User talk:Nuleander

Welcome!

Hello, Nuleander, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• Help pages
• Field-by-field guide to entering new publications into the database
• Help:Getting Started
• What the ISFDB Wiki is for
• FAQ
• Wiki editing help - Tips on how to use the wiki-specific features when editing wiki pages.
• Wiki Conventions - How things are usually done on this wiki.
• Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki

Note: Image uploading isn't entirely automated. You're uploading the files to the wiki which will then have to be linked to the database by editing the publication record.

Please be careful in editing publications that have been primary verified by other editors. See Help:How to verify data#Making changes to verified pubs. But if you have a copy of an unverified publication, verifying it can be quite helpful. See Help:How to verify data for detailed information.

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Annie 15:49, 18 July 2018 (EDT)

Modify a newly added publication before moderator's review

After submitting a new publication, I can see it in "My Pending Edits". But how do I modify it if I am getting aware of a flaw in the data, such as an image link to a site without permission, or a price tag with a comma (thousands) instead of a full stop (cent)? Nuleander 08:07, 18 July 2018 (EDT)

I am afraid there is no way to modify a pending submission. All you can do is cancel it and create a new one. However, in most cases the reviewing moderator will approve your submission, make any necessary changes and ask you about anything unclear or potentially problematic. In this case I have approved Galaktische Spuren and made the following changes:

• Downloaded the cover scan from the site which we do not have permission to link to and uploaded it to the ISFDB server.
• Changed the value in the price field from "€ 14,95" to "€14.95"
• Changed the editor of the anthology to "uncredited" as per Help:Screen:NewPub, which says "It is suggested that when there are five or more authors, that the editor should be entered as "uncredited"."

Everything else looks OK. Please feel free to add any details to the newly created author record and the publisher record that you may be aware of.

Sorry about the amount of time it took to get this submission processed. Our moderator coverage is light at the moment due to summer vacations. And welcome to the ISFDB! :-) Ahasuerus 08:44, 18 July 2018 (EDT)

Many thanks, Ahasuerus. One more question: If I upload a cover image from a publisher's site to isfdb, is it always safe to assume they agree with our Fair Use declaration as long as the image is public on the publisher's site? Nuleander 04:28, 19 July 2018 (EDT)

Unfortunately, copyright laws are complicated and differ from country to country. The ISFDB fair use standard for including copyrighted cover images is:

• "This resolution is significantly reduced, and could not plausibly be used to make publishable copies of the original" -- see the bottom part of Template:Cover Image Data for details
• "less than 600 pixels along its largest dimension" -- see Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki

It also helps keep our disk space requirements manageable :-) Ahasuerus 08:36, 19 July 2018 (EDT)

Okay. That's reasonable. Should we import cover images whenever possible into our data base, just in case the external link becomes invalid some day? Amazon, for example, might delete the image on their servers when the book is no longer available in the market. Nuleander 05:50, 20 July 2018 (EDT)

Stability is certainly a concern. Our backups are publicly available (see ISFDB Downloads#Image Backups) while externally-hosted images are much more unpredictable. However, there are other considerations at work, primarily the issue of man-hours. At the moment we host 141,240 covers and link to 269,746 Amazon covers. Uploading all of them to the ISFDB server and re-linking them would take a great deal of time.

As far as Amazon goes, their images used to be surprisingly stable. Even when they delete an ISBN/ASIN, they typically keep its cover art, e.g. see this book which is no longer listed by Amazon now that its author has been semi-banned. Things appear to be changing, though (recently discussed here), so uploading images to the ISFDB server is becoming more attractive. Ahasuerus 08:10, 20 July 2018 (EDT)

Horror-Cocktail

Hello,

I approved your submission but did a few changes:

• The price format (it had an extra space and a comma instead of a dot)
• The catalog ID is for books that either do not have ISBN or have a special catalog ID that is specifically set from the publisher. You cannot have "Sarturia Buch Nr. 30944" there. It sounds like a publication series so I moved it there but if it is something else, can you explain how it connects to the publisher so we figure out the best way to record.

