ISFDB:Community Portal/Archive/Archive40

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Expanded archive listing

Subdivide Short Fiction Category on Author Page?

I would like to suggest a programming change to split the "Short Fiction" listing on the author page into Short Story, Novelette, and Novella.--Rkihara 16:32, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

IMHO, not a desirable change (perhaps to be propsed in the "Other Views" section). Hauck 16:51, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

If were to do that, we would also have to add a sub-category for "short fiction". FYI, we currently have:

• 169,830 short stories
• 37,747 novelettes
• 16,994 novellas
• 70,513 uncategorized "short fiction" pieces

I don't think having 4 sections instead of 1 would work well.

Having said that, at one point I proposed displaying the "story length" code on the Summary pages, which currently display a generic "[SF]" code. Ahasuerus 17:16, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Maybe two sections, Short Stories and Novelettes/Novellas? I'm surprised there are so many pieces categorized as Short Fiction, since I thought that category had been obsoleted long ago. Maybe a Cleanup Report for Short Fiction?--Rkihara 17:39, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

"Short fiction" is used for excerpts and for works whose length we do not know. Ahasuerus 17:44, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

It's also used for stage plays, screen/teleplays, graphic novels' fiction content, etc. And it also just happens to be the default category for any SHORTFICTION work that hasn't been lengthed. A clean-up report would be impossible to clean, unless someone is willing to do a word count for 70K records of SHORTFICTION. Mhhutchins|talk 19:58, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Maybe have it split up into alphabetical groupings, or separate pages for each author, or sorted into publication year pages? There should be some way of finding all the uncategorized ones so they can eventually be corrected. Yes, I realize it will take a lot of work to do so. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:23, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Not really. A script could find all of them in a few seconds. Creating a clean-up report would be easy. Cleaning it would be practically impossible. First, you'd have to find a primary verifier. Then, that person would have to be willing to do a word count. So much effort for too small reward. I'd wager that less than 25% of those 70K stories are contained in primary verified publications, since most of the editors who verify publications also add the story length for the contents. Mhhutchins|talk 22:37, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

So perhaps have a cleanup report only for those which also have a primary verifier? That might make it more manageable, and it would update as people verified contents. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:05, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

That would work for a clean-up report to get more SHORTFICTION records lengthed, but since the ultimate goal of the poster was to separate them into categories on a summary page, it wouldn't work until all records have been lengthed, not just the verified ones. The unlengthed SHORTFICTION titles would still remain in a fourth category on many author summary pages which most users wouldn't understand. Mhhutchins|talk 23:53, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Well, at least it would be something to get the ball rolling. If we don't have a verifier for something, there's not much we can do to correct that. In the meantime, we can make sure the ones that do have a verifier are listed correctly. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:29, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I would like having the story length code displayed on the summary page. Since the record is being listed, it shouldn't increase the load on the server too much to add that. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:23, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I would be opposed to grouping the story lengths on an author's summary page, and would only approve of displaying them next to the titles if a user has the option not to display them. Mhhutchins|talk 22:37, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

If you build it they will come. Cleanup scripts could be limited to magazines, anthologies, collections, and the like. I still run across SHORTFICTION as a "subcategory" in magazines, although it was eliminated years ago. I remove those as I find them. Verifiers of magazines do word counts all the time. I still feel there is utility in grouping fiction by length or at least identifying them by code. I don't understand your objection to having this visible, other than it may offend your eye.--Rkihara 22:59, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're saying Ron. Nothing has been "eliminated years ago." It remains as a default category for all unlengthed titles. It's not like some entry fields where a user is required to choose from a dropdown menu. Editors have the option to leave it blank. Mhhutchins|talk 23:53, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I also oppose grouping them by story length (other than how they are right now). I only think it would be useful to have the (nt), (nv), or (ss} next to any short fiction titles. As it's not really obtrusive, I don't really care if there is a way to not display it (and I wouldn't object to having that option, if that's the only way to get the feature past Mhhutchins' objection). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:05, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Just being among the majority who is for the feature is "the only way to get the feature past Mhhutchins' objection". Believe me there have been many changes here to which I have objected when proposed. Being pointed out as the obdurate one, only riles me up even more and makes me present an even stronger case. Mhhutchins|talk 23:53, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

I apologize. I didn't mean to be rude. I merely indicated I was fine if that option existed or was added to appease you (and anyone else) who didn't want the added information being displayed. No offense was intended. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:29, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

(outdent) I'm not in favor of the original suggestion either. To me, it just creates more clutter with no benefit. Adding the story length codes is fine though it's not something I care about. -- JLaTondre (talk) 00:14, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

We can certainly add a user option to suppress story length codes on Summary pages, but first let's take a step back and consider what the proposed functionality entails.

Summary pages currently display short fiction works in two different places. There is a section for "Shortfiction" where the assumption is that all listed works are short fiction. Then there is a separate "Fiction Series" section, which comes first and which can also include short fiction titles.

Let's use Jim Butcher's Summary page as an example. There are short fiction titles in the main "The Dresden Files" series. In addition, there are numerous short fiction titles in its sub-series, "The Dresden Files Short Fiction", and its sub-sub-series, "Bigfoot". All of them have "[SF]" displayed next to them to indicate that they are "short fiction".

My original proposal was to change the "[SF]"s in the "Fiction Series" section to "[nt]", "[nv]", "[ss]" and "[sf]", as the case may be. The current proposal, however, would also add "[nt]", "[sf]", etc to the titles displayed in the "Shortfiction" section. Which is fine by me, but we'll need to decide how the proposed user option/setting will affect these two separate areas. Ahasuerus 00:30, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Re, Mhhutchins SHORTFICTION Subcategory. You'd probably have to be a magazine editor to have seen it. I can still point out more than a few magazines that show that subcategory. There is a drop-down menu for SHORTFICTION, ANTHOLOGY, and the like, and second drop-down which appears when you select SHORTFICTION, for the subcategories, SHORT STORY, NOVELETTE, etc. One of the choices in the second used to be SHORTFICTION, so you could pick both, SHORTFICTION and SHORTFICTION. The ability to do that for the second drop-down was eliminated, but a lot magazines have that choice grandfathered in until you change it.--Rkihara 00:51, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Why not make some mock pages showing each layout so we could see how it appears? It seems to me that splitting SHORTFICTION up into four sections would only make the page eight rows longer.--Rkihara 00:56, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Ron, I've created hundreds of magazine records, and their content entries are no different than any other type of publication. Maybe there was one in the distant past, but I can not recall there ever being a "SHORTFICTION Subcategory". There is an "Entry Type" field that includes SHORTFICTION as one of the options. And there is a "Length" field which gives the editor four options: 1) "-", meaning unlengthed, 2) "novella", 3) "short story", 4 "novelette". If an editor chooses not to complete the "Length" field, the record defaults to "shortfiction" which is how it is displayed in both the title record and the publication record. There may have been a "shortfiction" length option in the past, but now it's simply the default. 70,000 records in the db are a clear indication of that. More than 600 of them are from the first 5 months of 2016. Please give me an example of a magazine record that shows the "SHORTFICTION subcategory" when you get a chance. Thanks. Mhhutchins|talk 01:29, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

OK, now I see what the discussion is all about. You are both right -- sort of :-) If you choose "-" at data entry time, then the software will default the "story length" value to "sf" for SHORTFICTION titles. In most cases, "shortfiction" does not appear in the drop-down list, but until very recently there was a way to make it appear in the list by changing the title type in Edit Title, e.g. to ESSAY, and then going back to Edit Pub. I think I eliminated it when I fixed Bug 563 "EditPub doesn't recognize changes of Length values to '-'" a few weeks ago, but I can't guarantee that there is no way to recreate it now (that part of the code is horrible and needs to be rewritten.) The bug was fairly harmless because "-" and "shortfiction" mean the same thing for SHORTFICTION titles. Ahasuerus 02:06, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

[unindent] With 70K records of unlengthed SHORTFICTION-typed records, any attempt to display the titles in separate categories is going to be confusing to the average user. Yes, we ISFDB editors will understand why there would be a fourth unlengthed category. But put yourself in the place of the new user. They wouldn't understand it. Some authors may have a few dozen such unlengthed titles, and some may have one or two. Now how awkward would that display look? But let's forget about the aesthetics. A user comes to an author's summary page who wants a chronological or alphabetical listing of all of that author's short fiction. They're not going to get that if it's divided into these arbitrary categories. And believe me, to the average reader these categories are as arbitrary as they come. SF geek John Hodgman mentioned on his podcast the other day that he was going to host this year's Nebula awards ceremony and was trying to read as many of the nominees as he could, but had absolutely no idea what a "novelette" was!

So let's look at the second option: just giving the category as a suffix to the title, but all under the SHORTFICTION category on an author's page. The average db user would wonder why some of the titles have "ss" and others have "sf" when they know that these works are roughly the same length. How do we make it clear that: OK, so you want to know what we mean by "sf". Well let us explain. It could be that we don't know its length, or it's an excerpt for which we don't provide the length, or it could be a play or a graphic story. That's why I suggested that if this feature is passed by a consensus, it should be the user's option to have them displayed. At least one other editor concurs with me. Right, JLaTondre? I think we sometimes forget that we're not just doing this for ourselves. (Though I wouldn't be far off the mark to state that it's close to being some editors' attitude about working on the database.) Mhhutchins|talk 01:55, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Sorry to return to the Short Fiction subcategory again, but the ability to do what I was talking about went away over five years ago, so maybe few people remember it. There are plenty of examples still in the System. Check out http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?61727, go to edit and look at the drop down for Time on My Hands, by Mort Weisinger. I clear these as I find them. Once you change the sub-category, it cannot be changed back.--Rkihara 02:40, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

If you change the "story length" value to, say, "novella" in EditPub, you can still go back and change it to "-". When you do that, the software will set the "story length" value back to "shortfiction". Ahasuerus 02:53, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Mhhutchins, If your going to talk about people speaking only for themselves, you should look in a mirror. I've seen more than a few of your tantrums when you didn't or thought you weren't going to get your way.

