ISFDB:Community Portal/Archive/Archive49

From ISFDB
Jump to navigation Jump to search
The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.

This is an archive page for the Community Portal. Please do not edit the contents. To start a new discussion, please click here.
This archive includes discussions from July - December 2020

Archive Quick Links
Archives of old discussions from the Community Portal.

1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18 · 19 · 20 · 21 · 22 · 23 · 24 · 25 · 26 · 27 · 28 · 29 · 30 · 31 · 32 · 33 · 34 · 35 · 36 · 37 · 38 · 39 · 40 · 41 · 42 · 43 · 44 · 45 · 46 · 47 · 48 · 49 · 50 · 51 · 52 · 53 · 54 · 55


Postpunk

I am tagging the 1994 story Fan by Geoff Ryman as postpunk. This is a newly coined subgenre so I want to point out that it is after cyberpunk, where here public is much more helpless with the given technology, but not as socialized yet as in for example Ian Banks' The Culture series. Also it only has the early stirrings of an advanced space age. I myself have written a story like this titled The Lights Off Tension Way. Anyone who wants to publish it should let me know. Maybrick 19:48, 9 July 2020 (EDT)

Posts linking to ISFDB are blocked by Reddit

I've already contacted Ahasuerus about this - not that I think there's anything he can do about it personally - but maybe it's worth flagging up more widely: at some point, seemingly fairly recently, posts on Reddit that contain links to ISFDB get shadowblocked.

This link documents the symptoms of this blocking, and this link documents that ISFDB is one of the sites affected. Comments in the latter seem to imply that ISFDB can be whitelisted by moderators of a Reddit sub, but as I've just had a post to /r/scifi blocked, seemingly for linking here, that tweak seemingly hasn't been widely implemented by subs that might want to link here.

Like I said, I don't know that there's anything anyone here can do about it, other than being very careful about posting links here. (If you're not a Reddit user, this is a non-issue for you personally.) ErsatzCulture 13:07, 10 July 2020 (EDT)

EDIT: I posted about this Reddit issue on Twitter, and have been told that this also affects Facebook posts that link to ISFDB. I don't use FB personally; can anyone corroborate? ErsatzCulture 13:22, 10 July 2020 (EDT)

Facebook is a known issue - it is because of the way they add their IDs at the end of every link and how we build ids. So not blocked, simply don’t work. Annie 14:05, 10 July 2020 (EDT)
A bit of digging around has found a <20 line config file fix for the FB issue - annoyingly, the person who posted it seems to have done so about 2 weeks after Ahasuerus did an investigation, judging by what's in the archived discussion when that first came up. I'll forward him the details to see what he thinks. ErsatzCulture 18:32, 10 July 2020 (EDT)

Happy Birthday Pierre-Jean (or Pierre Jean)

While looking at today's birthdays, I noticed the both Pierre-Jean Brouillaud and Pierre Jean Brouillaud have birthdays today! I suspect that one of the names is spelled "wrong". Sjmathis 16:04, 25 July 2020 (EDT)

Not wrong per se - just alternative spelling (those names with hyphens are often weird that way) :) From the looks of it, the Romanian publications omitted the "-" and when the variants were created, noone connected the dots to reconcile the two names. I've pseudonymed the two versions now and got all the records together. Annie 16:30, 25 July 2020 (EDT)

New Amazon URLs

FYI, Amazon-hosted image URLs appear to be in the process of changing. For example, J. K. Rowling's main author image is now at "images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amzn-author-media-prod/fvh43djng407r1iq142ng0sk5f.jpg".

The ISFDB software that generates post-submission yellow warnings and drives the nightly cleanup reports has been adjusted to allow the new URL format. It may require further tweaks if and when Amazon implements additional formats. If you encounter anything unusual, please let me know. Ahasuerus 15:43, 31 July 2020 (EDT)

re: inconsistent date(s) in notes to "the left hand of darkness" (ursula k. le guin) ace books undated second mmpb printing

in item The Left Hand of Darkness

the notes give the third printing as being dated november 1972;

the circular cover flash announcing its hugo and nebula awards as requiring this second printing as being after august 1970;

the two advertising end pages numbered 7, 18 as requiring this second printing as being no earlier than november 1978;

this last date of 11/1978 is not consistent with this second ace printing being between 8/1970 and 11/1972.

- should it not read "november 1970" to be temporally possible without resort to a tardis, and not require this second printing to have been the same month and year as the third printing?

- love, ppint. Ppint.pinto 06:36, 7 August 2020 (EDT)

Fixed your link above :) You are right, this last paragraph does not sound right - if you replace 1978 with 1970 or 1971, it will make a lot more sense. Let me ping some of the active verifiers and see if they have an idea if 1970 or 1971 is the correct year. Either is possible as either of them leaves at least 2 years possible so we cannot set the year properly. Thanks for finding this! Annie 07:30, 8 August 2020 (EDT)

Klingon as a language for original works

Klingon is not currently available as a language tag for adding new original works into ISFDB. Can this be added to the list? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Russell Hume (talk • contribs) .

At this time, the list of languages supported by the ISFDB is a subset of the ISO 639-2 list. Since the latter includes "Klingon" (ISO 639-2 code "tlh"), we should be to add it to our list. What would be an example of an SF work written in Klingon or translated into Klingon? Ahasuerus 08:10, 11 August 2020 (EDT)
I'd think this submission might be intended. Stonecreek 14:30, 11 August 2020 (EDT)
I see, thanks! If there are no objections, I will add "Klingon" as a supported language tomorrow. Ahasuerus 17:42, 11 August 2020 (EDT)
The Klingon language has been added to the list of supported languages. Ahasuerus 14:47, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

Dating Ace publications

There are a few tricks to dating Ace publications that don't include a publication date (assuming you can trust the one they provide). These generally involve ads or the publisher's address. I've run across references to spreadsheets that collate this information but never run across one in the public domain. Is there any interest among the editors in referencing, collecting and analyzing this information? ../Doug H 14:45, 11 August 2020 (EDT)

Revised translations

I would appreciate some enlightenment about how to manage revised translations. Take this example: a story first translated in 1969, and then again by the same translator in 2008, both with the same title but the text has major modifications, almost as a new translation made for a different person. Should this two titles be merged and just mention in the notes that the later is a revised and altered version of the first, or should they be kept as different titles?

If there are major changes, add it as a new title, DO NOT merge and make sure you have a note explaining that it is heavily revised and should stay alone :) Annie 12:16, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

Also, this particular case:this title and this title are one of the cases that I mentioned above, although the author name is spelled differently in both publications. I guess this detail make the titles impossible to merge, am I right? Thanks!--Wolland 11:44, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

And yes - if the author is different, we cannot merge - you can specify in the note which translation matches what. Annie 12:16, 12 August 2020 (EDT)
Enlightened! Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wolland (talk • contribs) .
Any time. Think of it not in terms of "who translated" but "is this the same text (or with minor revisions), same author form, same title, same language". We use the translator as an easy way to indicate it is the same text but when it is a re-translation or severe revision, it does not matter that it is the same person, treat it as if it was someone else. Annie 14:59, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

A Dança dos Ossos

Hello. I have this submission on hold, as I couldn't figure out whether these stories contain speculative fiction elements or not, so a second pair of eyes would be welcome - is there anyone out there that is fluent enough in Portuguese to figure out if these gothic stories are not merely 'regular' horror, but do contain spec fic elements ? (ghosts, levitation, supernatural monsters,...). I've also left the same question on submitter's talk page. Thanks! MagicUnk 06:29, 24 August 2020 (EDT)

If you look through the few authors that we already have in the DB, the stories listed in this book are already in our DB. So chances are that the whole thing is at least partially in scope. I'd let it through in these circumstances (and if someone who speaks the language does not say something else). Most of these titles will need case adjustment as well :) Annie 07:04, 24 August 2020 (EDT)
Re: case adjustment. The editor Vampiregrave mentioned that titles in European Portuguese capitalize all words. I seem to remember that Zapp was converting some Portuguese works to sentence captizalization (or was that another language? can't remember). And honestly, when looking at all Portuguese titles currently in the database, there's really no standard capitalization that has been applied (yet). Is there anyone out there that can shed some light to what the capitalization rules are for Portuguese? Thanks! MagicUnk 05:53, 27 August 2020 (EDT)
I will find the links to the discussions when I am on a proper computer but Portuguese is sentence case. And yes - the old records are a mess - the same way the Italian are (and the Spanish and Dutch were before the major cleanup and adjustments there in the last years). Annie 11:49, 27 August 2020 (EDT)
Here are the relevant links, I think:
Reading through the standards discussion I find the following:
Alas, it is not so easy in Portuguese. In many people's opinion, Portuguese orthography is still governed by the Acordo Ortográfico de 1945, which prescribed that like in English, Portuguese titles would have some words capitalized and others lowercase (somewhat different words than in English); see Base XLIV on this page for the wording of the rules in the Acordo. Naturally there is widespread uncertainty over which exact words to capitalize; the rules are only 3 sentences long, but not entirely easy to understand. However, there is also a sizeable portion of Portuguese-users who write titles in sentence case -- like any sensible language :-). Here is one forum commenter who summarizes some differences in usage -- in oversimplified form. --Vasha (cazadora de tildes) 21:27, 31 October 2018 (EDT)
MagicUnk 12:35, 27 August 2020 (EDT)
Which is why we agreed at one point that the ISFDB standard for Portuguese is going to be sentence case - we cannot have it every each way because then you have messes in the same books. And the few active Portuguese editors agreed with that approach. We are not an academic institution and we simplify a lot of the rules - when it makes sense. These links are the tip of the iceberg -- there are a lot more of them (usually on the Portuguese editors pages) :) Annie 13:13, 27 August 2020 (EDT)
Ah, is it? I didn't read the material through thorougly, but I didn't see the statement that we'd do sentence case. Is that decision buried somewhere in the standards discussion then?... MagicUnk 16:51, 27 August 2020 (EDT)
While some of the changes introduced by the forementioned ortographic agreement are still subject of debate in Portugal, I might add that, regarding book titles, the vast majority of portuguese publishers, magazines and newspapers follow the old rules (titles in italic, with each word capitalized). The same applies in Wikipedia’s portuguese articles. Vampiregrave 18:22, 1 September 2020 (EDT)
Keep in mind that our Portuguese language is both for the European and the Brazilian variety and the Brazilians seem to be going in the other direction (or so had been indicated by the editors). :) The National Library of Portugal does not seem to capitalize later words in it its lists either (their individual entries are all caps but for anything else they use sentence case) (and I would take a library standard any day compared to Wiki's; however if all (most?) books use "capitalize all words" that can trump a library standard in most cases (capitalization is where we diverge the most from title pages basically)). As you said - there is a debate and things are changing so we need to decide on a standard for here -- if one day another one develops, we can convert easily (well, easy enough anyway). Let me see if any of the other editors had been around lately so they can also share an opinion. Annie 18:33, 1 September 2020 (EDT)

