ISFDB:Help desk/archives/archive 13

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This is an archive page for the Help Desk. Please do not edit the contents. To start a new discussion, please click here.
This archive includes discussions from August - November 2010.

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Expanded archive listing


John Branville

I was about to send most of John Branville's listings to be deleted as non-genre, but then I noticed they had been reviewed in SF related publications. I'm now seeking opinions re which of his books should be classified as non-genre.

"The Infinities" and "The Book of Evidence" are definitely SF. "Mefisto" appears to be SF.

From their descriptions "Doctor Copernicus" and "Kepler" are both straightforward historical fiction novels about the two scientists and the development of their theories (probably reviewed only because of the subject matter). "The Newton Letter" is apparently about someone writing a historical novel about Newton (ditto re the review).

"Birchwood" looks like a straightforward modern drama, so the reason for its review is a mystery to me. Jonschaper 02:53, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The policy page doesn't say so, but there has been some support in the past for indexing any work of whatever genre, reviewed in a genre magazine that is being indexed, in part so that the review links don't dead end. At least some popular science books have been added on this basis. I don't know that there was ever a clear consensus on this point. -DES Talk 03:20, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
DES is correct. It's been an unstated policy to create title records for books that are reviewed in genre magazines (especially books about science and scientists). Exceptions include graphic novels, manga, comic books (not really books as defined here), and video or audio recordings. I've changed the historical and biographical novels to the NONGENRE type. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
Thanks! I had those practices in mind when I cancelled my delete submissions. I was just left scratching my head over why "Birchwood" was reviewed, which led me to wonder if I might be missing in determining which of his books were definitely non-genre, i.e. if I should fully rely upon their descriptions. Jonschaper 04:21, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
Descriptions from one source might be misleading. Searching for multiple viewpoints and/or synopses can help determine whether a book may be spec-fic or not. Thanks for noticing that the titles had been reviewed in a genre magazine. When moderators see a delete pub request, we can't know that immediately. (Sounds like a feature request!) We have to go to the title record to see if there's an award or review record linked to the title.Mhhutchins 05:12, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
Hm, yes, it would be useful. I guess we'll need to check all titles in the about-to-be-deleted pub. Ahasuerus 05:30, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
FR 3038294 created. Should the RoA on the policy page be changed to indicate this practice? I would think so, myself. -DES Talk 14:04, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

The Silmarillion: Second Edition- duplicate tabs of same entry

Morning! This. [1] has two of this [2]. Can anyone figure it? Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 11:17, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure, but my guess is tht it is a result of the type mismatch. The title record 1214 is recorded as a NOVEL, but the publication THSLMRLLNB0000 is recorded as a COLLECTION. I can see arguments for either view, you could even make a case for Omnibus I suppose, but I think they need to match for the display logic to work properly. -DES Talk 14:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
But why mirror itself? I cloned off of the ISBN number, and I am pretty sure, very, that I made it a collection immediately. I did not notice the mirror effect yesterday, before I added an image. I should have noticed it because I had to look for :Second Edition and since I knew I was the first to use that add to title I should have noticed two with it. Unfortunately, the whole title IMO is a collection of stories not a novel. Actually could be argued to be a collection of essays. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 16:24, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm not sure but I suspect that the display logic is finding it once as a novel (because of the title type) and once as a collection (because of the publication type). Even if I am wrong, pubs whose types mis-match their title types can cause problems: for one thing, the pub->title link doesn't work. I think that we should either a) make this a novel, or b) make the other pubs collections, or c) unmerge this so it has a separate title record. I could see arguments for any of these courses. -DES Talk 16:29, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
Unmerges submitted. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 19:00, 5 August 2010 (UTC)
I see the submission, but I notice there are more pubs under that main title as collections (both ": Second Edition" and not, although the "not" ones don't have the display problem -- it must be matching on exact title) that should also be considered. My gut reaction is that separate titles really isn't the best way to go. I think we should see if we can get agreement about either NOVEL or COLLECTION and change the non-conforming publications to match. I notice Locus calls it a novel. I don't know if any of the other secondary sources might be helpful in choosing one over the other. --MartyD 10:37, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Will await, but remember that 'collections' are NOT clonable and this title has been mass produced. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 11:20, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Oops. [3]. First line is "collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic works". Divisions are discussed in later parts of the article. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 11:24, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps I'm missing something. In what way are collections "not clonable"? I have cloned many here. -DES Talk 13:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
As to "Collection" vs "Novel": The various sections were never published separately. The Ainulindalë, the Valaquenta, and the Quenta Silmarillion, are basically a single work, although they have separate title pages. Akallabêth and "Of the Rings of Power" are more separate, both in composition and in content, yet are no more divergent from Quenta Silmarillion than the various appendices are from LotR, in my view. Still collection may fit better. But if it does, the Second Edition is no more a collection than the first edition is. -DES Talk 13:30, 6 August 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I either mis-remembered a recent attempted cloning or something else. ah la. As for the parts of 'The Simarillion', they are the remainders of a writers works, edited into a book. We have no idea if they were complete or if parts were deleted, the editor does not make a novel a writer does. What makes the Second edition the second edition is the change in preface by the 'editor' which basically adds a letter he felt reflected on the content. Possibly, a case of material added for greater completeness? I did/do NOT argue that second edition made a collection, but after studying the 9th printing done as a collection and the statements of the editor I felt the argument for novel moot. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 15:09, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

(unindent) I think I can shed some light on the double entry. The publication contains the novel The Silmarillion, but also the novel Quenta Silmarillion, which is a variant of the first. In effect, the same novel is entered twice. Deleting the first from the contents should do the trick. --Willem H. 10:18, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Deletion requested. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 11:34, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
Done. Thanks for posting this part so I didn't have to figure out what was going on for myself. :-) --MartyD 12:30, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
It looks good now. Special thanks to Willem H for the insight and MartyD for the laugh. LOL Taking the novel out broke the connection to "The Silmarillion" novel as the hot link tab is no longer there. Now, How to merge it with the collection grouping? Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 12:51, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
That was one step further. I didn't think about this immediately, but the collection needs a container title. I added this, and merged with the existing container. Should now be as it was meant to be. --Willem H. 19:21, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
Looks Great! Thanks muchly, Harry. --Dragoondelight 22:47, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Pub Series access

The URL for a series link can specify either the record number or the series name after the question mark. Is this also true for publication Series URLs? I am asking so that i can be sure the new template {{PubSeries}} works correctly. -DES Talk 06:23, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Reviews with variant authors

I encountered a review of The Frankenstein Reader which credits it to "C. Beck" although it is linked to a title record which credits Calvin Beck. What is advisable in a case like this? Set up "C. Beck" as a pseudonym? Alter the review record (although it is verified)? Or simply leave the dangling author record? -DES Talk 16:17, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

IMO a pseudonym should not be created based on a variant spelling of the author's name in a review. The review should be corrected to give the author's name as credited on the book and the wrong name stated in the review should be recorded in the note field of the review record. Mhhutchins 04:47, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
Would you still do that when working from secondary sources, such as OCLC records, as opposed to the physical book? -DES Talk 05:17, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
I don't believe OCLC gives reviews as content in their records (I could be wrong). Some magazine indexes (secondary sources) might record reviews, and if I believe they give the wrong title or author I would correct them as well. Hal Hall's review indexes (of which I have no copies) would be handled the same way if I discovered an error in either title or author. I usually work from the primary sources, the magazines and fanzines in which the reviews appear. Mhhutchins 16:59, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
I was unclear. I found a dangling review (in a verifed pub), one where we don't index the pub reviewed. I looked up the pub reviewed on OCLC. but OCLC gives a different version of the authors name than the review did (adding a middle name IIRC). I created the pub record based on the OCLC data. But should I change the review to match the OCLC, which after all is secondary? or should I leave the dangling review which creates an empty author record? -DES Talk 01:36, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
I hate those empty author records and would do almost anything to clear them up (although I haven't worked on that project in quite some time now.) Give me the specifics of the title and author reviewed and I can give an opinion as to how I would handle it. Most likely, I'd follow the same procedure as above and change the review credits. Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:22, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
I'm doing the same thing as Mike - I too hate the empty authors. One other thing I do, although it's probably not necessary, is that even if the pseudonym exists, I'll link to the author of the actual publication if that's been verified - e.g. I'll re-link a review of a book that credits Brian Aldiss as author to the Brian W. Aldiss version if that is the correct one. BLongley 19:18, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
As for creating the missing publications - I tend to use the name as credited in the review unless there's better evidence of a different name, e.g. a cover scan, or existing publications by that author: it's not always OCLC as the main source. Which is why, for instance, we have no "L. E. Modesitt" here even though several reviews in Vector have been credited that way. I'm happy to add "L. E. Modesitt" with no ", Jr." when there ARE books credited that way, but I'm not happy with creating him from reviews alone. BLongley 19:18, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

Pseudonyms?