As far as someone not understanding why we've split things up, a one line explanation should suffice, and I don't think people are as dumb as you think they are.--Rkihara 02:46, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

To go back to the discussion that we had the other day, diplomacy is all about being able to disagree without being disagreeable. It's harder to do on the internet because so much of the body language is lost, but I am sure we can do it if we make a concerted effort. At least we are not limited to 140 characters per message like certain other sites! :-) Ahasuerus 02:58, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Ron, you're upset only because I speak the truth. I'd hold my record of service to this project up to anyone's, especially yours. As a clear indication of how much you've moderated other editor's submissions, just look at the queue. With six of your own submissions sitting there for a couple of days, it's clear that you never even go near the moderator's queue. So I don't need any whining from someone who pops in and out to work on his own submissions. And I don't think our users are dumb. I just have the ability to look at things from an outsider's perspective. I presented my case opposing your suggestion rationally and unemotionally. You take it as a personal attack, and there's nothing I can do to assure you that it wasn't. I am bowing out of this discussion for my own peace of mind. Mhhutchins|talk 03:56, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

This is from the person who threw a temper tantum here, http://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Community_Portal#Author_Biblio_pages_for_.22uncredited.22, and essentially said he was going to kick his heels and hold his breath until he turned red in the face, because he wasn't getting his way. You're too full of yourself.--Rkihara 04:08, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

<puts his bureaucrat's hat on> OK, this has gone too far. Time out. We can revisit the proposed changes to author biblio pages in a different section at a later time. Ahasuerus 05:42, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

A Public Statement & An Appeal

After much debate with myself I have decided to speak up, even if I may speak out of line.

I want to publicly state that I am very upset to find that this community seems to have finally managed to drive off one of its major contributors by repeated finger-pointing and name-calling during heated flame "discussions". For heaven's sake, folks, please remember your manners and re-read some basic netiquette rules !

To Michael I would like to send the appeal: Please come back. If not as your former super-active moderator self, then at least as an editor that responds to requests on his talk page. Michael, you have been moderating my submissions for a long time, and I always felt you did an excellent job! Usually the errors you patiently and politely pointed out were on my side, and if they were not we were able to figure things out quickly. Recently we had a minor clash over procedure, but I like to believe we managed that rather professionally and especially without the flinging of dirt. Nevertheless, I am sure that clash contributed in some way to your withdrawal, and even though I can't promise that something similar won't happen again in the future (we all have opinions), I hope that, by affirming my positive attitude towards you and your work, I can convince you that it is, indeed, worth to come back to the project and continue with your contributions.

Patrick -- Herzbube ^Talk 13:09, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

I should like to point out that Michael had little respect for the rules of netiquette. Just a couple of weeks ago he made a point of saying so. I've been around long enough to remember him bragging a couple of times when his rude exchanges caused editors to give up and leave. Just remember it takes at least two people to have a flame war, and in my opinion, Michael was always the first flamer. Initially, I always tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I'd rather not see him come back unless he learns to be respectful of other opinions.--Rkihara 17:26, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

(puts his bureaucrat's hat back on) As Policy says, "Anything that helps make the ISFDB a more useful and more reliable bibliographic tool is encouraged. Anything that hinders this process is discouraged."

Nothing kills collaborative projects faster than drama. I will archive this section shortly. Ahasuerus 20:12, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Used book store in London

It's been one and a half years since my last used books buying frenzy in Honolulu. The result then was not too bad, but shipping most of the books back home was rather expensive, and stowing the remainder in my backpack without damage was quite a struggle. So this time I intend to do it right: In March I have the opportunity to travel to London for a few days, and I will bring a large empty suitcase! The operation is still in the planning stage, but I know already that I will have two full days for raiding the SF sections of various used books stores in and around the city. The main question is: Where to go? In the past when I visited London I always checked out the Forbidden Planet store, but when I was last there (in 2009 I think) it had grown to juggernaut-like size and I felt rather turned off. So if any of you dear ISFDB editors have a personal recommendation where I could spend a pleasant couple of hours browsing bookshelves full of used SF books, it would be most welcome. Also if the opportunity arises I would not be averse to chat a bit over a coffee or cider :-). I will be there from the evening of March 16h until the weekend. Cheers, Patrick -- Herzbube ^Talk 14:47, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

A good place to start might be the Charing Cross Road, not far from Forbidden Planet. There are a handful of bookstores just north of Leicester Square tube station, notably Quinto Books and Any Amount of Books, which IIRC has a small paperback SF section near the entrance and a small hardcover SF section underground, but Quinto certainly has the better quality books. Charing Cross Road's SF/mystery store Murder One closed a few years ago, as did the excellent Fantasy Centre in north London on the Holloway Road. The best place to go in the area now for secondhand SF is probably Cecil Court, three streets south of Leicester Square tube station. It's full of secondhand/antiquarian bookstores but these stores stock mostly hardcovers rather than paperbacks. I've occasionally spent a whole day there, however unfortunately I won't be in the UK around 16 March. :( PeteYoung 23:18, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

I visited both Any Amount of Books and Quinto Books on Charing Cross, and as you said they only have tiny SF sections, roughly 1 and 1.5 shelves, respectively. After my raid they probably need to recuperate a while :-) before they again have something on offer that is worth its while. Slightly better equipped (one set of shelves, floor-to-ceiling) is the basement of Henry Pordes Books, also on Charing Cross and right next to the other two stores - they mostly have newer books, a lot of them were duplicates from the Gollancz SF Masterwork series that they must have picked up from some wholesale source. Next I checked out some of the stores in Cecil Court, but I soon found out that they cater only to collectors who are willing to spend serious money for first editions. My Back Pages in Balham no longer exists, Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street was supposed to have a second-hand book section in the back but I couldn't find it, and Judd Books on Marchmont Street, although a gorgeous second-hand bookstore, mostly has academic books and only a relatively small general fiction section with a mere handful of SF books strewn in. With such meager success, at last I succumbed to the lures of the Forbidden Planet megastore on Shaftesbury Avenue, but what a disappointment - not a single book by John Brunner, two copies of Babel-17 but nothing else by Delany, and just one (1) book by Pohl (Gateway) and Vance (The Complete Lyonesse). The most attractive part for classic SF readers like me was the Gollancz section with a lot of omnibuses from the SF Gateway pub series. Another large commercial bookstore that I visited was Foyles on Charing Cross: This was a pleasant surprise because they had a sizable SF section, and I liked the tasteful ambience of the place much more than the Forbidden Planet's cold neon glare. After so many so-so experiences, at last I found happiness in Skoob Books, which is located in The Brunswick off Marchmont Street. They have a large SF section of second-hand books, both old and new, in a delightfully packed basement full of nooks and crannies and hidden corners where you can sit down and browse at your leisure. I chatted a bit with the owner, and it appears that their SF section is so large because they are now picking up all the stuff that used to go the now-closed Fantasy Centre. Cheers, Patrick -- Herzbube ^Talk 18:38, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the update, Patrick. I hope to visit London sometime in 2017, and I hope that you (or otzers) have left something worth to collect ;-) Christian Stonecreek 18:48, 8 April 2016 (UTC)

If we had a 'Like' button I'd click it: thanks for the useful info! I was in Charing Cross Road a couple of days ago, and yes, Any Amount of Books has virtually no SF left its shelves!. PeteYoung 14:40, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

As long as Skoob Books is around I wouldn't worry about running out of stuff to buy :-). Just one thing: Stop buying anything by Philip K. Dick now - when you get to London you will find yourself swamped in seas of his books. What is really strange is that when I inspected my acquisitions upon returning home I found more books by Dick than I can remember actually buying. Apparently reality warps not only within his works! Patrick -- Herzbube ^Talk 14:19, 9 April 2016 (UTC)

"Classics of Modern Science Fiction"

(Asking here since the decision will affect pubs verified by multiple editors.)

Classics of Modern Science Fiction was a publication series published by Crown Publishers (US) in 1984-1985. It ran out of steam after 10 volumes. The first 4 volumes were reprinted by Robson Books (UK) in 1985. The UK covers were the same and included "Classics of Modern Science Fiction" at the top of each cover.

Earlier today I noticed that the Robson pubs had been entered inconsistently: two were under the Crown publication series and the other two had a publication series of their own. I merged the two publication series and was about to inform the verifiers when it occurred to me that a separate publication series for the 4 Robson books may be a better solution. What do you think? Ahasuerus 18:19, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

P.S. It turns out that volume 4 was also reprinted by the Australian publisher Greenhouse in 1985. Ahasuerus 18:26, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, separate is better. Hauck 18:29, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Would we have a third publication series for Greenhouse then? Ahasuerus 18:31, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes. Hauck 18:35, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I have to disagree. They are the same publication series: the series name, design, logo, and numbering are consistently the same. I can't think of another series which we separated when it moved from one publisher to another. I see no problem with them being displayed together, which lets the user know that some of the titles were reprinted by another publisher. Separating them will force the user to do further research. Mhhutchins|talk 18:41, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

It's the transnational facet of this publication series that make me choose a different approach than in this quite similar case. It's possible that users may be interested (at first) by publications in their country. Hauck 18:58, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I have to agree with Michael. This feels like a single series. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 19:10, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I would treat this pub series the same as the Quantum series, i.e. keep them together. Another question is, do we want the book club editions in this pub series? These also have the same cover, except for the numbers. --Willem 19:47, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Michael too. It looks as one series with different publishers per country, but with the same -consistent- outwards appearance.--Dirk P Broer 20:32, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Apologies for the late reply, I just now came back after a long'ish absence. I don't have much to add to this discussion, especially no strong opinion, although I tend to lean on the "one pub series" side. As of now, the pub series record does not mention the Greenhouse reprints, so I am going to add this as a note. Patrick -- Herzbube ^Talk 20:32, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

What's the current rule of thumb for 9999-00-00 forthcoming?

