ones may be more problematic but even there, there should not be that many. Annie 15:17, 15 July 2018 (EDT)

Sure, we can try that. I have changed User:Fixer/Public/Instructions to reflect the new process and cleaned it up a bit. If everything looks OK, we can describe the proposed process on the Community Portal and see if anyone has other ideas. Ahasuerus 17:38, 15 July 2018 (EDT)

Will look at it with fresh eyes in the morning. Annie 19:50, 15 July 2018 (EDT)

No hurry, take your time! Ahasuerus 21:03, 15 July 2018 (EDT)

(unindent) Just one note: the "Handling Additional ISBNs" section. I think I had that ones as other editions instead and the main reason for that were Kindle and Audible books - those don't always have ISBNs and Fixer cannot help with preliminary but if the editor wants, they can be added. Maybe we should change the title to "Handling Additional Editions for a Publication" and inside add a second paragraph after the one you have that says "If you had found other editions that do not have (visible) ISBNs (Kindle book, Audible books and so on), feel free to add them as well. Other from that, I think we are looking good. Annie 13:34, 16 July 2018 (EDT)

Good points! I have reorganized that section -- please take a look when you get a chance. Ahasuerus 14:01, 16 July 2018 (EDT)

Looks good. Shall we share with the community at large and see if a fresh set of eyes will uncover something else we are missing? :) Annie 14:21, 16 July 2018 (EDT)

Yes, that's pretty much what I have been thinking: explain what the problem is and what the proposed solution currently looks like. We can tweak the process based on the Community Portal feedback, then open the floodgates and see what happens. More likely than not, other tweaks will be needed as moderators start processing Fixer-originated submissions. Ahasuerus 14:36, 16 July 2018 (EDT)

There is only as much that a single beta-tester can do. :) The main thing to make sure is that these submissions are better than what Fixer can do on its own on the first pass - so just adding as is or without the research for series and publisher names and what's not is useless - we can as well have Fixer submit those. A submission from this process should not be materially different from one an editor does for any secondary-sourced book :) Annie 15:09, 16 July 2018 (EDT)

True enough. OK, I guess I'll do a write-up and post it on the Community Portal. Ahasuerus 16:10, 16 July 2018 (EDT)

Done. Ahasuerus 18:23, 16 July 2018 (EDT)

(unindent) I guess it's official now -- see the Community Portal announcement. Feel free to move some or all of User:Anniemod/ISBN Lists to the new and improved air-conditioned location! :) Ahasuerus 11:49, 21 July 2018 (EDT)

Will do this this week. Thanks! :) Annie 13:50, 23 July 2018 (EDT)

Viktoria Faust novel

The publication note for Viktoria Faust's novel The Great Escape from Fairyland, or The Witch, the Prince, the Girl and the Dragon says that it's translated from the original Croatian by the author, but doesn't say whether the Croatian version was published. Can you find that out, by any chance? --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 19:00, 25 July 2018 (EDT)

Got it - all added and varianted and so on :) Annie 19:18, 25 July 2018 (EDT)

Dead of Night #13, Summer 1995

Per your request here; I think I fixed the problem. I simply added a [2] to the back cover illustration, which should disambiguate everything. MLB 14:09, 30 July 2018 (EDT)

Thanks! Do we need to variant anything or are these different pictures? Annie 14:13, 30 July 2018 (EDT)

The Land of Somewhere Safe

Do you mind if I leave Hal Duncan's forthcoming The Land of Somewhere Safe here? It's a NewCon Press chapbook which may or may not appear in September and you are our NewCon Press expert :-) Ahasuerus 21:17, 31 July 2018 (EDT)

Absolutely - as soon as it is published, I will hear about it and will enter it then with all needed other editions. I am not too worried about ir - it is from the novellas sets and these had been coming out pretty reliably but I will wait to see it coming out before adding. Annie 22:32, 31 July 2018 (EDT)

Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:28, 31 July 2018 (EDT)

Updating SERIAL Help

I am leaving this message on the Talk pages of active editors who (AFAIK) are currently active in the magazine/fanzine area. Based on recent feedback from a new editor, I have attempted to streamline our Help templates which govern the use of the SERIAL title type. I have posted a proposal which shuffles the relevant snippets between 3 different Help templates and clarifies a few things. When you get a chance, could you please review the proposed language to make sure that it's accurate and comprehensive? TIA! Ahasuerus 15:27, 24 August 2018 (EDT)

Yeah, I saw the discussion in question - it is not the only place where two or three of our different help pages had fallen out of sync a bit but usually common sense is enough to untangle the problem. I will check the new proposal ASAP :) Annie 22:08, 24 August 2018 (EDT)

