User talk:Dirk P Broer/Archive-2011

Grolier Encyclopedia

I'm holding a submission which wants to credit the authors of this publication. Trouble is, you've placed all three authors in one field, thus creating a new author. I'm going to accept the submission because of the other data that you added, but ask that you do another update which enters each of the authors in their own field. Thanks. Mhhutchins 14:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Oké--Dirk P Broer 14:43, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

There's also some concern about crediting a corporate entity as an author. I've brought the subject up on the rules and standards page so that other editors can join the discussion. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:44, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

Amazon goes as far as only citing Grolier Multimedia as author...--Dirk P Broer 18:42, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

We trust Amazon so much we put a warning in the notes for anything sourced from there. :-/ BLongley 18:59, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

If we are to follow Wikipedia, we only cite Clute and Nicholls, but I wrote part of that entry myself and was the one to include the multimedia version in the references.--Dirk P Broer 19:56, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

We don't actually follow Wikipedia either - we LIKE Primary Verifications and Original Research. Thanks for the pointer though - I must pick up a First Edition now I know that one had illustrations too. BLongley 20:08, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

The consensus is that only Clute and Nicholls should be credited as the editors. You can credit Grolier in the notes field. Thanks.

Oké, they already were in the notes, removed them as 3rd author--Dirk P Broer 20:32, 8 April 2011 (UTC)

(Unindent) I made this new title a variant of the book version. --Willem H. 08:33, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

World's Best SF 1

Is this the title on the Title Page? If so then this edition needs to be a Variant title of the existing Title World's Best Science Fiction: 1968. I can accept the submission as is which would then require the new record to be unmerged from the other three, then made a Variant of the original title. Another way would be to submit again as a new anthology, then make that record the Variant. Either way the contents can then be imported to the new Sphere pub record. We also have another option which works the best when the titles are the same, called Cloning. By cloning an existing record [that option is available in the Editing Tools to the left of your screen] all the contents are included and automatically merged. A little research has this edition published in March 1971, source Amazon.UK [which, unlike its' US counterpart, is much more reliable when it comes to month/year]. Worldcat has an ISBN of 0722192738. Let me know about the title and I can do the rest or walk you through the process. --~ Bill, Bluesman 15:00, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Yep, that the title on the cover(though with periods between the S and the F and a period after: S.F.) Want a scan as well?--Dirk P Broer 15:24, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

The default title is the one on the Title page, not the cover. Usually it's the page before the copyright page. Once a record is made, then a scan can be added. --~ Bill, Bluesman 15:35, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

That page makes it even more clear: "The World's Best S.F. No. 1" --Dirk P Broer 16:15, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Okay! [This] is the result. Please check that the contents are correct and add a scan if you wish. I didn't add the ISBN from Worldcat, but if it is there [usually on the back cover for Sphere, or spine] please add it as well. --~ Bill, Bluesman 16:29, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

It's an old book, ISBN-wise, so the sphere book has sadly nothing more on it's back than 92738 --Dirk P Broer 16:32, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Scan has been uploaded, contents checked and found correct. If all Sphere books had a ISBN at that time beginning with 07221 than 92738 might be the part that identifies this particular book.--Dirk P Broer 18:57, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

They did, and it does. Feel free to make it an ISBN of 0722192738 (with notes to keep others happy). BLongley 20:40, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Uploaded images

Congratulations, you made the classic mistake most people make at least once. You copied the URL of the image's wiki page to the pub record. This should have been the URL for the image itself. I corrected The World's Best S.F. No. 1, but left the Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science Fiction for you to see the result. See step 6 here. Try again? --Willem H. 19:56, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

You lost me there. How am I supposed to know it is stored at www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/4/4c/*.jpg, -if that is the case with all following uploads- ??? --Dirk P Broer 20:29, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Hm, you didn't read the helptext? You're not "supposed to know" where the image is stored. Help sais In order to get the URL (address) for the image you just uploaded, left click anywhere on the image and copy the URL from your browser's address window. What you did is assume all images are stored here but they're not. I had to reject your last two submissions. --Willem H. 20:55, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Interstellar Empire

Hi. I have your edits to Interstellar Empire on hold. What you did is fine, but the information from OCLC and Locus1 don't quite match the entry (or each other), so I'm checking with Bill about those verifications and the OCLC number in the notes, rather than having the modified entry sit in an inconsistent state. Locus1 agrees with your changes, and a different OCLC number also matches what you have provided. I'll move it along and perhaps fix up the OCLC number in the notes once I hear from Bill. --MartyD 11:10, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

All set. I adjusted the note to reflect the OCLC number matching this printing. --MartyD 16:42, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Thnx!--Dirk P Broer 18:49, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Worlds Out of Words

It's ISFDB standard to disambiguate generically titled pieces (such as "Introduction", "Afterword", "Notes", "Glossary", etc.) by adding the title of the book in parentheses. I've done that for the applicable contents in this pub. Also, according to the OCLC record, this book is 21 cm. which would make it trade paperback-sized. If so, we use the initials "tp" to designate the book format. Thanks. Mhhutchins 13:10, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

It was initially coded 'hc', and, as it has no hardcover, I thoughtlessly changed that to pb (In the Netherlands used for the tp format, we call pb "pocket" format). Thanks for the instructions for the various entries in Worlds Out of Worlds! --Dirk P Broer 13:20, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