The special value 9999-00-00 is not documented on Template:PublicationFields:Year nor Template:TitleFields:Date. Should it be?

One of the unwritten rules is that we should not have titles and publications entered that are more than three months in the future. Regardless of that, ISFDB has support for the special value 9999-00-00 which displays as "forthcoming" for publications and titles. At present only two publications (and their titles) are listed as forthcoming with both of them being more than three months out. --Marc Kupper|talk 07:43, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

We had a discussion about this issue a couple of weeks ago. At the time I wrote:

• A little bit of history. Back in the day, we were naive and tended to trust authors' and publishers' announcement about forthcoming books, hence the use of "9999-00-00". Many years and thousands of cancelled ISBNs later, we learned better :-) That's when we came up with the previously mentioned "60-90 day window" as the standard for entering forthcoming books. It was a compromise between our desire to continue providing "forthcoming" information to our users and the unfortunate reality of wide-spread vaporware. At one point I even wondered if we wanted to change the software to disallow "9999-00-00", but some editors felt that it could be useful in certain cases. The cleanup report that Michael mentioned earlier was a compromise that allowed us to keep an eye on "forthcoming" books. Which reminds me that we should probably enhance it to include books to be published more than 3 months in the future... [implemented 3 days later as per FR 879.]

The more I think about it, the less value I see in 9999-00-00, but there are so few 9999 pubs that it's probably harmless. Ahasuerus 15:35, 2 April 2016 (UTC)

Edward Everett Hale

We appear to have unconnected entries for both Edward Everett Hale and Everett Edward Hale. I can't find any reference that Hale ever went under the name "Everett Edward Hale" and suspect the name was initially entered in error, possibly via the reviews in Bleiler's Science Fiction: The Early Years. None of the pubs associated to "Everett Edward" are verified, but there are the review links. If any editor knows of an actual use of "Everett Edward" then we'll need to make a pseudonym, otherwise I propose making the necessary corrections to remove the "Everett Edward" duplicates and correcting the reviews. Thanks. PeteYoung 05:38, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

He's given as "HALE, EDWARD EVERETT" in Bleiler (page 325). Hauck 12:33, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

According to the standards:

If the review uses a version of the author's name which differs from any of the versions of this author's name known to the ISFDB, but which still serves to unambiguously identify the book (e.g. if the review has a misprint, or abbreviates the author's name), then enter a corrected name

So, I have corrected the review records (which was the proper procedure, even if it had been confirmed that the reviews were credited in the publication to "Everett Edward Hale".) I also corrected author credit of the the publication records based on secondary sources. All were actually published as by "Edward E. Hale", which created a new pseudonym. The corrections I made eliminated the pseudonym "Everett Edward Hale" since there are no longer any records under that name in the database. Mhhutchins|talk 18:26, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

How to handle the "split" of a multi-volume novel?

I created an entry for the book Eleagabal Kuperus, published in 1910, printed (and reprinted several times) in two volumes (part 1 & 2). This is not unusual (here's another examle). In 1928 the book was reprinted again in 2 volumes but each of them got its own additional subtitle: 1989900 and 1989902. I know that the "parts" of a splitted novel should be treated like stand-alone books. Should this example here also be handled as a split novel? Even if the book had been published before always in two (nameless) volumes? If the answer is 'yes': shouldn't the 2 'new' novels be connected by a 'series' entry? My own preference is to handle the two parts as variant titles of Eleagabal Kuperus (similar to the handling of a splitted translation of a book). Thank you for advice! Boskar 18:57, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

For books published in multiple volumes and intended to be sold as a set, you should create one publication record, give the page count for both in the Page Count field (e.g. "245+322") and note the number of volumes in the Note field. For ISFDB purposes, a "split novel" is the publication of a work which originally appeared in one volume and subsequently split into multiple publications and sold separately.

To answer your first question, the title records of "split novels" (as defined by the ISFDB) can be varianted to the title record for the whole work. The answer to your second question: the software prevents variant titles from being entered into series. Only the parent title can contain series data. What you describe as your preference is the way the split titles should be handled. Mhhutchins|talk 20:06, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm not sure why Mhhutchins recommends doing it has a single publication. We have a number of two volume sets as separate publication records. For example A Treasury of Great Science Fiction by Anthony Boucher was always sold as a pair of books. The spine artwork looks odd until you have the book side by side on a shelf. We have that on ISFDB as Vol 1 and Vol 2 titles and their vol 1 and 2 publication records.

There's no problem with making a series that contains the all-in-one edition, vol 1, and vol 2. A downside is that the all-in-one edition will appear at the bottom of the series list if you assign series numbers to vol 1 and 2. I tested and ISFDB does not support something like |0 in the series number field to push a record to the top of the list. You can variant title the vol 1 & 2 titles books versions were published with slightly different sub-titles. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:52, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

The publication you cite, Marc, shouldn't be used as an example in this case. It's an anthology, not a novel, and that's what we're talking about here. I was trying to point out the difference between multi-volume novels and "split" novels, because the original poster may have thought the two were similar. They're not. Mhhutchins|talk 21:26, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Mhhutchins' answer does not correspond to how I understood How does the ISFDB deal with "split novels"?. But if the ISFDB rules really permit to handle the two volumes as variants that's fine; if they don't permit then Marc Kupper's example is also a fine way to handle the issue. Boskar 17:26, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

As I pointed out above, that example doesn't apply here. I see "split" novels as similar to serials, which are varianted to the parent title. If we didn't variant the titles of each part of a "split" novel they would be separate from the work's parent title without any connection. (Creating a fake series isn't the answer, IMHO.) The best way to currently connect these titles is through the variant function. Now if we had a relationship function, the question would be moot. Mhhutchins|talk 21:26, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

Boskar, what part of my answer does not correspond with the current standard. There is nothing in the documentation that explains what to do with the titles of split novels after they're created, only that they should be entered as novels. My response to your question was to show how I would handle them once they're in the database. Perhaps the standards should be clearer and actually document how they should be handled. The examples that are linked to are handled incorrectly, in my opinion. Without further research, the average user would find no direct connection to the original titles. But if that's the way they should be handled, then it should actually be documented, especially since there are probably just as many (or more) cases in the database of varianting split novels than not. Mhhutchins|talk 22:16, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

I am absolutely happy with this answer! I also think the best way to handle the situation is to define the separate volumes as variant titles. Thank you for clarification! Boskar 16:46, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

"Fenix", Polish SF magazine

Just in case you see some Polish stories suddenly showing up amongst your favorite authors, I thought I would mention what I'm up to. I've added the Polish magazine Fenix, with 107 issues. I'm about half-way through adding issue contents, and will finish that off by the weekend. The contents are adding a lot of Polish translations of English-language SF (plus some from other languages), which for now are not varianted to their original publications. I have many (but not all) of the original titles, and will get to the varianting in a few days. In some cases, I may also be creating variant spellings of some authors (e.g. the "Strugaccy" brothers, better known as Boris & Arkady Strugatsky), but I'm hoping that some of the cleanup reports will find those that I don't notice. Also, since I now have some macros to help me with the Polish SF databases, I many continue these efforts into some of their other magazines, so these "stray Polish variants" may continue over the next few months as I import their data. Chavey 13:21, 5 April 2016 (UTC)

These problems would be avoided by varianting the contents of each issue before moving on to the next issue. That's usually how publications with translated contents are handled. Otherwise, in the meantime, all of these will just be sitting in the database, waiting to be repaired, and risking the chance that many of them might be overlooked when you get around to fixing them. Mhhutchins|talk 08:08, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Cover: Le grand oiseau des galaxies

Is this correct? An interior art from 1979 as a variant of a cover from 1983? Thanks.Wolland 01:06, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixed, I hope. It appears to have been first published as interior art in the 1981 artist's collection, and later as covers to different publications. Mhhutchins|talk 01:21, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Not fixed yet. An internet search shows a different cover (DNA strand made up of figures) than the other one (a eagle-like bird). I'll try to figure it out. For now I'm going to break all variants. Thanks for finding the error. Mhhutchins|talk 01:24, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

If you take a look in Tim White's summary page you will find some more records in this situation.Wolland 01:28, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Dragon Awards at Dragon Con

Dragon Con is starting the Dragon Awards this year. It's an award based on fan popularity (like the Asimov's Readers' awards). Do we want to add them so we can include them once they are awarded in September? Since it has the potential to be voted on by up to 60-70k people, it seems like a good one to add. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:39, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

If someone volunteers to keep the data up to date, I see no reason not to add them. In most cases, the limiting factor is the man-hours that are needed to maintain currently missing awards. Ahasuerus 19:55, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

I can do it. Since this will be the first year, they won't need to be entered until September, and there is no backlog of previous awards to add. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:20, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Sounds good. Let's wait until they announce the nominees, though. If we create the basic data now, the award type and/or its categories will show up on our nightly cleanup reports. Ahasuerus 23:33, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

That makes sense. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:41, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

New/Edit/Add/Clone Publication cleanup

Please note that the behavior of these Web pages has been synchronized to support the EDITOR title type in the Content section. The associated Help page has been updated.

In addition, the software has been cleaned up, but the changes shouldn't be visible to the naked eye. Unless, of course, I messed up and accidentally introduced a new bug (not that it ever happens!) Ahasuerus 20:40, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

The Annotated ...

We have at least four instances where The Annotated X is handled merely as a publication of the famous NOVEL; that is, without any OMNIBUS or COLLECTION title record under the Annotated name.

• The Annotated Charlotte's Web P70804 -- Annotations only
• The New Annotated Dracula P295412 -- many essays, etc
• The Annotated Phantom Tollbooth P360225 -- Annotations only
• The Annotated Wizard of Oz P281974 -- several essays, etc

Thus The Annotated Charlotte's Web is in the database merely as a publication of Charlotte's Web.