Podcasts

Pointing you to this conversation about podcasts because of our exchange concerning an author's name in a podcast record the other day. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 16:48, 11 October 2018 (EDT)

And I did not change anything - I said that we need to verify them. I do not use podcasts sites as a base for a name change, just as a reminder to go and check :) Annie 17:59, 11 October 2018 (EDT)

Ognjen Spahić

Please correct Ognjen Spahic to Ognjen Spahić. Also, I have not added the contents of his English-language collection, let alone the Serbian one. Up to you if you want to work on it. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 17:51, 16 October 2018 (EDT)

Done. I wonder if the whole collection is genre - will see what I can figure out. Thanks! :) Annie 18:11, 16 October 2018 (EDT)

author correction

Please change Eric Picholle to Éric Picholle. Thanks --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 21:27, 18 October 2018 (EDT)

Done after a quick look around - seems like it may be like that in most (all?) books. Annie 21:29, 18 October 2018 (EDT)

Yes. I just found one English-language publication and that has the diacritic too. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 21:30, 18 October 2018 (EDT)

approval request

I am currently working on cleaning up the complete works of Sergio Gaut vel Hartman which someone (presumably the author) just added -- thank you very much whoever you are, but I wish you'd done a more complete and careful job. Annie, would you please approve all the merges I just submitted? That'll make editing things easier. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 20:20, 4 November 2018 (EST)

Give me 10 minutes - I have ~50 tabs open on one of my own cleanup jobs - will get these approved as soon as I can. Annie 20:22, 4 November 2018 (EST)

Got them all. One of the merges made a pub update invalid so you will need to redo that one. Annie 20:35, 4 November 2018 (EST)

Thanks! --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 20:35, 4 November 2018 (EST)

My Recently Changed Primary Verifications

What was wrong with the cover images there? --Zapp 12:37, 9 November 2018 (EST)

That was a result of this report - cleaning additional parameters left over in the Amazon links. No changes in any of the images - Amazon does not care if you use the sizing parameters or not - it just scales back on them - the only update was pulling out all of those Amazon sizing thingies between the name of the file and the extension (the help page explains what needs cleaning usually). Annie 14:01, 9 November 2018 (EST)

Your query

I answered your query, I think. MLB 05:28, 16 November 2018 (EST)

publisher correction

Hi Amnie--could you correct Gargola to Gárgola? Thanks! --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 04:03, 21 November 2018 (EST)

Done Annie 04:22, 21 November 2018 (EST)

Maria Anastasova

Would you happen to know more about this Bulgarian academic? Her only published work (that we know of) is in English, so her "working language" is currently English. If we could find and add her Bulgarian publications, assuming there are any, it would likely change her canonical name and her working language. Ahasuerus 13:53, 26 November 2018 (EST)

I am not sure if this was ever published in Bulgaria (or will ever be...) - from the looks of it, this is her PhD dissertation. I do have the Bulgarian name of that though ("Съспенсът в два романа на Стивън Кинг и техните филмови адаптации" - "The Suspense in Two Stephen King Novels and Their Film Adaptations") and this is (probably) a translation so I think it will be safe to set her to Bulgarian, put that as a non-published in Bulgarian and make the variant. No translator mentioned here though so maybe the author translated it. It was presented in Bulgarian for the PhD purposes. What do you think? Annie 14:06, 26 November 2018 (EST)

Oh, I see. Thanks for digging!

Dissertations are currently excluded as per ISFDB:Policy#Excluded. Originally Policy listed them as "debatable", but they were moved to "Excluded" after this 2011 discussion. At the time I wrote that we may "revisit the issue at a later point as part of a larger review of academic publications", but no such review has occurred yet. (It may be hard to compete with The Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database.)

For now, published versions of dissertations document what we know about the relationship in Notes, e.g.:

It would be probably best to follow the same process in this case. BTW, we don't know if the published version was revised, do we? Ahasuerus 14:54, 26 November 2018 (EST)

Yeah, I know they are excluded - but not when they are published as actual books I would think? Annie 15:10, 26 November 2018 (EST)

Right, dissertations published as books are included as NONFICTION pubs. The challenge, as you indicate below, is distinguishing between "published" and "unpublished". In the past it was reasonably straightforward. As Darrah Chavey wrote in 2011:

Speaking for myself, my Ph.D. thesis had 6 hc copies bound (with additional spiral bound copies), but I would not view it as being "published".