The result is here. Let me know if you have any questions and welcome again! Annie 15:53, 18 July 2018 (EDT)

Thank you so much for the warm welcome, Annie. And for approving my submission. The Sarturia Buch Nr may not be exactly a publication series. I have found it printed along with the ISBN inside the book. Probably, it is just a kind of identifier (or counting number) inside the Sarturia publishing house. Anyway, it's great to see my submissions approved so far, and I can learn to do it right for my next submissions. Nuleander 04:39, 19 July 2018 (EDT)

OK, so is the publisher "Dieter König" or Sarturia? What is written on the book? Because it sounds like the publisher is actually Sarturia (and if that is the case, who is Dieter König? And if it is a counting number for Sarturia then the catalog ID may be a good space for it (IF it is printed on the book and is not just online) Annie 13:58, 19 July 2018 (EDT)

"Sarturia" is the name of the institution, which is kind of a publishing house. The long name is "Sarturia Verlag e.K. Autoren Service" (see also: [1]). Sarturia is owned and run by Dieter König. The imprint inside the book says:

Horror-Cocktail

Herausgeber: Detlef Klewer

Horror-Anthologie

Originalausgabe

Sarturia Buch Nr. 30944

ISBN 978-3-940830-94-4

Verleger: Dieter König

Lektorat/Korrektorat: Aktiven-Team Sarturia

Covergestaltung und Illustrationen:

Detlef Klewer - www.kritzelkunst.de

Copyright (c) 2016

Sarturia Verlag e.K. Autoren Service

Finkenweg 9, 72669 Unterensingen

My understanding of "Herausgeber: Detlef Klewer" is "Editor: Detlef Klewer"

My understanding of "Verleger: Dieter König" is "Publisher: Dieter König"

My understanding of "Sarturia Verlag e.K. Autoren Service" is that this is the publishing house.

Problem is, the term "publisher" translates to either "Verlag" or "Verleger", which seems to be two different things in this case. So, if we want to display the publishing house in the record, we should change it to "Sarturia Verlag e.K. Autoren Service".

Sorry for making things complicated. :-)

Nuleander 05:42, 20 July 2018 (EDT)

Hi, and welcome here, Nuleander. The publisher in the ISFDB is usually the publishing company ("Verlag"), not the person ("Verleger") who owns, runs or heads the publishing company. Which means that "Sarturia" should be entered as publisher (as "Sarturia", without "Verlag" and without the other name extensions). The fact that Dieter König runs it can then be entered in note field of the publisher record. Jens Hitspacebar 06:52, 21 July 2018 (EDT)

Okay, done. Thanks! Nuleander 05:23, 22 July 2018 (EDT)

Parallelwelten

Regarding the Parallelwelten anthology there are a few issues to keep in mind:

• You had entered the title of the title record incorrectly in uppercase as "PARALLELWELTEN", but for the publication record correctly as "Parallelwelten". See section Case in the help for the Title about how titles are regularized in the ISFDB. I changed "PARALLELWELTEN" to "Parallelwelten" now.
• As for authors names:
  • You should always check if the author name is already in the database and if so, if it is really the same author as you want to enter. Different authors with the same name have to be disambiguated. In the anthology you have entered a story for Thomas Jordan, who died in 1685 (!). As you can see on Thomas Jordan's page, there are hints for other authors with the same name. You probably meant "Thomas Jordan (I)". You can go directly to the title record of the Unter Druck story and change the author there. Do you want to try that yourself?
  • When you make a submission which contains authors which are not in the database yet you will see this with a yellow hint after you made the submission. After such a submission has been approved by a moderator, you should at least add their working language to their author record (if there is more information available, the better).
• As already stated in the thread before, we don't add additions like "GmbH" to the publisher name. I changed it to "WIRmachenDRUCK" already.