In two of those four cases, "Annotations" is the only ESSAY content in the database (no Introduction), so there is only one author other than the original writer and perhaps illustrator. For Oz there is one major new author, ie the usually so-called editor, and for Dracula there are dozens.

More commonly we have The Annotated X as an OMNIBUS or COLLECTION distinct NOVEL whose publications are among the publications of the famous novel or novels. At least for The Annotated Alice T31174 there are two constituent novels, hence OMNIBUS. There we have "Introduction" as the only ESSAY content (no Annotations).

Is there agreement about how such works should be handled? --Pwendt|talk 23:37, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

I know of no annotated novel which is typed as anything other than NOVEL. Can you give an example of a publication of a single annotated novel which has been typed as OMNIBUS or COLLECTION? As to an annotated work's contents, it depends upon whether the record has been primary verified, and that editor's personal decision to add an ESSAY for the annotations. I personally would, but there's no hard and fast rule that it's required. Mhhutchins|talk 23:50, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Thanks for reply concerning the entered contents of the "Annotated" publications.

(one amendment above, strikeout and bold) The Annotated Alice is an OMNIBUS and The Annotated Brothers Grimm T157392 is a COLLECTION, so classified by the nature of their famous original contents. Both are in the database with distinct "Annotated" title records. At the moment I do not find any OMNIBUS or COLLECTION whose so-called Annotated edition is handled as the four NOVELs listed far above.

The point of first paragraph is that those four so-called Annotated novels do not have distinct title records. The Title Reference for The Annotated Charlotte's Web is Charlotte's Web, for instance. --Pwendt|talk 00:04, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to drop the issue of annotations entirely for my answer: If a work is published with a title which is not the canonical title, it should have its own title record which is varianted to the canonical title. In the case of Charlotte's Web, it should have its own title record. I will unmerge it from its title record and variant it. If you find others like this, either proceed to unmerge the publication from its title record and make it into a variant, or leave a message on the Moderator noticeboard asking one of us to do it. Mhhutchins|talk 00:18, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

(interjection 40 hours later) FYI to whom it may concern, I did promptly post to ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard#The Annotated X novels without distinct Title records, or without variant status. Since then verifiers/moderators of the particular publ's listed at the top have replied. --Pwendt|talk 20:27, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Now back to annotations: this title isn't varianted because there are multiple editions of stories by the Brothers Grimm, with a wide variety of contents. This particular work is a distinct collection, thus it isn't varianted to any other. Same situation with The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft and The Annotated Poe. The reason why you can't find COLLECTION-typed records of this sort as varianted is because of the nature of the collections. Each is almost invariably unique and not a previously published collection. Mhhutchins|talk 00:29, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Do we want to consider placing the Norton and Liveright annotated books into a publication series? Many of them have a matching trade dress. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 23:30, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Other than Dracula and Lovecraft, are there more titles so that we can determine it's a series? Other than having the same editor, I'm not sure that there's sufficient data to assume they're part of a series, especially since they're under different imprints. Mhhutchins|talk 03:05, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

There are a bunch:

• The Annotated Alice
• The Annotated Brothers Grimm
• The Annotated Classic Fairy Tales
• The Annotated Hunting of the Snark
• The Annotated Peter Pan
• The Annotated Wind in the Willows
• The Annotated Wizard of Oz

I know there is also A Christmas Carol, Hans Christian Andersen and The Secret Garden which we don't have listed. Of course, they also do several others which are outside our scope. I have their Sherlock Holmes and Huckleberry Finn. I don't know if the Lovecraft coming out on the Liveright imprint is just for that one, or if they are moving to that imprint for the series. The trade dress doesn't match, except in size, which is uniform with much of the rest of them. Also, it lists Norton's other annotated books. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 08:43, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

Writers and Illustrators of the Future

Would this fit under Awards? Should we have a listing for it? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:20, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia says that:

• Winners and published finalists in the contest have included the writers Stephen Baxter, Karen Joy Fowler, Carl Frederick, James Alan Gardner, Jim C. Hines, Jay Lake, David D. Levine, Syne Mitchell, Nnedi Okorafor, Michael H. Payne, Brian Plante, Robert Reed, Bruce Holland Rogers, Patrick Rothfuss, Dean Wesley Smith, Catriona Sparks, Sean Tinsley, Mary Turzillo, Sean Williams, Dave Wolverton, David Zindell, and the artists Shaun Tan and Frank Wu.

and that the list of past and current judges includes:

• Algis Budrys, Gregory Benford, Kevin J. Anderson, Orson Scott Card, Jack Williamson, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Brian Herbert, K. D. Wentworth, Tim Powers, Robert J. Sawyer, Frederik Pohl, Jerry Pournelle, Andre Norton, Larry Niven, and Anne McCaffrey.

That's an impressive list and I would be in favor of adding this award if someone is willing to enter the data. Ahasuerus 21:25, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

I will add it to the list of awards I am entering. Once I get past the Japanese short stories, it should go faster since I won't have to enter them, then wait for approval, then enter the awards, and wait for approval. That really slows things down. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:56, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

It's now on my list. There should be two award types: Writers of the Future, and Illustrators of the Future. There are three quarterly winners for each (1st, 2nd, and 3rd place for the writers, and three quarterly co-winners for the illustrators) and one Grand Prize each year for each (one for writers and one for illustrators).

Writers of the Future (for each year):

Quarterly First Prize

Quarterly Second Prize

Quarterly Third Prize

Grand Prize (winner of this prize will always have won one of the quarterly prizes)

Illustrators of the Future:

Quarterly Co-Winner

Grand Prize (winner of this prize will always have won the quarterly prize)

Hope that helps make it clear. I know someone who can help me find a list of which people won which prizes. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:09, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

It's completely covered at the SFADB. There are a few other categories, but those can be added on the fly (or is that a moderator only function?). --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 23:20, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Their coverage isn't complete as they have a few holes at the beginning and in more recent years. Only mods can add the categories. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:35, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

Only "bureaucrats" (Al and myself) can create new award types. Only moderators can create/edit/delete award categories within existing award types. All editors can create/edit/delete individual award records.

One thing that we probably want to decide ahead of time is whether "Illustrators of the Future" is a separate award type or whether it's an award category under the award type "Writers of the Future". According to the SFADB, there is one annual Grand Prize and about a dozen nominees per year, which makes it look more like a category than a separate award. However, the way the ISFDB software handles awards, an award type is either a "poll" or "not a poll". Poll-based awards like the Locus Poll awards let you specify "second place", "third place", etc. Non-poll awards are limited to "winners" and "nominees". Since the "Writers" award is a poll-based award and the "Illustrators" award is not a poll-based award, it would be hard to set them up as different categories within the same award type. Ahasuerus 23:43, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

The contests are held together, with the winning illustrators working on an illustration for a winning story (or stories) in the collection volume. For ISFDB purposes, they should be considered separate awards as they have separate prizes and the writer and illustrators are not competing against each other (they only compete against other writers in the case of writers, and other illustrators in the case of illustrators). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:11, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

I disagree. They should be considered as separate categories of the same award. The Hugo award has separate prizes, and the writers don't compete against each other, so that's not an effective argument. SFADB puts them together as two categories under one award. Wikipedia puts them together as two categories under one award. We should do so as well. Chavey 00:32, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

They aren't the same award, though. All of the Hugo awards are Hugo awards because it's one award with multiple categories. The Writers of the Future award and the Illustrators of the Future award are not different categories of the same award. Trying to combine them will only cause confusion. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 07:03, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Also, Wikipedia doesn't list them as "two categories under one award". They just have them both in one article (likely because there aren't very many references being used in the article, and the Illustrators article may not have had enough to support it as a separate article. It doesn't say they are the same contest (because they aren't) or that they are two categories of the same contest. As for SFADB, I don't know enough about the site to make a comment (I've used it in the past, but found it to be hit-or-miss for the things I was looking for. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:11, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

S. N. Dyer

Anyone know anything about S.N Dyer? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wizkorea (talk • contribs) .

That's Sharon N. Farber. Chavey 00:34, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Legacy.com --and other legacy webpages

I am not familiar with legacy.com. Today I added its copy of a NYTimes obituary to the Webpages at Nancy Garden A5888.

Later I found that the obit is freely accessible now at NYTimes.com [1]. Another day I might replace the other URL, but I decided to mention it here.

I reached that copy at NYTimes.com via the author's homepage [2], which links four June 2014 obituaries, all still freely accessible now. The footer on her webpages states: "This is the only authorized web site for Nancy Garden. Content updated April 2011. Copyright © 2011 by Nancy Garden. All rights reserved."

I did not add her homepage either, although I would have done so if known at the time I revised vital data (legal name and deathdate per NYTimes obituary).

For all three domains, prospective future accessibility of the content may be relevant here, but I don't know that it is considered relevant. --Pwendt|talk 21:13, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

If there is currently a requirement that the user be registered (free or not) to access a specific page on a website, then it should not be linked to ISFDB author summary page. You have the option to create a bio page on the wiki in order to link such sites, but you should state that registration to the website is required. Or you can add the data from such websites into the author's data, and use the wiki bio page to give the source for the data, whether you're able to link to it or not.

If there is currently no such requirement to register, feel free to link it. We can't know what's going to happen in the future.

If there's a choice between the two, always choose the one with unrestricted access. Having said all this, I don't believe there is a stated policy as such, but the way I've outlined it here seems to be the de facto standard. Mhhutchins|talk 23:14, 14 April 2016 (UTC)

Changes to Wiki cleanup reports

The cleanup reports that identify publications, publishers, series, magazines and fanzines with matching Wiki pages have been changed. The algorithm no longer flags the following types of records:

• publication records whose Notes fields contain at least one link to the ISFDB Wiki
• publisher, series, magazine and fanzine records with a "Webpages" link to the ISFDB Wiki

What this means is that we can keep meatier Wiki pages as long as we link them from their respective database records. Hopefully, this change will make the cleanup process easier.