SF Adventures #9

If you're doing a primary verification of a publication (book or magazine), feel free to remove any notes that no longer apply. It appears that all of the notes in this pub can be removed. Thanks. Mhhutchins 13:37, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Page counts for magazines

Unlike the method used for counting pages for books (the last numbered page), for magazines we count every page including the covers. This make take more than a cursory glance at the last page. You must determine if the publisher counts the covers in their pagination. Start with the cover and go forward. If you determine that page 1 is the first interior page you have to add 4 to the total pages. Make sure to count any unnumbered pages at the end as well. I'm holding the submission to change the page count of this issue from 116 to 112 in order for you to determine if the covers have been included in the count. If not, I'll reject the submission, or you can reject it yourself. Thanks. Mhhutchins 14:33, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

And they are not even consequent doing their pagination either... Science Fantasy 37 and 39 have 2 as their first numbered page (so add 4 for total count), 38 has 4 (so add 2). I will change the pagecount as per above. --15:08, 11 April 2011 (UTC)Dirk P Broer

Publisher of New Worlds (1966)

The publisher given in the 1966 issues of New Worlds which you have verified is Roberts and Vinter. There are other verified records of this title which give the publisher as Roberts and Vinter Ltd. If you agree that the "Ltd" is present in your issues, I can make a submission which will change all of the issues at once. Would you please check your copies? Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:20, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

You are right. I had the "Roberts and Vinter" (without "Ltd.") from the entry on 'New Worlds' in Clute and Nichollson's Encyclopedia. (p. 867.) --Dirk P Broer 00:29, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for checking. They've all been corrected. I'm also going to drop the "£" from the price field of these pre-decimalization issues. Mhhutchins 00:48, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Right you are. These prices date from the time that 12 Shilling made a Pound Sterling and 12 Pence was a Shilling. 3/6 is thus the equivalent of 3x12=36+6=42 Pence. As a pound is 144 Pence, that's comparable to a decimal £0.29 --Dirk P Broer 09:52, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually it was 20 shillings to the pound. 3/6 is equivalent to £0.175 new money. BLongley 16:09, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

20? Even more whacky than I thought (I am a real decimal dude) £0.175 new money shows you how far downhill we went since then, now its £7.99.... --Dirk P Broer 22:43, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

It could be worse: 17 silver Sickles to a gold Galleon, and 29 bronze Knuts to a Sickle. I've actually got books priced "14 Sickles, 3 Knuts", which equated to £2.50 in 2001. BLongley 23:08, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

14'/3'', and that's cutting me own throat, honest! (C.M.O.T Dibbler)

The Ankh-Morpork currency system:

There is the $AM, the dollar, which is made up of twenty shillings. (An older unit of currency is the Guinea, composed of twenty-one shillings, but this is falling from use)
The shilling is composed of twelve pennies, or two sixpences, or four thruppeny bits.
The Penny is composed of two Halfpennies; each Halfpenny is composed of two Farthings.
Each Farthing is composed of two Mites; each Mite is composed of two Elims.

Though this is severely contradicted in the Lemma Currency in both The Discworld Companion and the The New Discworld Companion. --Dirk P Broer 18:39, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

The Guinea, sixpences, thrupenny bits, ha'pennies and farthings were real British currency. Mites and Elims, not. BLongley 19:49, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Author/Artist fields

When adding data to a record or creating a new record, only the name of the person should be entered into the field. That's the only it can be automatically merged with other records by the same author or artist. All other information should be added to the notes field. I'm going to accept the submission for a new pub of The Streets of Ankh-Morpork, but you'll have to correct the problem with the cover art field. Also remember, the Artist field is for the cover artist only. All other credits should go into the note field. Here's the record that will need fixing. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:20, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

You create a record for interior art using the Add Title fields under Contents. Mhhutchins 17:21, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Done as you suggested. --Dirk P Broer 18:16, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The Streets of Ankh-Morpork and changing verified pubs

You have a submission updating this verified record. It is ISFDB policy to notify the editor who is the primary verifier when making changes in the record. Each editor has his own individual policy about the levels of notification that is usually found at the top of each user page. I have placed the submission on hold until you've discussed the change with the primary verifier. Mhhutchins 17:25, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Same situation with this pub. Mhhutchins 17:26, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Confessions of a Crap Artist

You want to change the date of this pub. If it's not stated in the pub, your source should be noted in the note field. You also credit three artists with the cover art: Claydon, Hook, and Mann. Is this correct? And you've added an introduction as a NONFICTION type. That type is reserved for larger works published in book form. Content pieces should be entered as an ESSAY type. You should also disambiguate any generic titles by adding the name of the book in parenthesis, e.g. "Introduction (Confessions of a Crap Artist)". I'm going to accept the submission and let you make the corrections. Mhhutchins 17:34, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Oké, done so. --Dirk P Broer 17:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Analog 3