Linking permission from jeddicon.com

The author Yasser Bahjatt, who is a new editor here as Ybahjatt, has given written permission in a reply on his Talk page for the ISFDB to deep-link images from the site jeddicon.com, which he owns. Thanks. PeteYoung 17:14, 29 August 2020 (EDT)

Thanks, I'll take care of it. Ahasuerus 18:39, 29 August 2020 (EDT)
Done! Ahasuerus 19:21, 29 August 2020 (EDT)
Template:Image Host Sites has been updated. Ahasuerus 10:21, 2 September 2020 (EDT)

Padgett bibliography?

I just noticed that the Summary Bibliography page for Lewis Padgett lists only one story. The other stories published under the Padgett name, such as The Twonky, list Author as Lewis Padgett, but if you click the author name on those stories, it takes you to the Summary Bibliography page that only lists “Mimsy Were the Borogoves.” I would be happy to fix this, but I’m not sure how to go about doing so—is it a matter of manually adding all of the Padgett stories to the Summary Bibliography page? Is there a way to get that page to automatically populate with the stories that ISFDB already has Padgett listed as the Author for? —Elysdir 00:41, 2 September 2020 (EDT)

As "Lewis Padgett" is a pseudonym, the stories will appear under the actual writers' name - that is why they are not visible here - that's just how the site works. The one that is there now is not processed yet - it will disappear as well. If you want to see the stories - they will be in the lists of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore. If you want to see all titles by Padgett, you can click on the link that is there now and it will show you this list (which is what you are looking for). Hope this makes sense. Let me know if you have any other questions and/or concerns. Annie 00:50, 2 September 2020 (EDT)

Север Гансовский

Hello, where he was born?

Help is very welcome. Thanks Henna 13:12, 8 September 2020 (EDT)

After some investigations in the pre internet era I have found the following informations:

I think there is no credible source. Maybe someone can delete the birthplace and explain the mess in the notes. Thanks again Henna 13:59, 8 September 2020 (EDT)

I have updated the Note field -- thanks! Ahasuerus 17:22, 8 September 2020 (EDT)
Hello Ahasuerus, perfect, thank you very much Henna 05:53, 9 September 2020 (EDT)

Advanced Search Question:

Hi. I have been trying to perform a search for a specific author in a specific publication (magazine). So far, I have not been successful. I keep thinking this should be possible from Advanced Search, but it's not working for me.

I assume that this should be possible, and I'm hoping somebody who knows can help me out.

I love ISFDB and I appreciate your help. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dave888 (talk • contribs) .

You are looking to search by magazine title and author within the magazine? Unfortunately, I don't believe that is possible. Our publication search will search by information about the publication, but not about the contents of the publication. And our title search will search by information about a title, but not about the publications it appeared in. We don't have a search option that combines the types (though that would be a nice feature request). However, if you let me know what you are looking for, I can do a search of a database dump to find that information. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:01, 12 September 2020 (EDT)

Asimov's The Rest of the Robots

I would like to suggest some changes regarding Asimov's The Rest of the Robots. I'm posting here because of the large number of verifiers of affected publications. My understanding of the publication history is that in 1964, Doubleday published a book containing Asimov's first two Elije Bailey novels and eight positronic robot stories. In 1966, Pyramid published a subset of the first book containing only the stories with the title Eight Stories from The Rest of the Robots. Beginning in 1968, Panther and subsequently others published the subset collection containing only the stories, but with the original title. We have all of these as publications of the original title There are also several translations, all of which contain only the stories, but are variants of either title. I'd like to propose that the original 1964 book be reclassified as an OMNIBUS since it contains two previously published novels. Doing so will create a problem for those publications currently under that title that have only the stories. I'd recommend that those titles be made into a variant of Eight Stories from The Rest of the Robots. I'm going direct active verifiers of the affected publications here. Of course, anyone else who has an opinion should feel free to weigh in. Thanks. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 18:18, 15 September 2020 (EDT)

No problem with me. This seems to be a good improvement, as the 1964 pub is indeed an OMNIBUS. Linguist 04:10, 16 September 2020 (EDT).
Same here. ../Doug H 08:12, 16 September 2020 (EDT)
This is the exact reason why I really dislike the practice of merging and/or varianting collections/anthologies/omnibuses with different contents - if the list of FICTION stories/titles does not match exactly (plus minus an excerpt or three), split them into a separate title and all is good again. Using the split novels rules outside of the novel category is a misuse of the rule (that's not how we ended up with this mess here but the whole "oh, a few stories difference, let's pretend it is the same" comes from that rule exactly) and makes it impossible to make any sense of our collections organization (and then someone helpfully imports contents from another book which has a slightly different contentx and makes it even worse). So yes - the "two novels+stories" is an omnibus, the stories only is a collection. If the list of the two sets of stories match, import the collection in the omnibus and you still will keep a connection between them. Sorry for the rant :) Annie 18:10, 16 September 2020 (EDT)
I have gone ahead and made this change. It wasn't as many edits as I had feared. I did not include the 1966 collection as part of the omnibus as doing so would necessitate back dating it to 1964 before it had appeared separately or indeed under its title. I'll next add a note to both parent records describing the relationship between them. Let me know if anything looks amiss. Thanks.Rtrace
Looks like common sense to me.--Dirk P Broer 07:39, 20 September 2020 (EDT)

Dan O'Driscoll canonical name

I think it is about time to switch the canonical name here. If no objections are voiced in the next few days, I will swap them. Annie 17:47, 27 September 2020 (EDT)

Looks like a no-brainer to me :) MagicUnk 02:23, 28 September 2020 (EDT)
Related, I can't remember if there is a feature request to automate switching canonical names? It could let you select from the alternate names, and then automatically make all the changes needed to switch them. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:45, 28 September 2020 (EDT)
I am not sure we can fully automate -- think of cases like artists being credited based on signature or non-credited COVERART artists in translations (where we would use the cannonical but only notes will tell you if it needs switching or it is a real credit and so on) - you need a human reading the notes - but doing the bulk of the switching automatically would be nice. The non-art titles are much easier to work through... :)Annie 12:54, 28 September 2020 (EDT)
This question has come up a number of times. I think we all agree that an automated way of swapping canonical names would save a lot of time. Unfortunately, back when I investigated what it would take to implement this functionality, I found a number of complexities which made it unfeasible.
That said, it's been a number of years since I looked into it and the rules have changed. For example, all variant titles have separate dates now, which wasn't the case in the past. Perhaps some kind of semi-automated approach may be feasible given the current state of the software and the data entry rules. I'd have to take a closer look. Ahasuerus 15:25, 28 September 2020 (EDT)

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh is currently entered as a single title record with an author of uncredited and a language of Akkadian. As described in the title notes & based on what research I've done (definitely not exhaustive), there are two different versions of this epic:

  1. The earlier Old Babylonian version for which the authors are not known
  2. The later Akkadian version which was credited to Sîn-lēqi-unninni on the tablets

Most current translations (but not necessarily all) are based primarily on the Akkadian version, but with portions from the Old Babylonian version to fill in gaps in the Akkadian tablets. So combining these into a single record would make sense.

