ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard/Archive 23

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This archive includes discussions from January - June 2018.

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Canonical name change: Joseph N./Joe Gores

Joseph N. Gores should have the canonical name Joe Gores. --Vasha 15:40, 3 January 2018 (EST)

Author name correction: Mandem

The artist Mandem should be spelled MANDEM (it's a collective, not a person). --Vasha 19:30, 3 January 2018 (EST)

It's not an acronym, though, so I don't see why we need to have it in all caps. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:37, 3 January 2018 (EST)

Actually, I think it is an acronym. At any rate, it is spelled in all caps in every publication. --Vasha 20:21, 3 January 2018 (EST)

An acronym of what, though? It's not their names as far as I can tell. I can't find anything that shows it's an acronym. As for it being in all caps in all publications you've seen, if you look under "Case" on Template:TitleFields:Author, it specifically states that "Case should be regularized." Unless it can be shown it is an actual acronym, it shouldn't be in all caps. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:54, 3 January 2018 (EST)

It's probably so rare that failure to address it in the "Case" section of the help is an oversight, but I believe that when an author explicitly chooses an atypical capitalization for his or her name, we should use that instead of the publication's capitalization or our own standard. The intent behind that piece of the help is that variants should not be created based on capitalization differences, so case should be normalized. The clear precedent/example of that is e. e. cummings. Such a treatment is not far removed from our handling of normalization of initials. In this particular situation, it's pretty clear they use MANDEM in all caps. --MartyD 07:19, 7 January 2018 (EST)

Can the software even tell the difference (currently) between "Mandem" and "MANDEM"? I don't think it can. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:46, 8 January 2018 (EST)

The way the software currently works, you can only have one version on file. For example, once "e. e. cummings" is in the database, all subsequent records are forced to use the lowercase version of his name regardless of whether they are entered as "E. E. Cummings" or "e. e. cummings". You can change the canonical name to a "differently cased" version if you do it in 2 steps, e.g. change "e. e. cummings" to "e. e. cummings1", then change it to "E. E. Cummings". The same rules apply to publishers, series, awards, pub series, etc. Ahasuerus 20:02, 16 January 2018 (EST)

Another author name correction

Jodi Renee Lester should be Jodi Renée Lester. --Vasha 18:27, 7 January 2018 (EST)

Don't forget to change Jodi Renée Lester and MANDEM. --Vasha 20:44, 20 January 2018 (EST)

Asimov's Science Fiction, January-February 2018

Well, I did it again. I just submitted the contents the latest Asimov's and made a few typos. If accepted I will then correct these, add the book reviews, and a cover image. MLB 19:53, 7 January 2018 (EST)

ASIN/ISBN reconciliation - 2018-01-13

Fixer has identified and submitted 10 new e-book publications whose ISBNs are apparently the same as their paperback analogs'. We may need to do additional digging to determine whether these ISBNs were re-used or whether there was a data entry error within the Amazon system. Ahasuerus 16:03, 13 January 2018 (EST)

Die Asimov-Chronik: Robot ist verloren

Hello, please delete the old version of the cover. Thanks Henna 11:13, 16 January 2018 (EST)

I do not see any leftover versions - did another moderator already delete it or am I not seeing it? Annie 12:41, 16 January 2018 (EST)

Such data is accessible here. Hauck 13:31, 16 January 2018 (EST)

Thanks. How to remove the Metadata from the cover? Thanks again Henna 17:46, 16 January 2018 (EST)

You need to do that before uploading. The Mediawiki software reads in the metadata from the image file. Most image editing programs have a way to do it. In Windows 10, you can also right click on an image file, select Properties, click the Details tab, click "Remove Properties and Personal Information", and click okay on the next window. It will create a copy with all camera metadata removed. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:31, 16 January 2018 (EST)

Thanks for your help. I removed the metadata from the covers and uploaded these again.

Please once more remove the old covers. Thanks again Henna 06:57, 17 January 2018 (EST)

Done. Stonecreek 08:02, 17 January 2018 (EST)

Thanks! Henna 15:13, 17 January 2018 (EST)

Correction to award page

The link to the web page for the Shadows award should be https://australasianhorror.wordpress.com/australian-shadows-awards/ --Vasha 18:19, 21 January 2018 (EST)

Fixed. Thanks for finding the new one! Annie 20:23, 21 January 2018 (EST)

Adventure pulp reprints

Fixer has identified and submitted a number of adventure pulp reprints. Please note that some of them may need to be rejected since they do not contain any speculative elements. Ahasuerus 14:48, 23 January 2018 (EST)

Stray publication

Why is this listed as a stray publication here? It has a container title here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:06, 24 January 2018 (EST)

Because the title record was varianted to a record by uncredited. I flipped that so it will actually show on Young's summary page. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:23, 24 January 2018 (EST)

That makes sense. Thanks. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:25, 24 January 2018 (EST)

New Profile?