Once everything has been cleaned up, I will remove the current "lexical match" link from all pages. Ahasuerus 19:45, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Is it possible to display these within their own category rather than intersperse them in the others? Mhhutchins|talk 20:50, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Let me first make sure that I understood the question correctly. The way these cleanup reports work post-patch is that they no longer display any records with links to the ISFDB Wiki. Are you suggesting that we create a separate suite of cleanup reports that would show records with links to the ISFDB Wiki? If so, then yes, it would be fairly easy to do. What kind of use cases do you have in mind? Ahasuerus 21:12, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

P.S. Re-reading your question, it occurs to me that you may be asking whether we could move all Wiki cleanup reports to a separate section/block on the main cleanup menu. If so, then yes, it would be very easy to do. Ahasuerus 21:14, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Yes. That's what I meant. It would be nice to have all of the wiki migration reports all in the same category on the cleanup report list. Thanks. Mhhutchins|talk 01:04, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Done! Ahasuerus 16:58, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

There is a -misleading- 25 titles long list of Fanzine Wikipages that do not link to Fanzine records. Mostly because a Fanzine:Title of the Fanzine wikipage can't be properly (as in working vice-versa) linked unless it is moved to Series:Title of the Fanzine. The 'Title of the Fanzine' needs to be the precise title of the fanzine record too, or the link will fail. See e.g. the history for Fanzine:The Philip K. Dick Society Newsletter.--Dirk P Broer 09:57, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

The same holds true for Magazines, as Kpulliam already found out four years ago.--Dirk P Broer 10:56, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

What I'm misunderstanding is that there's a clean-up report which finds unlinked wiki pages, and another one that finds wiki pages to be migrated to the database. So what's the point in linking wiki pages to the database when the goal of the project is to delete them entirely from the wiki? Shouldn't the data on those unlinked wiki pages be moved to the database and the wiki pages be deleted? If you only link them to the database, you're removing them from one clean-up report but adding them to another! Mhhutchins|talk 16:28, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

I expect that the contents of the vast majority of these Wiki pages will be migrated to the database and the Wiki pages will be deleted. Some "meatier" Wiki pages -- like Publisher:Science Fiction Book Club -- will likely be kept and linked from the database side.

At this time we have four reports for each record type (publication, publisher, series, magazine, fanzine):

• [records] with Wiki pages
• [records] with Talk pages
• [record] Wiki pages not linked to [records]
• [record] Talk Wiki pages not linked to [records]

It may be possible to combine each set of four reports into one, but there would be technical difficulties because of the way the nightly reports work. I also suspect that it would make it harder for editors to understand what is going on with each Wiki page. Ahasuerus 19:24, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Edit Publication bug fixed

Bug 563, "EditPub doesn't recognize changes of Length values to '-'", has been fixed. (The way we handle "storylen" values really needs to be changed, but that's a much bigger can of worms.) Ahasuerus 22:29, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Cheap Street Press Collection at Tulane University Library

I'll be in New Orleans for a conference in early May and will be taking the opportunity to spend a day at the Rare Books department at Tulane University's Howard-Tilton Memorial Library to view the Cheap Street Collection. In addition to having copies of all of the Cheap Street books, the collection also houses promotional material and correspondence between the O'Nale's and the authors and artists whose work is represented in the collection.

My primary interest is in the KSR correspondence, but if anyone has anything else they'd like me to investigate or grab pictures of please let me know. My appointment is on May 9th. Albinoflea 15:59, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Scheduled maintenance on 2016-04-28 at 8pm

The database will be down for patch installation between 8pm and 8:05pm server (North American Daylight Time). The patch will add support for transliterated titles. Patch notes will be available shortly. Ahasuerus 23:33, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Everything should be back up. The first few titles listed on Vladimir Colin's and Arkady Strugatsky's Summary pages showcase the new functionality. Detailed patch notes to come. Ahasuerus 00:06, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Patch 2016-04-76: Transliterated titles

A new field, "Transliterated Title", has been added to title records. It's similar to the other "transliterated value" fields that have been added lately. You can use it to add romanized versions of titles that contain non-Latin characters.

Please note that you can enter as many transliterated versions of each title as necessary, which can be handy when there is more than one possible transliteration. (If nothing happens the first time you click on "Add Transliterated Title", please do a clean page reload by pressing Control-F5.)

The regular Search logic has been updated to check transliterated titles, so a search on "ulitka" should find this record and this record. The main Advanced Search page has had "Transliterated Title" added as one of Title selectors.

Approximately a dozen Web pages have been updated to display transliterated titles in mouse-over bubbles. Again, this is similar to the way other "transliterated values" fields work.

As always, if you run into any issues, please report them here. Ahasuerus 00:32, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

P.S. This patch also added a dozen new title-specific cleanup reports to the cleanup menu. The data will be available tomorrow morning. In addition, all cleanup reports that deal with transliteration issues have been moved to a new "Transliterations" section. Ahasuerus 00:44, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Awesome! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:06, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

"Check for Duplicates" bugged

Of the three versions of our Duplicate Finder two -- the publication-specific one and the title-specific one -- are currently broken. The one that handles authors is OK. I expect to have a fix deployed shortly. Ahasuerus 02:01, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Fixed. Ahasuerus 04:47, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Author Biblio pages for "uncredited"

As of this morning, we have 43,063 titles whose author is "uncredited". It takes over 30 seconds to load this "author"'s Summary page and the resulting bibliography is so long that I doubt anyone finds it useful. In addition, every time the server builds and displays this page, it hammers the database and affects everyone else's response/load times. I assume that few users access this page on purpose, but I see that it has been displayed 29,406 times since we started keeping track. That's a lot of extra work for the server for very little gain. As the number of "uncredited" titles continues to grow, this will become a bigger problem.

I propose that we change the software that drives our Summary, Alphabetical and Chronological pages to display the following message when one of these pages is accessed for "uncredited":

• Summary[/Alphabetical/Chronological] Bibliography for "uncredited" is not available due to the number of titles associated with this "author".

We can also change all other pages that link to the Summary page not to create a hyperlink for "uncredited".

Am I missing any legitimate reasons why a user may want to view "uncredited"'s biblio pages? Ahasuerus 23:27, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Is there a way to create a report which compares titles on this list with other titles with the same or a similar name which were published within a few years of when the uncredited work was published? It might help reduce the number of items on the list. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:52, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Also, perhaps run a chron job nightly which creates a cached version of the pages. That way, it hits the database only once a day for each one, but they are still reasonably current as far as new items being added to them. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:54, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

I used to go that summary page to see if there's anything that can be legitimately cleaned, e.g. COVERART records. But since one editor insists that there's a legitimate reason for crediting COVERART records to "uncredited", I don't check any more. Mhhutchins|talk 01:12, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

I will be very interested by the creation of a new author called "uncredited cover artist" (or any other circumlocution). 1) This will decrease the number of "uncredited" titles by a grand total of 4 (an exepriment of my doing). 2) This will somewhat align the COVERART category with the other types (it's the only one where an authorship along the lines of "uncredited" is not allowed, which is sometimes quite hard to explain to newcomers). 3) More importantly, this will allow a real bibliographic work on such items (date of first appearance (like here), place of first appearance, language, re-uses for the same title (like here), re-uses for a different title, re-uses in different countries (like this one)). 4) Finally, when the "real" artist will be found, it will allow a quite rapid update of all concerned records (as they will be varianted). Hauck 08:21, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

An interesting thought, but perhaps it deserves a separate topic. Ahasuerus 18:13, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

So the issue at hand was to decrease the strain on the server, and Hauck proposes that we create another form of credit that will most likely cause the same or even greater strain than the current problem. Add to that the time and effort it will take to update thousands of records in the database with this new credit. Amazing. Mhhutchins|talk 18:42, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Here's how to explain the difference in handling artist credit and author credit to new editors: they're two different things and the ISFDB handles them accordingly. Period. Mhhutchins|talk 18:44, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for reminding me periodically why I usually don't partcipate in debates (sic) here. Thanks for your advice on how to explain things to newcomers, this may really win new contributors. Hauck 07:31, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Community Portal/Rules and Standards debates do get heated from time to time. I would urge all contributors to exercise restraint in order to make the process smoother and maximize editor participation. When editors give up on these discussions, it increases the likelihood of important considerations being overlooked when deciding which direction we should take. Ahasuerus 16:33, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm unable to restrain myself when I read something so extraordinarily bad, and our software writer says it's "an interesting thought". It would have been an interesting idea back in 2005, but a decade later, it just will not work. Don't complain when I speak my mind about a topic under discussion and then later point out that I should have been part of the discussion before such bad ideas are implemented. Mhhutchins|talk 16:52, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

It's great when editors speak their minds, I am just urging everyone to do it in a less heated way. As they say, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar :-) All of us have changed each other's minds over the last 10 years -- most recently you convinced me to implement the COVERART changes differently -- but the reason why we have been able to do it was that we presented convincing logical arguments and left the communication channels open. Ahasuerus 17:46, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm not a diplomat, and I'm not going to sugarcoat my words when reacting to a bad suggestion. Maybe if I'd spoken louder and firmer in the past, a lot of directions the ISFDB has gone in the last few years could have been altered. (I won't go into those unless you insist, but in a separate post.) I'm going to make my opinion known as strongly as possible. I know no other way to do it. Take me as I am, or not at all. Now I'll take a few days break to clear my head of this anger. Mhhutchins|talk 18:10, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

Diplomatic skills are just that, skills. We are not born with them, but they can be learned. It's the art of dealing with people in a tactful and effective way, something that greatly facilitates communications and policy development. Ahasuerus 19:07, 2 May 2016 (UTC)

I think that addressing the issues raised in Hervé's #3 and #4 would be helpful, but I am not sure what the best way to support this functionality would be. It doesn't have to be done as yet another "uncredited" "author"; there may be other, more elegant, ways of accomplishing the same objectives. I'll have to think about it.