Hi, I suspect Bob Barger, Robert Barger, and Robert P. Barger are one and the same. Jonschaper 03:17, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

All appearances are in issues of the same fanzine, all that I entered, so I'll create a variant, using the more popular form as the canon. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:52, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

First Contact - upload problems

Morning! This. [4]. First problem, it will not accept .gif images. Says it is corrupt, and I have had this problem before and even conversion will not make them acceptable. Instructions say it is allowed, so that either needs change or modification. Second problem, process goes to already has image do you want to replace and zap you can look at the image I wish to replace and when it is tried you are still looking at the image I wish to replace. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 12:26, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

From my side it looks like no problem. The new image is converted to .jpg here(twice). I have seen the problem with seeing the old image when you want the new one before. Have you tried refreshing (F5) your browser? --Willem H. 13:04, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Absolutely Shocked to Death! F5 did work, so the 'sneaky' machine hid it! Yikes. Still, will not accept a .gif though. Is probably this machine again? Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 14:28, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
I have no idea. Perhaps a more experienced moderator? --Willem H. 14:39, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
I have uploaded gif files before without problem, what is the source of this one? It is possible that the file is corrupt, in that it fails to fully comply with the GIF standard, even though your computer can display it -- some programs are stricter about the standard than others. I recommend the free program IrfanView (free for non-comercial use from http://www.irfanview.com/). You can load a file and do save as and be sure the result is standards-conformant. You can also use this to adjust file size (scale down), and indeed convert format (such as gif->jpeg) and many other graphics file functions. -DES Talk 15:20, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
As Willem H. said, the current image looks fine and is a jpeg. I see you uploaded three versions of this image. Please NOTE when you upload a revised version of an image, the upload comment does not replace the image description it is just an edit summary. To REPLACE the image description (as with an altered or improved template that credits the artist) you need to edit the image page and change the description and save. I have done so for Image:FRSTCNTT1971.jpg. Please remember this in future. also please remember steps 10, 11, & 12 of Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki, linking the artist category created if it is not already linked. This helps make Category:Artist Images into a complete directory of artists for whom we have images on file. You upload a lot of images, taking these steps will really help with this. Remember that they need only be done once per artist name. -DES Talk 15:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
I have seen this error when uploading a gif file to a Wiki file whose extension is .jpg (the default if you use the upload new scan link) instead of .gif. --MartyD 18:47, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
It says .gif. Source wanted is this site [5] and this image [6]. My computer uses Microsoft Office Picture Manager. When using User:Dragoondelight}}it shows as .gif and results in this "The file is corrupt or has an incorrect extension. Please check the file and upload again." Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 19:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
Got what happens. The "destination file name said .jpeg or jpg and I just changed that to .gif and it appears to have accepted. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 19:38, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
By the way, you uplaoded this with the default "Source" that is "Scanned by User:Dragoondelight ". But in this case the actual source was "http://members.cox.net/sjrohde4/images/books_k/knight_first_pinnp062n.gif" if I understand you. The "Source=" parameter should be corrected on Image:FRSTCNTT1971.jpg. -DES Talk 21:33, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

James Gunn interview

Morning! This. [7]. I wish to move the "James Gunn" interview to the "James E. Gunn" entries. The only method I see is to add the 'MI' to the interviewee name. What is the preferred solution? Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 11:37, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I'd go with your solution for now, and add a note to the interview title record (as I do for Review records that would otherwise create a new author). In the long term, I think we should improve the software display of interviews. BLongley 23:10, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
P.S. I'm assuming that your original alternative suggestion to add "MI" was a typo? Just add an "E."? BLongley 23:10, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
I've done this more than a few times. Sometimes an interview gives a familiar name to the interviewee, which I correct to the canonical name, e.g. "Bob Silverberg" to Robert Silverberg. I can't see any problem here, and see no need to create a pseudonym. After all, the interviewee is not the author of the piece, and we want it linked on his summary page, not sitting in limbo on a pseudonym page. Mhhutchins 23:22, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
And speaking of Gunn, when are we going to allow that the man has rarely used "James E. Gunn" since 1960 and admit that "James Gunn" is his canonical name? Just asking. Mhhutchins 23:34, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
Probably the same time that we reverse Dean (R.) Koontz. It's just a pain to do at the moment. :-/ BTW, I don't like the last reversal we did - can we have "John Grant (1949-)" back to plain John Grant? I don't think there's much risk of confusion with "John Grant (?-)". BLongley 18:21, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree. Once it's established that one is the more popular we need to remove the disambiguation for that one. Just have to be careful about any new records for "John Grant (?-)... Mhhutchins 03:37, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
This will be much much easier once we Enable mass variant title creation for Authors. Ahasuerus 01:22, 1 September 2010 (UTC)
Change submitted. "MI" was for 'middle initial'. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 11:08, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Wildcard Search Possible of Author's Date of Birth/Death?

Is it possible to do a wildcard search on the date of an author's birth/death in advanced search, or even for specific dates? Only the year seems to be searched. Is it necessary to run a script of some sort?--Rkihara 18:38, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

By experiment, this isn't possible. If there is a way to do it, it doesn't use any of the obvious methods. it seems as if you can search on a specific birth year, but not a range of years, not on a specific date, and not on any part of the date other than the year. Seems like a worthwhile feature request to me. -DES Talk 22:56, 31 August 2010 (UTC)
The search logic in Advanced Search converts dates to years, so wildcards are not supported at this time. Ahasuerus 01:19, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Daves

Does anyone know if David Barnett, David G. Barnett and/or Dave Barnett are the same person? I note that David Barnett's website only lists stories and novels listed here as by "David Barnett", which is perhaps meaningful, but vs David G. and Dave, his listings are all 2005 and later so maybe he just doesn't like his earlier work? Jonschaper 01:50, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

I would wager they're different persons. It's a common name, so it's possible some credits may be confused between the two. "Dave" could possibly be "David G." as it has some cover art credit. I'd advise leaving them be until something more definitive arises. Mhhutchins
There's at least two different people there. I've found a website for David G. Barnett now, and he seems to be involved with Necro Publications / Bedlam Press. Which is on hold indefinitely now. He doesn't seem to be having a good life at the moment. :-( BLongley 18:10, 3 September 2010 (UTC)
Wow, bad news. Maybe it makes me a communist in some peoples' eyes, but damn, I'm glad I was born in a country with universal healthcare coverage and other social safety nets. Jonschaper 02:58, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Gillam vs Gilliam

I suspect Barry Gilliam should be Barry Gillam, apparently a known fan. Jonschaper 05:19, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

You're right. The piece is signed as by "Barry Gillam" I merged the two under the right name. --Willem H. 05:52, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

Geoffrey John Barrett

Hi, this person appears to have two entries (under G.J. Barrett and [John Barrett]). They both have the legal name "Geoffrey John Barrett", and the same birth and death dates, BUT one is listed as being born in Norfolk, Virginai (sic), and the other in Norwich, Norfolk, England. I'm not sure where this info comes from. I have to run so I'll maybe do more of a search another time, but if anyone has info or wants to check in the meantime... Jonschaper 06:08, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

Reginald has G.J. Barrett as with the correct bibliography and as being born in Norfolk, England. I can find John Barrett in Murray, but it unfortunately doesn't give biographical details. While not impossible that they are the same person, I would guess that, given the two different time periods of the works, they are two different persons and the biographical details under John Barrett are incorrect. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 11:57, 8 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, I'll make a note under "John's" bibliographic notes then delete the bio data since even if he is Geoffrey John it is partly incorrect. Do you have any sources confirming the more detailed death date (14 October 1999 vs 1999)for G.J.?Jonschaper 02:07, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
Nevermind, I found confirmation of the death date AND three pseudonyms relevant to this database Jonschaper 02:16, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Pseudonyms and Award Listings

Terry Lamsley and Terry E. Lamsley are the same person; the latter name exists only to indicate an award nomination for the collection "Dark Matters" (here are links to the Terry E. Lamsley version and the the Terry Lamsley version). Obviously these records need to be combined in some way. I was going to create a pseudonym, but I don't know enough about how award listings work to be sure it would display correctly, so I've brought the problem here instead. BrendanMoody 14:25, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

I don't know where the E came from, but The Locus Award Index says the nomination was for the No-E version. So I'd just merge the authors and keep the No-E one. BLongley 17:01, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Barycz

Anyone know if R., R.I. and/or Richard Barycz are one and the same? I strongly suspect so. All contribute to Vector. Jonschaper 04:41, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

Every piece by all three authors appeared in the same British fanzines. With that unusual last name, they have to be the same person. Mhhutchins 14:25, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
Agreed, they're all the same person. Editor of "Worst British Fanzine, 1978-79" according to some sources. BLongley 18:55, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

TO: "Mhhutchins"/Editor, ISFDB

TO: Mhhutchins/Editor, ISFDB

FROM: Priscilla Lowell, Writer, Interviewer

Message: How do I reach you regarding the recent editing of my "Bio" submission on the 

         ISfDB website?

