ISFDB:Community Portal/Archive/Archive05

Duplicate Titles Created By Adding Contents to a Pub

After adding the contents to this book [1] I noticed that all the stories which were already in the isfdb have been duplicated. That is to say, the original instance of them with whatever pubs it already had, and a new one that only has the pub I just edited, and thus requiring an orgy of merging. Is there any way to add contents to a book without this happening? (I just looked at the instructions for adding a new pub to a title, and it looks like the same problem would occur, i.e., creating a whole new title, rather than adding the story to an existing one.)Jefe 15:41, 11 Jan 2007 (CST)

There is a way around this in some cases, but contents do still have to be manually merged in some situations.

First, if you're adding a new publication of an existing title, if you choose to clone one of the publications, instead of "Add Pub to Title", then you will get a screen that looks like the addpub screen but it will be already filled in with much of the data. Adding page numbers and submitting/approving the result will cause an automatic merge for each content item.

If you're adding a pub and there are some differences, it's often most efficient to clone, then use "Remove Title" where necessary, and finally "Edit Pub" and add contents as needed, manually merging these last items.

Cloning has limitations, though. You can't use it if you want any differences in the title of the book, or the author's name. If you have a "Brian Aldiss" pub in your hand, and the existing title in the ISFDB is by "Brian W. Aldiss", then you're going to have to enter it from scratch.

There's an outstanding feature request to allow selection of stories to automerge with on submission of new pubs, but I don't think it's easy and so it may not arrive in the near future.

-- Mike Christie (talk) 20:24, 11 Jan 2007 (CST)

Eric Ambler's "The Dark Frontier"

from Wikipedia: "Based on the development in weaponry of the year 1936, The Dark Frontier was one of the first novels to predict the invention of a nuclear bomb and its consequences. Ambler evidently had no knowledge of what producing an atomic bomb may involve (even professional physicists at the time had only a vague idea). The book makes no mention of uranium or any other radioactive material, and makes instead the assumption that setting off an atomic bomb would involve a considerable electric charge. Still, Ambler could be credited with having become aware, before many others, of this coming weapon which was to have such a profound effect on the entire world, and his depiction of scientists in a secret hideout buiding such a bomb could be considered a premonition of the Manhattan Project - and he correctly surmised that refugees from Nazi Germany might get involved in such a project."

What do you think? Hayford Peirce 16:37, 12 Jan 2007 (CST)

I believe the Nicholls encyclopaedia omits "future war" books on the grounds that the genre is too vast. However, specific works like this sound like they're too close to the border to be worth the effort to delete. I say leave it in if it's in; don't bother adding it if it's not unless you're working on Ambler's biblio (assuming he wrote anything else that would qualify). Mike Christie (talk) 17:34, 12 Jan 2007 (CST)

No, this is the only thing he ever wrote that could remotely be called SF. It's pulpish and melodramatic and it's practically unknown -- I don't think he liked being associated with it. It isn't listed at the moment. It isn't really "future war" -- a standard spy-thriller or innocent-in-danger thriller that Ambler later perfected, but with the atomic bomb McGuffin. I'll wait to see if anyone else offers an opinion. Hayford Peirce 18:41, 12 Jan 2007 (CST)

Reginald lists it, but no one else does (including Bleiler's "The Early Years", which is fairly inclusive). Reginald says the first edition is the 1936 Hodder & Stoughton. If it's good enough for Reginald, it's good enough for me. Alvonruff 19:32, 12 Jan 2007 (CST)

Redundant info and editing process

Some of what I'm going to say I've also written a little earlier under "Why can't we put Series info into the initial New Novel data input?" and I *do* understand that this is an evolving project in which newer (and maybe better) ideas have been overlaid over what has gone before, sort of like Windows 98 evolving out of MS-DOS1, groan. Anyway, here's my gripe: If you go to "Jonathan Gash - Summary Bibliography" you see a list of 20 books in the Lovejoy series. If you click on some of the earlier ones, such as The Vatican Rip, you'll see a Note that says "The Lovejoy series link etc." And then, a little lower, under Publications you'll see the name of the book. If you click on that, another page opens up and here, once again, is the same Note with the same link info. If, on the other hand, you go back to the Summary Biblio. and click on a later book such as The Possessions of a Lady, you'll see the same Note on that first page, but NOT under Publications if you click on the name of book there. This is because I never know where to put in this info -- and also because there are TWO separate info inputs for this, one under New Novel, and then, later, under Publication info or Title info, I forget which. So, since I have to wait for a Moderator to approve my initial input of the New Novel, by the time I come back to put in the series link info I can't remember if I've put it in Notes under the first edit or not, or whether it should *also* go in Notes under Publications. What I'm getting at is that it would sure be nice if we had a *single* info template into which *all* the info could be put at the same time. Title, author, name of series, number in the series, publisher, date of publication, hb or pb, Type, etc. etc., with synopsis, notes, links to Wiki, links to reviews, EVERYTHING, quoi, on that same page. So that there wouldn't be any more back-and-forthing (at least for me and other non-moderators) between New Novels, Authors, Titles, Publications, etc. etc for editing. Probably can't be done, sigh, but it would sure be nice! Hayford Peirce 18:04, 15 Jan 2007 (CST)