That said, it's a potentially huge can of worms and I think it would be best to discuss it separately. Ahasuerus 19:20, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea to display the message rather than the summary page. Once or twice a year it happens that I accidentally hit on uncredited's link, and I also think of no good reason to display all the titles of this eager beaver: it wouldn't be useful to any search purpose. Stonecreek 18:46, 1 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Christian. And I like the idea of not creating the hyperlinks -- I know I've clicked by mistake from time to time. --MartyD 01:48, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

I think dropping the hyperlink is best, but allowing searches for "uncredited" under "Advanced Search," with searches for "enabled" only after the specification of at least one other parameter, such as Year, Publication Type, etc.--Rkihara 19:41, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

The proposed change would affect author pages and author links only. It shouldn't affect title links or the ability to run Advanced Title searches. Ahasuerus 20:16, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

(unindent) The software has been changed not to display "uncredited"'s Summary, Chronological or Alphabetical biblio pages. It will require additional work not to display "uncredited" as a hyperlink. Ahasuerus 19:41, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Wells Odhams editions

I have several copies of what I think is this series. The note there gives reasons for making the date 1953; the books look much more in the style of the 1930s to me. This listing mentions inscriptions dated 1933. I have eight of those nine, plus three more, one of which is very slightly different from the others -- the red cloth is a slightyl different tone and the lettering is gilt, whereas on the other ten volumes the lettering is grey to black. The differences could be just due to differential wear and storage; I bought the different one from another source. One volume (not the different one) has an inscription dated 1935. The other nine like it were all bought together and can be assumed to also be the same age; it looks like the owner just inscribed one of the books.

I'll go through each volume and see if each is already entered in the database, but what do I do about dates? I think I should change the note about 1953 to indicate that it seems to be no more trustworthy than the others, and give 1933 as the best guess, mentioning both my inscribed copy and the reference on the web. Is that good enough? Mike Christie (talk) 00:20, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Here is an image of one of the books in the series, from a current eBay listing. Mike Christie (talk) 00:24, 3 May 2016 (UTC)

Thomas Harris?

Thinking of deleting the entry for Thomas Harris. Hannibal Lecter seems to fall outside of the definition of SF.--Rkihara 16:27, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes! Hauck 16:30, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

Harris's books have been nominated for 5 Stoker, 1 Locus and 1 World Fantasy awards. I suggest we change them to "non-genre" instead of deleting them. Ahasuerus 17:25, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

They definitely fall into horror (if nothing else), which falls under the umbrella of speculative fiction as defined here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:24, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

The Rules of Acquisition define speculative fiction to include supernatural horror, but not psychological horror. In other word, for our purposes zombies are "genre" and cannibals are "non-genre". Unless they are zombie cannibals, of course :) Ahasuerus 15:27, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I clarified ISFDB:Policy#Exclusions based on the above. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:19, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I actually feel that you may have muddied things a bit. Your three examples of exclusions are all works which have been allowed into the database either due to a de facto standard of having been nominated for an award, or because their author is above the threshold. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 23:11, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I agree that the chosen examples are not helpful because they are exceptions. I doubt that we need examples in this section at all. Ahasuerus 23:50, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

That's fine. They can be removed (and I just did that). I included them because they were mentioned specifically in the Wikipedia article as examples of it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:32, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I should note that Wikipedia included Ringu as an example of psychological horror, even though it includes some supernatural elements (disease transmission via video, cursing, etc.) ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:34, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I'd also like to point out that several Harris' titles have not been nominated or won awards. He's clearly not above the threshold. Some of them were probably entered as a result of reviews when that was the standard. But I can see no reason that we include Black Sunday under the current ROA. Should we either delete these titles, revisit allowing reviewed works in, or consider allowing psychological horror in? The Stokers, Jacksons and the Locus awards don't appear to make the distinction. Perhaps we shouldn't either. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 23:11, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

My take on it is that psychological horror is fundamentally different from speculative fiction. All branches of spec fiction -- from alternate history to ghost stories -- postulate a world different from ours while psychological horror does not. Ahasuerus 23:50, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

I lean more toward supporting Rtrace's suggestion. Excluding some horror may only lead to confusion. Yes, we have the policy page we can point to, but most people aren't going to know about it right away (I know I didn't know about it for the first while when I started submitting works). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:32, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the term "speculative fiction" is nebulous (e.g. see this peculiar categorization), so new users won't know for sure what we cover until their read our Policy.

We recognized it as a problem back in the 1990s, but we couldn't come up with a better term. We wanted something that would cover science fiction, fantasy and supernatural horror (I don't recall whether alternate history was discussed since it was still pretty rare then), but "The Internet Database of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Supernatural Horror" would have been too unwieldy. John Clute's Fantastika wasn't "a thing" at the time and I am not sure it would be less obscure even in 2016. Ahasuerus 01:14, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I think this may be one of those things that's just on the border and should be included (similar to the way non-genre works by those "above the threshold" are included). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:32, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

That's a very different case. When we include non-genre works by authors "above the threshold", we include all of their book length works regardless of genre. The proposal to include psychological horror is based on genre. Ahasuerus 01:03, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I think the percentage of psychological horror compared to supernatural horror is pretty small, especially nowadays. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 00:32, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

It goes up and down. The whole horror field crashed and burned in the 1990s, then made a comeback. And there is no telling what we may end up with once we start getting more Chinese, Russian, etc books.

More importantly, I believe we should change our definition of speculative fiction based on merit and not on whether something is popular. Ahasuerus 01:03, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

What do you mean? I wasn't aware of our definition being based on popularity. Sorry, I'm just not understanding what you mean. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 04:58, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

I was responding to your comment that "the percentage of psychological horror compared to supernatural horror is pretty small, especially nowadays". My point was that I don't think that the amount of psychological horror being published should be a significant consideration when determining whether to include it. If we decide to change the scope of the ISFDB project to include another genre or subgenre, I believe we should do it based on our understanding of where the borders of speculative fiction lie rather than on the number of books in the (sub)genre. Ahasuerus 05:27, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

That makes sense. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 06:46, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

My personal preference is that with works where it's unclear if it's speculative, the person who enters it should normally include in the title synopsis something that says "why this is speculative fiction". E.g., what about The Secret Garden or A Little Princess makes them speculative? And if someone wanted to add the horror book Little Angie to the database, I think they should be obligated to explain what they think is supernatural horror instead of "just" psychological horror. Chavey 01:18, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Magazine Directory and Magazine Search updates

Magazine Directory and Magazine Search have been updated to take advantage of transliterated titles. For example, the "Te" part of the Magazine Directory now lists "Техника – молодежи" because the transliterated title of one its title records is "Tekhnika - molodezhi". Ahasuerus 00:01, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

2016-05-05: Sporadic connectivity problems

Some users are reporting experiencing sporadic connectivity problems since noon server (US Eastern Daylight) time. Ahasuerus 18:01, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Title tags revamp

Due to the number of titles associated with popular title tags like "fantasy", "science fiction", and "young-adult fantasy", the Web pages that display them have been revamped. They now display 100 titles per page, which is similar to the way Advanced Search pages work. In addition, the displayed data has been tweaked and expanded to use the same table columns as the Advanced Title Search results page. Finally, more links have been added so that if you are on the page that lists the titles that I have tagged with "young-adult fantasy", you can easily jump to the page that shows all of my tags or to the page that shows all titles associated with the "young-adult fantasy" tag. Ahasuerus 23:43, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Planet Savers

This title really seems to be a NOVELLA rather than a NOVEL. It has barely 100 pages in most of its publications (or even less) and is afaik often referred to as SHORTFICTION. In fact it has been already published in 1958 in Amazing, see here. It seems to me that we have another case of a 'novel' that got entered as such only because the publisher Ace said it was one. Is there any reason that would speak against changing the title type? Stonecreek 15:26, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Looking through various sources (SFE, wikipedia, two Darkover sites) I could find no evidence that the 1962 publication as Ace Double features any fundamental change or addition. It seems that the two titles have to be merged, unless there's new information supplied. Stonecreek 14:02, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

A quick check of the online Project Gutemberg version and the Ace Double F-153 doesn't show any changes in the text. Hauck 15:13, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

So the titles were merged and the corresponding publications were adapted. Stonecreek 03:57, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Changes made for the french translations. Hauck 06:32, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

List of people who can work in various languages

I think it would be useful to have a list of people somewhere on the site of those who can work in various languages. For instance, I would be listed as English and Japanese (at least), as would Uzume. Then, we could add a "Language help" link in the navigation menu on the left, and perhaps add one to one of the submenus on the main site, too (under "Other Pages" or "Editing Tools", perhaps). Thoughts? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:56, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes, this could be useful. But what exactly do you mean by working in a language? For example, due to a school course in Latin and a basic learner course I may be able to understand written Italian and could handle such submissions. Would that be enough by your definition or should we establish different levels of fluency? Stonecreek 17:24, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Just to be able to handle entries here. Transliterations, mostly. I don't think we need a lot more than that here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:52, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

I expect that different housekeeping tasks will require at least three different tiers of language proficiency:

• Working knowledge of the alphabet to be able to add transliterations
• Working knowledge of the basic grammar and bibliographic terms/abbreviations to be able to parse bibliographic information
• Ability to translate titles

Ahasuerus 21:07, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

So, should I whip up something? And what about the links I mentioned? Would that be something we could add to make it easier for people to find the page? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:38, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Something like this: Language help. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:05, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Ahasuerus, will this work? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:43, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Sure, it's a start. We just need to decide which Help pages should link to this list.