         My E mail: Skylar44@Verizon.Net —The preceding unsigned comment added by Priscilla Lowell, (Author) (talk • contribs) 21:16, 21 September 2010
I've sent an email to the address above. There's also a link on my user talk page User_talk:Mhhutchins for private email correspondence. Or you can post a message directly on that page which would be public. Mhhutchins 03:56, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Delete Author?

The database supposedly removes author records with no associated titles, but I've been finding a lot of those lately. Has something changed or am I missing something?--Rkihara 04:47, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

If the author is listed in a review, the author db entry will be retained even if there are no publications or titles listed for the author. This is a nuisance. Often the best solution is to add the work reviewed, or if it is of a kind excluded by the RoA, to convert the review listing into an ESSAY listing. I think you will need to use Advanced Search to find the review(s) involved. -DES Talk 14:15, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, now that you mention it, I vaguely remember that. I think I'll leave them alone, as in many cases that would involve reversing deliberate choices by the editors involved. A feature change to show the review an author without entered titles would be a nice addition.--Rkihara 16:23, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I agree about the feature changes. However note the cleanup project ISFDB:Authors that only exist due to reviews -- the typical response in many cases has been to add the publications. -DES Talk 16:31, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
FR 3073458 (Display dangling reviews) submitted. -DES Talk 16:40, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I used to enter all pubs for reviews of relevant books and leave out reviews of non-genre items. Now I believe the practice of many editors is to enter all reviews, but not to add the pubs for non-genre items. So to fix the authors without titles I have the choice of deleting the review or adding a non-genre pub. This is sure to annoy someone.--Rkihara 16:48, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
There has been discussion of this not too long ago. I and some other editors will routinely add a pub record for any non-genre book (but not movie or comic) reviewed in a genre publication. RoA #16 was added to codify this practice in this edit. Of course you are free not to add such if you prefer. -DES Talk 17:05, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Somewhere, some piece of help must suggest entering reviews of non-genre books, comics, movies, etc., as ESSAY, because that is how I learned to do it. I know I didn't come up with that approach on my own.... --MartyD 17:11, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
I think that was common practice at one point, i'm not sure it was ever in the help. Now I at least do that only for non-book items (movies, comics, magna, graphic novels, etc). -DES Talk 17:25, 22 September 2010 (UTC)
Stray authors are not necessarily down to reviews - I thought they always were, so added the "Reviewed Author" option to advanced title search to help find them. But there have been other bugs which meant "authors" don't always disappear - I think secondary cover-artists were not always deleted automatically. Must put my coding-hat on again sometime soon and find them... BLongley 03:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
As for data-entry - I always add reviewed books in genre magazines now, whether nonfiction on non-genre: media and comic reviews only if it's any easy copy'n'paste. I'd link magazine/fanzine reviews but the Editor-Merging practices don't help me do that. :-/ See "Barbed Wire Kisses" and suchlike. BLongley

Stan! vs. Stan Brown

Stan! and Stan Brown are the same person (see [8] & [9]). I wanted to set-up a pseudonym, but I'm not sure which one should be the canonical name. From an ISFDB perspective, Stan Brown is more used and so could be considered the "most recognized name". However, from an external perspective, the author seems to be pushing Stan! and I don't know the RPG world so not sure how he's known there. Any suggestions?

Also, as a note to myself so I don't forget: once the canonical name is picked, those links should be added. --JLaTondre 14:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC)

I'd go for the more complete name as the canonical one. And it would mean making only one variant record. Mhhutchins 16:48, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Actually, after some research, I saw that two of those that were credited as "Stan Brown" in the db should have been credited to "Stan!". I'd still go with "Stan Brown". And to throw in another monkey wrench, there's this author. Mhhutchins 17:04, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I submitted changes to make Stan! and Steven ’Stan’ Brown pseudonyms of Stan Brown. --JLaTondre 17:06, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Potential Merges with Story Length Questions

Each of the following cases consists of shortfiction with the same author, date, and publication year, but with different story lengths. While it's possible that an author could produce two versions of the same story in the same year, it seems more likely that most of these are data inconsistencies.

Does anybody have knowledge of what the correct lengths of these are or if they are indeed different versions? I would assume the three cases (the verified ones) arising from the British printings of Analog Science Fact -> Science Fiction are indeed errors. --JLaTondre 17:32, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

I agree, the British printings are probably the same length as the US ones. Whether the US one is right I don't know. However, be careful: John Brunner for instance is known to claim "extensive revisions" on later reprints in book form, so the length of "Listen! The Stars!" does not necessarily mean the "Novel" The Stardroppers is as short. BLongley 18:31, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Okay, you've confused me. Is your warning that the novella & novelette versions of "Listen! The Stars!" are not the same (though this is one of the British printing cases)? Or did you just toss in a totally different topic? --JLaTondre 18:59, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Sorry, I should probably have quoted this instead. The novella & novelette magazine versions are probably the same, but there is a "Novel" version as well that MAY be the same in the Ace Double (only 96 pages). In which case the Stardroppers should be unlinked from the Shortfiction and the Ace Double entry made Shortfiction (probably of Novella length). But it really might appear as 3 different lengths. :-/ BLongley 19:13, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
At least three of the stories in question can be found in Project Gutenberg. Very easy to figure out the word count for such titles. If you are using Firefox there is a very useful add-on called wordcount.--swfritter 15:51, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Kim Stanley Robinson's Collection The Martians

Kim Stanley Robinson's collection The Martians has an entry in the table of contents titled: If Wong Wei Lived on Mars and Other Poems. In every instance it has been entered here, it is listed as a single poem.

In the British 1st printing this group consists of 18 poems, while in American editions is consists of 16 poems, and the remaining 2, The Names of the Canals and The Soundtrack, are listed as short stories along with the other titles.

In both cases it seems evident from reading that these poems (all 18) are in fact individual pieces rather than subsections of a longer poem.

I suspect it would be best to list each of the poems as a separate entry for both the American and British editions, although no one has cataloged them as such thus far. (The German and Spanish editions listed seem to just be clones of the American editions, at least as far as they've been cataloged here so far.) But what to do about the 2 entries that are listed as poems in one edition but short stories in another? Or should this just be pointed out as a note in the title data?

Also, is the title If Wong Wei Lived on Mars and Other Poems still retained as an entry if the poems are broken out as individual entries? I suspect the answer would be yes, but if so what should it be listed as? A poem? A collection?

Thanks, Albinoflea 06:45, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

I tend to agree, if you are wiling to enter the individual poems, they should be indexed. The ISFDB does not handle "group titles" well. That is titles that are not published separately, but form a coherent group within a publication, or even in multiple publications. Redcurrant examples include "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" as seen in The Tolkien Reader and Tales from the Perilous Realm. Here the "Preface" to the sub-collection more or less signals its start, but there is no entry for the overall title, in part because the title is almost the same as the first poem. Or consider the sets of six quite short stories by Aurthur C. Clarke: The Other side of the Sky and Venture to the Moon. These appear as groups in the collection The Other Side of the Sky (and i thought elsewhere but I can't find a listing) and in the anthology A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, Volume Two, and are also separately reprinted in various publications. Here the device adopted is to put the individual stories into a series, which marks them as part of the group in all their appearances, automatically. Title notes on the individual stories are also used here.
If you include an index entry for the group, i would suggest that it be of type COLLECTION. This works, but it does look a little odd. (This method i have used with "A Child's Garden of Verse" some or all of which is included in publications primarily devoted to genre works by Stevenson. See DRJKLLNDMR2008.) I suggest that you also or instead use the series method.
There is a feature request pending for the creation of a new type to serve this purpose, but how knows when or how it will be implemented. -DES Talk 15:26, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
As to the two items listed as short stories in some pubs, if it can be established that they are the same texts (and that they are in fact poems), i think they should be corrected to type POEM and merged with any listing of type POEM. (If as Mhhutchins indicates below, they are actually short prose works, merge them as SHORTFICTION.) Since at least some of their appearances are verified, the verifiers should be asked to confirm that these are in fact the same texts as the poems, and asked if they object to changing the type to POEM. -DES Talk 15:30, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
I verified the first American edition of the collection, and I would not group those two pieces ("The Names of the Canals" and "The Soundtrack") as part of a poetry cycle titled "If Wang Wei Lived on Mars and Other Poems". First, because they're not poems; they're vignettes. Secondly, they are not published with the other poems, in fact, they're printed twenty pages before the group of poems. I'm going to update the record to show the individual poems, creating title records for each noting their relationship in the pub record's note field. Mhhutchins 17:09, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
OK, I'll have a look at what you've done before I go and update the 1st British edition. I agree with your assessments that those two pieces aren't quite poems, which is likely why they were broken out for the American edition.
While you're updating the 1st American edition, could you check on the spelling of the group of poems? I think we may have been inadvertently propagating a misspelling of Wang Wei as Wong Wei. I'm quoting this conversation from my talk page:
p.s. I did the merges, except for If Wang Wei Lived on Mars and Other Poems with If Wong Wei Lived on Mars and Other Poems ("Wang" vs. "Wong"). That might need to be a variant. I see Locus agrees with the "Wang" spelling, but many verifications agree with the "Wong" spelling, including your own verified THMRTNSHBF1999. Perhaps you could double-check and if necessary add that into the discussion you started on the help page? —The preceding unsigned comment added by MartyD (talk • contribs) 06:39, 2 October 2010
Well, that is interesting and probably something that wouldn't have cropped up if I hadn't re-entered by hand. I have the UK edition here and the spelling Wang is correct. (It's a reference to an actual Chinese poet named Wang Wei, so I guess that's not too surprising.) When I get home I'll have to check the Easton and Bantam editions, but I suspect from what I'm seeing in the Google Books preview that Wang is also correct for those editions as well. Albinoflea 16:36, 2 October 2010 (UTC)
I merged the two title records. It's likely that the "Wong" spelling originated with one pub which was subsequently cloned for contents. Mhhutchins 00:55, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, before I proceed with adding the individual poems to the 1st British edition, what would be the best way to do this?