I think the core problem here is that you have to wait for approval. I do think that the notes don't all belong in the same place -- there are title-specific notes, and publication-specific notes, and so on. In this particular case I think I would place the note on the series by preference, which would require you to do it only once. However, there is no note on the series record. This would be a reasonable feature request. In the meantime, the title record is the only reasonable place to put the note.

I also think that if you get the distinction between publications and titles clear, it will be a lot less confusing. Take a look at a title with lots of pubs, such as Le Guin's The Farthest Shore. I think you'd agree that it would make no sense to put the note on each pub here. If you visualize a pile of different editions and different printings of "The Vatican Rip", then your note naturally attaches to the whole pile, not to each book in the pile. Does that clarify it? Mike Christie (talk) 19:07, 15 Jan 2007 (CST)

I have seen the two "Note" fields confuse other editors as well and I recall using the wrong field a couple of times myself when moderator editing was enabled in May 2006. Perhaps one way to address the confusion would be to disambiguate the two fields by giving them separate labels? Ahasuerus 14:36, 16 Jan 2007 (CST)

Would Series Notes, Author Notes, Title Notes, and Publication Notes work or do you think something else needs to be different? Marc Kupper 15:08, 16 Jan 2007 (CST)

I think that should work unless somebody can come up with catchier labels. Ahasuerus 16:52, 16 Jan 2007 (CST)

Those ought to do the trick. But I thought that Series Notes are *not* available -- but that we all wish they were. Or am I wrong about this? Hayford Peirce 16:59, 16 Jan 2007 (CST)

Some things I've noticed in recent submissions

This is really a note to the other moderators, though others may find it interesting too, to see what problems are coming in on the sub queue.

Here are a couple of things I've seen. Several of these are from one user, Dsorgen, but I've seen them from others too.

1. People submitting new contents when it would be more efficient to clone. I'm hesitant to reject these, so I've been holding them for one recent case (User talk:Dsorgen#A_Hole_in_Space), with an explanation of what's going on.
2. Deletion of "jvn" in the story length. I'll add an action item to clean up the def on the story length field.
3. Editing titles in collections, not realizing that this will edit the title for all cases
4. Entry of first printing data from a later printing. I have some of Dsorgen's on hold for this now, and will write him a note about it shortly. See this one for example.

Got to go; more later. Mike Christie (talk) 19:14, 15 Jan 2007 (CST)

• One more would be editors trying to remove-title the parent title of a publication. --Marc Kupper 19:51, 15 Jan 2007 (CST)

shortfiction storylen

Sometimes I run across a storylen of “sf” or “shortfiction.” Where do these come from and what does it mean in terms of the story length? Marc Kupper 19:51, 15 Jan 2007 (CST)

It's the default when you don't select a story length for a SHORTFICTION content type. I generate a lot of them as I have been entering magazines, which are notoriously unreliable in their description of length, so I never use a length. I have sometimes done so when the story is just two or three pages long, since that's pretty clearly a short story, but other than that I've been leaving it blank. In fact I don't really like this field, though I see its utility -- it has an objective definition but it's not one we're very well equipped to apply. Still, there are external sources such as Hugo qualification lists that can be used to be objective. Mike Christie (talk) 22:06, 15 Jan 2007 (CST)

FYI, there are some minor and apparently harmless bugs in the way the software handles "shortfiction" titles, especially in the Title Merge area. One of these days I'll figure out exactly what's going on and submit a bug report. Ahasuerus 14:39, 16 Jan 2007 (CST)

I was on Locus recent and saw a storylen of vi. I wondered what that was and found on their their Abbreviations page the following storylen codes. Based on the following table I set up a spreadsheet where now I copy/paste the ISFDB Contents from a publication display and the spreadsheet extracts the page number and computes the storylen code. There is some pain because edit-pub does not sort the contents making for a manual hunt/edit. Marc Kupper 15:19, 16 Jan 2007 (CST)

Code	Description
vi	vignette (under 4 pages, under 1,000 words)
ss	short story (4-20 pages, 1,000-7,499 words)
nv	novelette (21-45 pages, 7,500-17,499 words)
na	novella (46-100 pages, 17,500-39,999 words)
n.	novel (over 100 pages, over 40,000 words)