In 2018 things are less straightforward. A newly minted PhD can format her dissertation using KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) and make it available on Amazon in a matter of days. As an e-book with an ASIN it would become eligible for inclusion. If Anastasova were to take the Bulgarian text and make it available that way, it would be considered "published" for our purposes. Since -- as far as we can tell -- she hasn't done it at this point, I think we have two choices:

keep the English version as the canonical title and add the Bulgarian title of the dissertation in Notes
create an "unpublished" Bulgarian NONFICTION title and turn the English title into a variant

The first method seems like it would be more in line with the current policy, but I don't expect the second method to be an issue. BTW, if we were to use the second method, what would we use as the Bulgarian book title? Ahasuerus 15:35, 26 November 2018 (EST)

We should use the original dissertation title: "Съспенсът в два романа на Стивън Кинг и техните филмови адаптации" - anything else will be just a guess:) Annie 15:53, 26 November 2018 (EST)

This is one of the more unfortunate things about translations of unpublished works: the title of the original work is uncertain. Sometimes we know the author's intended title, e.g. the English titles of volumes 4 and 5 in this series. Other times it's just a guess. Ahasuerus 16:43, 26 November 2018 (EST)

Keeps the adrenaline flowing I guess :) And that will become a problem more and more often - as much as I love that I live in the era of reprints and self-publishing, it can drive one crazy sometimes... Annie 17:10, 26 November 2018 (EST)

I am fine with either solution. I think that the second is more in line (as it is a translation after all) but eligible translation of a non-eligible text is not something we see often... so far. But either works. Annie 15:53, 26 November 2018 (EST)

For now I have added a note to the English title. I'll leave the rest to your tender mercies :-) Ahasuerus 16:43, 26 November 2018 (EST)

Looks good to me so I will leave it like that for now. Will send a few messages back home to see if someone knows anything more though.Annie 17:10, 26 November 2018 (EST)

Especially when the book does not say "dissertation" - I'd venture a guess that a big part of the "Cambridge Scholars Publishing" output is from authors publishing their dissertations. Trying to police what is a dissertation and what a new work may not be that easy (the era of self-publishing comes to get us again...)

I cannot find the Bulgarian text (so far - working on it) - from the academic reviewer's notes and the abstract(available online - one of those docs also says that the author had done the needed translations from English from her sources - so this was definitely in Bulgarian first), the format had not been changed at all and the number of pages is within acceptable drift between languages. I do not think it is revised quite honestly - the parts I can compare based on the notes and the google text seem to be in line - if there are revisions, they are minimal. And it is a 2016/2017 one - so not too much time to actually revise. Annie 15:10, 26 November 2018 (EST)

Author correction 11/26

Please correct Sjon to Sjón (his name is printed with the diacritic in English-language publications) --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 23:40, 26 November 2018 (EST)

Done. Annie 23:42, 26 November 2018 (EST)

Extrasolar

If memory serves, you collect books by PS Publishing. We have two editions of their 2017 anthology Extrasolar on file. Amazon UK claims that a trade paperback edition was published as well. However, the ISBN (1786363372) is listed as "Currently unavailable" and the record is sparse. Amazon UK also states that the book was published by "Drugstore Indian Press", which seems odd. No other online bookstore has this edition for sale, so I assume that it was either a cancelled ISBN or an Amazon data entry error.

Would you happen to know if this ISBN/edition was ever mentioned by PS Publishing? If it was, we could add it as 8888-00-00. If not, then we could simply ignore it. TIA! Ahasuerus 15:20, 27 November 2018 (EST)

Yeah, I do collect them. :) here is the book - ISBN 978-1-786363-37-4. Note that the CODE is the HC ISBN but there is a TP one down in the notes. I think this is what causes the mess across the other sellers. Who knows. You can buy it from them though. I can send an email and ask them if required. "Drugstore Indian Press" is an imprint of PS (here) - they switched to it for some (if not all) of the paperbacks at some point (the earliest I remember is 2012 (we have them here) but it may be earlier and I am not sure if all of the paperbacks became DIP that early). I need to go and do something around PS's list and get them sorted out (including splitting all the DIP books) but it is on my list somewhere... :) One project at a time so I can have them actually finishedAnnie 16:20, 27 November 2018 (EST)

Excellent, thanks! Ahasuerus 17:02, 27 November 2018 (EST)

Magazine issue tracker updated

You said you might be working on current magazines some, so I just wanted to let you know that the tracker is now fully up-to-date and correctly showing what issues have been published and which ones are already in the DB. Feel free to fill in some of the white or light-brown squares ... --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 22:12, 10 December 2018 (EST)