Hi, I bring up an issue that has become more and more annoying in the last few months:

It takes a (very) long time until (my) edits are approved by a reviewing moderator. I remember when I started to contribute to the ISFDB in 2015 the waiting time was a few minutes, exceptionally a few hours. Now this has turned completely: to wait just a few minutes have become an exception (at the moment I am waiting for approval for more than ten hours).

This is not a complaint! I am sure there a good reasons for it.

My proposal to improve the situation is to install an "experienced" or "trustable" ISFDB user for persons who have contributed to the ISFDB for a long period without doing serious mistakes (like me, I hope). Such experienced users have extended authorizations: more than a common (or new) user but less than a moderator. It will be sufficient if this user is authorized to approve his own new and old edits; or even better: to change all content without primary and secondary verification (except verified by his resp. her own, of course). This option will ease my own work and also the work of the reviewers substantially. Additionally, it will restore the fun to add new content and will be a motivation to add more content.

Thank you for discussing this proposal! Boskar 03:15, 29 January 2018 (EST)

One of the main reasons for the delays is the massive amount of submissions that are not of a primary rank (but one sees that only when looking at the submission): things like adding or moving secondary links. But there are now many more editors active than before. Stonecreek 05:54, 29 January 2018 (EST)

There have been times when the editor/moderator ratio became noticeably low. In a couple of cases we addressed this issue by making certain editors moderators with the understanding that they would limit their approvals to their own edits. If the ratio is getting low again, we could try the same approach assuming that we have editors who are ready for self-approval. And, of course, we could always review our list of most active editors to see if some of them are ready to become moderators. Ahasuerus 17:45, 29 January 2018 (EST)

Biomassbob and Vasha are way overdue.--Rkihara 11:55, 30 January 2018 (EST)

No, I don't think so. I might agree to self-moderate, though. --Vasha 13:08, 30 January 2018 (EST)

What time zone are you in? It's possible there are no moderators working on things around the time you normally submit. I used to run into that between about 3pm and 11pm Mountain Time. It seemed that no one was working on things during that time. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:57, 29 January 2018 (EST)

I will try not to clog up the queue with too many minor edits. It isn't the small things that take long, though. When I submit completely new publications, they've been sitting waiting for up to three days lately. --Vasha 23:05, 29 January 2018 (EST)

It might be helpful if the number of all pending submissions would be made available to non-moderators, maybe additionally grouped by submission type, so that non-moderators can see if the submission they want to create will have to wait for 3 or 300 submissions to be approved before. This would of course only be a very rough indicator for the time it may take until the submission an editor wants to create will have been approved. Nevertheless, non-moderators get a hint about what's going on and can decide to defer the creation of new submissions. Jens Hitspacebar 09:36, 30 January 2018 (EST)

It's certainly doable, but we would have to tweak the report logic to ignore:

held submissions
submissions by moderators
robotic submissions

Breaking the stats down by submission type is possible, but non-trivial because the submission table doesn't store submission type codes in an easy to retrieve format (bizarre but true!) Also, certain types of submissions like PubUpdate may be either trivial or time-consuming to moderate depending on what has been changed. Ahasuerus 15:22, 30 January 2018 (EST)

A simple "count(*) from all pending submissions" will do, I think. The number is a very rough approximation in the sense of how much time the queue will need to get approved (e.g. checking submissions for collections need more time than for title updates), and this could be emphasized by printing it as "approx. 300 pending submissions" or so. I think there's no need to filter out the three kinds of submissions you mentioned because of this approximation. If we think this number is helpful information the I think a good place for it would be on top of the submission forms (inside or below the green help section). Jens Hitspacebar 15:46, 30 January 2018 (EST)

Well, sometimes a moderator may create a few dozen submissions and leave them overnight. Between that and a dozen held submissions and a few dozen robotic submissions, the queue size may look intimidating even though the number of relevant submissions may be small. Let me see what I can do... Ahasuerus 16:01, 30 January 2018 (EST)

OK, "My Pending Edits" has been updated -- see my post on the Community Portal. If everything looks good and the information appears to be helpful, we can add it to the top of all edit forms. Ahasuerus 17:42, 30 January 2018 (EST)

I don't think that a rough estimation about the delay is a significant improvement of the situation. The only improvement would be a reduction of the delay for the submitters. But this seems not to be practicable. I will have to cope with the bad situation. Thank you for having discussed my proposal! Boskar 01:47, 2 February 2018 (EST)