Unfortunately, the number of words per page varies depending on the binding/font/publisher, etc. Also, in the pulps, a story could be easily split in two or even more sections, appearing, e.g., on pages 50-60 and then 80-84, so the algorithm is rather unreliable :( Ahasuerus 16:58, 16 Jan 2007 (CST)

BTW, what’s the source of the ISFDB storylen codes? They are different than Locusmag for example nt, nv, na. Marc Kupper (talk) 17:47, 20 Jan 2007 (CST)

Locus	ISFDB	Description
vi	N/A	vignette (under 4 pages, under 1,000 words)
ss	ss	short story (4-20 pages, 1,000-7,499 words)
nv	nt	novelette (21-45 pages, 7,500-17,499 words)
na	nv	novella (46-100 pages, 17,500-39,999 words)
n.	N/A	novel (over 100 pages, over 40,000 words)

Pratchett question

Over at BLongley's talk page he has raised some questions about some Pratchett books. I have to run for now; if anyone else has time to head over there and comment and clarify things, please do. I'll try to catch up later tonight. Mike Christie (talk) 18:32, 16 Jan 2007 (CST)

I've done some fixing over some period of time and edits... there's a lot of possibilities still. Like separating the plays into the series they are plays of - Discworld versus Johnny Maxwell, etc. The Maps should go under Discworld I think, there's no other maps. There's a new can of worms arriving possibly, with the Discworld Diaries - how can you categorise a book that that is SUPPOSED to be mostly blank pages? There's more to add...

Feel free to leave it with me to mess around with if you like. I promise not to add the jigsaw puzzles. ;-) BLongley 17:09, 22 Jan 2007 (CST)

Short fiction in series?

I am writing a "How to work with series" help page, and realized that I had never seen short fiction in a series. I looked at a couple of obvious candidates, such as Merovingen Nights, and found that they've been handled by putting the anthology in as the series member. I tried adding "The Day Before the Revolution" to Le Guin's Hainish series, and found that in worked, but is not identified as short fiction, though there is an "SF" tag on Le Guin's biblio page.

Do we have a preference for whether short fiction gets included or not? I would think it should be included, though if a collection of stories is written in internal chronological order and does not overlap other series elements I could see it being included en masse.

I am going to write the help to suggest that short fiction be included; let me know if there's a reason not to. Mike Christie (talk) 07:35, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

Series support is still evolving. A few weeks ago Al added additional logic to display shortfiction (marked as "SF", a rather ambiguous abbreviation in our context) pieces on Summary Bibliography pages, but the same logic hasn't been added to the Series Bibilography pages yet. Also, Summary Bibliography pages only display short fiction pieces as part of a series if there is a book length work in the series as well. If the series consists exclusively of short fiction pieces, then they are not displayed as a series - cf. the Doctor Bird and Operative Carnes series listing and S._P._Meek's summary page. I would check with Al to see where he is taking this whole area before writing anything up. Ahasuerus 12:32, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

I already created Help:How to work with series. I'll edit it to conform when I hear from Al. I'll also add a note now explaining the limitation you cite. Mike Christie (talk) 12:39, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

The other problem with short fiction that appears in a series is that such stories are displayed out of chronological order in the short fiction list (this is true regardless of whether a series has books in it as well). See Michael Swanwick's summary biblio for an example, where the stories in his three (listed) short fiction series appear (in no apparent order) after the last non-series story (being "Lord Weary's Empire (2006)"). Jefe 16:36, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

Yup, it's a side effect of the rewrite of the series logic that is still incomplete. The problem was reported a while back, but I don't see it among Open Display Bugs. I'll add it to the list, thanks! Ahasuerus 19:28, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

Moderator qualifications

I have just created Moderator Qualifications as a place to discuss what it takes to be a moderator, and also to host any discussions of creating new moderators from existing editors. It's a draft; it seemed like a good idea to have a permanent location for this -- prior community portal discussion has been archived.

Looks good to me, Mike: particularly the bits on welcoming new editors, which you seem to be showing the perfect example of! BLongley 17:21, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

I suspect the next moderator we create should come from the UK timezone; we have nobody on that side of the pond right now. Mike Christie (talk) 11:05, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

While rapid approvals help some editors that know what they want to do and how, I think the "giving advice" is the more important bit. And I hope you're not looking towards me just because I'm in the UK - I do learn pretty quickly, but that's led to me being Moderator/Craftsman/Admin for 7 sites already (3 I'm still actively responsible for) and I don't multi-task perfectly. But give me 6 months and IF I'm still active here it's the sort of role I'd be interested in. (If the programmer jobs aren't available - I do that sort of thing for a living, just not the way it's done here.) BLongley 17:21, 17 Jan 2007 (CST)

PHP Error (AKA: What the flip does this mean?)