However, some translations credit Sîn-lēqi-unninni on their title page. Ele que o abismo viu is one of these (with the added complication that it is a Portuguese publication that uses Sin-léqi-unnínni). I'm currently holding this edit which would add bibliographic information to Sin-léqi-unnínni. As currently entered, though, Sin-léqi-unnínni would need to made an alternate name to uncredited (which is bit unusual) and we don't normally enter bibliographic information for alternate names. Any thoughts on the best way to handle this? Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:40, 29 September 2020 (EDT)

For me would be ok to move the bibliographical info to Sîn-lēqi-unninni and make "Sin-léqi-unnínni" just as an alternate name. As a note, the Akkadian-Brazilian Portuguese translator Jacyntho Lins Brandão, in the introduction of Ele que o abismo viu, states that his translation sole uses the Akkadian version without filling the gaps with the early version, because that would be "offering the reader a text that never existed at any time or anywhere." (1) - but acknowledges that some translators did exactly that. Here is an example of a English translation from the Old Babylonian version. Thanks, ErickSoares3 10:59, 30 September 2020 (EDT)
Edit: because the mixing of the Old Babylonian and Akkadian versions would be "offering the reader a text that never existed at any time or anywhere." ErickSoares3 11:08, 30 September 2020 (EDT)
As currently entered, uncredited is the parent record. There is no Sîn-lēqi-unninni entry and the software does not allow for alternate names of alternate names. Given no one has weighed in to change the current grouping of both versions into one entry (which does have advantages as reliably splitting the different editions would be hard), I've made Sin-léqi-unnínni an alternate name to uncredited and accepted the submission adding the bibliographic information. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:19, 17 October 2020 (EDT)
Kind of related: would be interesting to make possible to make the "release" date of ancient works as "circa" one or two periods (years, centuries, millennium BCE/ACE) - that also could apply for author's birthday when the only data the we know is "circa". For the Title statistics, would be interesting for an algorithm to acknowledge public domain works by jurisdiction (U.S. law, 70 years since the author death, worldwide...). ErickSoares3 17:21, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Clarkesworld (again)

Are there any objections to merging these two series:

Both are incomplete, we don't keep them synced and technically we also have webzine format now so we can add these as well. Which will make even more of a mess. So any objections to getting all Clarkesworlds in one neat series? If no objections are voiced in a week or so, I will proceed with the merge. Annie 16:57, 4 October 2020 (EDT)

The Clarkesworld Magazine series contains webzines from 2006-2010 and then ebooks from 2010 on. If we are going to combine the same issue in multiple formats, it would be nice if the magazine grid would show all the formats or at least add the ebook format (it currently shows '[webzine]' for webzine ones). But that's a nice to have and not an objection to merging them. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:10, 4 October 2020 (EDT)
That is what I am trying to achieve - get all issues in the same grid :) The way the grid works now is that the format will be shown as the format of the majority of issues and for every issue that does not have that format, the format is added to the issue view (like here). So we can see at a glance what we have and do not have in the DB (and if/when all back issues are filled in, what was published and available).
We can do the same with nested series but it is clunkier and harder to read.
We have a similar problem with other magazines but I guess we will be solving them one by one. And if we combine them, we can add a history of what was published when in the series (plus we can add notes on differences in format - Lightspeed's additional novella in the ebook edition for example when we get to that). Annie 19:20, 4 October 2020 (EDT)
Ah, I've only ever seen the '[webzine]'. Thanks for the info on how it works. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:42, 4 October 2020 (EDT)
It got changed awhile back - a year ago maybe? Makes it easier to spot anomalies in magazine runs (so they can be corrected) and much easier to figure out what we actually have with the multi format magazines. Considering that Clarksworld had been a webzine through its entire run, once we merge the series and do all the back-filling, I expect that the main format will become webzine and then the tp and ebook versions will get their format indicated on the line. Which is why the grid works the way it does -- the data determines the format so we do not need to update it based on manual counts. :) Annie 19:55, 4 October 2020 (EDT)

Amazon-mandated changes implemented

As we discussed in October 2019, the FTC updated its e-commerce disclosure rules a while back. Since our ISBN/ASIN-based links to Amazon "product" pages make us money, we were required to implement certain software changes in order to comply. As I wrote last year:

  • The money that we get is typically in the $5-$15/month range and goes to partially offset server costs. In the grand scheme of things it's inconsequential and we could easily live without it. However, having programmatic access to the Amazon database is a big deal since it enables Fixer to create automatic submissions. They make it much easier to keep up with (at least English-language) new books. If we stop embedding ISFDB IDs in Amazon URLs, we will stop making money for Amazon and they will revoke our access to their database.

The last discussion resulted in the creation of FR 1322, "Display changes requested by Amazon". Earlier this month I received an e-mail from Amazon reminding me about this requirement. I have now implemented the requested changes. As the body of the FR says:

  • The phrasing that we ended up using was "(paid link)" next to ASIN/ISBN links and "As an Amazon Associate ISFDB earns from qualifying purchases” at the bottom of Publication pages.

Our "Amazon Associate" statement also explains why we have a relationship with Amazon. If you think there is a better way to phrase what we are trying to say here, please post your suggestions below. Ahasuerus 21:08, 10 October 2020 (EDT)

I'm not a big fan of "paid link" as that implies they are paying us to have the link. I'd prefer "commissions earned". -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:04, 11 October 2020 (EDT)
The language of the Amazon requirement is as follows:
  • A clear disclosure could be as simple as “(paid link)”, “#ad” or “#CommissionsEarned”.
I can certainly change "paid link" to "commissions earned" if the consensus is that it looks better. Ahasuerus 18:04, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
Are commissions only earned on US/UK links or the FTC directions only apply to US/UK links? The comment that it only applies to those two is a little ambiguous. If commissions are earned on all, the statement could go above the links (within the Amazon box) to avoid making the left bar wider. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:04, 11 October 2020 (EDT)
We only embed ISFDB-specific codes within US and UK URLs at this time. Ahasuerus 18:07, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
For the page bottom statement, I think "ISFDB is an Amazon Associate in order to have access to Amazon's product data. As a result, the ISFDB earns a commission from qualifying purchases." would be better as it states the true priority. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:04, 11 October 2020 (EDT)
Unfortunately, Amazon is very explicit about the language of this particular disclosure:
  • [t]he Operating Agreement requires that the following statement clearly and conspicuously appears on your Site: “As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.”
The most I could do was change "I" to "ISFDB" and append a clarifying sentence. Ahasuerus 18:09, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
You could still change the order: "ISFDB is an Amazon Associate in order to have access to Amazon's product data. As an Amazon Associate ISFDB earns from qualifying purchases." -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:40, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
That's a very good idea! Ahasuerus 20:51, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
The placement of the text when there are multiple ASINs (Amazon does have different ASIN for the same book in some cases - usually cross languages or cross-countries (UK/US) but sometimes even inside of the same Amazon) is also a bit weird (see this one which is a bit of an extreme but still). Annie 00:49, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
That's a very good point. I'll make sure to consolidate duplicate instances. Ahasuerus 18:16, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
Maybe for the External ID links, move the notice to the bottom of that section, just after the "Cover art supplied by Amazon.com" part? So it would state "Cover art supplied by Amazon.com. ISFDB is an Amazon Associate in order to have access to Amazon's product data. As a result, the ISFDB earns a commission from qualifying purchases." there if there are external IDs or ISBNs. This would make sure that text was prominent (one of the FTC requirements) and very visible on every applicable page. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:23, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
It's my understanding that the FTC's visibility requirement means that the disclosure needs to be on the same page as the sponsored link. The requirement was added because some sites used to put their disclosure language on a single page and then link other pages to it. Ahasuerus 18:19, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
That's what I understand, too. My suggestion does that. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:33, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
Keep in mind that our Publication pages display Amazon-mandated disclosures in three places:
* On the ASIN line (displayed if the pub has an ASIN)
* In the "Amazon Links" drop-down list (displayed if the pub has an ISBN)
* At the bottom of all publication pages even if the pub doesn't have an ASIN or an ISBN
I think that displaying the same long sentence in the ASIN section and the ISBN section would be excessive. Ahasuerus 20:56, 12 October 2020 (EDT)

2020-10-13 changes

Based on the feedback above, I have changed "(paid link)" to "(commissions earned)". I have also changed the statement at the bottom of Publication pages to read "ISFDB is an Amazon Associate in order to have access to Amazon's product data. As an Amazon Associate ISFDB earns from qualifying purchases."

Annie's comment about pubs with multiple ASINs like this one raised a larger issue. The original design didn't account for External IDs with a dozen+ associated Web sites. I'll need to change the software to display them on separate lines. Ahasuerus 13:02, 13 October 2020 (EDT)

A new cleanup report - Suspect Captilization of English titles

A new cleanup report, "Titles with Suspect English Capitalization", has been deployed. It looks for English language title records which capitalize the "always lower case" words listed in Template:PublicationFields:Title:

  • "and", "or", "the", "a", "an", "for", "of", "in", "on", "by", "at", "from", "with", and "to"

The report logic ignores title record which capitalize these words after colons, periods, semicolons and exclamation points, but there are many other scenarios which it can't account for. For this reason the report lets moderators "ignore" title records.

