User talk:Arch

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Welcome!

Hello, Arch, 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:

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! Mhhutchins 04:10, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Binding/pub format field

Please use the standard designations for publication format as shown in this list. In most cases, the terms are not capitalized, so "quarto" should be used instead of "Quarto", just as we don't capitalize "pb" or "hc". Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:13, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Series

Series data can only be entered in the designated field in an edit/update to the title record. It should not be entered into the title field when entering a content record into a publication record. I've corrected the two content records which were added to this publication. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:20, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Reviews of multiple titles

When adding reviews to a publication record, you should create separate records for each book being reviewed, regardless of whether they're reviewed within the same essay. So the review of the Gunn and King works in this issue will have to be split. Just change the current review into the Gunn title and create a new one for the King title. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:06, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

You'll have to do the same thing with the review of the art books on page 11. Mhhutchins 15:08, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for ALL of this very useful information. My partner in crime, Artem, just told me this about reviews of multiple books, so I'm chagrined to have put you to the trouble. But on Tuesday, I'll work on fixing up and finishing my current issues. Arch 05:17, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Special Characters

If I post to my talk page, will a moderator automatically know to reply? I guess I'll find out.

I couldn't find this anywhere, or maybe I overlooked it. What is the accepted convention for forming special characters (not only accents but other special characters, such as the copyright symbol)? I found a discussion of unicode, HTML, etc., but (not being a techie person) I don't even know what these terms really mean in practical application. How do I insert the special characters? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Arch (talk • contribs) .

This should have been posted at the ISFDB:Help desk. Posting requests and questions on your own page will delay any response, if any at all. I just happened to notice this on the Wiki changes page.
To your question: you should use Alt codes for special characters. Do not use HTML in any field of a publication record except for the Note field. Here is a list of all Alt codes. For example, the copyright symbol Alt code is 0169. There is a tutorial there as well. Ask if you need further assistance. (Ask here, since this is the page where the discussion began, a wiki convention.) Mhhutchins 22:30, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Review of nongenre and nonassociational titles

Do not use the REVIEW type to create records for reviews of nongenre fiction or nonfiction nonassociational works by nongenre (not spec-fic) authors. They should be entered as ESSAYs in the Contents Section (not the Reviews Section) of the entry form. Look at how I entered them into this record and use that as a guideline for any future such reviews. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:01, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks--I'll review these procedures. I am six months out of practice and never had full proficiency in the first place. BTW, I just entered more material right before reading this message. Arch 00:11, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I believe I just blew it as well with an article in the "101" series. I thought I understood how to handle those, but I clearly don't. Arch 00:14, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

SFRA Review #256

Hello, I've put your submission on hold. If the authors of the works reviewed are not correctly given, this should be rectified at the reviewed title/publication level, not at the review level. Note that in the case of this book, the cover shown here seems to confirm the authors as given. Note also that the addition of Stover as co-author of The War of the World may be debattable. Hauck 12:11, 17 September 2017 (EDT)

Shoot, you're darned right about Muriel E. Eddy/Muriel F. Eddy. I must have double-checked the author's name when I first entered this review a few years ago. That issue was one of the first ones I entered, and I'm trying to proofread and fix errors on all of the issues I and my colleague did. I'm way out of practice and was never very good to begin with--can you clarify, for a rank beginner, the difference between the reviewed title/publication level and the review level? I believe that I was supposed to enter the incorrect name correctly in the review itself but put a note in the publication section that there was a misprint--that's what you mean, right? Arch 15:10, 18 September 2017 (EDT)
In fact we do not create "new" authors because of typos in reviews. We enter and link to the correct author and (eventually) mention the typo in the notes. Hauck 17:10, 18 September 2017 (EDT)
One more thing--I couldn't find this addressed in the procedural pages I'm looking at. You said that the inclusion of Stover was debatable, and I see what you mean. But I'd like to chase that down so that I'm correct in the future. When a canonical work (say, by H. G. Wells) is released in a new edition with a new editor (say, by Leon Stover) and includes what appears to be extensive additional material by that editor (preface, critical introduction, extensive footnoting), is the editor usually/always left out and not included in an author field? Thank you for all your help. Arch 15:40, 18 September 2017 (EDT)
AFAIK, in such cases (a paratext "around" a work of fiction) the editor is not considered as the co-author. He/she's just credited with the parts (ESSAYs) what he/she wrote. Hauck 17:10, 18 September 2017 (EDT)

Many thanks for the newest bunch. For further submissions please keep in mind that all the pages of a magazine go into a page count (so that the page count for quarto magazines likely has to be dividable by four, but at least by two), and the titling for magazines, as in the revised ones for SFRA Rebview. Thanks again, Stonecreek 06:13, 6 July 2019 (EDT)

With the adressed mistakes and omissions repeated I rejected the latest issues and installed stub records instead. For the reviews there also was the problem of unfitting titles: they have to match exactly in both ways: spelling of the title proper & the author.
Regarding the page count, I do cite from the rules: "For magazines, the rule is to use the actual page count - including the cover."
"Also, please note that the title should be of the form Magazine Title, Date, such as Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2004." Stonecreek 16:53, 6 July 2019 (EDT)
Thanks for the help. I was going by the page count in the PDFs at the publisher's site. I thought they were odd (in more ways than one) but just logged what I saw. I can easily remember the quarto rule.
The magazine titling convention is a different matter; either the convention changed since I started this venture years ago, or I learned to do things the wrong way. I'll look again at the rules. I'm also not sure how I screwed up the review titles. I'll have to check out the rejected issues, but I'm hoping you can point me to a couple of specific mismatches of review titles so that I can see what you mean.
I don't know what stubs are, so I'll have to hunt around for more information. Can you point me in the right direction, though? I'm still a dilettante here, basically. Arch 02:15, 13 July 2019 (EDT)
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