I'm trying to add the contents to "Witpunk" anthology edited by Claude Lalumiere and Marty Halpern. I dump in the first page (page #, title & author). I get to the end and submit with the result of a paga junk and the following message:

+++++++++++++++++

AttributeError: 'list' object has no attribute 'value'

     args = ("'list' object has no attribute 'value'",)

+++++++++++++++++

What's up with this? I'm NOT a PHP guy. Oh, crap, I've forgotten how to comment HTML too. Jeez, I'm getting old...

Dave Sorgen 20:44, 17 Jan 2007

This may be a newly introduced bug as I ran into the same thing tonight. See Open_Editing_Bugs 10089 Python error adding essay with two authors. The "fix" for now is when adding contents to only include one author the first time and then do an edit-pub (after approval of the first edit) to add the second author. I did some more testing and the bug only seems to apply to the first title record in the contents and hit me because my anthology had two editors and the first record was the introduction. It seems I can add-title and add the introduction with both authors as a second or later title. Marc Kupper 03:30, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

Hmmm... Seems to work as you suggested (make the two-author entry #2 or later). I've built part of the entries for the anthology. I'll inspect later to see what happens, then build the rest. Too bad PHP didn't localize the problem a bit better; I might have figured this one out. Sigh... The update to two editors is still pending for the item as a whole.

--Dsorgen 15:38, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

Blue Mars

I have an edition of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Blue Mars" which I was trying to use to verify the ISFDB entry; most of the data is the same, but the page numbers are wildly off -- mine has 609, the isfdb has 576. The Locus index agrees with me, but I'm loath to go and change the page number in case there's some weird variant version of this edition running around (it seems unlikely but who knows?). Should I enter my copy as a new pub and leave the existing one, or edit the existing one?Jefe 13:27, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

Edit it to agree with your copy. If there's a new one, it'll show up as a separate entry eventually. It's reasonable to do a little searching on used.addall.com or somewhere similar, when you suspect an extra edition exists, but in this case you're unlikely to see page numbering recorded so there's little you can do. Some things would indicate a different copy; a change in price, for example. But if you verify it, and add a note indicating the printing, someone else can add the other version and they'll have enough data to distinguish it from yours. Mike Christie (talk) 14:19, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

This brings up something else I've been wondering about. Since we're trying to record every printing of every edition, would it make more sense for there to be a field labelling something like "Edition/printing" for this information, rather than just putting it in the notes? My concern is that many editors are not going to think to put in this data if there's no explicit location for it (I know I didn't for the first several books I entered). If this data is left out, it might actually lead to lost data, or at least lost work. For example, I entered data for Gene Wolfe's "Calde of the Long Sun" from the second printing of the first edition. If I leave that information out, somebody with another printing of that edition may either 1) not enter their copy because they think it's already been done, or 2) edit my entry to show their printing information.Jefe 15:41, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

Take a look at Feature:90091 Edition label for publications where something along these lines is discussed. I started adding the "Stated third printing" to the notes because I was running into exactly the situation you describe, where you can't tell if you're dealing with the same printing. That led to this feature request, which would probably be better described as "Series functionality for publications". Mike Christie (talk) 15:51, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

I’ll have to chime in “me too” on this one too. I have been adding publication-notes about the printing number but each time I do so I wonder if future editors will understand my notes. Recently someone tried to change one of my notes (good catch Mike) so I edited that particular publication’s note to (hopefully) make it clearer. I have the same problem on the DAW list page.

In my case what I’m trying to do is to say “This is a confirmed sighting of the nth printing. If you have the same printing then it’s quite likely we have identical publications. If you have another printing but otherwise your publication seems identical to mine (same cover, price, and all that) then great, just add your printing # to the list of confirmed sightings. Over time we will end up with a list of exactly which printings were used for this price/cover/etc.” I don’t want to say all of that in each publication’s notes and shorten it to “12th printing” (73 words compressed to two!) which, unsurprisingly, mystifies future editors.