I'm holding the submission to update this pub. You want to change to price from "xiv+269" to "xiv + 269 pp". It's not necessary to add "pp" to the page count. The system does that automatically (see the listing here). Also, it is ISFDB standard not to place a space between any designated page counts. You also state that the price is 30/- which would indicate a later (undated) printing. I just checked Tuck who gives the price as 21/-. Because you added the page numbers and cover artist I'm going to accept the submission, but remove the changes you made in the page count field, price field, and note field. Then you can clone the current record, remove the date, change the price, and add your note about it being a possible later undated printing. Once that's accepted you can remove your primary verification of the first printing and move it to the reprinting. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:22, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm having second thoughts about it after the cloning. On close inspection, I discovered that the price of 30/- was in the advertisement for the Analog Anthology on the back flap. The book itself had been "price clipped" at the front flap, so might well have been the first Dobson printing. Sorry, what do we do now?--Dirk P Broer 20:23, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks like you've already deleted the clone, and gone back to verify the first. You'll have to correct the notes that I placed in the note field about the source. Note that the verified copy is price-clipped and give Tuck as the source for the price. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:11, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

OCLC's ISBN

When obtaining data from an OCLC record, the ISBN that is stated first is the one that is listed in the book itself. Like the ISFDB, the OCLC has "retrofitted" all ISBN-10s with the corresponding ISBN-13, even though the latter is not stated in the book. So this record will have to be corrected giving only a single ISBN, the first one (this was 1988, long before the ISBN-13 existed) Also, checking the OCLC record, I see the title is The Fires of Bride. The record must reflect that as well. Another thing: what is "DDC: 823'/914 LCC: PR6057"? Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:58, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

This one will have to be corrected, too. Mhhutchins 16:00, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

DDC=Dewey's Decimal Code, LCC=Library of Congress Catalog (see e.g wikipedia entries on books)

"LCC: PR6057" doesn't work. We've tried to establish a standard designation similar to the Library of Congress current usage: LCCN (Library of Congress Control Number). See here. Mhhutchins 23:46, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

LCCN for The Fires of Bride: 88-3925. PR6057 is part of the call number which it shares with other titles, so I can think of no reason to include it as part of the ISFDB record. Mhhutchins 01:47, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

1973 Annual

You added a cover image to this pub with a note stating "jacket painting by". The cover is only text, so where is the "painting"? Perhaps George Woodman designed the cover? Mhhutchins 16:08, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

That's the effect of cloning for you....and of trying to do as much as possible in as short a time--Dirk P Broer 15:51, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

It actually says: "Jacket Design by George Woodman". --Dirk P Broer 17:02, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Planeet der gevangenen by Godwin

What is the source for this pub's date? The OCLC record isn't definitive about the date of publication. Mhhutchins 16:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I know -because I read it halfway the 1970ies- that it can not be 1980, so I went looking on the net and found a site with publication years for all published Luitingh SF books.--Dirk P Broer 09:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I've updated the record to give the website as the source for the date. Mhhutchins 15:34, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

A Decade of F&SF

Thanks for adding the pagination of the stories in this anthology. The story by Green was overlooked. Mhhutchins 15:28, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Breaking lines in the note field

When you want to start a new line of notes in the note field, keyboard returns aren't recognized. You should enter the html code <br> at the end of the previous line. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:37, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Links in notes

Hi. The ISFDB data presentation doesn't use the Wiki software, so Wiki shortcuts like "[" + "]" to get a hyperlink to a URL don't work in the publication and title notes fields. To get a link, you need to use HTML anchors instead:

<a href="the url">the label</a>

I converted the Google Books link you added to Human and Other Beings. --MartyD 09:55, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Cover art credit

I approved your edit of The Book of Mars, but then removed Chris Foss from the artist field. Your note is clear, and we don't credit an artist unless there's proof somewhere (some of us add notes about where the proof can be found). I'm holding your edit of Savage Heroes. You add Lee Edwards as cover artist, but no note (is he credited in the pub, is there a signature??). Second reason, you should notify Unaperson of this change. Please read this help page. --Willem H. 15:29, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

There's an interesting little service at tineye.com which does reverse image searches. I plugged in the URL for our "The Book of Mars" cover and it came back with 3 pictures of the cover but also a magazine cover which seems to have the same artwork. This page, when run through Google translate, seems to indicate it's by Patrick Woodroffe. BLongley 16:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this site! Tineye.com looks very useful, Google has nothing like it. Jane Frank agrees with Patrick Woodroffe, and I found a reproduction on page 127 of Mythopoeikon, so I added the credit and a note. Can you agree? --Willem H. 19:43, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly, the second image works as well and shows that the same image was used on White Dwarf 16. A little searching on that title does give the cover artist credit to Les Edwards. BLongley 17:30, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's my source for Les Edwards as cover artist for "Savage Heroes" What is the change that I should notify Unapersson of?.--Dirk P Broer 17:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Just that you're changing one of his verified pubs, which I see you have done now. BLongley 18:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

He might just be a she, Una Persson in the Jerry Cornelius series was.--Dirk P Broer 18:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe our Unapersson is a male called Ian Davey. Bit of a Moorcock Expert. BLongley 20:33, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Sorry it took a while. I had to go shopping, cook food and eat. Approved the edit (it was Les, my mistake). You should add a note about where the cover credit came from. --Willem H. 19:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

You eat arond the same time as I do. Done as you suggested. (BTW: are you Dutch -like me-, as your name Willem suggests?).--Dirk P Broer 19:37, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Good guess, but it's no secret. I live in Haren (a few kilometers below Groningen). --Willem H. 19:57, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

reverting publication date on Human and Other Beings

Hi. I'm sorry, but I did not look closely enough at your change to the publication date of Human and Other Beings. The source you cited is a list of copyright registrations, not publication dates. We don't use copyright dates for publication dates. I reverted the publication date to 1963-00-00 and moved the date you discovered into the note. --MartyD 02:09, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Naming interior art