Jens Hitspacebar 08:05, 22 July 2018 (EDT)

Moreover, it looks like there was a typo in one of your submissions, because we now have Valeri Gaber and Valerie Gaber in the database and it looks like one is wrong and has to be corrected. However, if it was no error on your side and was indeed spelt that way in the publication, and if these two names mean the same author, then one of the names has to become a pseudonym of the other name (see Help:How_to_record_a_pseudonym). Jens Hitspacebar 12:39, 22 July 2018 (EDT)

Okay. I have changed the author of Unter Druck to "Thomas Jordan (I)", and that's the correct one, indeed. There is a photo of him in the biography section of "Parallelwelten", which I am going to upload shortly.

Okay, I have changed the author of Das Geheimnis von E0 to "Valerie Gaber". It was just a typo, indeed. The author "Valeri Gaber" does not exist. How do I delete it?

Thank you for all your help and hints. I am still leaning how to do it right. Nuleander 15:42, 23 July 2018 (EDT)

The system deletes the authors automatically when they have no titles attached to them. That's not true for other elements but authors are getting deleted without the need to do anything :) Annie 15:45, 23 July 2018 (EDT)

She is gone. Thanks! Nuleander 16:10, 23 July 2018 (EDT)

Es braucht Veränderung

Hi. I've put your submission for "Es braucht Veränderung" on hold because there are a few issues and questions:

1. It looks like this may be not at all or note entirely speculative fiction (or about speculative fiction): Amazon lists the title as "Es braucht Veränderung: Ausgewählte Ideen für eine Schöne neue Welt - ganz ohne Science-Fiction", and the description there states that the book contains works about past, present and future. Please see the ISFDB rules about what kinds of works we include. Can you confirm that at least one of the works in the book belongs into the ISFDB according to these rules? If that's the case you also have to determine if all texts are eligible for inclusion. Works that are not related to speculative fiction by authors who have not published other works either of or about speculative fiction over a certain threshold are excluded and not entered in the ISFDB.
2. As for the the works "Das Zuckerauto" and "Der Verwahrloste" in your submission: they look like they could actually be a novelette instead of a short story. The ISFDB distinguishes several categories of short fiction based on the length of the work: short story, novelette and novella. Did you check the word count in the book? For details, check the infos about "Length". If you didn't do or don't want to do a word count leave the "length" field empty when the correct length category isn't obvious or otherwise deducible.
3. We usually include the subtitle of a publication if it is stated on the title page (not on the cover). So, if the title page says both "Es braucht Veränderung" and also "Ausgewählte Ideen für eine Schöne neue Welt - ganz ohne Science-Fiction", then the correct title to be entered is "Es braucht Veränderung: Ausgewählte Ideen für eine Schöne neue Welt - ganz ohne Science-Fiction". See section "Subtitles" in the help for details.

Jens Hitspacebar 05:50, 28 July 2018 (EDT)

Hi Jens, thanks for your hints.

1. Some stories are not exactly Science-Fiction, indeed. Those are fiction, focusing on social or society speculation. "Das Zuckerauto" is a mix of historical fact and present-day fiction, with alternating paragraphs. The story "Zwiegespräch" is a fictional dialogue between a youngster and an old philosopher, analyzing the different perceptions of progress from the generation's angle. "Die ungerufenen Geister" speculates about future societies and alternative concepts. "An der Schwelle zum Paradies" gives a preview of a possible world in the year 2027. "Eine unglaubliche Geschichte" sketches a possible technical solution to boost the awareness of environmental problems - clearly SciFi. "Eine Minute Sternenhimmel" tells the fictional story of fighting the growing nightly light pollution by organizing a one-minute light-off every day at midnight in a whole city - social speculation of the near future. "Der Verwahrloste" tells the fictional story of a social fall-down in an extreme achievement-oriented society.

2. My estimate of the word count is about 7600 words for the "Zuckerauto". So, you are right, we should classify this one a novelette.