On the Blue Mars page number thing. I personally would add a note saying that ISFDB had the YYY page count and that you corrected it to ZZZ based on your physical copy. That way if someone shows up with a copy that has YYY pages they don’t just overwrite your page count but instead can clone the pub, fix the page #, and update the note to explain their copy. Marc Kupper 23:36, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

SF Works in Non-genre Publications

I saw on one of the introduction pages that sf works in non-genre (or mixed-genre) publications are fair game for the isfdb, but I don't see anything in the help pages about how to enter them. I.e., should I just enter the genre content and leave the rest of the contents out? This seems to make sense, but we will end up with anthologies that have only one story listed.Jefe 13:27, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

I came at this from the other angle: there are stories listed such as Evelyn Waugh's "The Man Who Liked Dickens" that are clearly not genre and I bitched about it for a while. But it's a long-established custom that an anthology with even 1 or 2 genre stories get listed -- as well as *all* the stories in that book or publication, whether they are genre or not. Hayford Peirce 13:38, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

Hayford's right that the custom was to enter all stories in anything that gets entered. However, we did have a discussion about this a couple of months ago, and the most recent consensus was that we should only enter the genre material in the contents. See Bibliographic_Rules#Stories_published_in_non-genre_magazines; unfortunately I can't find the original discussion -- perhaps Marc or Ahasuerus will remember where it was. The reasoning was, as I recall, that we would find ourselves with vast amounts of data entry to do from (e.g.) Argosy, which would clutter up the indices. I think that's still the right answer. If that's not reflected in the help, it should be (unless we want to reopen that discussion).

Of course, as Hayford mentions, occasionally a clearly non-genre piece will show up in a genre magazine; that's cause for indexing. Whether we then go back and index all other appearance of that work hasn't yet been discussed, but I don't think we would do that. Mike Christie (talk) 14:27, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

The discussion linked above states that works in non-genre magazines can be found via the regular search apparatus. However, I can't seem to figure out how to search for magazines that don't have a wiki page. I'd like to enter a story published in "The Black Cat" but I want to make sure that the issue isn't already in the database (the story itself doesn't show the mag as a pub, but that's not conclusive). I tried various things in the advanced search, but couldn't even get mags that I know are in the db to show.Jefe 16:01, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

Part of the problem is that titles for magazines are grouped by year. To see what I mean, look at this title for Astounding. This is done by merging all 12 titles created by each issue that year into one title, and editing it to the form you see there.

The reason is to avoid hundreds of issues showing up in the biblios of the editor of the magazine. See Campbell's biblio to see what the result looks like. The drawback is that there is no longer the expected title/pub relationship for magazines. Also, it's not done consistently, as it's done for the look of things, so some magazines don't have this treatment yet -- do a title search on "Infinity Science Fiction" and you'll see what I mean.

The other thing to be aware of is that a MAGAZINE publication has an EDITOR title type. So if you go to Advanced search and put in Astounding for the title, you can put in EDITOR for the Title Type and you'll see all the magazine records without the books that have "Astounding" in. As far as I can see, based on these searches, there are no editions of "The Black Cat" in there now, so you are OK to enter this one. Mike Christie (talk) 16:49, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

On my home page I have these links

• ISFDB (Google)
• ISFDB Wiki (Google)

I use the Google links to search for content on the ISBDB sites and for "The Black Cat" it does get mentioned on the Wiki side at Magazine:1900-1919. There are 58 pages on the ISFDB side meaning you'll need to add more keywords, perhaps a story title from your issue, to better see if your magazine is listed. It's not perfect as Google does not index ISFDB in real time meaning it would see recent changes. Marc Kupper 23:46, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

(unindent) You have to be careful with Google, folks. It's good at what it does, but perhaps a little too good in our case. It indexes out of date ISFDB Wiki pages that are currently orphaned or at least no longer linked from the main pages.

As far as finding Magazine publications goes, you typically have to search for them using the Publication Search form. It is at the bottom of the Advanced Search screen. Please note that you can use it to search for Publication titles, but many other, more complex searches (ISBN, publisher, etc) are currently broken.

As as a general observation, our magazine implementation has gotten rather involved with the addition of the EDITOR title type. Mike Christie put a summary of the current EDITOR functionality that I wrote a while back on his User page and it's not for the faint of heart. We may want to add it to the "Advanced topics" section of the Help pages for now, but in the long run I hope we can make it more transparent to the users. Ahasuerus 10:41, 19 Jan 2007 (CST)

Creating Magazines

I'm having two problems with creating new magazines. One is a documentation issue: there's no documentation for the "tag" field on the NewPub helpscreen. The other is that you don't seem to be able to enter a magazine without an editor. (Well, the error I'm getting is "*** ERROR: No authors were specified", so I assume that's the problem.) I was trying to add the first publication of RAH's "It's Great to Be Back" in "The Saturday Evening Post", and I can't imagine that we care who the editor was. (Plus, I don't have a complete copy of the magazine -- I just have a photocopy of the story I made for a research project).Jefe 16:12, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

I'll add documentation for the tag field; I'd forgotten about that. Essentially it's an alternate unique id. It's actually possible to create a duplicate tag, but then you'll find that you can only retrieve one of the pubs that has that tag, so you don't want to do that. Usually on picks a string of consonants from the magazine title and appends the date, in some format. The tag for the November 1957 issue of "Infinity Science Fiction", for example, is "INFNTOCT57". The date at the end pretty much ensures uniqueness.