P.S. Sorry about slow responses, I am currently buried in Fixer's stuff. Last month the eager beaver... er, the eager robot found almost 20,000 ISBNs for me to process. Ahasuerus 19:38, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Hopefully it will prove useful. Now to encourage people to go add themselves to it... ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:47, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Have we picked a transliteration systems for each language yet? For example, I would transliterate Japanese using Hepburn, rather than JSL or Kunrei-shiki, since that is the system I am most familiar with.--Rkihara 16:02, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I usually use a modified Hepburn. For example, "ha" instead of "wa" for は, "wo" instead of "o" for を, and "he" instead of "e" for へ, for those particles. I also use "sho" instead of "syo" for しょ (and the like). I prefer to use macrons instead of double letters or "ou". And "n" instead of "m" for the syllabic ん. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:51, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

The decision was to support multiple transliteration systems instead of choosing one transliteration system per language. As our mouse-over Help says, "If there is more than one possible Romanization, click on the Add Transliterated [record] button below and enter the other Romanized spellings of the [record]. You can click on the Add button as many times as necessary." Ahasuerus 18:21, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

That makes sense, especially since we use the title in the original script now. Makes things much easier. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:23, 17 May 2016 (UTC)

I wonder if an option should be put in to hide the transliterations (so you have to click "Show" to make them appear)? In some cases (such as Japanese, as shown above), there can be quite a number of possible transliterations, which would make the page look unwieldy or ugly. Would that be easy to add, Ahasuerus? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:04, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

It wouldn't be that hard to implement, but first we need to agree on the nature of the change. For example, would it be better to display all transliterations on one line and use slashes (pipes?) as delimiters? Ahasuerus 00:29, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

I thought about that, but I think that would make the titles harder to read, especially if there were more than just a couple of them. There are a couple titles which have 6-9 different transliterations, so that could get messy quickly. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:41, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

Alternatively we could use mouse-over help, which we already use elsewhere, e.g. see this pub. Ahasuerus 16:30, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

That would work, too. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:31, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

[unindent]

Added a few things (Hebrew, Latin, Ancient and Modern Greek, Hungarian…). I put "3" where I felt most comfortable, but I suppose I could work out approximative translations for most of them if I really had to… :o) Linguist 09:40, 18 May 2016 (UTC).

I'm wondering why we're putting a list of multi-linguistic editors on a page. Are people supposed to contact them by email? Or put questions on their talk page? The three things I'd have expected I might find on a Language Help page would be support information about how ISFDB deals with languages (such as profiles for viewing, and the Add Transliteration button Ahasuerus mentioned above), a place to request translations from anyone able to provide them or identify languages, or a forum for discussing particular problems that are language related (although I don't know why these wouldn't be in the Community Portal). By the way, my French is 40 years out of use and my Icelandic consists of counting. Doug H 13:12, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

Right now, it's likely putting questions on their talk pages. We could add information about how ISFDB deals with each of the languages (I know there was recently a question about using a cedilla or a character with a comma under it for Romanian). Since this page is just starting out, it's definitely open for suggestions on how to make it even more useful, I think. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:01, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

New cleanup report -- "Series Names That May Need Disambiguation"

We have a number of partially disambiguated series names on file. For example, there is Anomaly (Williams) by Sandy Williams and a plain Anomaly by Krista McGee. Ditto "The Inheritance trilogy" and many others. To use a more extreme case, of the 6 versions of "The Fallen", 5 are disambiguated and 1 is not. On the other hand, in some cases the main series probably does not need to be disambiguated, e.g. "Perry Rhodan" or "Harry Potter".

A new cleanup report to identify these series names has been deployed. All editors can access the report, but only moderators can "ignore" series. The data will become available tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 21:15, 11 May 2016 (UTC)

Shouldn't cases where a series listed in the "Other Series Titles" column of the report is only a sub-series of the one listed in the "Series Title" column be excluded from the report? Example: why does Alien Contact need to be more disambiguated? Jens Hitspacebar 10:21, 14 May 2016 (UTC)

An interesting idea. I'll take a look. Thanks! Ahasuerus 01:21, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

J. S. Fletcher (1863-1935)

This author has both Wikipedia and SFE3 links. They agree on the day of birth and death, but disagree by 3 years on the years of those events. We currently list the dates from SFE3. Any idea as to how to be confident that those dates are correct? Chavey 22:44, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Well, The Yorkshire Post and Hathi Trust Digital Library both have 1863. So does this book (view the Look Inside and find the bio on the first couple pages). I say we go with the 1863 date. I can't find anyone other than Wikipedia that has the 1860 date. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 23:30, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Contemporary Authors gives 1863-02-07 and 1935-01-30.--Rkihara 03:13, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks much! And thanks to Nihonjoe and JLaTondre for correcting the Wikipedia entry! Chavey 19:55, 13 May 2016 (UTC)

Eiji Yoshikawa

Unless someone objects I will be removing author Eiji Yoshikawa from the database. The author and his works have no SF connection.--Rkihara 18:02, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Did you check with MLB and Don Erikson to have them see if there are any fantasy elements in "from Musashi"? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:36, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

I left a note with MLB. "from Musashi" is an excerpt from the book, which I have read. It is tied to another SF pub, so I will leave it. It needs to be identified as non-genre. I removed the other reference to Musashi.--Rkihara 23:02, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Just doing some checking around, I can't find any evidence anything written by Yoshikawa included any fantasy or science fiction elements. Musashi seems to have been an historical drama more than anything. "Based on a true story", but embellished to make it a fun read. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:06, 18 May 2016 (UTC)

I submitted a change to remove "from Musashi" by Eiji Yoshikawa from this pub as it is a non-genre work. I added it as a pub note instead. I advised MLB and Don Erikson since they had verified the pub. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:33, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

My computer is still down. Please do what you need to do, I have no objection. I have never read this anthology. The page was created by someone else, I had just double checked the contents before passing the book on to others. MLB 06:02, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Looks like everything is done and the author is no longer in the database except as a comment on this pub. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 22:41, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

The Epic of Gilgamesh

Is this appropriate for inclusion? Chavey 20:59, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

I would say it could be included, since it includes Humbaba, a giant with the face of a lion, breathes fire, and can kill people with a look. At least that is one description of him. There are others even more fantastical. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:59, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

The problem here is that it can be hard to tell whether a myth was considered fiction or non-fiction at the time of its creation/compilation/etc. If a story of gods, demons and monsters was presented by its compilers as a factual account of what happened 10 generations ago, then it wasn't really speculative fiction. The problem is aggravated, as the Policy page says, by "difficulties with distinguishing between speculative and non-speculative fiction (or even fiction and non-fiction) when you are dealing with pre-1800 works." This was taken into account when the Policy pages was created:

• "The older the book, the more likely we are to include it even if it is borderline eligible. This is caused by the fact that there were relatively few works published prior to 1800 and by the difficulties [see above]."

but at the same time "Fairy tales with no known author" are excluded. And so it remains a gray area. Ahasuerus 22:10, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

So, being a gray area, I can include it if I wish? Chavey 06:39, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't think it's going to be a problem for now. At some point we may want to have a Rules and Standards discussion to settle this issue once and for all. Ahasuerus 16:26, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

That might be useful. I'd like the opportunity to vote against "The Iliad". Chavey 17:59, 20 May 2016 (UTC)

Cover artist for "3001: The Final Odyssey"

There is an iconic image for Arthur C. Clarke's 3001: The Final Odyssey". We sometimes credit it to Tim Brown, and sometimes to David Stevenson. The details reported on various pub records say: "Jacket photo © Tim Brown/Tony Stone Images. Jacket design by David Stevenson" and also note that Locus credits Stevenson. Who should rightfully be given the credit here? [This affects verified publications from Waldstein, Kraang, Phileas, MartyD, Holmesd, Willem H., Syzygy, Teddybear, Hauck, Bluesman, and SpanishMill.] Chavey 07:25, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

I have the paperback edition (March 98) which does not credit the cover art, but when it is a choice between artist/photographer and the designer, I always go with the artist/photographer for the credit. I believe a designer uses the art/photos already available to him but does not create the art/photos. Also, Locus1 data has its fair share of errata entered by human hands so they could be in error here. Syzygy 00:00, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

I'd do the same: at least back then a jacket designer only used to choose the fonts for the letters, the background colors and other things like these. Stonecreek 03:45, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

ISBN curiosities

1. Seven for the Sea (Andre Deutsch, 1972) 558407 --see Notes item from the linked LCCN record, "ISBN: 0233963683 (reportedly invalid "bad checksum")"

After seeing the report upon submission, I deleted that number from the ISBN field (or the moderator removed it). Now I see elsewhere that others do it differently, eg 158211, found among others by search for "bad checksum".

2. A Net to Catch the Wind (Harper & Row, 1979) 571624 --see Notes below the whitespace

I did not clone a record of the library binding format, despite having two distinct prices from LC. Is that reasonable? The note "ISBN for this book re-used" pertains to both ISBN-10, so I should have written "these books".

3. The Ice is Coming T5079 (Hutchinson UK and AU, 1977)

For the UK ed. I added the Hutchinson (London) cover image from Amazon and ISBN-10 from the linked library records, with Note "1st UK ed. (same ISBN as published both UK and Australia)". Is the use of same ISBN for UK and AU editions likely? Sometimes I have declined to add an edition from library records because the reported ISBN matches one that we have. Perhaps one should clone and modify only with the book in hand (and probably the price in another currency)?

--Pwendt|talk 18:43, 24 May 2016 (UTC) (add 3.) --Pwendt|talk 21:10, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Names of the country "Russia"

About a year ago, myself and a couple of other editors worked to standardize the names we use across time for England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. That's been reasonably successful, and we have a cleanup report that checks that those standards remain (more-or-less) as is. I'm working on a similar task for the various names of Russia. Using Wikipedia as the source, and using what have become de facto standards here for some of the naming, my understanding of the names we should be using are:

1. "Russian Empire" from 1721 to March 14, 1917.
2. "Russian Republic" from March 15 to Nov. 7, 1917.
3. "Russian Federation", short for "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic" from Nov. 8, 1917 to Dec. 29, 1922.
4. "Russia, USSR" from Dec. 30, 1922 to Dec. 25, 1991.
5. "Russian Federation" from Dec. 16, 1991 to the present.