The data, limited to the first 1,000 matches out of 18,000+, will become available tomorrow morning. Once things look stable, I will create a similar cleanup report for publication records. Ahasuerus 17:55, 12 October 2020 (EDT)

Yay! This always bugs me, technical editor that I am. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:34, 12 October 2020 (EDT)
Would it make sense to ignore words after " or, "? Or run that as a separate report for a faster,specialized review? (Assuming many will be ignored). ../Doug H 11:12, 17 October 2020 (EDT) (p.s. can we put the "always lower case" words in alphabetical order in Template:PublicationFields:Title?)
I've updated the "always lower case" list to be alphabetical. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:27, 26 October 2020 (EDT)
I hate it - alphabetizing the prepositions is ok but the "and/or" and the three articles should be grouped together IMO (or "the" and "or" will be missed a lot). Annie 14:33, 26 October 2020 (EDT)
Hm, this is a tough one. On the one hand, the more prepositions, conjunctions, etc we add to this list, the harder it will be to find individual words if they are not alphabetized. On the other hand, the original order was organized by part of speech, which is also informative. Perhaps we could split the list into three sub-lists -- articles, prepositions, conjunctions -- alphabetized each sub-list and display them on separate lines? Ahasuerus 15:13, 26 October 2020 (EDT)
If I don't see "the" next to "a/an", I won't even look in the "t" section to see if "the" may be there by any chance -- it may be the decades of being trained by English dictionaries and grammar books but it is how my brain works. Same for "and/or". Three lines make sense to me as a compromise if we want real alphabetical order... Annie 15:24, 26 October 2020 (EDT)
Something like this?
  • Articles: "a", "an", "the".
  • Conjunctions: "and", "but", "or".
  • Prepositions: "at", "by", "for", "from", "in", "of", "on", "to", "with".
That would work for me. Also, I added "but" into the conjunction list above. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:10, 26 October 2020 (EDT)
Why would you add an additional conjunction without discussion? If you want to add But, take it to R&S - don’t sneak it in while reordering the list for better readability. The format works but please do not change the list with no discussion. Annie 08:49, 27 October 2020 (EDT)
I wasn't trying to sneak it it. Please assume a little good faith. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:37, 27 October 2020 (EDT)
I have started a discussion on the R&S page. Ahasuerus 10:07, 27 October 2020 (EDT)

(unindent) When you have a chance, can you check the counter of this one? It seems to be reducing the number of what we get every night based on what had been ignored - we are now getting 993 records and I am pretty sure there are 7 in the ignored table (from previous days) that would have completed the 1000. Annie 01:20, 28 October 2020 (EDT)

Yup, it was a bug which affected two recently added cleanup reports. All fixed now. Thanks for identifying the issue! Ahasuerus 16:01, 28 October 2020 (EDT)

The Unshakable Winter Blossom Princess - dupe ebook pubs?

Light novels definitely aren't my thing, but I'm struggling to spot what any meaningful difference is between the two ebook pubs for this title - the pub date, publisher, ISBN and ASIN are the same between both. Reported page count in the pub note is different, but that just might be down to the vagaries of ebooks and/or Amazon updating their product description.

What *might* be a contributing factor - and what tipped me off there might be something amiss with these pubs - is that there seem to be 2 different ASINs associated with this pub: B07QT8HN4P and B07QC86NTP, although only the latter is in the database. (Maybe the former is for non-US Amazons?)

The edit history for both of these pubs shows several people with much more ISFDB expertise than me have worked on these, so I'm reluctant to submit edits to delete one and incorporate any additional notes into the other, in case there's some subtlety here that I'm unaware of. ErsatzCulture 16:43, 13 October 2020 (EDT)

It is the same one. The first one was added without ISBN so Fixer served the second one as a new and unknown ISBN a few months later despite the existing ASIN (because the ISBN is missing). The processing moderator did not notice the existing one so we had a duplicate at that point - everyone tries to be careful for things like that but they do slip in now and then. Then later on, Fixer found the ISBN match for the first one and the handling moderator did not notice/act on the duplicate either and simply approved. (this is one of the things moderators should be looking out for when handling these pubUpdates). One of them needs deleting. Annie 17:09, 13 October 2020 (EDT)
BTW: ASIN B07QT8HN4P belongs to a totally different book: Redefining the META at VRMMO Academy Vol. 1. Which does not mean that Amazon had not them mixed up once upon a time. Annie 17:12, 13 October 2020 (EDT)

Do we have a standard for miscredited artists/authors?

From time to time we encounter a miscredited author or artist. There is a practice then to credit as stated in the pub, but with a '(in error)' appended to the author/artist's name, and then varianting this one to the canonical of the actual author/artist. Is this standard practice? I didn't find anything in the help (didn't look too hard to be honest).
It might be worthwhile to make this the standard practice? What do you think? MagicUnk 09:28, 24 October 2020 (EDT)

I've never done the "(in error)" thing, though I could see it being useful in some cases. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:22, 26 October 2020 (EDT)
I personally like the practice -- it allows the actual credit as in the magazine/book to be visible when someone opens the record (so we do not have an inexperienced editor trying to "correct" based on what they see on the page and it allows us to keep some track of how things are used (and occasionally it allows a title to be properly identified when translated under the wrong name). It is also a LOT more likely to happen with translations (art is also a place where that happens more often than we all wished it did) - and when the translation uses a different form of the names, it leaves things cleaner (in comparison with swapping a localized name with the original one.
We have 53 names with the "in error" syntax. We probably need to have this discussion over in R&S - although there does not seem to be much interest in it anyway :) Annie 15:13, 28 October 2020 (EDT)
My concern is that if we do not standardize the way we record miscredited artists/authors, that there will be slipping in "a lot" of factually incorrect records where an editor in good faith submitted a correction, with the end result that that particular record no longer corresponds to what was actually printed in the book, and that it is not recognized as such because there are not sufficient notes to document the error. So, even if there's no much interest of other editors or moderators (which you could interpret that they are indifferent to what's being decided, they're okay either way), I feel that we really should have the practice made explicit. It's not that it would be a big burden as it's not all that frequent, but frequent enough to standardize imo - it will definitely benefit our data quality. Regards, MagicUnk 15:37, 28 October 2020 (EDT)
I don't disagree -- and technically anything being changed to be NOT as in the book should have sufficient notes. We all know it doe snot happen always though so... Feel free to pursue that over in R&S - just don't get discouraged when noone cares (which will mean that we cannot get the standard set - community rules can be fun that way) :) Annie 15:45, 28 October 2020 (EDT)

Publications with Non-standard ASINs enhancement request

Can we change Publications with Non-standard ASINs to allow Audible ASINs matching ISBN10? Audible changed their rules at some point so now for books with ISBNs, they use the ISBN10 for ASIN (and as we do not have a link to Audible on the right, these are still in policy in the field).

We probably need to have a longer discussion around Audible ASINs (and non-US stores) but this is just to get the report to stop flagging that many false positives. :) Annie 13:41, 30 October 2020 (EDT)

Done! Ahasuerus 17:14, 30 October 2020 (EDT)

Handling cover images when cloning publications

(based on a recent Help Desk discussion, which has more context)

We commonly deal with the following three scenarios when cloning publications:

  1. The cover art of the to-be-created publication record is different from the cover art of the original publication. When this happens, the two publication records have different COVERART titles AND different cover URLs.
  2. The cover art of the to-be-created publication record is the same as the cover art of the original publication, BUT at least some publication-specific details (price, ISBN, etc) are different. When this happens, the two publication records share the same COVERART titles record but use different cover URLs.
  3. The cover art AND all of the publication details of the two publications are the same. When this happens, the two publication records share the same COVERART titles record AND the cover URLs.

The way our "Clone Publication" Web page currently facilitates these scenarios is by displaying the image associated with the source publication and a check box which says "Reuse COVERART title(s) and image URL?". Note how a single check box is used to determine what happens with the COVERART title(s) as well as with the cover URL.

This works well for scenarios 1 and 3 above -- basically "all or nothing" -- but it doesn't help with scenario 2. Perhaps it would be better to split the "Reuse COVERART title(s) and image URL?" check box into two: "Reuse COVERART title(s)?" and "Reuse image URL?", which would support all 3 scenarios. It would be an easy change to make. Ahasuerus 19:07, 3 November 2020 (EST)

Do we really have usecase 3 though? If they have all the details the same, why would we need two records? I really cannot think of a case where the URL will be the same (especially for an ISFDB image)? Annie 19:33, 3 November 2020 (EST)
We have quite a few pubs whose covers are identical, but the copyright page states that it's a different printing. Ahasuerus 10:05, 4 November 2020 (EST)
Until an eagle eyed later PV notices a small difference on the later printing and changes the uploaded file without realizing it changes it for all printings. Reusing ISFDB images across publications is a bad idea and we should actively discourage it IMO (at least a yellow warning maybe?). Amazon links and other external covers - sure. But ours are problematic for that. Annie 11:13, 4 November 2020 (EST)
Sure, we could add a yellow warning to the "Image" row. It could say something like "This image is already in use by another publication." Would that work? Ahasuerus 13:33, 4 November 2020 (EST)
It is not the "used in 2 places" that is the only problem, it is using an image that do not belong to this book and which can be overwritten from another semi-automated upload without anyone realizing. Can we compare the ID of the image with the ID/Tag of the publication? The problem that started this discussion was that the image was uploaded to the first printing, NOT used there and used only in the 16th. So when Glenn went to add a image to the 1st, it would have replaced the image for the 16th - he paid attention so it did not happen but as it is one of the actions not requiring approval, a new editor would not know to look for that and will easily replace a file. A warning just looking if the image was used elsewhere would not have flagged a problem... Annie 13:45, 4 November 2020 (EST)
I think it would. That warning is actually a good idea if you ask me. At least it will make you pause and reconsider what you were doing. The warning would only show up if the image was used elsewhere. It doesn't come up all that often (I think), but a forewarning is a good idea imo. And yes, I agree with Annie on the "using the same URL in different places". I myself am nowadays often uploading separate image copies to go with each individual printing - I've noticed there are sometimes subtle differences between them. Doing it this way avoid anyone accidentally replacing a cover. Another thought; could it be an idea to turn off the 'Copy image while cloning' checkbox, instead of having it checked by default? Regards, MagicUnk 13:53, 4 November 2020 (EST)
I am not arguing against the warning - just highlighting that we may need a warning for a different case as well - the "hold on, this image does not belong to this publication tag, you sure you want to use it here?" case :) Annie 14:34, 4 November 2020 (EST)
By the way, Glenn's a bit of a special case - I haven't seen it myself. But generally speaking, the more 'common' case is when the 1st printing image is being replaced while also being used in later printings. MagicUnk 13:54, 4 November 2020 (EST)
I had seen this case a few times - the editor clones and uploads on the one they clone from either because they do not want to wait for the approval of the clone or by mistake while they have both open post approval. Happens. I even managed to do something like that the other day while working on a string of Bulgarian books. :) Annie 14:34, 4 November 2020 (EST)
If warnings are on the table, it would be nice to indicate that an Amazon /P/10digit-isbn link is problematic. --GlennMcG 14:15, 4 November 2020 (EST)
Or any Amazon format that is NOT in the /I/Randomthingie syntax really.... Annie 14:34, 4 November 2020 (EST)