3. Okay, we should change the title accordingly.

Nuleander 11:21, 28 July 2018 (EDT)

Ok, thanks for the information. Then it looks like the anthology should be included, but not all of its content. If I understood you summaries correctly, the following stories should be excluded because they are not speculative fiction as defined in the ISFDB rules and because their author hasn't published a substantial amount of other work of or about speculative fiction so far:

• "Das Zuckerauto" (only historical fact and present-day fiction)
• "Zwiegespräch": (a dialogue analyzing the different perceptions of progress from the generation's angle)
• "Eine Minute Sternenhimmel" (doesn't sound like speculative fiction if it's only about how to organize the one-minute light-off every day)
• "Der Verwahrloste" (doesn't sound like there's any speculative element in there)

Do you agree? If so I'd approve the submission an delete the titles afterwards. Information about titles can then be added in the note field.

Jens Hitspacebar 12:22, 28 July 2018 (EDT)

Agreed. Thanks a lot. Nuleander 10:35, 29 July 2018 (EDT)

OK, submission approved. I delete the non-genre titles and added information about them to the title record's note. The result is here. Jens Hitspacebar 11:14, 29 July 2018 (EDT)

Looks great, many thanks! Nuleander 06:08, 30 July 2018 (EDT)

The subtitle "Ausgewählte Ideen für eine Schöne neue Welt - ganz ohne Science-Fiction" was still missing. I just added it. Now everything should look ok. Jens Hitspacebar 06:59, 30 July 2018 (EDT)

Mondgesänge

I've approved your submission for Mondgesänge, but there are a few issues:

1. Please check the lengths for all stories, like I explained in the previous post above. A 63 page story like "Lavinia" is almost certainly not a "short story" but at least a "novelette", and there are some more novelette candidates there.
2. You had entered "Sarturia Buch" as a new title series. However, it's a (already existing) publication series (see Help:Screen:PublicationSeries and the links there for details about the difference). I changed the data now, though I actually thinks it's questionable if it's a series at all. "Sarturia Buch" likeley only means that it's publication with number X by the publisher, and it should therefore be deleted. What do you think?

Jens Hitspacebar 06:11, 28 July 2018 (EDT)

Hi again,

1. Okay. Due to the estimated word count the following stories are novelettes: "Lavinia", "Die Bestie von Tarkub", "S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-E" and "Schattenjäger". I am going to change this.

2. Since there are no other series of this publisher, I agree not to consider this a Pub Series. I'm going to delete the entry in both Mondgesänge and Horror-Cocktail.

Thanks again. Nuleander 11:35, 28 July 2018 (EDT)

Ok, sounds good. One more tiny thing: is Patchwork Familie really spelt this way on its title page and not as Patchwork-Familie (with the dash)? Jens Hitspacebar 12:26, 28 July 2018 (EDT)

I see now that you changed the length for "Lavinia", "Die Bestie von Tarkub", "S-A-C-R-I-F-I-C-E" and "Schattenjäger" to "novella" instead of "novelette". However, you wrote above that they are "novelettes", so it looks like you made a mistake when you changed the lengths. Jens Hitspacebar 12:37, 28 July 2018 (EDT)

Oops, sorry. Yes, those are novelettes. Now it should be correct. And "Patchwork Familie" is as printed in the book, in both contents listing and title page. Seems a bit like a mix of English and German. Nuleander 10:49, 29 July 2018 (EDT)

Yes, maybe. The title record then has to stay as it is. Grammatically it nevertheless looks awkward, and actually plain wrong to me, but maybe reading the story would explain it :) Jens Hitspacebar 11:21, 29 July 2018 (EDT)

In Engish it would be okay. In German it actually doesn't. The story itself is about a patchwork family, consisting partly of electronic persons in cyberspace, and I do not see a hint about the strange naming. Anyway, thanks again! Nuleander 06:19, 30 July 2018 (EDT)

eXperimenta, #10/2017

Hi, I approved your submission for eXperimenta, #10/2017, but there were several issues with your submission:

• The ISSN is not the catalog id, because the ISSN is not for an issue of a magazine but for the magazine in general. If you want to enter the ISSN, it has to go into the note of the publication (see Catalog Id in the help).
• The publisher has to be simply "INKAS". I moved the explanation of the acronym into the note field of the publisher.
• If you enter a magazine, the Series field has to be filled out with the magazine's name (as stored in the ISFDB if it already exists there). In this case the name is "eXperimenta". Without the "Series" the software will not be able to create the issue grid of the magazine.
• Der Katzenstaat is a serial because its split up into 3 parts in 3 different issues. This has to be entered as SERIAL instead of SHORTFICTION with a suffix stating which part out of how many parts it is. In a second step, after such a submission has been approved, the SERIAL record has to become a variant of the whole SHORTFICTION record using the "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work" link in the SERIAL title record. See the infos about "SERIAL" in the "Title Type" section in in the help.
• Please always put the data source into the note field of the publication (even it can be deduced that the PDF at the publisher's website may have been the source).

I made all the necessary changes. The results are

• the publication itself
• the magazine as a series and its issue grid
• Der Katenstaat short fiction with the first part of the serial as a variant

Jens Hitspacebar 06:44, 18 August 2018 (EDT)

Thank you so much. Sorry for making such a mess. I will try to add more issues of the magazine correctly. Nuleander 15:57, 21 August 2018 (EDT)

No problem. You're only going though the process every new editor goes through: learning by doing and by help from moderation. There are many rules to get to know and to remember, and, moreover, you've chosen the rather complex things in the ISFDB (anthologies and magazines) as a start. Therefore the amount of things in your submissions which have to be corrected is rather "normal" for a new editor :) Jens Hitspacebar 17:43, 21 August 2018 (EDT)

How do I make eXperimenta, #11/2017 to be a part of the magazine as a series? I have tried to edit the magazine as a series, but I can't find a field with the parts of the series. Nuleander 15:06, 22 August 2018 (EDT)

You add an item to a series by adding the series to the item. So edit the EDITOR record of the magazine (in this case this one) and add the series there :) Annie 15:16, 22 August 2018 (EDT)

Like this? Nuleander 15:26, 22 August 2018 (EDT)

I think I understand now. Thanks for the hint! Nuleander 15:32, 22 August 2018 (EDT)

Yep. Approved. Annie 15:41, 22 August 2018 (EDT)

(unindent)One question - is that a non-genre magazine that publishes genre stories sometimes or a genre magazine? It sounds like a non-genre one based on your notes? In this case we do not credit the editors, instead we use "Editors of eXperimenta" as the editor name and we mark the magazine as a non-genre (see Nature for an example. The reason for that is that the editors of those magazines don't work in the genre usually so adding them as authors clutters the DB. I tend to add the names in the Editor records (or in the pub records) as notes - thus having the data without having the extra authors. We also do yearly EDITOR records (see Nature again) but let's take that step by step. Annie 15:41, 22 August 2018 (EDT)

Yes, I agree. We should mark the magazine as a non-genre. I'll try ... Nuleander 13:14, 23 August 2018 (EDT)

The magazine is now marked "non-fiction". I have tried to remove the cover artists, for they are not related to any speculative works of the magazine. But somehow it did not show up in the submission, maybe due to a flaw in the software, and hence the cover artists have not been removed. What can I do to complete the task? Nuleander 04:28, 26 August 2018 (EDT)

It seems you mixed-up the termns "non-fiction" and "non-genre", but seeing that you cancelled your submissions you probably already realized the difference. If not, don't hesitate to ask.

Marking something as "non-genre" is done by checking a checkbox on a title record, for example the one for eXperimenta, #10/2017 (the title record of the magazine's issue). Just click on the "Edit Title Data" link and you'll see the checkbox labelled "Non-Genre". It's currently not possible to mark the whole magazine (i.e. the title series) as "non-genre".

As for removing the cover artist, it involves two steps:

1. Remove the cover from the publication: Go to the publication record of the magazine (for example eXperimenta, #10/2017) and click on "Remove Titles From This Pub". You'll see a list of titles contained in the publication, with a checkbox for each. Check the one for the "COVER ART" and submit. This removes the connection between titles but doesn't delete titles. After the submission has been approved, the record for the cover art is still in the database, but it's now not connected to the publication anymore.
2. Delete the cover record itself: If a title (in this case the title for the cover art) isn't connected to any publication at all anymore is has to be deleted completely. Go to the title record of the cover (for example eXperimenta, #10/2017) and click on "Delete This Title". The record for the cover artist is deleted automatically after the last of his or her titles has been deleted.