I am in the process of updating author "birth places" to use these names. That's changed very few "country of births", but one that I must mention is that it changes Isaac Asimov's birth place from "Russia" to "Russian Federation". That makes it a major change, and I wanted to give other editors the opportunity to challenge that, if they wish. Chavey 01:47, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

I should note that there has been a persistent minority viewpoint that the 1922-1991 name should be "Russian Federation, USSR". Chavey 02:10, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

1721 is correct, but March 14, 1917 is not. To quote page 44 of "The Russian Revolution and the Soviet State 1917–1921: Documents":

• Believing it necessary to terminate the outward vagueness of the form of government, and mindful of the wholehearted and enthusiastic acceptance of the republican idea that was shown at the Moscow State Conference, the Provisional Government declares that the political form under which the Russian State is governed is a republican form, and it proclaims the Russian Republic. [... signed:] A. F. Kerensky, Minister-President, Zarudny, Minister of Justice, 1 September 1917 (From Izvestiya, 3 September 1917)

Quoting the Wikipedia article on the "Russian Republic":

• The Russian Republic was a short-lived state that controlled, de jure, the territory of the former Russian Empire after the abdication of Emperor Nicholas II on 15 March [O.S. 2 March] 1917.

With essentially all revolutions, there is an overthrow, a new group is in power and it's now their country, it takes a while for them to figure out their constitution, their name, what government positions they have, etc. I think there's little doubt that after the February revolution (on March 15th), that the new nation (whether or not they had their name set) had been created. Chavey 05:48, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

As a general rule, I don't think our nomenclature reflects revolutions, coups, new constitutions and so on. Between 1789 and 1875 France had a dozen constitutions and the state changed its name/structure almost as many times (monarchy, republic, directory, consulate, empire, monarchy, republic, empire, republic.) And yet we just call it "France" for our purposes.

On the other hand, our nomenclature tries to account for hierarchical changes, territorial transfers, formations of new countries, etc. For example, M. E. Patchett was born in "Sydney, Colony of New South Wales, British Empire" in 1897, but Christina Stead was born in "Sydney, New South Wales, Australia" in 1902.

Similarly, for our purposes the big issue with Russia in 1917-1922 is not that the form of government changed a bunch of times. The main issue is the dissolution and the subsequent reconstitution of the transnational entity known as the Russian Empire in 1721-1917 and the USSR in 1922-1991. Finland, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, etc were all parts of the Russian Empire in the 19th century. They became separate states in 1915-1918 and some of them were incorporated in the USSR in 1922. Thus we state that Arkady Strugatsky (1925-1991) was born in "Batumi, Georgia, USSR" rather than in "Batumi, Georgia" or "Batumi, Georgia, Russian Empire". Ahasuerus 13:56, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Note that Russia used the Julian calendar, which was 13 days behind the Gregorian calendar in 1917, at the time. 1917-09-01 Julian is 1917-09-14 Gregorian. We use the Gregorian calendar for all of our dates.

I tried to do that throughout. Chavey 05:48, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Nov. 8, 1917 is also incorrect. "Russian Soviet Federative [or Federated] Socialist Republic" was proclaimed when the 5th Congress of Soviets adopted the first Soviet constitution on July 10, 1918. By then Bolshevik-controlled parts of Russia had switched to the Gregorian calendar, so there was no ambiguity.

Again, the October revolution (Nov. 7th) brought in the new government, regardless of the fact that it took another 9 months for them to have a constitution. What would you suggest we do with someone who is born while a new government is forming, put down "[No Nation]?" Chavey 05:48, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

If we are going to use a formal name like "Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic", I don't think we can use it retroactively for dates that precede its adoption. If we decide to use "Russia" as per my suggestion below, then it won't be an issue.

Re: the argument that the 1917-11-07 revolution brought in a new government, well, Russia had 6 revolutionary governments between March and December 1917. They all claimed to be "provisional pending the convocation of the Constituent Assembly". The forces that overthrew the fourth Provisional government on 1917-11-07 (Bolsheviks, anarchists and the left wing of the Socialist Revolutionary Party) blamed the previous government for delaying the Constituent Assembly elections and promised to hold them ASAP. True to their word, they formed yet another provisional government and held an election on 1917-11-25. It was only after it had become clear that they had lost the election that they slowly abandoned the notion that their government was provisional, disbanded the Constituent Assembly on 1918-01-19 and proclaimed a permanent Soviet-based republic at the Third Congress of Soviets.

Which just goes to show how complicated these things can get and, I believe, is another argument in favor of using a short name like "Russia". Ahasuerus 14:38, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Also, if we are going to use "Russian Federation" for 1918-1922, then we should probably use it for 1922-1991 as well. Even though Russia became a part of the newly formed "USSR" in December 1922, its official name remained "Russian Soviet Federative [or Federated] Socialist Republic". It kept the name after the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. The name was finally changed to "Russian Federation" with the adoption of the post-Soviet constitution on December 25, 1993.

That's what I was expecting discussion to actually be about. Chavey 05:48, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Oh, and I think you meant "Dec. 26, 1991" rather than "Dec. 16, 1991". Ahasuerus 03:48, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Yes; a typo. Chavey 05:48, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

The larger question here is whether we want to use official names or commonly used names. If we use "France" instead of "French Republic", "Germany" instead of "Federal Republic of Germany", "Poland" instead of "Republic of Poland", and "Mexico" instead of "United Mexican States", shouldn't we use "Russia" instead of "Russian Federation"? If the answer is "yes", then how about the following system:

• 1721 through 1917-09-13: "Russian Empire"
• 1917-09-14 through 1922-12-29: "Russia"
• 1922-12-30 through 1991-12-25: "Russia, USSR"
• Since 1991-12-26: "Russia"

? Ahasuerus 04:23, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

In general, I'm in favor of shorter, more "common" names, as opposed to formal, legal names. However, when there are two substantially different "countries" in play, as in these last three Russian eras, I think there is value in using different names to distinguish those "different nations". Even if that does mean that one of them goes with a more formal name. I'm not sure "Russian Federation" is the best choice, but it is what several editors have been using. Chavey 05:48, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Wasn't it actually RSFSR while part of the USSR? That was the name I was taught when I was in school at the time. I personally prefer Ahasuerus' suggestion. --MartyD 11:07, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

That's right. The official names of Russia proper have been:

• 1721-11-02 through 1917-09-13: Russian Empire (included Russia proper, Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, etc)
• 1917-09-14 through 1918-07-09: Russian Republic (included Finland, Ukraine, etc in 1917, but lost them in 1918)
• 1918-07-10 through 1922-12-29: Russian Soviet Federative [or Federated] Socialist Republic, an independent state
• 1922-12-30 through 1991-12-25: Russian Soviet Federative [or Federated] Socialist Republic, a constituent part of the USSR
• 1991-12-26 through 1993-12-24: Russian Soviet Federative [or Federated] Socialist Republic, an independent state
• 1993-12-25 - current: Russian Federation

As I mentioned earlier, I think the important thing is to capture these hierarchical changes. Ahasuerus 14:13, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

I'm in favor of using short names, since things will become incredibly complicated if we use the proper historical names throughout. Even the US will be difficult, since parts belonged to Mexico,Spain, and France, and before that, various Indian nations. For example, Hawaii was kingdom, became a republic, then a territory, and finally a state. Maybe a script could be written to automatically assign the official name based on the birthdate or a drop down menu for editors that appears when you enter the short name?--Rkihara 17:05, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

There is a nightly cleanup script that looks for invalid uses of "Kingdom of England", "Kingdom of Scotland", "British Empire", "USA", "Kingdom of Hawaii", etc during various time periods. Once we decide how we want to handle Russia, we can update the report accordingly. Ahasuerus 21:35, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

(unindent) It looks like we have 3 people in favor of the short form of the country's name and 1 person in favor of the long form. Any objections to changing the nightly cleanup report to look for places of birth that do not follow the following convention:

• Prior to 1721-11-02: Russia
• 1721-11-02 through 1917-09-13: Russian Empire
• 1917-09-14 through 1922-12-29: Russia
• 1922-12-30 through 1991-12-25: Russia, USSR
• After 1991-12-26: Russia

? Ahasuerus 00:05, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Looks good to me. I'm not committed to particular names; I just prefer some level of consistency. I'll change the "Russian Federation" authors to Russia, and I think that will make the initial run of the revised cleanup report start clean. Chavey 03:39, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

OK, FR 896 has been created. Ahasuerus 19:39, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Romanian ș and ț

Two new cleanup reports have been deployed as per FR 890. They identify Romanian titles and pubs which (incorrectly) use "ş" and "ţ" instead of "ș" and "ț". "ş" and "ţ" are valid in certain other languages, but not in Romanian. The data will become available tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 21:21, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Great ! Thanks a lot ! Linguist 12:48, 28 May 2016 (UTC).

Publication display and language mismatch

Publication pages have been changed to display the language of Contents items if they don't match the language of the main ("reference" or "referral") title in the publication -- see the Contents section of this pub for an example. Ahasuerus 23:26, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

That's very nice. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:24, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Well, that's not the best example, since those "English" titles were assigned that language in error (and will soon be corrected). But I'm pleased to see this change, e.g. because it will help me find those titles in "Fenix" that were incorrectly assigned "English" as a language. This improvement will also make it much clearer for those examples that have a story printed in two languages, such as this edition of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. Chavey 08:10, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

Regular Search improvements

The logic behind regular Search has been tweaked to make certain types of searches faster. In addition, single character searches (like "a") have been disabled for "All Titles", "Fiction Titles", "Names" and "Publishers" searches. You can still user single characters in Advanced Search. Ahasuerus 18:58, 29 May 2016 (UTC)