(unindent) To summarize, here are the warning messages that have been proposed so far:

  1. This image is already in use by another publication
  2. The URL of this ISFDB-hosted image does not match this publication tag [display the two tags?]
  3. The URL of this Amazon-hosted image does not start with "/images/I/"

Note that we already display a warning if an Amazon-hosted image doesn't start with "/images/X" -- where "X" is "P", "I", "G" or "S" -- followed by one of "recognized" patterns. Ahasuerus 09:58, 5 November 2020 (EST)

Looks good to me. The Amazon ones - yes, we allow the rest BUT /P/ is based on ISBN for example... and these change whenever Amazon have a new printing with a new cover and the rest of the formats seem to have their own oddities. I suspect we may want to enforce /I/ only for newly added covers but that may not be trivial and we have a lot of covers that do so probably a yellow warning is enough fot now... Annie 12:27, 5 November 2020 (EST)
OK, FR 1376 has been created. Ahasuerus 10:06, 7 November 2020 (EST)
For what the first message is concerned, I would only display the yellow warning if replacing the image would affect another pub record. If replacing the image doesn't update the other pub record, then we're fine. Is that how everyone understands it? MagicUnk 12:03, 9 November 2020 (EST)
Yes, it matches my understanding. Ahasuerus 14:04, 11 November 2020 (EST)
2 and 3 have been implemented. 1 needs a new database index, so it will take additional work. Ahasuerus 17:55, 11 November 2020 (EST)
1 has been implemented. Ahasuerus 17:27, 14 November 2020 (EST)
There is a bug in the #1 implementation: If you edit a book, it always shows the warning because the URL is used in the book itself. See this for an example. Annie 21:09, 14 November 2020 (EST)
EditPub is ok actually; it seems like ImportExport is the (only?) one that has a problem. I will keep an eye for any others. Annie 21:42, 14 November 2020 (EST)
I see what's going on. EditPub and ImportExport submissions both use "Record" elements. However, they use them to mean different things, which confuses the "yellow warning" logic. I will fix it tomorrow morning. Thanks for reporting the problem. Ahasuerus 21:48, 14 November 2020 (EST)
It turns out that there is even more complexity there than I realized. The affected part of the ISFDB code has reached the point where it needs to be redesigned before we can add more functionality. For now, I have disabled the "Duplicate image URL" warning. Ahasuerus 13:17, 15 November 2020 (EST)

(unindent) OK, I think I finally got the "duplicate image URL" warning to work correctly. If you come across anything unexpected, please let me know. Ahasuerus 19:09, 15 November 2020 (EST)

We probably want to disable the Tag check for author pages - as we will always have it when the author image is in our DB (no nice Upload link...)? See here. Annie 13:36, 3 February 2021 (EST)
Oh, good catch! Bug 765 has been created. Ahasuerus 13:51, 3 February 2021 (EST)

Technical question: form an external link to request a certain ISBN

Hello there. On your highly appreciated site one can easily search for a certain ISBN. Fill in the number, select "ISBN" and then "Go". Is there a way to place an external link in our wiki which does automatically start the search and leads me to the requested publication? An URL with special syntax? Think of this: "https://portal.dnb.de/opac.htm?referrer=Perrypedia&method=enhancedSearch&index=num&term=9783000157202&operator=and" (german national library).
The ISFDB is part of our ISBN search page https://www.perrypedia.de/wiki/Spezial:ISBN-Suche, but currently one has to copy&paste the number. I'd prefer an automatic search, if possible. Thanks in advance, --Klenzy 04:31, 12 November 2020 (EST)

Yes. The search box calls the following endpoint: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=0-684-18221-1&type=ISBN
You can call it externally & fill in the ISBN you wish. The advanced search can also be done similarly. Just create a search and look at the URL displayed for that. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:17, 12 November 2020 (EST)
Done - and works fine. This is great! Thank you very much. --Klenzy 10:16, 12 November 2020 (EST)

Last Dangerous Visions

I'm not around much any more, although I hope that will change next year, but I thought I would pass on the news of the imminent publication of "Last Dangerous Visions", ed. Harlan Ellison & J. Michael Straczynski -- my excuse for posting here is that we will need to change the entry for that book (originally announced to be published in 1974.) Not surprisingly, the contents have changed substantially from the original listings, although many of those works will be included. Of course this means that y'all will have to figure out how to reconcile the original list of stories with the actual published ToC. Details on these developments are in Straczynski's open Patreon post earlier this evening. (Edit: Straczynski is the literary executor of Ellison's estate.) Chavey 20:11, 13 November 2020 (EST)

I'd say to keep these title records separate (Add a new one for this one, leave the old one as is), link via notes and explain what happened and why - otherwise this will be a mess to look at :) Thanks for posting about it - I will see what I can do to get these sorted out later this weekend! Annie 11:08, 14 November 2020 (EST)
Since Straczynski's post says that the new anthology will have a very different list of stories I agree that it would be best handled as a separate record.
In addition, he writes:
  • Once all the stories are in place, we will take the book to market around March/April 2021. Given the unique place in science fiction history occupied by Dangerous Visions in general, and this book in particular, and some of the authors who have already agreed to participate, several major publishers have already expressed significant interest in picking up the book upon completion.
In other words, things are still very raw and it will be many months before we find out when this version of tLDV will be published. Granted, the fact that Straczynski promises to "cover the cost of paying for all of the stories up front" suggests that this version may have better luck than the original. Ahasuerus 15:13, 14 November 2020 (EST)
I agree with the suggestion to keep these as two separate records. Presumably, the unpublished 1974 book remains listed with Ellison as the editor, and 2021 book will (I assume) be listed with Ellison *and* Straczynski as editors. (Or, at least, we should certainly list it that way.) That should be enough to keep the records separate. Chavey 01:34, 15 November 2020 (EST)

ISFDB 2020-11-14 downtime

The database will be unavailable between roughly 5pm and 5:30pm. I will be using the downtime to purge ancient versions of Wiki pages, add a new index and install a new patch. Ahasuerus 15:21, 14 November 2020 (EST)

We are back up. Ahasuerus 17:24, 14 November 2020 (EST)

New post-submission warnings

2 new post-submission warnings have been added. They are triggered by notes/synopsis text which includes mismatched double braces or unrecognized templates. Ahasuerus 17:04, 15 November 2020 (EST)

It got weirder: [See http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?4831579]. Ignore the URL warning (it is expected once it was approved and it was not there before that); but the template warning was there from the beginning. It is not there on the PubEdit so I suspect it is in the "add New" kind of pages only. Annie 00:30, 16 November 2020 (EST)
And it is not the Fixer formatting - even if I do not touch the field, an edit is clean. So definitely something in the AddPub (and possibly some of the other new creation pages (confirmed for ImportExport - we have the same problem; same with Clone.). Annie 00:49, 16 November 2020 (EST)
Thanks, I'll take a look. Ahasuerus 06:22, 16 November 2020 (EST)
The bug has been recreated on the development server. Ahasuerus 06:31, 16 November 2020 (EST)
Ah, missed that announcement and decided these are a side effect of a change done for the URLS. Thanks for moving this where it belongs. Annie 11:31, 16 November 2020 (EST)
Fixed. Sorry about the bugs in recent patches. I am probably out of practice. 13:22, 16 November 2020 (EST)

New warnings for dates 90+ days in the future

New yellow warnings have been added for publication/title dates more than 90 days in the future. Ahasuerus 18:54, 16 November 2020 (EST)

New cleanup report - publication titles with invalid capitalization

A few weeks ago I created a new cleanup report to look for English titles with invalid capitalization. We now have a matching report for publication records which include English language titles. The data will become available tomorrow morning.

In addition, I tweaked the cleanup report logic to ignore capitalized articles/prepositions/conjunctions after a slash. We use slashes to separate omnibus titles, which was generating a lot of false positives. Ahasuerus 15:59, 17 November 2020 (EST)

New yellow warning when removing titles from primary-verified pubs

The software has been modified to display a yellow warning when a submission attempts to remove a title record from a primary-verified publication. It will display the same list of primary verifiers that you see when trying to edit a primary-verified publication. Ahasuerus 16:37, 17 November 2020 (EST)

Same ISBN with both tp and pb pubs?