Re: the practicability of changing the software to flag certain editors as "experienced" in order to give them certain additional abilities. Yes, it's possible, but we'd need to define the exact nature of the extended abilities before we could estimate how time-consuming it would be to change the software. Ahasuerus 08:34, 2 February 2018 (EST)

Fixer -- UK-based e-AddPubs

Fixer has identified and is about to start submitting 156 UK-based e-AddPubs. Unfortunately, due to recent Amazon changes, Fixer's UK-based submissions are no longer as complete as US-based submissions. In many/most cases the price field and/or the "Image URL" field are blank. Sometimes the "Pages" field is blank as well. Approving moderators may need to follow the link in the "Note to Moderator" field to find the missing data. Ahasuerus 11:03, 31 January 2018 (EST)

145 e-AddPubs have been submitted. Ahasuerus 11:25, 31 January 2018 (EST)

P.S. Also, this batch of submissions does not have ASINs, although I may be able to tweak Fixer to add them in the future. Ahasuerus 11:52, 31 January 2018 (EST)

Jim Burns

I find a death date 2 June 2016 on this page, but I'm happy to say that I can't find on the internet that he died. Do I overlook something or is this rumour of his death completely unfounded? Horzel 07:07, 2 February 2018 (EST)

It was a mix-up: it was James H. Burns who died on 2016-06-02, not Jim Burns. The record has been corrected -- thanks for identifying the problem! Ahasuerus 07:40, 2 February 2018 (EST)

author name correction

Please change the artist Antoni Garces to "Antoni Garcés," also Garces to "Garcés." All verifiers have been consulted and a note has been made on the one publication that doesn't have the diacritic. --Vasha 11:52, 4 February 2018 (EST)

Done. Hauck 11:57, 4 February 2018 (EST)

Collector cards

I am in possession of several sets of collector cards. I noticed some sets had been entered, some fully describing each card, other a selection and some just the existence. I figures I could fill in gaps, but wondered about a couple in particular - they are Conan images, but as I go through them I see that they are all taken from comic covers. I know we don't do comics, but should I continue with these? Doug H 13:01, 5 February 2018 (EST)

Submitted this anyway. I notice that one author (Ovi) was misspelled (Ovl) but would rather fix than re-submit. Thanks. Doug H 19:40, 5 February 2018 (EST)

Author name correction: G.Kay Bishop

G. Kay Bishop should be "G.Kay Bishop." However eccentric, that is truly how they spell their name, and it appears that way in all publications. Please fix; and also, have there been any more thoughts on how to handle non-standard punctuation (or spacing!) of author names? --Vasha 23:02, 22 February 2018 (EST)

Arcturus Publishing

Fixer has identified and submitted approximately 20 new ISBNs (mostly hardcover reprints of classic books) by Arcturus Publishing. The data is not perfect due to certain recently added Amazon UK limitations. Some data elements, notable prices, may not be present and will need to be checked against Amazon UK. Ahasuerus 16:17, 24 February 2018 (EST)

Edit Title Type Help

The other day I noticed that Help:Screen:EditTitle says things like:

OMNIBUS. Do not use; the omnibus content type is created automatically by the ISFDB when an omnibus publication is entered. It is not displayed with the publication and never needs to be entered manually.

The underlying problem is that some Wiki templates used by the EditTitle Help page are shared with the Contents sections of the New/EditPub Help pages. Since the functionality is different, the Help text needs to be different as well. Template:TitleFields:TitleType (quoted above) is particularly egregious, but other templates are problematic as well.

I guess the first question to answer is whether it's feasible to make the affected templates generic so that they could be used by EditTitle as well as by New/Edit Pub. If it's not feasible, then we will need to create new templates for EditTitle. Ahasuerus 13:39, 25 February 2018 (EST)

If it's all cases where that screen is transcluded to other help pages (vs. directly linked from the database), a parameter can be used to display different text. See Template:TitleFields:Date for an example of one that does that (though I believe its use case is obsolete and so could actually be removed at this point). -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:07, 1 March 2018 (EST)

Ferrel D. Moore

I just completed an update on the author Ferrel D. Moore and despite a growing body of work he did write one suspense thriller The Tesla Factor. According to his website and Amazon he has several new novels coming out this year. So, has he earned the right to have his lone transgression listed on his page as non-genre? MLB 18:05, 1 March 2018 (EST)

Author corrections - 2018-03-16

Two more author name corrections, a bit trickier. 1. Azorin is Azorín in Spanish (including the publication I just added); I have no way of checking how the name is printed in the English and Romanian publications. 2. Angel Torres Quesada is properly Ángel Torres Quesada. It's true that a number of book covers show the name without an accent over the A, but that's because accents on capital letters are sometimes omitted for stylistic reasons. --Vasha 12:23, 16 March 2018 (EDT)