Since Mhhutchins has already added records for the individual poems to the 1st American edition, can I perform an import so that there won't be any need to merge records, or will that just create duplicate records for all of the other short pieces? Would it be better to just add the poems to the existing list of records? It isn't clear to me from looking at the import content page or its help:screen page what happens after I submit data when performing an import: does it get submitted into the pending edit queue for a moderator to deal with, or am I sent to the Edit pub screen where I can make further changes?

Also, we will wind up with a variant title for the poem Canyon Color as it retains the British spelling Canyon Colour. Albinoflea 02:18, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

It would be better to add the contents then merge the identical records. (Make "Canyon Colour" a variant.) The importing function doesn't allow you to choose which items to import; it imports all contents. It's possible you could then delete the duplicates, but there was a bug at one time that would delete both copies, so we'll leave that method. I'll do some experimenting to see if that will work for the future. For now, use the first method. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:37, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
I experimented and saw that any shared contents does not get duplicated when imported into another record. So go ahead and do an import from this pub: THMRTNSLFX1999. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:47, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
FYI, after an import a mod must approve before it takes effect, just as with other edits. But as Mhhutchins discovered, import is smarter than it used to be. Also the bug in remove titles he mentioned has been fixed, so even if import did create dupes, they could be fixed fairly easily.
Where there is a group of titles to add to multiple pubs, sometimes the best way is to create a dummy (empty) pub, import into that, remove the unwanted titles, and then import from the dummy into all target pubs. But that requires multiple approvals, so it is much easier for those who can self-approve. -DES Talk 03:59, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Unfortunately I must have been entering it in using the first method when you wrote the above... so there will be some merging to be done. Nevertheless, I'll need to follow this same process up with the Easton edition so I'll try the import method at that point.
In addition to Canyon Colour there will be another variant for I Say Goodbye to Mars / I Say Good-Bye to Mars.
I'm curious now as to whether the subsequent British pb editions follow the British hc or the American ordering of these pieces. Albinoflea 04:56, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Approved the additions and merged the duplicates. I did not make variants. Enjoy. --MartyD 10:28, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
Thanks MartyD. Albinoflea 05:29, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
OK, it actually looks like there might be some bugginess with the import function: see the title entries for The Soundtrack or Odessa and notice how the Easton Press and SFBC editions are listed twice, and these are the pubs that had content imported into them. Albinoflea 05:55, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
OK, I've got an import submitted to bring the Easton edition into alignment with the other editions that have Wang Wei Lived on Mars broken out into individual poems, and added the individual poems to a series as DES suggested, and the variants for the two with varied British/American spellings. Albinoflea 01:50, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
Approved, looks good. I see "If Wang Wei Lived on Mars and Other Poems" is still listed as a POEM. Has any further thought been given to converting it to a collection or other type? -DES Talk 03:15, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
For now I've followed Mhhutchins's lead, such that "If Wang Wei Lived on Mars and Other Poems" is not being retained as an index entry, but is being deleted and replaced with the individual poem entries and an explanation in the pub notes. Between us we've converted 4 of the entries, but there are seven other pubs that are still using the original single poem entry, four of which haven't been verified.
I'm not sure how best to proceed, as there are differences between the US and UK editions both in the spelling of the poem titles and what is included in the series. Interestingly, the American ARC has the US spellings but the same grouping as the 1st UK edition. Albinoflea 05:29, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
A bigger problem: all of the content pieces have been duplicated in the Easton Press edition. The duplicates are not visible in the pub view, but the title records of each content piece shows it appearing twice in this edition. If you do a "Remove Titles" function you can see the duplicates. I'm afraid if you try to remove the duplicate records, all will be deleted. Looks like the bug wasn't really fixed. The only resolution is to remove all contents and do a clone from a clean edition. Mhhutchins 19:24, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
I have removed the duplicates (not all of the content items were duplicated, although many were). The remove titles function showed each duplicate twice, and allowed the removal of only one. However, when editing the pub, a change to the page number of one of a pair of duplicates affects both. -DES Talk 21:41, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
This proves that the bug still exists, and that we shouldn't use the clone import function if the same content record exists in both pub records. Even though it won't be displayed in the pub record, the pub will be listed twice in the content's title record listing. Mhhutchins 22:13, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
I meant that the bug in the remove function was fixed. The dummy pub method works (1. create a new dummy pub of the title. 2. export desired content into it. 3. remove unwanted content items from the dummy. 4 import from the dummy into the target(s) 5. delete the dummy) but it has too many approval steps for a non-mod to use conveniently. -DES Talk 03:06, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
Then the bug in the import function remains. If it can't be programmed to recognize that another copy exists when it's importing the same title, there should be a warning. Who knows how many copies are floating around without being visible on the pub record page? Mhhutchins 04:27, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
OK, I just recreated the bug. It's even more twisted than it may appear because the clone/import option ignores container titles (see Bug 2873841), but doesn't check for duplicates. I'll create a bug report and then check how many pubs with duplicate titles we have. Thanks! Ahasuerus 18:59, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

[unindent] Just finally finished converting the last of these over to listing the individual poems! That certainly dragged on for a while... Albinoflea 04:04, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Deletion

Hi, the reference here to Stover as an editor should be deleted and I'm not sure how to go about it. There is (correctly) an entry for Stover's authorship of this article in the same publication. Jonschaper 22:45, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

I suspect that the essay was originally mis-entered as an EDITOR record (an easy mistake to make, they are next to each other in the pull down). I have converted the EDITOR record back to an ESSAY record. The next step is to remove the duplicate. I started to do this, but I am gettign an error msg, there seems to be a bug here. I will report it. -DES Talk 23:46, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

When are two collections not the same title?

I know we're somewhat tolerant of differing contents among editions of "the same" collection or anthology. At what point do we consider the differences to be too great for the container title to be shared? I have on hold a submission that proposes to merge Yesterday Knocks of 1953 with one of 2003. The 1953 collection of that title was privately published and contained five stories. The 2003 collection of that title contains 11 stories -- the five from the 1953 collection, plus six more that were printed later in various issues of Supernatural Stories but were not collected until this 2003 publication. I'd be inclined to keep these titles separate but I imagine we must have run across this situation before. Thanks. --MartyD 01:44, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

I would ordinarily agree that the titles should remain separate, but this one appears to be an exception: the publisher states in its promotional literature that this is a reprint of the 1953 collection with six tales that "have never before been collected into book form". There is no story titled "Yesterday Knocks" which also leads me believe that the publisher considers this a reprint of the earlier same-titled collection. Mhhutchins 02:10, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
Also, because we don't create variants based on content (or aren't supposed to), if we choose to keep the titles separate, they must be disambiguated. Or at least noted in the title record so that any moderator won't inadvertently accept a future submission to merge. Mhhutchins 02:15, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
I buy your reasoning. I will approve the merge and add a note to the 2003 pub and to the title. Thanks. --MartyD 02:20, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Message from Another New User

Hello Everyone, I'm Space27. I discovered ISFDB years ago, then I really discovered it a few days ago. Has it gotten better? I can now find more stuff easier than ever. The "selected upcoming books" and the "authors born on this day" are good features. Also good is that I myself can add and correct listings.