You stumbled on another gotcha in your edit of Tigers of the Sea. Interior art gets the title of the publication, without the addition "Interior Art" before or after the title, since it's title type is already interior art. --Willem H. 20:48, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Another thing about naming interior art records: if the piece is a specialized type of interiorart, (e.g. map, frontispiece, chapter headings) you still name it the same as the publication's title but add the type in parentheses. So in this pub the frontispiece should be titled "Plague Daemon (frontispiece)" [note small "f'], and a map would be "Plague Daemon (map)". The only exception is if the map is titled, then it's acceptable to give the record the title of the map. (This may not have be formalized in the help documentation, but it appears to be the working standard.) Mhhutchins 15:59, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

You'll have to correct the names of the interior art records for this pub, using the standard stated above. (Also "frontispiece" is misspelled.) Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:01, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Adding shortfiction records to novel records

I'm holding your submission to update this pub, by adding shortfiction records. If you're certain this is a collection of stories, the pub type will have to be changed to COLLECTION (the type of the title record will also have to be changed.) Are you certain that these are individual stories and not just chapter titles? Could any of the stories stand alone? The Wikipedia article you linked to in the notes say it's a "short story anthology" (the ISFDB and the SF community have a different definition of the term) and it's edited by David Pringle. Is he credited in the book? Are there individual copyrights for the stories or acknowledgement of previous publications of any of them? Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:27, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I had already assumed as much, so included the wikipedia link. David Pringle is not credited (and he shouldn't, Jack Yeovil is Kim Newman), and there are no individual copyrights. I will gladly cancel this submission.--Dirk P Broer 16:35, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Adjusting notes

Hi. When you edit a publication record based on a book you have (especially when you then make yourself Primary verifier), you should adjust any notes that cite a secondary source for information you have found in the book. Secondary source citations in notes are used for entries where a physical copy of the book has not been found and when providing additional information not present in the book itself. So, for example Renaissance no longer needs to say the artist is from Locus1, and Brak the Barbarian no longer needs to say the data is from Cal State. --MartyD 12:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Having said that, I have your second edit to Brak on hold. This would remove the artist credit. Are you sure it is not Achilleos, as perhaps the Cal State data might have stated? I found this showing some covers for Tandem printings, if it's of any help. --MartyD 13:14, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I have now removed Achilleos twice already, and in the meantime uploaded a scan for the 1976 edition as well, which will show you it is the same unnamed artist as with the previous two 1976 Tandem editions, which show very different cover art than the 1970 (Achilleos) editions. Rather crude paintings I'd say.--Dirk P Broer 13:18, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I accepted the edit. --MartyD 14:09, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Legal names on authors

Hi again. Legal names on authors should be entered as LAST, FIRST MIDDLE. See Help:Screen:AuthorData. I adjusted your edit to Kris Jensen, so just something to keep in mind for the future. Thanks. --MartyD 13:05, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

I'll never do it again, promise! --Dirk P Broer 13:07, 24 April 2011 (UTC) (Broer, Dirk Pieter)

Gerald Knave

Here is my last one for today, I promise. I have your proposed Gerald Knave-related edits on hold. These would assign a number (3) to the Knave and the Game collection and then renumber +1 the three later novels. While that collection certainly belongs in general series, it doesn't look to me like it's part of the series of five novels. I Googled a little and couldn't find anyone / anywhere treating the collection as part of the series of novels. Why do you think it should be #3? Thanks. --MartyD 14:08, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Because Reginald3 (p.502) and Clute/Nicholls (p.639) say so? Are the present #3, #4 and #5 visibly numbered then? --Dirk P Broer 14:17, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

That's a good reason to think so. :-) --MartyD 00:23, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Reginald3 also has a series index on pages 1359-1482 (which btw extends further back than 1975, a real treasure) and Knave and the Game is there given as #3 as well (p.1411).--Dirk P Broer 07:11, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Cover Images

Thanks for the cover scans, but when you're adding them to the publication you're using the wrong URL - it needs the URL of the image, not of the wiki page the image is on. E.g. you used http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Image:THDTHFGRSS1988.jpg whereas the image on that page is actually http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/5/54/THDTHFGRSS1988.jpg. You can normally get the image URL by right-clicking on it and using "Copy Image Location" (or the equivalent in your browser). BLongley 15:14, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see you've learned this already on later submissions - ignore me. BLongley 15:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Image "permissions"

I accepted some submissions adding images [Edmond Cooper Dutch titles] before realizing the website they came from is not on our [list] of sites that have given us explicit permission to directly link to them. If you can get the site's permission [there's a sample letter shown on the page that can be used], we'll add it to the list, then the site name will be displayed beneath the image. I went back and downloaded the images to my computer, then uploaded them to the database, so these are okay now. I generally just follow that procedure when using an image of a book that I don't have, as any external site could change/disappear and all the images linked to would also disappear. --~ Bill, Bluesman 14:08, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