Noticed whilst doing a bit of background research on the Alan Dean Foster/Disney royalties thing - the latest (2014) edition of the novelization of Alien has both tp and pb pubs listed for the same ISBN - is that plausibly correct? The tp record has a UK price, and the pb as US one, so maybe it's just Fixer making assumptions based on source location, without realizing this is a "transatlantic" pub?

(I did try to look up the details on the publisher's site - titanbooks.com - but it seems to be down at the moment.) ErsatzCulture 19:51, 18 November 2020 (EST)

According to the Notes field, the data comes from Locus 641 and 644 respectively. We could ask around to see if anyone has these two issues of Locus readily available. It's possible that something went wrong either on the Locus side or on our side. Ahasuerus 10:16, 19 November 2020 (EST)

My Primary Verifications

Is there a way to omit Transient verifications from the list displayed when you use this function ? --Mavmaramis 02:56, 19 November 2020 (EST)

Nope -- but there is a column telling you it is transient once you get to the list. Annie 04:51, 19 November 2020 (EST)

Adding support for deleting invalid secondary verifications

Moderators can now remove invalid secondary verifications. In order to remove a secondary verification, you have to be on the “Verify Publication” page which now displays a “Select a Secondary Verification to Remove (Moderator Only)” link at the bottom. If you click the link, it will take you to a new “Select Secondary Verification to Remove” Web page which will display a list of secondary verifications for the selected pub. You will then be able to remove a single secondary verification at a time.

In addition, “Recent Edits”, “Recent Primary Verifications” and “Recently Added Secondary Verifications” have been moved from the navigation bar on the left to a new Web page, Recent Activity. A new option, “Recently Removed Secondary Verifications”, has been made available and added to this menu.

Similarly, “My Primary Verifications” and “My Changed Primary Verifications” have been moved from the navigation bar on the left to a new Web page, My Verifications. A new option, “My Removed Secondary Verifications”, has been made available and added to this menu.

If you come across any bugs or unexpected behavior, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus 16:04, 19 November 2020 (EST)

"My Primary Verification" tweaked

The Web page "My Primary Verifications" has been tweaked to display 200 verification at a time. It used to display 1,000 verifications per page, which was affecting performance. Ahasuerus 09:42, 20 November 2020 (EST)

New Web page - My Secondary Verifications

A new Web page, My Secondary Verifications, has been added to the My verifications menu. Recently Added Secondary Verifications has been tweaked to use the same page layout. Ahasuerus 11:40, 20 November 2020 (EST)

Consolidating 4 "My ... Edit" pages?

The navigation bar on the left currently includes the following 4 links:

Would it be better to create a new menu page -- we can call it "Me Edits" -- and move these 4 links to it? It would make the navigation bar cleaner. Ahasuerus 11:44, 20 November 2020 (EST)

(Presumably call it "My Edits") Could the page be the display of the edits and have radio buttons to select which type of edit? ../Doug H 14:02, 20 November 2020 (EST)
I like "Me Edits". It's more piratey. (^_^) ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:49, 20 November 2020 (EST)
I like the consolidation, not a bit fan of the radio buttons idea. Annie 19:12, 20 November 2020 (EST)
I'm against the consolidation in this case. It would make it difficult to switch between the edits and data entry menu items. While I am in a data entry session, I often need easy access to recent and pending edits (rejected and errored out not so much). Hiding these on another page makes it so that I (and others) have to do additional mouse clicks. For example, while entering data I need recent edits to go to a previous pub entry for a clone. Or going back to a previous entry to correct a mistake, or to add additional data. I use it often enough that it quickly would become irritating - see tangential topic below. Generally speaking, less mouse clicks the better it is. MagicUnk 07:35, 21 November 2020 (EST)
That's a good point. I usually use moderator-only options to find pending/recently approved/recently rejected submissions, but I can see how the other way can be more convenient depending on what you are doing. Ahasuerus 12:09, 21 November 2020 (EST)
That's right. The advantage of going to my edits is exactly that, that you're only seeing your own edits, not interspersed with others. MagicUnk 14:24, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Does/could ISFDB support command/shortcut keys? ../Doug H 15:36, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Keyboard commands and shortcuts are generally browser-specific for all Web sites: Firefox may support one set, Google Chrome another set, etc. The ISFDB software doesn't try to override the default browser behavior. Ahasuerus 17:31, 21 November 2020 (EST)
web app shortcuts ../Doug H 19:25, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Yes, but that's Web App shortcuts, a whole different can of worms. The ISFDB software is not a Web app, just a plain old Web site :-) Ahasuerus 10:35, 22 November 2020 (EST)
Tangentially related topic. While cloning a record there is no entry at the bottom of the page after submission approval that allows to go to directly to the verification screen, without first having to go to the pub record, and then select the left-hand menu item (I need this for roughly each 3rd data edit action I'm taking when entering publications). While if I'm editing an existing pub record, that link to the verification screen -is- available after approval. So, it would be nice if we could have that same link after approval of clone submissions too. Regards, MagicUnk 07:35, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Done. Ahasuerus 12:09, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Wow, super quick! Thank you, thank you, thank you :) MagicUnk 14:24, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Sure thing! Ahasuerus 14:44, 21 November 2020 (EST)

Hover menus

Instead of moving to separate pages (which are inconvenient), why not use hover menus? Either like the Amazon / Other Link ones or more modern ones. If you want to stick with the existing style, you could have an Activity section that had both the My Edits and the Recent Activity links. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:27, 21 November 2020 (EST)

Please No. These do not work on IOS and possibly any other touchscreens. Putting them behind a hover menu will make it almost impossible for me to do half of the things I do from my phone. Annie 13:50, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Then they should be fixed. The technology works on mobile. Testing it, the Amazon links works for Chrome on iOS, but not Safari. That just means something is wrong with the implementation as plenty of sites have similar things that work fine in Safari. We don't need to be adding extra clicks that make things more user unfriendly. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:24, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Had been reported multiple times and never fixed. Until it is, any plans to move even more menus under this model should not be entertained. Annie 16:34, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Unfortunately, I don't own any iOS devices to test with. When I run ISFDB-generated pages past HTML and CSS validators, the drop-down menus in the navigation bar comes back green. I'd love to fix the iOS/Safari problem, but I don't know where to start :-( Ahasuerus 17:35, 21 November 2020 (EST)

New site might allow cover images to be used

Hello. I hope this is the right place to post this. I emailed Demian Katz, who runs gamebooks.org, and asked if we could use images from the site. I got this reply:

Thanks, Rosa! I believe that I have granted permission to others from the ISFDB in the past, but I'm not sure if that permission was ever actually acted upon. As long as it's possible to attribute the images with a credit and link back to my site, I'm happy to have them used elsewhere. Please note that not all of the images on my site come directly from me; if you check the "thanks" section on any given page, you will sometimes see image credits attributing others. You're welcome to take any images that are my own original creations, but if there's a "thanks," it might be good form to ask the actual contributor of the image. I can help make connections as needed. :-)

- Demian

Is it possible to do that? Thanks. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Rosab618 (talk • contribs) .

It would be easy to add "gamebooks.org" to the list of supported (and automatically credited) site names. However, the part of Demian Katz's response which mentions "image credits attributing others" raises additional questions.
Let's use this review page as an example. At the bottom of the page it says "Special Thanks: Thanks to Joonseok for the cover image". Suppose the ISFDB editor working on the publication queried Joonseok and received permission to link to the image. However, the ISFDB software would credit gamebooks.org because credits are automatically generated based on the name of the hosting Web site. Would that be OK? Ahasuerus 11:24, 21 November 2020 (EST)
You tell me.--Rosab618 16:35, 22 November 2020 (EST)
Since you are in contact with Demian Katz, could you please pass this question on to him? TIA! Ahasuerus 12:04, 23 November 2020 (EST)

Translations preference being ignored

I have set my Display Translations preference to "None". However, when I bring up a title, I keep seeing entries for Publications in multiple languages. While I can click on the "Do not display translations" link and get the non-English entries hidden, this is an annoyance that shouldn't have to be done with my preference set as it is. Is there any fix for this? An example title is "Children of Dune". —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Philfreund (talk • contribs) .

The display translations preference works on the author summary page (and other summary listing pages likes series). It is not for the title pages like Children of Dune. That would be a features request for Ahasuerus, the ISFDB developer. -- JLaTondre (talk) 10:11, 21 November 2020 (EST)
As I recall, this issue was raised back when translation preferences were first implemented. At the time, the consensus was that "Display Translations" should only control the behavior of Summary pages.
Now that we have a lot more translations on file, it may be time to revisit the issue. How about we change the name of "Display Translations" to "Display Translations on Author Pages" and create a new user preference for "Display Translations on Title Pages"? That way users will be able to control the behavior of Author and Title pages separately. Ahasuerus 11:30, 21 November 2020 (EST)
Two options sounds good. The existing one works on Series as well as Author pages so the name would need tweaking. Does it work anywhere else? If not "Display Translations on Author & Series Pages" would suffice. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:22, 21 November 2020 (EST)
A quick scan of the ISFDB code suggests that it only affects Author and Series pages. Ahasuerus 14:44, 21 November 2020 (EST)
OK, FR 1380 "Add a user preference to suppress translations on title pages" has been created. Ahasuerus 11:34, 25 November 2020 (EST)
Done. Ahasuerus 18:26, 29 December 2020 (EST)

Hayford Peirce

I am saddened to report that Hayford Peirce, an SF author as well as an early ISFDB contributor, died of (what appears to be) a self-inflicted wound on November 20 -- see https://kvoa.com/news/top-stories/2020/11/20/pcsd-man-succumbs-to-self-inflicted-gunshot-wounds-in-case-that-left-woman-dead/ . He will be missed :-(

P.S. If anyone feels like checking his bibliography to make sure that we are not missing any recent works, please note that books about Byzantine art were written by his father, Hayford Peirce, Sr. (1883-1946). Ahasuerus 21:49, 21 November 2020 (EST)

Estimated word count

This is addressed to MagicUnk, who posted a question to my talk page. I apologize for not replying earlier; I didn't realize this was a thing. I find the editing on this site confusing, but I was definitely not trying to blow you off!