All pubs have tags; for everything but magazine the tag is generated automatically, and the uniqueness is ensured by the ISFDB scripts. I believe the reason that the magazines don't do this is to make it easier to build the magazine index pages. In the case of "The Saturday Evening Post", I'd pick a string like "STDYEVENPST27JUL1947".

For the editor, I'd probably enter "unknown". Using "uncredited" or "Anonymous" would imply that you had the publication in hand and the editor could not be determined, so those aren't appropriate. Mike Christie (talk) 21:29, 18 Jan 2007 (CST)

The general rule of thumb is to remove all the vowels to make the tag (THSTRDVNNGPSTJUL1947) though I still have no idea why it's done that way rather than a more human friendly TheSaturdayEveningPost-Jul1947 (which fits in the 32-character tag field). Yes, use "unknown" for the editor but also add a note to explain the story is getting entered from a photocopy and that the editor's name may well be available if someone has the original publication. Marc Kupper 00:02, 19 Jan 2007 (CST)

Ahasuerus has pointed out to me that apparently if you leave the field blank, it fills it in for you (using the algorithm Marc suggests). I didn't know it did that. Mike Christie (talk) 19:26, 19 Jan 2007 (CST)

Single-author omnibuses

For single-author omnibuses, is there any reason not to enter them as collections? I'm thinking of things like this, this, and this -- one collection, one omnibus, and one I entered as a collection. Does the OMNIBUS type tell us something more that we can't tell from a COLLECTION type? Mike Christie (talk) 19:29, 19 Jan 2007 (CST)

We typically use the term "omnibus" to describe a book which contains at least two or more previously published novels. This definition of the term (one of a few given by the OED) is favored by many genre bibliographers and booksellers, but is not always properly understood by the general public. It emphasizes the reprint nature of the edition and usually implies that it is inexpensive since omnibus editions have been typically downmarket reprints since the 1930s when they were quite popular. Ahasuerus 19:52, 19 Jan 2007 (CST)

OK, I'm convinced. I think one generally knows an omnibus when one sees one. Mike Christie (talk) 21:26, 19 Jan 2007 (CST)

It gets interesting when it's an omnibus that also includes a short story. For example, I decided to call The Winds of Darkover & The Planet Savers an omnibus though it also includes a shortstory. The publication [The Planet Savers/The Sword of Aldones http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?THPLLDNS9C1980] also got called an omnibus though it includes the same short story. But, someone entered The Planet Savers as a collection. The story The Planet Savers itself is exactly 100 pages putting it right on the border between novella and novel while The Waterfall which seems to get included with planet-savers is a 13 page shortstory. If I was entering that last pub I probably would have called it a novel that contains both the main novel and a short story. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:08, 20 Jan 2007 (CST)

Editors of collections

I started entering some Anderson and ran across a book Marc has updated with some DAW data: The Book of Poul Anderson. If you read the notes, you'll see that Marc has quite reasonably credited Elwood as author/editor since he is credited on the title page. However, I suspect that his role here is that of packager, or perhaps freelance editor/agent. He may have selected the stories and obtained copyright and so on, but this is no more than any other editor at a publisher does for any collection.

However, going by the rule that we enter what's on the pub, I think we have to record Elwood's participation in some way. Does he deserve an "Editor" level entry, though? I am in two minds about this and would like to hear other opinions. Marc, did you base your decision simply on the fact that he's on the title page? Mike Christie (talk) 21:26, 19 Jan 2007 (CST)

regarding the decision process for The Book of Poul Anderson. I first gave thought to removing Anderson's name as he's not really on the title page (his name is in medium type in the upper/right corner) but figured that would create a bit of a disconnect bibliographically plus his name is on the spine where DAW normally puts the author’s name. As for Ellwood – that he was on the title page carried a lot of weight but that alone was not enough to get him listed as a “co-author.” After spotting him on the title page I flipped through the book for more evidence and saw that he wrote the foreword plus got the copyright assignment. I then checked each of the stories in ISFDB to see if Anderson had written any new material for the collection. There was none and it’s possible Anderson had next to zero input on the book as I figured he could not resist sticking in a preface had he worked with Ellwood on the project. Thus I was comfortable with listing Ellwood as a contributor to the publication though also added a note explaining the roles. Marc Kupper 02:17, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

There have been numerous requests to add support for editors of single author books, be they novels or collections, especially since Tor and some other publishers frequently make this information explicit on the copyright page these days. However, there is nothing in the software (that I know of) that supports this functionality at this time.