The other Bill over-simplifies a bit - someone (probably me or Ahasuerus, judging by current activity) will have to do some code changes to make sure the site is credited properly. But there has been some discussion - see point 7 here - User_talk:Mhhutchins#Data_Consistency_.3E_Cleanup_Scripts about making it easier to record which sites are allowed, so we can clean-up ones that aren't - and provide more obvious warnings to moderators when new sites come along. BLongley 15:07, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Just a simple kind of guy!! :-) A thought occurred to me [it does happen...] that on the Upload page, there is a link to the process but no link to the Policy page that lists the currently accepted sites. And that page can't be edited by just anyone to add the link [or I would have]. That would make the fact that we need permission more evident and possibly prevent unauthorized linking. And I hope we get permission from this particular site, as well. The images are small but of very good quality. --~ Bill, Bluesman 18:47, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

In fact, there isn't even a link from the Help page on how to upload images to the policy page that says where we can get them from. The link should even go in with the Welcome list we put on each new editor's talk page. Just another idea... on a roll now! ;-) --~ Bill, Bluesman 18:54, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

The request has just been sent, let's hope he grants us permission, he has pretty much everything that has ever been translated into the Dutch/Flemmish.--Dirk P Broer 15:55, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

WE've permission to use the images of www.deboekenplank.nl The owner of the site would appreciate linking back to him.--Dirk P Broer 10:36, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The coding is done, not sure when it will go live. BLongley 16:21, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The Lost Face

This should be made a Variant of the Czech title, not a variant of a variant. Sounds odd but it's the right method. Looks like all the common stories need merging, as well. --~ Bill, Bluesman 19:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Meaning Vynález proti sobĕ ?--Dirk P Broer 19:15, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The other title is a variant of it, as this one should be. Have you done a variant relationship yet? --~ Bill, Bluesman 19:48, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Alea Iacta Est. 1126686 is the parent. --Dirk P Broer 20:08, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

And done! The stories still need to be merged. --~ Bill, Bluesman 20:18, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Dutch translations

Do you have a copy of this pub in order to do a primary verification? If not, please give the source for the data. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:19, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

And here. Mhhutchins 16:20, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Both first versions I read of those publications (somewhere in the 1980ies), and which I have since obtained in English. The original Dutch versions are at a friend of my daughter. More on the Dutch translations of Laumer's books can be found here.--Dirk P Broer 19:37, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Gladiator-at-Law by Pohl & Kornbluth

I've submitted an update for your verified pub to change the author from "Cyril M. Kornbluth" to "C. M. Kornbluth". It's on hold at the moment, but I'll accept it if the change is correct. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:33, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

It's C.M. on the cover and on the copyright page, and also the more common version of his name (see Cyril M. Kornbluth).--Dirk P Broer 19:30, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Blind Heelal

Hi Dirk, I approved the addition of this pub, but I think you should reconsider a few things. You have the publisher as "Luitingh-Sijthoff", but in those days Sijthoff was not mentioned in the Luitingh books. I think the publication series should be "Tijgerpockets", not "Luitingh SF" (that came later), and the price is mentioned on the backcover (295138 means ƒ2.95, Tijgerpocket 138). --Willem H. 10:16, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Oke! I do not have the book at home anymore -gave it away to a friend of my daughter when I bought the Hamlyn edition- so I had to find my information on the net, where I was deceived by this, but the same site also says this, which supports what you suggest.--Dirk P Broer 10:25, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I had some thoughts in that direction. Kees Buijs is not always accurate in his information, Fandata is better, but has no cover scans, and information in Fantasfeer (Meulenhoff 1979) is very reliable. By the way, I own most Dutch SF publications pre 1975, and will eventually enter them when foreign language support is better than now (at least a translator field and acceptance of translated title records). I hate doing things twice, but you can always ask (the books are on shelves, but second and third row). --Willem H. 10:44, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Take Back Plenty

I approved your submission regarding this title here but I don't understand why you duplicated the same comments in both fields "Note" & "Synopsis". Note also that your method for linking to another ISFDB record is not right (IIRC it's more along the lines of <a href="http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?901188">here</a> ). Hauck 15:31, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The method used for linking is a wikipedia template, and doesn't work in the database, which as Hauck states should be HTML. Also, a synopsis should be neutral. The field should not be used to review the work. Mhhutchins 15:41, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I had it originally under 'synopsis', decided that it did not really belong in that field and, using 'cut and paste' took it from there and placed it under 'note'.--Dirk P Broer 15:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Notification of Modifications

Please remember to notify the primary (and 2nd, 3rd etc) verifier when you modify some of the data, you'll see on each talk's page their desiderata (some want to be notified of everything, some of only certain types of change, etc.). Regarding this pub [1] please keep in mind that you are changing data ("VGSF/Gollancz") that is ISFDB-wise perfectly valid and correct (see our discussion on the subject and the content of the help pages) by another set of information ("VGSF", which is also perfectly valid and correct albeit less informative for the neophyte), in this case, I'd don't see the point of reducing the quantity of information entered in the db. Hauck 17:18, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I try to strife for consistency. Like Bill Longley I do not see the added value in entering VGSF / Gollancz, (see his remarks under publisher VGSF on these pages about it) and I would like the see all books categorized in the same, consistent way, like any good database should have consistency. You yourself have entered in the note field "First VGSF edition 1990", and looking up its OCLC gives the same VGSF as publisher, *NOT* Gollancz, *NOR* VGSF / Gollancz. Must we have the same argument over and over again? Publisher = logo on cover, it is that simple.--Dirk P Broer 17:27, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd advise you to have a look at the help page : "Publisher = The name of the book's publisher. Use the official statement of publication where you can. The publisher has in the past not been a key entity in the ISFDB, but publisher and imprint support is in the process of being improved, and a process of determining canonical names for publishers and imprints is in progress. For the time being you are free to choose an imprint ("Ace Books"), a division ("Berkley") or the parent corporation ("Penguin Group (USA)") as you wish.". Hauck 18:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