There are a couple of features that I wish could be added to ISFDB. One is a search by date, to find out who was born, who died, and who first got published on a given day of the year, as well as which works first appeared. Another is an option to sort a list by date and alphabetical order of name and title, combined with a conversion of all the top 100 lists into sortable tables. Would any technical wizards be up to creating those features? —The preceding unsigned comment added by Space27 (talk • contribs) 19:30, 12 October 2010

Interesting questions - I think you're asking for more than a couple of features though! You can currently do a birthdate or a deathdate search in the advanced author search, but only by year. That could be improved fairly easily I guess. "First Publication date" search we don't cater for at all really, but if you are interested in a particular author look at their "Other Bibliographies For This Author" and there's a "Chronological" option - it still separates titles by category but you should be able to find the first thing we know they published, whether it was a poem or essay or short fiction or novel. That's the nearest to choosing a sort order we currently have, I think - but yes, it would be nice to specify the order of results on any search. "Top 100" is our default for most searches anyway and I know we've comparatively recently fixed some types of search to allow you to see the next 100, and the 100 after that... so yes, there are still improvements to be made, and I hope that the fiddling we've done since Al let us play at Development ourselves has improved things. There should also be a lot more data than we had a few years ago, thanks to our editors. BLongley 00:28, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Separating different works with the same/similar titles

This listing for Ray Bradbury's "That Woman on the Lawn" combines two separate works with the same title, a poem from 1973 and a short story from 1996. (They have the same basic concept, but are otherwise so different that the latter can't really be considered a revised version of the former.) I was planning to unmerge the four occurrences of the poem, remerge them into one separate title for the poem, then edit the title data of the original listing to correct its date and title type. Mhhutchins explained that there are problems with the unmerge feature that make it tricky to use. So I'm wondering if there's a better way to separate the two items. BrendanMoody 02:13, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I left a note on your talk page about the procedures I will take to separate these into two types. Thanks. Mhhutchins 02:40, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

John C. Bayliss bio data

The entry for John C. Bayliss includes a link to a wikipedia article re "John Bayliss". What throws me off is that while some of the bio data on isfdb matches the wikipedia article, there's a huge discrepency in death date (1978 vs 2008). The wikipedia article only mentions poetry and editing, no novels, but I found a website claiming John C. Bayliss was indeed born in 1919 (but the source for this info isn't cited). Is there certainty they are the same person? Jonschaper 01:48, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

oldpoetry.com gives dates of 1919-1978 and seems to match our entry except for not mentioning any fiction, and the wikipedia entry except for the death date. This article from The independent appears to confirm that there was a "John Bayliss" born around 1919 who was a poet, bnut it says that he was "an objector" while wikipedia says he served in the RAF during WWII. SF Authors gives his name as "John Clifford Bayliss", confirms the 1919 birth date, says he is the son of Alfred Edward MacDuff Bayliss, and co-editor (with his father) of Science in Fiction, which all matches our record, but does not give a death date. Wikipedia showed a date of death of 1978 until 14:39, 4 September 2008 , when it was changed by someone who stated "I am a bookseller, and bought his library from him in May 2008. I had a conversation today with his daughter who told me of his death" but who did not give any name. Wikipedia cites no sources for this bio. Webster's quotations gives the 1978 date, citing wikipedia. It seems likely that the poet was also the SF anthologies. The death date seems doubntful, i would favor the 1978 date, it seems to have better sources. -DES Talk 03:14, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
Cheers

MySQL query question

Does anyone know enough SQL to create a list of all co-authorships across all science fiction magazines starting with Weird Tales in 1923 to the present? I'm having trouble stringing together the different normalized tables to get what I want without much difficulty. Davimre 26 October 2010

Yes. Are you looking for co-editorships of the magazines or co-authorships of stories in magazines? Limited to just Weird Tales? --MartyD 10:25, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
Exactly! I'm looking for co-editorships of magazines and co-authorships of stories for every sci-fi magazine starting with Weird Tales to the present (ie this would include ASF, F&SF...). Any additional editor and author information (birth and death dates, birthplace etc) included would be helpful. Davimre 17:19, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
There are different ways to do this. In the technique I've chosen, I basically build temporary table of records having two or more authors, then join everything else with that temporary table. An alternative approach is to use "exists" instead (so do a flat query and constrain it with an "and exists" inner selection looking for a second author). --MartyD 13:43, 8 November 2010 (UTC)
This is an example of getting all magazine + author (editor, really) combinations for magazines having two or more authors (editors):
 select x.pub_id, x.pub_tag, x.pub_title, a.author_id, a.author_canonical
   from pub_authors p, authors a,
    (select pub.pub_id, pub.pub_tag, pub.pub_title, count(*)
       from pubs pub, pub_authors pa
      where pub.pub_id = pa.pub_id and pub.pub_ctype = 'MAGAZINE'
     group by pub.pub_id, pub.pub_tag, pub.pub_title
     having count(*) > 1) x
  where x.pub_id = p.pub_id and p.author_id = a.author_id
 order by x.pub_title, a.author_canonical;
This is an example of getting all magazine appearances of all "stories" having multiple authors. To make it run faster, I coded in a restriction that the titles must be essay, poem, serial, or shortfiction. You could remove that restriction or change the set of types (use select distinct title_ttype from titles; to get a list of the possible types):
 select p.pub_id, p.pub_tag, p.pub_title, x.title_id, x.title_ttype, x.title_title, a.author_id, a.author_canonical
   from pubs p, authors a, canonical_author ca, pub_content pc,
    (select t.title_id, t.title_ttype, t.title_title, count(*)
       from titles t, canonical_author ca
      where t.title_id = ca.title_id
        and t.title_ttype in ('SHORTFICTION','SERIAL','POEM','ESSAY')
     group by t.title_id, t.title_ttype, t.title_title
     having count(*) > 1) x
  where pc.title_id = x.title_id and pc.pub_id = p.pub_id and p.pub_ctype = 'MAGAZINE'
    and ca.title_id = x.title_id and ca.author_id = a.author_id
 order by x.title_title, a.author_canonical, p.pub_title;
This latter one is a bit of a light-dimmer, taking about a minute and a half on my pretty capable machine.... Good luck! --MartyD 13:43, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

John Inouye

I strongly suspect John Inouye should be Jon Inouye. ANyone able to verify? Jonschaper 03:34, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Even though Miller/Contento gives the name as "John Inouye" in their magazine listing, it's under "Jon Inouye" in their author listing. I've changed the records to "Jon", but we still need a physical verification to be sure. Mhhutchins 15:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Book includes Preview of another book

In the 1st edition of "Song of Sorcery", by Elizabeth Scarborough, there is a 13 page preview of "Firelord" by Parke Godwin. This is not included in the ISFDB record for "Song of Sorcery", and looking under the Parke Godwin bibliography, I don't see any indication of this preview/extract existing separately from the novel. Presumably, I should add this. The Help:Screen:EditPub#What_to_Include says to include In Times to Come type entries, but the wording there is specific to magazines, hence doesn't appear to be definitive on this point, nor does it quite tell me how to enter this. So what's the format for including such a content item, and how do I make sure that it appears appropriately under Parke Godwin's bibliography? Chavey 04:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

So called promotional extracts are sometimes added, but not always. It is permitted but not required for editors to add them, and some choose not to do so. If you do add it, make it a work of SHORTFICTION entitled "Firelord (excerpt)". This has been discussed, but no clear consensus seems to have developed, see ISFDB:Community Portal/Archive/Archive12#Novel vs. Collection: Part X of Y and Rules and standards discussions/Archive/Archive03#Annotating Excerpts. -DES Talk 06:13, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
Thank you for the pointers. I particularly like the very last entry in the "Rules and Standards" thread, which said (more or less) "Since this issue hasn't been fully resolved, we should carry this topic over after this posting is archived", which (of course) didn't happen :-) My sense of the discussion was that the main consensus was to normally not include such excerpts in the contents (with a few examples of where one would). So, I'll add this as a note to the publication, but not as a content item. Chavey 13:12, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
I think you are correct on the sense of that discussion. However, since it was held, entry of such excerpts has if anything become more common, particularly when they are included in the page count of the book. a search of fiction titles for "(excerpt)" returns 1540 results, and many of them seem to be "promotional excerpts". WE really should come to a better consensus on this. -DES Talk 15:43, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
See the new thread Rules and standards discussions#Promotional Excerpts. -DES Talk 16:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

A Synopsis

I looked up Evelyn Waugh and found a new feature: a brief synopsis of the novel Vile Bodies. This is what many entries could use, a little mention of the plot and subject matter, just to introduce an unfamiliar work so one could better consider looking for it. Many novels have puzzling titles and I could only guess what they're about. For instance, Grainne by Keith Roberts. It won an award, but no one seems to remember it. Maybe I could an some synopses to other novels. Space27 02:42, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, each title can have a synopsis, and you are very welcome to add some. See Help:Screen:EditTitle#Synopsis for some guidelines and an example. A moderator will look over your proposed synopsis (and any other changes), so editing titles is completely safe. Give it a try! --MartyD 02:54, 29 October 2010 (UTC)


Perry Rhodan #1 Enterprise Stardust by K. H. Scheer & Walter Ernsting

comment initially posted in previous section Perry Rhodan #1 Enterprise Stardust by K. H. Scheer & Walter Ernsting. I have in my have a copy of this book which is identical to the ISFDB 1969 entry, with the exception of the Catalog # which in my case is 020-65970 and the fact that the 1969 entry is described as a Magazine. My copy is no magazine. I could buy Anthology since there are two storie, "Enterprise Stardust" by K. H. Scheer and "The Third Power" by Walter Ernsting. It simply doesn't, in my opinion meet the description of a magazine. I wasn't able to clone the 1969 entry as it is a magazine. Do I enter a new Anthology. Is it even an Anthology? I need a Perry Rhodan expert. What do I do? Rhschu. end comment initially posted in previous section


