User talk:Bgibbard

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Important!

This editor is no longer actively participating and is unlikely to respond to messages left here.

If this user is the sole verifier of a publication record, please:

  • post only notices on the user's talk page concerning the addition of images and notes
  • post inquiries regarding any other changes to the verified record at the Moderator noticeboard

Otherwise, please post notices and inquiries only on the talk pages of the other primary verifiers.

Welcome!

Hello, Bgibbard, 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:

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! --MartyD 03:13, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The Hobbit

Hi. A question about your proposed modifications to The Hobbit. You've made yourself primary verifier, which basically says you have the book, have checked the data, and are willing to answer questions about it. Yet the note you want to add says the pagination and pricing are derived from the 11th printing. That sounds to me as if you don't have this particular printing. Do you? If you do, is the pricing on the book? If not, I don't think we can "derive" a price from another printing -- there's no way for us to know if that printing had the same price unless we have a source stating what the price was. Let me know what you think (you can reply here; use the "Edit" button at the top right of this section, and indent you reply by adding a leading colon (":"), one colon per level of indentation. Thanks, again welcome, and thanks for contributing. --MartyD 03:34, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi Marty, I see what you mean, I am more used to databases that deal at the level of editions rather than printing. I will instead cancel this submission and do a clone instead, making the clone specifically an 11th printing with the specific pagination and pricing. As with most reprints, I presume I should use 000-00-00 for the date? I don't have a date for the printing, only a "Published HarperCollinsPublishers 1995" statement for the edition. Bgibbard 03:47, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
I see you already submitted it, but to answer your question, "yes". If the edition you have isn't dated, then use 0000-00-00. Some books date the current printing, some do not. Sometimes we find secondary sources or later printings that give us the date -- then we date the record and note the external source of the date. Someday we're hoping to have an easier way to handle reprints but for now each one is a separate publication of a common title. It looks like you've figured it out pretty well so far. Good to have you contributing. Enjoy! --MartyD 11:15, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Linking to uploaded cover images

Hi. Thanks for the uploaded covers. When you link to them, though, you need to link to the image file itself, not to the Wiki page for the file. After the upload, right-click on either the image itself or the link that appears just below it on the page and copy shortcut/location, then paste that in the publication editor. I fixed up the ones you submitted, so they should all be good. This quirk bites people quite often, I'm afraid. --MartyD 11:54, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Marty, I was originally expecting that the process of uploading the covers would cause the linking to happen automatically, so was very puzzled when the pictures did not show up (and I suspect most people would probably make the same assumption I did; perhaps a suggestion for a future upgrade.). Later I concluded that maybe it was just because it needed to be approved by a moderator. After that I figured out that something had to be entered in the link field, but I did not find a good description of just exactly what should go there and made an inaccurate guess. --Bgibbard 15:09, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
This Wiki and the main database are two separate entities, so the integration between the two is not as tight as you might expect. See Help:How_to_upload_images_to_the_ISFDB_wiki for some details about working with images. --MartyD 11:10, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
An additional request for clarification: Are there any "quality" standards required for scans of covers? As an example, the book I am just beginning to read has an obvious price-tag from the used bookstore I bought it from stuck right across the front cover. Is that a problem, or is any version of a cover pic better than no pic? The same issue would arise if I entered records based on library paperbacks, which usually have a bunch of stamps and/or stickers covering bits of the front cover.
I'd say any version of a cover pic is better than no pic. We can always replace it with better ones later. Which is one of the reasons we wouldn't want to automate the linking - people might disagree on which scan is "better". BLongley 17:56, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Changes to Primary-verified pubs

Sorry for all of the administrivia, but here's one more for you. Our policy for making changes to publications with a Primary verifier is to notify the verifier of the changes. The general rule is to notify after the fact when adding information that's not there and to ask/confirm before the fact when changing any of the data that's already there. We do this on the verifier's Talk page (the Discussion tab of their user page, which is linked to from the verification list). Some people have special instructions posted for how (or whether) they want to be notified of edits involving their verifications. I let Mike Christie know about the cover your added to Tehanu, but please keep it in mind for future edits. Even something as seemingly innocuous as a cover has led us to discover different printings, so it does help with overall quality. Thanks. --MartyD 12:02, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

price on The Return of the King

Hi. I just approved your three Lord of the Rings clones, and I noticed that The Return of the King has a price of £14.99, while the other two from the same set were priced at £16.99. I only mention it in case the £14.99 came from the original entry that you cloned and you missed updating the price. If it is correct, don't mind me. --MartyD 13:17, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

You're quite right, I did miss updating the price on that one. Will do that now. --Bgibbard 13:38, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Coronet edition of The Crystal Cave

I'm holding your update for this pub. You want to change the publication date from 1983 to 1971, but I think you should clone it. According to Fantastic Fiction the 1983 Coronet edition was published, so it should remain in the database. By the way, are you sure the first Coronet edition was in 1971? Fantastic Fiction has it in 1972, but they can be wrong too. --Willem H. 15:55, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm willing to revoke my edit on this one and re-clone at a later date if you think it advisable. My concern is that there is no indication of a new edition or any kind of later printing on the record that exists, and yet I have a copy with a printing date of 1977 (which pretty much matches my recollection of when I bought it: I am pretty sure I was still in high-school and living with my parents at the time, which would not have been true in 1983. Also the ISBN is exactly the same as my copy which is older than 1983. It make me wonder if the original creator failed to note a indication of something like "2nd edition" or "New edition" or "umpteenth printing". However I suppose it is possible that Coronet produced more than one edition without saying so on their title page verso, or stopped giving printing statements. I notice that my version of the companion volume [The Hollow Hills] is older than the version currently in ISFDB, again with the identical ISBN, but a very different cover than mine, and no indication of a different edition or printing statement.
It's a good thing to create a record for the first printing, but each printing gets it's own record here, so eventually we should have all Coronet printings (on the Fantastic Fiction website I count ten, starting in 1972) in the database. That's the reason you should clone the existing record, not change it's date. As for the ISBN, many publishers use the same ISBN on different printings of the same title. --Willem H. 21:25, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
I realize that ISBNs usually do not change between printings, but I would have been a lot happier to see some printing statement in the Notes area that would indicate how the creator of the record knows what the printing date should be. Nonetheless I have cancelled my initial edit and will re-create using a clone. I will add a cover and a verification statement once the initial record creation is accepted.

"The Crystal Cave", by Mary Stewart

In doing a second verification of your verified publication, I thought it was worthwhile to add as content items the two essays at the end ("The Legend" and "Author's Notes"), along with the map at the beginning. I hope you'll agree that this are substantial enough to merit that. Chavey 02:12, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

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