To give a more elaborate example why I think your view is wrong, I take my copy of "Jingo" by Terry Pratchett. Printing history:
Originally published 1997 by Victor Gollancz Ltd
Corgi edition published 1998. Would you now enter this book as Corgi / Gollancz?--Dirk P Broer 17:47, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

IMHO we're not talking about Pratchett here. To stay with _Tangents_, which part of the phrase on copyright page : "VGSF is an imprint of Victor Gollancz" leads you to believe that VGSF is not the imprint and Gollancz not the publisher ? Your desire to standardize the "Publishers" field is commandable but it will be more efficienly done at the global level and with an formalized agreement of a majority of the contributors. There is also the matter of simple politness when modifying other person's entered data. Hauck 18:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

So we are left with opposite views on this matter until there comes a separate field 'imprint'? In my point of view it is just a mere *coincidence* that the hardcover publisher of "Tangents" belongs to the same publishing group as it's paperback publisher. To stay with _Tangents_, which part of the phrase on copyright page "first VGSF edition" leads you to believe that VGSF / Gollancz is its publisher? "VGSF is an imprint of Victor Gollancz"? yeah, and why don't we use such data with other publishers? I use the Pratchett analogy to point out that the link between paperback publisher and hardcover publisher can be very shady or even non-existent so, to avoid confusion one way and different ways of entry on the other, I'd like to standardize using a simple rule-of-thumb: publisher=logo When that is too simple ALL entered books need to be checked and changed when needed into imprint / publisher, but I would rather not have not policies like you are free to choose an imprint ("Ace Books"), a division ("Berkley") or the parent corporation ("Penguin Group (USA)") as you wish, because this only leads to a need for massive editing in the future.--Dirk P Broer 18:46, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

So here's a nice one for you : Mortal Remains is very interesting as it bears the VGSF logo on spine but has "Victor Gollancz" (not VGSF) on title page and "First published in GB 1995 in hardback and paperback by Victor Gollancz" => see here and there. So here's a book with the VGSF logo that is clearly published by Gollancz. It seems to settle the debate to determine who is VGSF publisher. Hauck 16:46, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

In my eyes this is a book published by Cassel, using it's Gollancz brand and publishing it under the imprint VGSF, hence the VGSF logo. I yesterday verified a Futura book -part of Macdonald & Co), published under the Orbit imprint, as it has Orbit logos on spine and cover, also stating "An Orbit book" in the copyright page (Storm Constatine's The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire). here shows in any case clearly that VGSF / Gollancz is out of the question, if you want to be consequent you'd use VGSF / Cassel here (But why? What does it add? The ties between imprint(s) and publisher need to be addressed at a higher level, not per publication).--Dirk P Broer 17:01, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

0-575- identifies the once-independent Victor Gollancz Ltd., and its VGSF imprint: both these are now imprints of Cassell, which is in turn owned by Orion (since late 1998), who are themselves owned by Hachette; and also Vista, which Cassell launched as an imprint of Cassell using that same stem, after they bought Gollancz from merkin publishers, Houghton Miflin (who were the owners of Victor Gollancz Ltd. from their purchase of it upon the retirement of Livia Gollancz); see also 0-75281- etc. (Orion); titles on the vista list are being re-badged and -isbn-ed as orion millennium books as they are reprinted. So, VGSF / Gollancz might not even been so clear-cut as you think it is.--Dirk P Broer 19:11, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems pretty clear-cut to me. If you can point out any publication under the VGSF imprint that wasn't published by Gollancz, I will buy your argument. Do you have any book in your collection that carries the VGSF imprint, but doesn't give Gollancz as the publsher? As far as I know, VGSF hasn't been used since Orion published Gollancz in 1998. The argument should not be obfuscated by bringing in Cassell, Hachette, Millennium, Orion, and Vista. I'm not going to merge the two publishers (VGSF and VGSF / Gollancz), even though it would only take two submissions to make every pub in the database have the same publisher. (Hauck could do the same, if he wanted to.) I respect those verifiers who chose not to have the longer name. I believe Hauck asks for the same respect when it comes to pubs that he verified. Please feel free to change any non-verified pub in your collection to whichever usage you prefer. Mhhutchins 21:02, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

This policy will make it impossible to see (at this moment) all that was published under the VGSF imprint, while if you add an imprint field and make mother-daughter relations, stating that VGSF is a daughter of Gollancz, it would be possible to see all that is published under Gollancz, no matter what imprint and each and every imprint as well. By giving people the choice to do as they please you give yourself -and others- more work in the future, IMHO.--Dirk P Broer 21:11, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Not really too much work. As I said, it would only take a couple of submissions to standardize all the publications of VGSF. If (a big IF) we ever get a separate imprint field, a global change would take a millisecond (a few more seconds for the editor). Mhhutchins 21:45, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

millisecond..It would be true if not for the fact that some publications that are in my eyes just "VGSF" have been coded as "Gollancz" only. Nevertheless, they can easily been found using the list of publications at the back of the VGSF titles, where it says "Titles available from VGSF". Just a matter of finely distinguishing when the publications suddenly went over being "Vista", such as with e.g. Hegira by Greg Bear.--Dirk P Broer 21:55, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