I just saved a page on this subject but didn't enter a subject so I'm doing it over. I have a copy of this book in my hand. I looked it up in the ISFDB and it is described in the 1969 entry as a magazine. My copy is identical except for the catalog # which in my case is 020-65970 and the fact that what I have in my hand is, in my opinion, no magazine. It just doesn't meet the glossary definition. I tried to clone the 1969 entry but apparently you can't clone a magazine. So what do I do? I think that it meets the definition of an Anthology. There are two separate stories by two different authors. I need a Perry Rhodan expert. I'm just a novice at this. Thanks. Rhschu. —The preceding unsigned comment added by Rhschu (talk • contribs) 22:24, 31 October 2010

You can change the magazine entry to an ANTHOLOGY, and after that change is approved, clone it. If you were sure (and assuming the item isn't primary verified) that would be the thing to do. However, Perry Rhodan is quite tricky and i am not an expert either. I advise waiting until one of our PR experts posts on the subject. I think that user:Dragoondelight is fairly knowledgable about PR, you might ask ion his talk page. -DES Talk 04:15, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
The problem that it has been primary verified. The cover art shown is exactly the same as the book that I have in front of me and as I said, all of the information given in the entry, except for the catalog # is the same. This just isn't a magazine. It even refers to itself at the end of the opening essay by Forrest J. Ackerman as a "pocketbook". I would like to do something with this but I'm not about to until I can get this clarified.Rhschu 16:05, 1 November 2010 (UTC)Rhschu
I suppose the discussion is about this pub. It looks like there are two problems, the booknumber and the question about the Ace editions of the Perry Rhodan series being a magazine or not. I can't say anything definite about the first, since I don't own a copy, and we can't ask the primary verifier (Bob Hall) since he's not active, but i.m.o. the booknumber should have been 65970 in the first place, as it's shown on the frontcover. The 020 and 441 prefix were only shown on the spine in those years. You can't clone a magazine, but I don't think it's neccesary here. Just change the booknumber to 65970 and leave a note on Bob Hall's talkpage. As for it being a magazine, that was decided back in 2007. The help screen under pub type/magazine states: It can be difficult in some cases to determine if something should be regarded as a magazine or a book. Some magazines were published in book format; some books were published as series with letter columns and regular dates of publication. Borderline cases should be discussed on the magazine or book wiki pages, but generally a magazine must have a common title from issue to issue, and an enumeration or dating system of some kind. --Willem H. 17:47, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
I too dislike the entry of the reprints as Magazines: e.g. PRRRHDNNTD1974. The Orbit/Futura editions are definitely books to me, and should credit the authors as listed on title-page, not an Editor. There is no problem with a Magazine being reprinted as an Anthology or Collection, we've got several of those. I'm just personally fed-up with Perry Rhodan. :-( BLongley 19:40, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
I'm still trying to find an easy way to enter the German originals. Takes an awful lot of time... --Willem H. 19:58, 1 November 2010 (UTC)
Get the originals right, and I'll attempt to do the UK reprints. But I'm not starting that project. :-/ BLongley 23:35, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Crediting uncredited work

What should we do when the author of a piece is not credited in the actual publication but we positively know who the author is based on other verified sources? For example, when a preface or introduction in an earlier publication is credited, but is later reprinted without credit. Should a variant record be created so that the pub will indicate the true author? As in: • Introduction (The Star Saga) • essay by John Smith [as by uncredited]. Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:17, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I like the variant approach. Recording the actual author seems consistent in spirit with our treatment of cover art credits. But why wouldn't we want to do it this way? --MartyD 10:20, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Delete?

Please tell me that this dreck about a girl dating Prince William can be deleted and that self-published fan fiction about sexual or romantic fantasies about real personages doesn't count as "alternate history". Please. Jonschaper 01:37, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Delete away, unless Prince William is considered a Space Pilot rather than a "mere" terrestrial one. BLongley 02:04, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Pre-Birth Publications

While being a child prodigy is certainly impressive, it's even more impressive when you can manage to publish a work before you have been born. Each of the following individuals has managed to pull that off (a couple more than once):

Author Birth Title Date Type
E. B. White 1899 Quo Vadimus or the Case for the Bicycle 1038 NONFICTION
Hugh Lamb 1946 The White Hare 1915 SHORTFICTION
Isabel Allende 1942 Stories of Eva Luna, Signed Copies 1920 NOVEL
James Reynolds 1891 Equality: or, A History of Lithconia 1802 NOVEL
James Reynolds 1891 From Equality: A History of Lithconia (Excerpt) 1802 SHORTFICTION
Joanna Russ 1937 The Death of Augusta 1928 POEM
John Brown 1966 Stepping-Stone to the Stars 1943 ESSAY
Martin McKenna 1969 Three Worlds to Conquer (Part 1 of 2) 1964 INTERIORART
Martin McKenna 1969 Three Worlds to Conquer (Part 2 of 2) 1964 INTERIORART
Sir Walter Scott 1771 Tamlane 1548 POEM

There were a several other cases that had verified publications so I passed those on to the verifiers. Of these remaining, they are probably either data entry errors (either in the title record or the author's birth date) or cases where there are multiple authors with the same name that need to be separated.

A couple of comments on the poems:

  1. The Death of Augusta: The note field states this was written by Emily Brontë and edited by Joanna Russ. This could be considered a variant of the original, but if the original date is to be used, the note field has that as 1923, not 1928 so there is still a discrepancy. However, based on some web searching, it sounds like the editing may have been substantial so to me it sounds like it should be dated 1979 as a new edition.
  2. Tamlane: I believe Scott's version of this poem first appeared in 1802 in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

Any help in resolving these would be appreciated. --JLaTondre 00:30, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

I've been updating author records, so I'll fix them.--Rkihara 23:25, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Fixed everything but the poems for which I have no references. The original poem by Emily Brontë would have to be in the 1800's.--Rkihara 00:39, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
It looks like "The Death of Augusta" is "The Death of A.G.A." and was written January 1841 - May 1844. I could not figure out a first publication, but it also looks like some of her poems were published under the name Ellis Bell in the mid-1800s FWIW. --MartyD 11:36, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
I cannot find a definitive source, but several reviews [10][11] of Amazons! (the book the Joanna Russ version appeared in) state that it is a poem compiled by Russ from Bronte's notebooks. So, even if previously published, it sounds like this version would be sufficiently different to be a new version and be dated the same as the Amazons! publication. I think one way to look at it is: if the editing is sufficient enough to have Russ as co-author, than it should it be dated to when that version was published; if the editing wasn't sufficient to have a new date, than Russ shouldn't be listed as co-author (she could be listed in the notes field instead). --JLaTondre 13:15, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
I've submitted an update for "Tamlane" as Scott's version is from Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802). His version was originally titled "The Young Tamlane" so I'll create a variant record with notes once the date edit goes through. --JLaTondre 14:06, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
JLaTondre asked me to chime in as one of the verifiers of Amazons!. There is a short introduction by Salmonson describes Russ' role: ". . . Joanna yet made time to bring together, edit, and annotate a piece of Emily Brontë's less known work, Gondal's Queen." (the entire introduction is in italics with "Gondal's Queen" switching back to non-italics). From Russ' annotations, it appears that Brontë wrote many poems about Gondal, which were eventually assembled by Fannie E. Ratchford to form Gondal's Queen: A Novel in Verse.
As for the text itself. There is no explicit indication that Russ changed Brontë's poetry. It mainly looks like she provided a prose story as a framework for the poems i.e. she interrupts the verse to state who is speaking or what action is occuring. Given that the verse isn't titled separately, I'd suggest that the whole is a sum of the two authors and as Salmonson's introduction indicates that it is original to her collection, I think a December 1979 date would be most appropriate. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 17:40, 7 November 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. I have gone ahead a submitted an update to the date and notes based on your input. --JLaTondre 22:26, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Adding the newest issue of Analog?