All of my length-based edits are labeled in the "note to moderator". I have a link to an on-line word counter, so if I have an e-text, I can get (and so indicate) an actual count. If I label it "by very careful estimate" I've used the method that I see mentioned several times on this page--I count an entire page, and then count the pages, carefully removing any quarter or half-pages that are blank, filled with an illustration, etc. A few of my older edits were labelled "careful estimate"; in those I only counted maybe half a page, and then calculated an average number of words per line, multiplying by the number of lines on the page to get a page count. But now I count a whole page. If I use any other method, I've indicated it (such as a story in an anthology being the same page count as another in the same anthology).

I'll try to remember to look at my talk page a little more often! Markjoseph125 12:02, 23 November 2020 (EST)

Hello. Thank you for your reply. As a matter of fact, you can reply to any question over at your talk page by simply pressing the 'edit' at the right of the message title you want to respond to (and indent your reply by adding one or more colons ':')). Moderators are generally monitoring the talk pages of editors for any reply posted there. So, for a reply on your actual response to my question - see your talk page. MagicUnk 13:04, 23 November 2020 (EST)

Variant titles having the same publication date as the original

Hello. I've come across a couple of variant titles that were published for the first time years after the original title (per the data available in our DB), but have gotten the original title's publication year instead. Two examples are

Moreover, based on the above pub dates, looks like the varianting has been done the wrong way (ie later version being the original)

See also this discussion. Am I going mad, or am I missing something obvious?? MagicUnk 16:50, 23 November 2020 (EST)

And if I'm not seeing ghosts, how big of a problem is this really? Could a report be extracted with number of title records with dates before first publication date? MagicUnk 16:53, 23 November 2020 (EST)

That's a special usecase - when the canonical title is NOT the title of the first publication (in the original language) - it does not happen often but when it does, this is how it will always look like. If you do not carry the date upwards, the story will appear in the wrong year with variants in the earlier year - including a possible 1920 story with a 1950 date because the prevalent title did not show up until the 50s for example. Or would you rather have this story showing up as a 1950s story?
We already have a set of reports for problems in the dates but this one is a legitimate case where you want the dates to look like this. Until we can have separate dates for order and for "showing on the entry", that's the way to work around oddities like this one.
Variants get dated based on first publication under that title/author/language. Canonical titles are a bit different. :) Annie 17:06, 23 November 2020 (EST)
I get the canonical title thing - but for the two examples above, how would I know, find out that indeed, the later published title is the canonical one? Seems to me very tricky and subjective somehow. Wouldn't we be better off to not do that? Regards, MagicUnk 17:11, 23 November 2020 (EST)
Look at the numbers: 1 publication under the title "Satisfaction" (the very first). Every reprint is under Semper Fi (and the translations use a derivative of that). Should be pretty obvious what the canonical title should be. We are looking at how the story is known, not at how the first editor published it.
The other one is less clear cut on first glance but Mary is definitely used more often including in Best of (and in translations) so the variant is created as it is - the only ones using the original title are the original magazine and the readers based on that magazine. Everyone else uses Mary. So again - should be obvious. :)
So you are proposing to change the meaning of the "canonical title" in this DB from "the most used title" to the "first used title"? If so, please post in R&S and argue your case. As it is, neither canonical author names nor canonical titles are necessarily the first occurrences of a title/author per the rules. Changing that will change how the DB looks like and needs to be discussed (if that is what you want). Annie 17:23, 23 November 2020 (EST)
Thanks for the clarification Annie - re. changing the rules - will need to think a bit more on that before I'll start an R&S :D MagicUnk 17:32, 23 November 2020 (EST)
As an FYI, this issue was hotly debated back when ISFDB 2.0 was getting off the ground. The existence of works like The Stars My Destination, which first appeared as "Tiger! Tiger!" but is much better known as "The Stars My Destination" helped convince the majority of ISFDB editors to use the "better known" standard for canonical titles. We deliberately left some wiggle room when we updated Help to say "For stories or novels that appeared under more than one title, the canonical title is usually the first title for that work, but may be a later title if that title is much better known." Ahasuerus 19:45, 23 November 2020 (EST)

More Banner art

I offer the following for approval and submission: MAGASIN D'ÉDUCATION ET DE RÉCRÉATION IsfdbBannerMagasin.jpg

There are no links for the dates, as the individual issues have not been entered. ../Doug H 23:27, 23 November 2020 (EST)

My knowledge of SF art is limited, but I like the idea of adding banners based on French/German/etc magazine covers. It would help us project a more accurate image of what we currently have in the database. Ahasuerus 09:47, 24 November 2020 (EST)
In this case, the images are from interior art, not covers (there was no cover art), not that I think that should matter. If anyone has any ideas and image source(s) for suitable non-English magazines, I'd be interested. ../Doug H 10:04, 24 November 2020 (EST)
The only thing that I'm not sure about is the all-grayscale nature of the banner. Would that blend in well with the overall look of the start page? Obv. we can give it a try, and if it doesn't work, remove it again... MagicUnk 11:38, 24 November 2020 (EST)
We could tint it sepia tone to make it feel "old". Regarding other possible magazines to use, we could make one based on S-Fマガジン (I can try to find the appropriate fonts, though the Japanese ones might be harder). It's one of the longest-running in the world. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:54, 24 November 2020 (EST)
IsfdbBannerMagasinSepia.jpg
The individual images' blue outlines is an artifact of the image extraction and I might be able to get rid of it. Sepia applies to photographs rather than paper - the greyscale was an easy way to make the background act as contrast to the black and white of the images. Applying the colour to the images would blur them unduly. ../Doug H 13:09, 24 November 2020 (EST)
Sepia tone can be applied to anything. It's not just a photograph thing. Here's an example of what I meant:
IsfdbBannerMagasin-sepia.jpg
This was just a quick-n-dirty application of the sepia tone, but I think it gets across the idea. Also, shouldn't it be "Speculative Fiction" instead of "Science Fiction"? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:02, 24 November 2020 (EST)
That's right, "Speculative Fiction". (No opinion re: "sepia tone" since I am colorblind.) Ahasuerus 15:09, 24 November 2020 (EST)
Sepia tone comes from the processing of antique photographs, it would not have appeared in the paper originally or even as it aged. I'd kind of hoped the gray-scale said "old". As for Science vs Speculative - the Asimov banner (last in the credits) also has it. Let's pretend it was subconscious. Back to:
IsfdbBannerMagasinv2.jpg
../Doug H 17:07, 24 November 2020 (EST)
Yeah, I'm familiar with the process. I mentioned it because it's often used to indicate a picture is old, even if it's not as old as when sepia was used a lot. Black and white isn't as specifically "old", at least in my mind. I'm fine either way. :) ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:22, 24 November 2020 (EST)
The sepia tone looks nicer. Not sure the black & white is going to look well against the rest of the site's colors. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:22, 24 November 2020 (EST)

(unindent) My graphics software is from 2004 and doesn't support a simple Sepia option. If someone would be willing to colourize this, I would appreciate it. ../Doug H 12:45, 25 November 2020 (EST)

The sepia version of the one you linked is already showing above. Here's a sepia version of the second one:
IsfdbBannerMagasinv2-sepia.jpg
If you want newer software, you can download GIMP. It's free, available for Windows, macOS, and Unix/Linux, and it's what I used to do this (since I'm at work and don't have Photoshop available). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:59, 25 November 2020 (EST)
The new proposal is for:
IsfdbBannerMagasin.jpg
which can be found on the wiki here (you may have to refresh the browser page, as 3 versions have now been loaded). The first image in the thread should also change from gray "Science Fiction" to sepia "Speculative Fiction". ../Doug H 14:10, 25 November 2020 (EST)
In respect for the French origin, I've modified the text and added an additional image to take advantage of the space freed up. The image was re-uploaded so refreshing the page should refresh the image just above and at the beginning of this topic. ../Doug H 10:42, 1 December 2020 (EST)
I love the French text! :) MagicUnk 14:34, 1 December 2020 (EST)
Looks good to me. Ahasuerus 15:06, 1 December 2020 (EST)
I don't know what you're looking for in terms of consensus, but you may want to hold off installing for a wee bit, there's another in the works. ../Doug H 15:38, 1 December 2020 (EST)
The final stage is out of my hands, maybe this one could be installed at you convenience. ../Doug H 11:03, 27 December 2020 (EST)
Done -- the new image will be displayed tomorrow. Thanks for working on it! Ahasuerus 18:46, 27 December 2020 (EST)

The Dread Machine

(copied over from Moderator noticeboard for wider discussion) Hello. How should we deal with The Dread Machine? It has been accepted as a webzine, but it doesn't appear to have any separately published issues, so not a periodical. Rather, it looks like an ever expanding collection of stories, corroborated by this submission of new titles. Regards, MagicUnk 15:34, 23 November 2020 (EST)

There are three options:
  • Do not include it based on the policy statement of "online periodicals without distinct issues are not considered webzines"
  • As each story is individually dated on the website, treat it like Tor.com and enter a single story per issue
  • Treat it like Daily Science Fiction and group them into monthly issues. However, with the Daily Science Fiction, while their individual stories don't really met the policy statement of distinct issues, they used to offer a monthly archive (though those pages no longer work) and monthly eBook versions in the distant past.
You should consider moving this to the community portal. Inclusion, how to handle, etc. issues are not limited to input from moderators. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:21, 24 November 2020 (EST)

Mismatched braces in notes and synopses

The cleanup report "Mismatched Template Braces" and the associated yellow warning have been changed to simply "Mismatched Braces". It turns out that we have over 90 occurrences of mismatched single braces, e.g. "[This Publication}", and all of them them are apparently in error.