(after an edit conflict) Those publications would have to be discovered regardless of the outcome of this discussion or a global change. Eventually they will. That's what makes this so much fun! Mhhutchins 22:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not that big an "IF". I've suggested, several times, that we separate Imprints and Publishers - by default, at worst we'd have the same information in both, and if people don't know which one to use then it would go in both, or the moderator can choose to fix or improve either. So if I coded it and provided the initial fix script, then all "VGSF" pubs would get that as "imprint", and all "VGSF / Gollancz" pubs would get "VGSF" as imprint and "Gollancz" as publisher. Much rework would then ensue - and I'm sure that the "/ SFBC" exception will need special coding. We can code stuff that people want, you just have to agree on what you want! BLongley 22:08, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I can see both sides of the argument. I never mass-change a Publisher without checking with active Verifiers - the most angry I've ever been with another moderator is when lots of my books became "Del Rey / Ballantine" without my consent. I've left a load of publications alone when I'm not the first verifier - and I'd be happy to code in extra checks to make sure that moderators cannot do mass "publisher" changes on verified books. Or at least get warnings about whose books will be affected. I think it all boils down to "simplicity" versus "as much information as possible" - which are not incompatible, it's just that "Publishers" as a separate entity is comparatively new and people used to put all the information in the Publisher field, as there was nowhere else. We've improved that, and can improve it more. I really do want to standardise a bit more as, for instance "Awards" for "Publishers" don't link. But too much bickering will not lead to an improvement. BLongley 21:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, too much bickering will not lead to an improvement. Neither does taking no stand and let anyone do as they please. What it boils down to is the question "What is a publisher?" Should a division be considered a publisher? In my honest opinion: NO, unless the division publishes books under their own name. But that should be another publisher, and not a combination of various levels of publication. The same -or even more so- holds for parent companies. These higher entities can be related to the lower ones at another level, not per publication. I am assuming isfdb is a relational database, I hope that is correct?--Dirk P Broer 21:43, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

It is indeed relational - based on MySQL. You can download a copy of the latest backup and try it for yourself. However, editing is not dependent on knowing about such, or Mike wouldn't be top moderator and contributor - he freely admits that DB stuff is not his expertise, but I'd challenge anyone to find faults in his bibliographic skills. I think you've got a lot of valid comments about "What is a publisher?" - and I think it would be far simpler in the long run to separate imprint and publisher. But I'm not going to be prescriptive about it, let the discussions continue - in a good-natured way, hopefully. It shouldn't really be taking place on one person's talk page though.... BLongley 22:22, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Harm's Way by Greenland

I'm holding a submission that wants to add a new paperback edition of this title, dated 1993. There is already a record for a paperback edition dated February 1994. I checked this against Locus1, which may have been the source for the record. Does your copy specifically state it was published in 1993, and not the hardcover and trade paperback editions? They appeared simultaneously in May 1993, and it would be unusual, at least in US publishing (I'm not so certain about UK publishing) for a paperback reprint to appear within 7 months. Thanks for checking. Mhhutchins 18:56, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, my copy clearly states, as I put in the notes: "This paperback edition 1993", followed by a printing line 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2. As far as I know sometimes books are published simultaniously in different formats, and sometimes the paperback is even printed first.--Dirk P Broer 19:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I also have the matching OCLC number, 31609231, and a coverscan is waiting (NOT the smae as the hardcover, in fact I do not know the artist. You can see an example here.--Dirk P Broer 20:40, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll accept the submission, delete the Feb 1994 record, and note that Locus1 gives another date for the pub. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:04, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The Feb 1994 edition may very well be the 400 page OCLC 221466632.....--Dirk P Broer 21:14, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Locus1 matches everything but the date, including page count and ISBN. I personally feel that the stated date is incorrect, but ISFDB standards require that we record data as found. That's why I gave the sources of the conflicting data in the record's note field, but didn't change the date of the record. BTW, the OCLC record you cite gives a 1994 publication date, not a copyright date, which bolsters my theory of an incorrectly stated date. OCLC gives the page count as "[400]" which means they're taking it from another source (probably the publisher's catalog), not the actual book. Publishers' pre-publication data often gives the total number of pages in a book, not the last numbered page method we use. Check out recent and forthcoming books on Amazon and you'll found the page counts hardly ever match the actual book, and are almost always multiples of 4. Mhhutchins 23:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Even counting a biography, an advertisement for the BSFA, a preface for "Hot Head" by Simon Ings, and blanks (3), I get no further than 384 pages, which I believe is a multiple of 4 too. I get to 386 counting the inner and outer back cover, and I can count no further than that. Nearest multiplication of 4 is then 388, not 400...--Dirk P Broer 00:10, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Making changes to verified pubs / notifying primary verifiers