I noticed that the Jan/Feb 2011 issue of Analog (that I just got in the mail) hasn't been entered yet. I'd like to do so, but I'm somewhat confused as to how... Specifically, where do I enter a new Title record? And how do I make the "EDITOR" record for Analog 2011? And what's up with the Publication Tags? How are they generated? (they should be added to the NewPub and EditPub help screens...) Sorry for all the questions. ;-) JesseW 05:23, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Start with "Add a New Magazine". That will prompt you for everything. There will be a link on that screen to Help:Screen:NewPub that will help explain what to do for each field. I also suggest you look at a couple of issues that have been recorded already to get an idea of how to handle certain things like letters, recurring features, etc. Don't be afraid to ask for more help here or to simply take your best shot -- a moderator will look over what you submit and will help you with anything that isn't quite right. --MartyD 11:35, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
I've now submitted my best shot. Hope it's mostly right, at least... ;-) JesseW 21:04, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
I'll let one of the more-experienced-with-magazines Mods approve and fix, but apart from adding an extra "EDITOR" record that we'd normally let be created automatically, it looks pretty good. BLongley 22:09, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
It was quite good, in fact. As Bill notes, there was no need to add the extra EDITOR record. Adding a new magazine works just like adding any other new publication -- a title record (in this case, what we see as an EDITOR record) gets created automatically. To get the "Magazine Name - Year" entry in the editor's bibliography instead of "Magazine Name, Month1-Month2 Year", one has to do a second edit after the submission has been approved and that title record created. For the first issue of the year, you can just edit the title to have the desired format. For subsequent issues, you need to Merge the created title with the existing "Magazine Name - Year" title. It's a little odd until you get used to it. I fixed this up and stuck the new "- 2011" title into the Analog series. --MartyD 23:16, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
p.s. Several of the regular Analog features (the editorial, Brass Tacks, etc.) have been put into series. You can assign the new content to those. Just edit the titles and type in the series names. You'll see a couple of these in Schmidt's bibliography. You can also see them by looking at some of the other issues -- the series names appear after the titles in square brackets. --MartyD 23:16, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Creating a clone of the ISFDB on my website

Hello- I'm a web designer and am a lot more comfortable in the graphics/visual world then the code and database one. Nevertheless, I'm interested in using the instructions on the ISFDB:Personal_Linux_Website page in the ISFDB_Downloads section to create a cloned copy of the ISFDB which I can play around with and make UI and design changes to. However, the instructions on that page are intended for Linux users hosting a local site on their personal machine, and in my situation, I would be installing to my web hosting company's server (also Linux) via cpanel and phpMyAdmin. Can anyone help me adapt the instructions? Thanks! --Gideon 19:35, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

If you give it a try, and post your specific individual problems, I'm sure there'll be some advice available. I'm not sure why you want it on a public web-server though - have you got lots of testers in mind? A second public ISFDB web-server could get confusing, especially with all the links back to the main one's wiki pages that would come as default. It would be nice to know that more than two people could set up ISFDB on a full web-server if needed (the hosting history has not been flawless by any means) but it might be better to practice locally, as several others of us have done. If you're not running Linux or Windows locally, then instructions for another local O/S might be just as useful to others. (Is anyone running it on a Mac yet?) But good luck with it, I haven't refreshed my local copy of the software for ages, just the database. I'm specialising in using the data rather than the interface nowadays. BLongley 22:39, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Benford's "Of Space-Time and the River"

Hi, I note "Of Space/Time and the River" is a variant of the above title. There's also a listing for "Of Time/Space and the River" here (a chapbook). Is this latter title in error, and is there a way to get that listing to show up under the title data for "Of Space-Time"? Jonschaper 22:47, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

"...Time/Space..." is wrong. I've corrected the titles of the shortfiction, chapterbook, and pub records. I also merged the shortfiction record with the current variant record of the same name. Thanks for finding the error. Mhhutchins 00:00, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Coleman Brax

According to the F&SF website here Coleman Brax's real name is Malcolm Coleman Easton. Are there preferences re who should be parent? Jonschaper 04:43, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Brax should be the pseudonym. All of his book-length work was published as by M. Coleman Easton, which is his legal name (just with an initial). In researching this I also discovered that he wrote a series of books with Clare Bell under the joint pseudonym Clare Coleman which will also have to be worked on. Mhhutchins 05:05, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Norbert Wiener vs Weiner

Hi, I'm not sure of Scott Latham who verified this is still active. Can anyone verify the spelling of Norbert's name? Thanks Jonschaper 04:28, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

According to Tuck, the name should be "Wiener". Funny thing is that later printings of the same anthology gives it as by "W. Norbert". Bluesman also did a primary verification on it, so he should be able to check the actual pub. Mhhutchins 05:43, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
The name is definitely "Wiener". He's pretty famous in mathematics and computer science, e.g. for getting his Ph.D. from Harvard at age 18, but tons of stuff since then. (He's also fairly famous for having essentially no photograph of him taken in which he isn't smoking :-). He wrote a series of science fiction stories in the "Tech Engineering News", only one of which we have credited to him. He specifically used his regular name "Norbert Wiener" for all of his non-fiction and "W. Norbert Wiener" for all of his science fiction saying that "it enabled him to keep his professional writing separate from his science fiction writing" (Technology Review, v. 98, p. 9, MIT 1995). I don't know if the "W." actually stands for something. If some anthologists have reprinted his SF stories as by "Norbert Wiener" without the "W.", or if Tuck credited it that way, then it's done so against his stated wishes. Our author listing for Norbert Wiener correctly maintains this distinction. Chavey 13:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Finding out verification status for Bleiler1

I'd like to get a list of the status of verifications from Reference:Bleiler1. It looks like many of the Astounding Stories issues have been verified, so I'd like to check which ones (if any) haven't. Also, Bleiler1 covers a relatively small area, so it'd be nice to have a robot go through an mark as N/A all the entries outside its range (1926-1936). JesseW 07:59, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Verifications of Astounding are probably complete for Bleiler1, the issue grid shows verification status. Light blue background for secondary (Bleiler1/Miller/Contento), gray background if primary completed, gold for no verification (primary/secondary).--Rkihara 16:07, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Primary Verifications will hide Secondary ones, but some SQL can pick them out: Bleiler1 is Reference number 10 so this:
select p.pub_title
, date_format(p.pub_year,'%Y%m%d')
from pubs p
WHERE p.pub_title like 'Astounding%'
and NOT exists (select 1 from  verification v
   where v.reference_id = 10
   and p.pub_id = v.pub_id)
group by   p.pub_title
, date_format(p.pub_year,'%Y%m%d')
order by 2
picks them out. The only Pre-1937 title left to do is Astounding Stories, December 1931. BLongley 16:32, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
I've now verified the Dec 1931 issue from the copy at Google Books. JesseW 23:18, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
Don't know how the meticulous Harry could have missed that one!--swfritter 23:40, 10 November 2010 (UTC)
I think we can forgive missing one verification in a ten-year run of magazines with hundreds of individual reviews done. I wish my error rate was that low! I'm still going back to some titles and wondering where all the meticulous detail for an obscure title came from - and suddenly realising it was from me! BLongley 03:31, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
Dragoondelight did an extensive amount of work on Bleiler1, adding review entries for all the stories.--swfritter 16:33, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Technical issue

"Victor-Levy Beaulieu" shows up in a name search but the page doesn't open. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?Victor-Lévy%20Beaulieu Jonschaper 02:10, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Must have something to do with the non-unicode character in his name. I changed the author name of the one record that was credited to him to Victor-Lévy Beaulieu. Mhhutchins 02:44, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
There are a reasonable collection of other entries that have similar problems. For authors with last names starting with A-C, the list of those inaccessible from the name search link are:
In each case, if you do a name search on a portion of the name without diacritical marks, you will get an apparent link to that author, but the link fails. This is a complete list for A-C, but I suspect that are several others later in the alphabet that I haven't found yet. I don't know how to correct these errors, at least partly because I can't get to the title records that link to these names. Chavey 06:35, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Slow Train to Arcturus

I was entering Eric Flint's and Dave Freer's Slow Train to Arcturus into my book collection database, and while checking the entry here on ISFDB, I noticed that it's entered in as A Slow Train to Arcturus (with an "A" in front). It seems like the entry is indicating that the correct title begins with an "A" and the variant doesn't have an "A." However, according to Eric Flint's web site http://www.ericflint.net/index.php/bibliography/, and according to the title page inside my hardcover edition, there is no "A" at the beginning of the title. The entry here on ISFDB for the hardcover edition is http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?SLWTRNTRCT2008. How can that be changed to have the correct title? Thanks :) AndonSage 06:14, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Since none of the entries involved is verified, you should change it (if anything were verified, you would start by asking the verifier(s) about it). You'll see in the notes for the publication you cited that it is an entry generated by "Dissembler" -- this is a robot that crawled Amazon and would have picked up whatever information Amazon had at the time. A human reviewer seeing the cover wouldn't have known any different. Where you have the book, you should now fix up the data that's there (and remove the Dissembler comment) to match the actual book. I would include a Note that says a short form of what you say above: The cover has "A" but the title page does not, further confirmed by the entry on Flint's site. That should be enough to stop anyone from trying to add the "A" back again. Once the changes have been accepted, you can then Primary-verify the book if you want to, so people will know you have the book and can check with you if they have questions.
That takes care of the book, but there's still the title and the ebook. I notice if I follow the link in the ebook notes to Webscription.net, (a) they use Slow Train to Arcturus and (b) they have a different cover image (which I will upload) with no "A" in it. So that's pretty good evidence that this one should be changed to have no "A" as well. After that, there would no longer be any publications using the "A", which in turn is sufficient evidence that the title itself should be edited to remove the "A" (if some instances used "A" and some did not, we would have to make a variant title instead).
Please do edit the hardcover. If you're comfortable doing it, go ahead and make the other changes as well. If you'd rather not do those, I'll be happy to do them for you. But give it a try -- it'll be easy, and you'll see a little bit of how Title and Publication records work. --MartyD 11:42, 12 November 2010 (UTC)
Hmmm... I thought I uploaded the cover image I scanned, which doesn't have an "A." But if I didn't, and you already have scanned and uploaded one, then I won't worry about it. If you would like me to upload my image, please let me know. I'll go ahead and make the changes to the entry. Thanks for the info :) AndonSage 00:06, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
I see the cover image is now correct, so I won't upload my image. AndonSage 00:08, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
You did upload the cover without the "A", and I approved your submission. So that's what you saw. I uploaded a similar cover for the ebook. --MartyD 11:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
How do I delete the Title Reference to "A Slow Train to Arcturus?" That title shouldn't be anywhere, it's incorrect. AndonSage 05:04, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
A tricky thing to be aware of is that this "Title" may not be the same as the "title" used in the publication -- the "Title" is sort of a universal identifier of the work/story. Publications contain Titles, but then also have a "title" in their own right. For novels, these are usually identical. To actually get to the title, you can search for it. Or, you can view the record for the publication, and in there you'll see a line Title Reference:. You can click on the "A Slow Train to Arcturus" link next to it, which will bring you to the title page. This shows you the information about the Title, and all publications recorded that contain the Title. So right now you will see two things: (1) You've changed the "title" of the hardcover to remove the "A", while the "A" still remains in the "Title". (2) There's an ebook publication still using the "A" in its "title". Both of these can and should be fixed. While on the Title page, you'll see "Edit Title Data" in the menu at the left (by the way "Delete This Title" is here, too, but you don't need to delete in this case, just edit). You can use this to remove the "A" from the "Title" record. Note that doing this changes the contents of all publications in which the Title appears but does not change the publications' "titles". So once you've submitted the removal of the "A" from the "Title", you'll also want to edit the ebook (just as you edited the hard cover) to remove the "A" from the publication's title. It's much easier than it sounds -- give it a try. --MartyD 11:55, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
I think I got it now. Thanks for the help :) I made the edits. AndonSage 05:54, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
I accepted your edits, and I think you'll find it all looks much better now. Thanks for catching it, and thanks for putting in the effort to make the changes. --MartyD 11:43, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Author Directory bug