Thanks for the update :) Got caught into finishing the external IDs project and had not had a chance to look at the magazines much. Will stop by and do some magazines before the year is gone - I should probably pull all of my own 2018 ones as well and do some verifications as well... Annie 22:16, 10 December 2018 (EST)

Gallica template

I've searched the wiki and can find our first discussion and your question to Linguist but not the discussion about creating a Gallica template (linking or non-linking). First, can you tell me where the discussion was and secondly, why I couldn't find it using the wiki search? Thanks ../Doug H 15:37, 11 December 2018 (EST)

We never had a real discussion - after we talked, I stopped by Linguist's page, we had a quick chat and that was it. No template - too little number of titles yet to justify one. If you think we can use it, start a discussion - I do not mind a new template :) Annie 17:13, 11 December 2018 (EST)

Frederic Golden

First, thanks for the welcome! I had not expected to find this [author] here. I have the book from which all of the essays noted on his page were originally translated into the German. Should I add the book to the database? If so, should all the chapters/essays be noted or just the ones that correspond to the German titles? By itself, I doubt it would be included, though anything to do with black holes is speculative. Thanks! --Artisan 14:01, 17 December 2018 (EST)

You are very welcome. :)

Perry Rhodan is a genre magazine and as such all of the content is eligible for inclusion - thus the author making it in. If they are translations, we need the original names. Is the book pure science or is there anything genre into it? If it is not eligible, so what we need added is just the English titles - without an attached publication. I can do that - we seem to have the names in the notes actually.

The author is not above the threshold so the book itself won't be eligible for inclusion unless we can consider it about speculative fiction. It can get a bit confusing, cannot it? :) Annie 15:56, 17 December 2018 (EST)

The only speculative chapter is the last which explores wormholes [The Fate of the Universe], but that's not one of the essays translated into German. I only ask because the English edition is specifically noted as the original source. --Artisan 16:19, 17 December 2018 (EST)

Then nope - the complete book is technically not eligible. Annie 17:03, 17 December 2018 (EST)

OK, one less to enter. --Artisan 20:16, 17 December 2018 (EST)

Questions about some stuff on Audible

I understand even though the individual books are included the audible presentation of Locke & Key is not to be included, I see that we include interviews -- can you look these three over and let me know how to enter them? https://www.audible.com/pd/Joe-Hill-Audiobook/B01H45SIVQ Joe Hill interviewed by Robin Morgan https://www.audible.com/pd/FREE-Audible-Sessions-with-Leigh-Bardugo-Audiobook/B01N9HAK42 Leigh Bardugo interviewed by Robin Morgan and https://www.audible.com/pd/Jack-Campbell-and-Elizabeth-Moon-A-Conversation-Audiobook/B003G5315M Jack Campbell & Elizabeth Moon Susan O'Fearna 02:06, 18 December 2018 (EST)

Honestly, I have no idea. Non-fiction on its own is either NONFICTION or in a magazine - all other types need at least one fiction title by definition. As this is obviously not a magazine, I would say Non-fiction book with the interview added as a content item? Or treat them as Daily Science Fiction and make a "monthly" issue magazine out of them? Both sound a bit off to me though - the NONFICTION sounds better I think. I would call them eligible (they are not different from a pamphlet with the same interview printed) but maybe we need to move this discussion to R&S to see what other users think? Annie 20:17, 18 December 2018 (EST)

Wild Rose Press

I have created author-specific Wild Rose Press sub-pages for their most prolific authors. The vast majority of these authors' ISBNs were published by Wild Press Rose, but a few weren't. I included all of them since I assume that it should make the investigative process easier.

Would you like me to do the same thing for the rest of the Wild Rose Press authors? They mostly have 1-3 ISBNs per author. We can either create individual sub-pages or dump the remaining 294 ISBNs on one page.

As far as "ASIN-only" pubs go, I think it may be best to wait until we wrap up the ISBNs. Many ASIN-only records will end up as AddPubs, which are easier to handle. Ahasuerus 15:56, 29 December 2018 (EST)

Thanks! Dump the rest in a single page, ordered by author if possible? :) Annie 15:58, 29 December 2018 (EST)

Sounds like a plan! Ahasuerus 16:10, 29 December 2018 (EST)

Done. Ahasuerus 18:02, 29 December 2018 (EST)

Perfect. I added a note (the other option was to move the whole set under my page -- which will be too much copying with no real reason for it - I will be moving the sets I am working on. Thanks again! Annie 18:09, 29 December 2018 (EST)

Sure thing. It's given me some ideas re: moving at least some parts of Fixer to the main server, which is a good thing. Ahasuerus 18:15, 29 December 2018 (EST)

One step at a time. :) Annie 18:17, 29 December 2018 (EST)