I could do all this for you, but I think you maybe want to try it for yourself to learn. Just let me know :) Jens Hitspacebar 07:07, 26 August 2018 (EDT)

Okay, done. Thanks for the explanation. When I tried to mark it "non-genre", I was in the wrong editor, where there was no checkbox. I keep mixing up the Publication Record and the Title Record, but now I have an idea of the difference. The Title Record is similar to a library catalog, holding the meta data of a publication. The Publication Record on the other hand seems to hold information about the contents of a publication. Nuleander 14:52, 27 August 2018 (EDT)

Almost right, and I think you got it, but you're still mixing the terms "title" and "publication" a bit: a title record holds meta data about a title, not about a publication. It contains the data which are the same for all publications of this title. A publication is the concrete release of a title. Example: Der Herr der Ringe is a title (the translation of Lord of the Rings by a certain translator, first published in a certain year etc.), and there are several publications of this title with different ISBNs, different covers etc.

I approved your submissions. You can now delete the cover art records (step 2. mentioned above). They are maybe already deleted by someone else when you read this because titles like these (=without a publication) show up in one of the database's clean-up reports. Jens Hitspacebar 15:32, 27 August 2018 (EDT)

This explains why the Publication Record and the Title Record are separate things. Thanks! Nuleander 15:15, 30 August 2018 (EDT)

Review in Exodus #41

Hi, and thanks for adding some more titles! However, the review had to be removed and replaced with an essay, because review titles are specially designed for reviews of texts (that are indexed in ISFDB, almost exclusively of speculative fiction), and since Rainer Schorm ain't a book or a text, this was an essay by Weigand on him. Stonecreek 13:36, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

I understand. Thanks for correcting this. Nuleander 04:07, 15 September 2020 (EDT)

May I ask you another two questions: I have added a new anthology "Kaltes klares Wasser", and there are two things:

• 1. The editor is Gerhard Schneider, who is also an author of one of the stories in the book, naming himself Gard Spirlin. How do I connect those two names? See also http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?228668
• 2. I put Story Center as the name of the series, which may be wrong. Its not part of the title either. So, what to do with it?

Nuleander 04:30, 15 September 2020 (EDT)

All seems okay, since we do in fact spell the author's name as stated: Gerhard Schneider as editor and Gard Spirlin if he's stated so with the story (they'll be connected eventually via a pseudonymous relation). The series also seems to be alright: that we don't have it already established just shows that there are many publications / titles still missing. Stonecreek 06:39, 15 September 2020 (EDT)

I've done so for Schneider / Spirlin. To do this there are two steps: 1) Establish an alternate name connection: here for Schneider, because Spirlin is the name which seems to be the chosen writer's identity, the canonical name (like George Orwell was for Eric Arthur Blair); 2) variant the titles under the alternate name to the canonical name. Christian Stonecreek 09:17, 16 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks so much, Christian. Another thought about the series' name: Now that I am looking again at the now existing series, it seem I should have chosen "Story Center (anthologies)" instead of "Story Center". The editor of "Boa Esperança", "Uriel" and "Quantum" is Michael Haitel, who is the head of p.machinery anyway. So, I will prepare the change accordingly. Sorry for causing confusion. Nuleander 12:47, 16 September 2020 (EDT)

Spiegel

Hello! I' ve just discovered some adjustments in the publication Spiegel.

You have placed a part of the book title in the item "transliteration". In this item we transliterate a title if it includes for example the German letters ä, ö, ü, ß.

Further you have named vitae as nonfiction. According to our rules, such texts are labeled as an essay and if no author is explicitly named for an essay, we insert "uncredited" as the author.

Could it be typos here? Maria "m"endix and Alfre"f", Lord Tennyson.

Regards Rudolf Rudam 12:14, 18 September 2021 (EDT)