The Author Directory page is, IMHO, a very useful recent addition. The lists it generates, however, have a bug when it comes to generating links for names that contain an apostrophe. For example, if you click the "Bi" link, scroll down to "Dante's Bistro", and click that link, it gives a non-existent author page. The problem is that the link the "Author Directory" generates has a 'curly-apostrophe' instead of a regular apostrophe. I'm guessing that this should be reasonably easy to correct. For last names starting with A-C, this problem affects 25 names. Chavey 07:07, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Bug 3108657 has been created. Ahasuerus 23:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
Found a related problem in Advanced Search. A search for all authors with surnames starting with [O'] finds only 199 entries, though there are obviously more as search sorts authors by last, then first name, and the list stops at "Mxxx O'xxx."--Rkihara 17:30, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Yes, I see the bug in script aa_search.py. Bug 3109761 created, thanks! Ahasuerus 20:50, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Both bugs have been fixed. The second one affected all Author, Title and Publication searches. Thanks for noticing/reporting them! Ahasuerus 04:32, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Help with SFBC book please

I have the SFBC edition of Ten Points For Style, and am wondering how to verify the published year (which shows Jan 1996)? The book itself does not contain a publishing date, and the only date I can find anywhere is for the Doubleday Books edition, which shows Sept 1995 (as does the Amazon page. Thanks. AndonSage 20:03, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Help:How_to_enter_a_SFBC_publication will be a big help to you. One very big gotcha about SFBC entries is that we use the date-of-selection, rather than the date of printing (as would be indicated by any gutter code), as the publication date. If you go to Publisher:Science_Fiction_Book_Club and scroll down to the bottom, you'll find links to all of the selections by year. If you follow Publisher:SFBC_1995-1997, you'll see Ten Points for Style with ID #10261 was a Winter selection. You can compare the ID number from your book (usually on the back or at the bottom of the rear flap) with that to see if it seems to be the same one. --MartyD 23:39, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, that's exactly the information I needed :) Links are saved! :) AndonSage 01:24, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Question about number line

I have a question regarding The Innocent Mage - Sept 2007 Edition. The price on the ISFDB entry shows $6.99, but my copy of the book shows $7.99. I thought the $6.99 needed to be fixed but I'm not sure if my copy and the one entered here are the same printing. The ISBN numbers match, but I don't know what the "1st printing per number line of the first Orbit edition: September 2007." in the notes section means. My copy says "First Orbit edition: September 2007" and below that I see a line of numbers that shows: 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7. How do I know which printing the copy of the book I have is? Thanks for any help. AndonSage 04:12, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

You have the seventh printing based on the number line. You can clone the present record, changing all the fields that don't match with your copy, thus creating a new record. Because there is no industry standard, publisher's indications of printing varies tremendously. Some are very explicit, some are through a publisher-defined code (most of which are easily deciphered when you have many pubs from the same publisher during the same time frame), and some publishers give no indication whatsoever about the printing. The more pubs you enter, the more you'll be able to figure out the info provided. If you're not sure, just enter the info exactly as recorded in your book, and let a moderator decide if a new record should be created. Hope this helps. BTW, never "correct" a pub record until you're absolutely positive that it represents the pub in hand. ISBNs are no indication of printing. Because publishers have to pay fees for blocks of ISBN numbers, they often reuse the same ISBN for later printings. Mhhutchins 06:14, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Also, when you clone the publication record and update any differing fields, you usually need to change the publication date to "0000-00-00". Some books record the date of the later printing, but most don't -- all they tell you is the date of the 1st printing. So in these cases, the actual publication date is unknown, and the 0's are the way to indicate that. Chavey 19:34, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
All of the above is correct, but a very simple rule of thumb is that the lowest number in the number line is the number of the current printing. Thus, if you see "2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10", it's the second printing. If you see "9 8 7 6 5", it's the fifth printing. And if you see a pyramid-shaped line like "2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3", it's the second printing. This rule will get you the right printing number in most cases, although you can never be 100% sure due to misstated printing numbers (some publishers are very bad at it), Canadian/US differences, etc. Still, it's a start! :-) Ahasuerus 20:56, 15 November 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for all the info, folks. I'll do my best to get things right. I'm OCD when it comes to details. BTW, has anyone ever considered a "Notes for the moderator" line when submitting new or changed info? Would let someone ask questions at the time of submission. AndonSage 00:48, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
Some new editors try to do that using the Notes field, but we discourage the practice. No matter how good we think we are, there will be slip-ups and those comments might wind up as part of the pub record. (Removing them requires a subsequent submission along with the corresponding moderation.) All questions should be directed to the Wiki page, which we all follow faithfully (when we're active). The Wiki, although part of the ISFDB, remains a distinctly separate entity from the database proper. That's for the best, IMHO. Mhhutchins 01:10, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Procedure for adding content to verified pub?

What's the procedure for adding content to a verifed publication? The information currently there is correct, but I want to add in the Maps and Afterward information. Do I need to ask permission, or do I just tell the verifier I did it? In case it matters, this is for 1633. AndonSage 01:45, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

It depends on the verifier. Most verifiers leave a note at the top of their talk page regarding their verified pubs. Current practice seems to favor leaving a note on the verifier's talk page (a good practice for tracking change history) and allowing the verifier to decide if he wants to make the change or leave it to you. I don't require notification if something I missed is added, but I like to fix any mistakes that have been pointed out. I think Scott Lathem has been absent for a couple of years, so make the change and leave a note on his talk page for tracking purposes.--Rkihara 07:53, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Strange search result

The following link showed up in the results for a name search: philsp.com/data/images/a/albedo_2004_n29.jpg (I've removed the prefix so the photo doesn't load onto the help page). Clicking on the link just takes you to an author not found page. Jonschaper 03:48, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

That seems to stem from this pub, where someone put a link to the cover scan in the field for the cover artist credit. I've made a submission correcting it. BrendanMoody 04:04, 18 November 2010 (UTC)
There was a conflict in editing here. I'd already made the correction. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:06, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Earl L(easton) Bell

Can anyone confirm if Earl Leaston Bell and Earl L. Bell are the same person? Jonschaper 23:16, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Confirmed in Mike Ashley's The Gernsback Days, p. 104. Ahasuerus 01:11, 25 November 2010 (UTC)
P.S. VTs created. I used "Earl L. Bell" as the canonical name since its titles had a number of user-defined tags that couldn't be easily moved to other titles. Ahasuerus 01:31, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

Paul Klee credits for Le Guin's "Unlocking the Air"

Hi, there are three listings for Paul Klee doing covers for the above title (see here). The photo illustrating the 2000 edition definitely looks like Klee's work. The photo for the 1997 edition definitely doesn't. I'd presume the 1996 edition is more likely the same as the 1997 edition. Any objections to me removing the Klee credit from teh 1996 & 1997 editions? Jonschaper 03:28, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

A search on Abebooks for the 1996 edition showed a couple of bookseller images that match the Amazon image, so I linked it to the record. The 2000 edition almost duplicates that of 1996, so those two credits can be merged. The 1997 edition appears to be a photograph, so you can remove the Klee credit from it. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:34, 30 November 2010 (UTC)
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