The new data will become available tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 13:54, 27 November 2020 (EST)

Discussion about ISFDB eligibility at File 770

I dunno if anyone more official/experienced than me might be interested in responding to this comment thread? In particular, this comment: 

   It would be interesting to know how much ISFDB reflects a single editorial position. 
   I know the source data is user-supplied, but is it like Wikipedia, in that a particular
   entry reflects the opinion of the last person to edit it? or is new data moderated or
   curated by someone with authority before it goes public?

Obviously you could merely answer "yes" to both questions, and/or link to the rules of acquisition, but that might come across as a bit unhelpful or passive-aggressive... ErsatzCulture 06:16, 2 December 2020 (EST)

Well, only partly, as I don't know where 'opinion' should come in at ISFDB (other than voting - and maybe tagging). I think we do have some hard criteria, and if there's some unclarity (for example about something being a SHORTFICTION or a NOVEL), that's because some data may still be missing (the exact word count in the example). Christian Stonecreek 09:10, 2 December 2020 (EST)
The Rex Stout example in the article seems to be a short story in a book titled Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories to Be Read with the Door Locked. The story, according to wikipedia is a locked room mystery, possibly included without careful reading. So between our speculative fiction SF including horror versus the general expectation that SF is science fiction, and that a level of trust is required by moderators without access to the book and contributors varying interpretation of rules - it is possible that entries can be moderated (unlike Wikipedia) and still reflect the opinion of the last person to edit. ../Doug H 09:51, 2 December 2020 (EST)
If most (all) of the other stories in this anthology are in scope, it may have also have been added based on the unofficial "mostly SF so all is in" principle (which at least a few editors had confessed to using through the years). Plus some of the policies had changed so many times that older records need some edits...
So we are probably somewhere in the middle - there is no "one person" who has the final word but most people conform to the community agreement (and when they don't, someone tends to fix things sooner or later). In the meantime I had put the non-genre flag on that specific story (for now). This whole anthology probably needs revisiting and cleaning... Annie 10:36, 2 December 2020 (EST)
If we are going to post a response, we should probably start by linking ISFDB:Policy, which has a "Contents/Project Scope Policy" section.
In theory, anything that we list should be either eligible based on our policy statement or labeled "non-genre". In practice, we have a number of exceptions, most commonly:
  • Works erroneously entered before the current moderation system was put into place in 2006 and never cleaned up. This includes a number of records created by the first generation of our robots back in the early 2000s.
  • Works entered based on earlier versions of ISFDB:Policy which still need to be cleaned up, e.g. certain non-fiction and non-genre records exist solely because they were reviewed in a genre magazine.
  • Works entered based on incomplete information available to our editors/moderators, e.g. the title of the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire" makes it sound like it's SF even though it's not.
  • Borderline cases, which we try to document in Notes. For example, the Note field of "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot" record (another Sherlock Holmes story) reads "Bleiler considered the elements of an imaginary drug and "The Lion's Mane" which involves questionable marine biology as speculative enough to review this story in Science-Fiction: The Early Years."
  • Non-genre works which the editor/moderator knew to be non-genre but couldn't flag correctly because our software had limited support for the "non-genre" flag at the time the record was created.
Ahasuerus 13:26, 2 December 2020 (EST)
I posted a reply there. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:32, 2 December 2020 (EST)
Thanks! I have posted another reply with answers to some other questions. Ahasuerus 15:57, 4 December 2020 (EST)

Stephen King works they mention

That thread mentioned these works, stating they are not genre: "The Ledge", "Dolan's Cadillac", and "Quitters Inc.". Two of them are in various verified Night Shift publications, and one is in verified publications of Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Do these have speculative content in them (as defined here)? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:26, 3 December 2020 (EST)

To be clear, I ("bill" in the File770 thread) didn't state that they are not genre, I said that I couldn't recall genre elements in them. Maybe they are, and my memory is faulty. But my best recollection, particularly of "The Ledge" and "Quitters Inc." is that they are crime fiction with no speculative elements. I suppose I should dig them out and re-read them. --Amcombill 03:06, 5 December 2020 (EST)
That'd be appreciated! I tried to dig out my German copy of Night Shift, but it has to resting in a different box than I thought. Stonecreek 05:12, 5 December 2020 (EST)
Okay, I've re-read all three. There is no element of genre at all in either "The Ledge" or "Quitters Inc.". I don't consider "Dolan's Cadillac" to be genre either, but I can see where others might find it to be a bit more of an edge case. In it, the protagonist's wife is killed by a mobster, and the protagonist exacts revenge. Throughout most of the story, the protagonist's late wife "speaks" to him in his thoughts. It is played straight, as imagination and memory, and never as a ghost or supernatural. If it appeared by another author in a mystery magazine, I don't think it would be considered genre at all. I'd mark it without hesitation as "non-genre".--Amcombill 13:30, 5 December 2020 (EST)
Done. They are now marked "non-genre". ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:43, 7 December 2020 (EST)

Microsoft Edge browser

I've just switched over to the Edge browser on a new machine and noticed that the left-side menus (navigation, search, toolbox) in the wiki are positioned after the material on the right - meaning I have to scroll to the bottom to see the left-side menus. Is there something I need to change to keep things up? ../Doug H 20:17, 25 December 2020 (EST)

Interesting. I can recreate the problem using MS Edge and I think I know what's causing it. Unfortunately, the problem is apparently between Edge and the Wiki software, which we have limited control over. Al is currently looking into possibly upgrading our Wiki software, which may help. Until then, I am not sure there is anything we can do to ameliorate the problem. Ahasuerus 21:04, 25 December 2020 (EST)
I can live with it, knowing what's going on - or at least that it's not my fault. ../Doug H 23:00, 25 December 2020 (EST)
If Al would like some help, I'm happy to help where I can with upgrading the wiki software. I don't know how to interact with him, though, since I've never seen him post here. (^_^) ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:29, 30 December 2020 (EST)
Thanks, I've sent Al an email to let him know. Ahasuerus 15:13, 31 December 2020 (EST)
Al has been notoriously unreliable for about a decade now, so the posting rate is pretty low. I'm working through a new setup with the latest versions of Linux (Ubuntu 20.04), MySQL, and Python, so there are a few hickups with the documented installation procedures. After that I'll need to figure out a MediaWiki strategy, since the original MediaWiki installation was challenging (I'm not really a PHP guy), and pretty ancient, so iterating through release upgrades may not be possible (maybe we should make an ISFDB Docker image, so all the tools are consistent). At any rate, you can hit me on my User Talk page while I'm currently paying attention. Alvonruff 18:56, 31 December 2020 (EST)

Award Edit History

Award pages have been updated to support Edit History. The functionality is similar to what Publication and Title pages currently support. Ahasuerus 19:26, 30 December 2020 (EST)

Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:27, 30 December 2020 (EST)
Happy to be of service! Award Type pages have also been updated to support Edit History. Ahasuerus 14:12, 31 December 2020 (EST)
Ditto Award Category pages. Ahasuerus 17:21, 31 December 2020 (EST)

Non-genre novels in a genre series

For a book series, do we evaluate each book individually on whether or not it falls in the genre category? Looking at this series, the first book is listed as non-genre, and my recollection is that while there is an implication of psychic behavior, there is nothing explicitly genre. The next two books, and associated novel and novella, are clearly genre entries. I'm just wondering if it makes sense to leave this book as non-genre when it occurs in a genre "universe". Any thoughts?Tom

I have run into this scenario on a number of occasions. The earliest one was a horror duology in which the protagonist battled backwoods cannibals in Book 1 and zombies in Book 2. I ended up entering Book 1 as "non-genre" in order to make it clear to our users that there would be no speculative elements in the book.
And then there are overwhelmingly non-genre series with one or more genre stores mixed in. For example, the vast majority of the Nancy Drew books are non-genre, but a few have unambiguously genre elements. When I enter them, I make sure to add a note about the nature of the book (like "Unlike many other Nancy Drew mysteries, this one features a real (rather than a fake) ghost.") to avoid confusion. Ahasuerus 14:36, 31 December 2020 (EST)
Retrieved from "https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php?title=ISFDB:Community_Portal/Archive/Archive49&oldid=601653"