The current practice is not to list editors as "co-authors" and mention them in the Notes section instead, but there are quite a few cases (that mostly come from Amazon.com) which do. For example, see this Avram Davidson collection. One of the Publication records lists Davis and Silverberg as co-authors and the other one doesn't.

If we decide to create a feature request for this, we will need to figure out whether we want to add "single author editor" support at the Title level as well as at the Publication level. I am pretty sure that we generally don't want novel editors to be listed at the Title level since we would then have to split many Titles unnecessarily. After all, "essays" like introductions and afterwords do not a new Title make (in our little world).

However, I can see how editors could be claimed to be so closely associated with the selection of works for collections that they belong at the Title lefvel as well we the Pub level. For example, the two Leinster collections published in the US and the UK in 1976 were really two separate Titles with a different story selection, one by Brian Davis and one by John J. Pierce. As an aside,we currently list the two under the same Title, which needs to be unmerged.

Finally, copyright information is generally not a good source of editor attribution. Too many works are "works for hire" in this day and age, which can mean that the copyright belongs to a third party, not to the author or to the editor. Ahasuerus 01:37, 20 Jan 2007 (CST)

My first novel, Napoleon Disentimed, had "Ben Bova's Discoveries" in large letters above the title on the cover, and my name in small print on the bottom (my wife was upset about that, hehe). There was an intro by Ben on the very first page, then his BB Dis. on the title page also. My second and third books both said "Ben Bova Presents" on the cover. (I was at an enormous book-signing at the S.F. Hilton once and a guy came up with one of books and, as I signed, gushed about how my novel about the spaceman in orbit was his *favorite* book of all time. I puzzled about this for a while but thanked him heartily and he went away happy. It was only afterwards that I realized he thought I was Ben Bova and that he had just gotten a new Ben Bova book! Wonder what he thought when he examined it more carefully -- he told me he wuz a schoolteacher from Indiana....) So, anyhow, what do we do (if anything) above the Bova presence on/in these three books? Hayford Peirce 11:39, 20 Jan 2007 (CST)

"Presenter", e.g. "Isaac Asimov presents", is presumably a separate role. The Library of Congress uses various MARC21 codes for contributors, e.g. illustrator, editor, etc, but we don't have a similar structure, so for now it just goes under Notes. Ahasuerus 17:21, 20 Jan 2007 (CST)

There is a title data type called EDITOR that could be employed. This would allow the editor to be acknowledged for collections while not having his or her name appear in the main title record. In fact, perhaps the EDITOR type or something similar (CONTRIBUTOR?) could get expanded to handle other background people such as cover designers, translators, etc. where ISFDB may not have a specific pigeonhole available. We use [Add Title] and set the title itself to match the pub’s and in (parentheses) explain the role. In the bibliographies you add a "Contributed to:" section and you’d see a neat list of titles and the role that person had. Marc Kupper 01:43, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Sure, it could be done (although we would need to ask Al whether we want to use the EDITOR title_type or if something new would be needed), but keep in mind that it would require a fairly substantial upgrade of all related display logic. I suspect that it would be rather time consuming, but we could certainly create a feature request along these lines. Ahasuerus 18:39, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Right now EDITOR quietly means magazine editor (the software actually generates one of these records when a new magazine is entered, and it's displayed in a biblio under 'Magazine Editor'). There is a more general need for publication roles: illustrator, narrator for audio books, editor, possibly translator (that's a little thornier as a translation generates a new text). This needs some serious thought before putting something together (does a narrator get a title entry in the ISFDB? How to disambiguate between different types of editors?) Alvonruff 05:55, 22 Jan 2007 (CST)

Baffled by pseudonym-creating

The mystery writer Ellery Queen (in itself the pseudonym of two cousins) also, towards the end of his career, had various books written by prominent SF writers under the EQ byline. If you go to Ellery Queen you'll see three of them listed, Vance, Sturgeon, and Davidson, the last being entered by me. But in doing so, I also did things backwards intially, so that on the Ellery Queen page you'll see an entry saying that Queen also wrote as Davidson. I can't find any means of deleting this. Can someone help.

Also, I'd just like to say that this whole business of naming pseudonyms is absolutely opaque and impossible to understand. Even in the Help page, someone writes plaintively of "cognitive dissonance." That's fer sure! I have at least one suggestion for how the pseudonym page could be reworded so as to make it *possibly* clearer -- if anyone would like to hear it. Hayford Peirce 19:59, 20 Jan 2007 (CST)

It's my understanding that the current pseudonym logic does next to nothing which is why it's hard to understand. About all it seems to do is to trigger the "Used As Alternate Name By:" and "Used These Alternate Names:" stuff you see at the top of the author pages. It seems to have no affect at all on the title and publication displays.

As for how to delete them? I don't think you can at the moment but will add a feature request as I have an idea that should be easy to implement. BTW, my attempts to delete the existing link resulted in second link from Avram Davidson to Ellery Queen being added... Marc Kupper 00:30, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Well, there are two challenges here. The first one is to understand the complexities inherent in the way pseudonyms exist in the real world, including house names, self-collaborations, etc. Al has been struggling with it for many years (with some help from the peanut gallery) and the underlying structure is now quite robust and lets you mimic what's happening in the real world pretty accurately. The display logic still has a number of bugs in it, though.

The second challenge, however, is to hide these complexities from the casual user and make them look easy. I don't think we are anywhere near done in the second area. Moreover, it's an inherently more difficult task since "easy" is subjective: one person's "easy" is another person's "completely counter-intuitive". I suspect that it won't be always possible to reach a compromise, especially given out limited resources and the Web's less than sterling support for anything other than basic forms. Web 2.0 may help some if and when we migrate to it. Ahasuerus 18:35, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Artists and illustrators

Does anyone have any definite rule as to the correct procedure when listing books with a company only listed as the designer of the cover or cover art? And what if the bookjacket is a photograph or historical artwork ( altered or not?). Could a seperate option be included at some stage to 'Add Photographer/ Designer' or similar nomenclature? Thomas conneely 16:06, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

(copy pasted from Thomas Conneely's user talk page as he had posted the questin in both places). I don't think there is a "definite rule" but this is what I use.

• If it's a company that did the cover then just list the company as a cover artist. For example, yesterday I added a book where the cover art was credited to "G-Force Design."
• If it's just the cover design, photographer, etc. then you can either add a comment in the notes or you could add an INTERIORART record ([add-title]). Let's say the title is A Way Home and so you would do
  • [Add-Title]
  • Page: cv
  • Title: A Way Home (Cover Design)
  • Type: INTERIORART
  • Author: credit whoever did the cover design

That will allow the contributors to get created and linked up both for the publication and on the contributor's page. Marc Kupper 16:19, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Worst so far I've seen is in Robert Rankin's books. Cover Art, Illustration, Sculpture, Photograph, Models, Technical Design and Technical Support all get credited at some point. And that's just from the first dozen I picked from the paperbacks. Sometimes it's a person, sometimes a company, sometimes it's the Author himself. He's out to make our lives miserable I think. :-( BLongley 17:17, 23 Jan 2007 (CST)

Tor ISBNs

Entering a Tor paperback, I recalled a comment of Al's that Tor mis-hyphenate their ISBNs. The ISBN on the book I have in hand is "0-812-53083-7"; it's in the ISFDB with hyphenation of "0-8125-3083-7". Do we need to make any note of this as we verify these pubs? Should we, for example, make a note in the notes field of the Tor version of the ISBN?

I'm also curious as to what the standard or definition of ISBN is that permits us to determine that Tor are doing this wrong. Can anyone enlighten me? Mike Christie (talk) 17:14, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Al eventually found the standards document and posted a link to it, which I don't have handy at the moment. We may want to check with Al first to make sure that after reviewing the document he still thinks that Tor is mis-hypenating their ISBNs. Ahasuerus 18:26, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

Tor has always mis-hyphated their ISBNs and when Al added the hyphenation I suggested that he add to the tables a special case for Tor. I'm not sure if Tor's hyphenation was an error that they decided to stick with or if they knew the correct hyphenation but chose to use 0-812-5xxx so they would be more similar to established publishers that had the larger x-xxx-#####-x blocks.

See http://www.isbn-international.org/en/identifiers.html which lists the area and country codes and some formatting info. I've written a lot of ISBN code over the years and could write at length about them. :-) Marc Kupper 20:53, 21 Jan 2007 (CST)

They share 0312 with St. Martin's, and the correct formatting there IS x-xxx-xxxxx-x. 0812 puts it into another formatting group. They have the same issue with the newer 0765 ISBNs. I generally have exception handling for 0812 and 0765, but it's in different areas depending on whether it's a display, editor, or moderator routine. Which app displayed the "0-8125-3083-7" version? Alvonruff 05:44, 22 Jan 2007 (CST)

It was the pl tool. Here's the link.

Problem on the John Dickson Carr page

I just went to the JDC page to merge a couple of new entries and discovered that clicking on *any* of the novel titles brings up and error message beginning "A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred." Gobblydegook (to me) follows.... These errors weren't there a couple of hours ago.... Hayford Peirce 15:25, 3 Feb 2007 (CST)

Yes, there's a problem with title.cgi right now -- it broke an hour or so ago, then worked for a bit, and now it's broken again. I think I detect Al working on the code. I let him know on his talk page, just in case he hadn't realized something was broken. Mike Christie (talk) 15:40, 3 Feb 2007 (CST)