Hi Dirk, this is one thing you seem to keep forgetting. Can I direct your attention once more to this "rule"? It states It is a matter of courtesy to inform the verifier of changes you make to his or her primary verified pubs, unless a specific verifier has requested not to be notified of particular types of changes. It is very strongly encouraged that you notify the verifier first if the change is particularly significant. Many moderators will not approve a "destructive" change -- that is one that removes or alters data in a verified pub record -- unless the verifier has been asked first. Changes that only add data are usually considered less significant, but verifiers should still be notified of such changes. Your edit of The Great Fetish, adding Steele Savage is a good find, but I would like to know about it. Scott Latham may not respond to wiki questions, but he is active on the database side, and even though Dragoondelight is not active now, you should consider notifying him. --Willem H. 15:15, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I had looked up those users and found a remark from Dragoondelight saying "I am resigning as of this date and will not respond to wiki questions", while Scott Latham's contribution to the record was made some 4 years ago and has not answered a single message since February 2010. When I add things that are verifiable true, like the literal text of the copyright page, the OCLC number, I can hardly imagine anyone to take offense to that. It is also impossible -for me- to see what my editing will change in those cases that it is been held up by the moderator, and therefore I find it hard to send someone a message saying "I have changed something in a publication you once verified earlier than me, but I have forgotten exactly what it is all about, as I have no insight in the outstanding editing requests". The application is already incredibly slow -forcing me to hit F5 all the time while on a 20 Mb line-, and now you force me to open two instances in order to notify people of changes. Can you make the outstanding edits visible? Than I can include a link to them in a message.--Dirk P Broer 15:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

That sounds like FR 2799077. Does that cover it, or is there more? BLongley 17:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

FR 2799077 would sure be very helpful! By linking to your proposed changes you can let people see exactly what you did. And by the way, my -proposed- changes are not the gospel. People can leave out what they please, especially as they can explain why.

In a VGSF vs VGSF / Gollancz or, when they choose, plain Gollancz that's alright as well, people frustrate me by making it impossible to look up what has been published undere a given label/imprintby putting it under a publishing conglomerate or a mix of publishing labels.--Dirk P Broer 17:39, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

It looks to me like you're avoiding the real question. What's your excuse for not notifying me when you submit a substantial edit to one of my verifications? --Willem H. 18:38, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

You lost me there. What is the substantial edit, what was it for, and -when I am the 3rd, 4th or 5th verifier-, who do I have to notify for which change I *propose*? I come from Wikipedia, where all editors have the same rights, and good faith is assumed (wich sometimes is a bit naieve, but nevertheless).--Dirk P Broer 08:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

You could start by reading this. It might make you understand what primary verification means. In my opinion, one of the important things is, that the primary verifyer states, that the information recorded is correct. Changing or adding data the way you do makes the primary verifier responsible for data he hasn't been able to check, and that's one thing I do not want. The yellow note on top of my talk page is clear about my preferences. Notification of minor edits (notes and cover images) should go on my "changes" page, for other edits I want a message on my talk page. In this case the substantial edit was the addition of the cover artist. I'm always happy if one is identified, and I want to know about it. This is not wikipedia, and no, not all editors have the same rights there. On wikipedia they're called administrators. --Willem H. 09:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Why not make the person who adds information responsible for that specific part of information? In this case the first verifier has done his thing 4 years ago, and seems not to be active anymore (at least does not answer any message after Feb 2010). I add the cover artist, and in the note field I add a line where you can find a picture where the credit for the illustration is given (and when you choose the maximum resolution for that picture you can read "Steele" clearly). I did not remove any information that was already there -to my knowledge, but I cannot check that- and in my eyes I just added a "nice to know". I will take care to notify each and every earlier verifier in the future, I did not foresee that adding information that is so verifiably right has to be judged be all preceding verifiers. And I am aware of the existence of Wikipedia administrators. It was the plain editors I was writing about.--Dirk P Broer 13:48, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

One of the big differences between the Wiki and the database side of ISFDB, is that it's very hard to find out who made what change to a record after a submission is accepted. So it's nearly impossible to make someone responsible for the information he added. Also, the point is not the addition of valuable information (I appreciate that very much), but that I want to know about my mistakes, things I missed in a pub or simply didn't know when I verified a pub. I have some 6000 primary verifications now, and if I don't get a signal about changes, it will probably be years before look at the record again. Do remember it's about the record's information, you don't have to inform me about your verifications (primary or secondary), or OCLC/Worldcat records that the database links to by itself (if a publication has an ISBN number, you'll find the Worldcat link on the left side under "other sites. This takes you directly to the OCLC record). I mentioned the Wikipedia administrators, because they're comparable to ISFDB moderators. --Willem H. 17:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

To answer your question that came with the info about Frank Javor's "The Ice Beast", this site was originally meant for Anglo-Saxon publications only. We, the continental Europeans are allowed to add things in our language here, but the database is not very user friendly for translations (I think you already found that out by now). The Versins encyclopedia is of course one of the important reference works. It is in the database, but not (yet) on the Sources of Bibliographic Information page. I'll verify my copy someday (if I ever finish the @&%X anthologies), and add some others too. --Willem H. 17:47, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll be looking out to the other-language references. Haven't finished my anthologies either. Can I add my ConFiction 1990 Souvenir book as well?--Dirk P Broer 19:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Adding a souvenir book should not be a problem. See here for an example of how it's done. --Willem H. 08:16, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

The Weird Ones

Is H. L. Gold actually credited as the editor of this book? Reginald1 says it was uncredited and was anonymously edited by Ivan Howard. Thanks for checking. Mhhutchins 21:20, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Citing Malcolm J. Edwards entry for H.L. Gold in Clute/Nicholls 1995, p. 505: "He also edited one independent antology, The Weird Ones (anth 1962)". So, on this ground, I have him as editor for the later edition as well. On the other hand the book itself says with an introduction by H.L. Gold, not actually saying "edited by", and Clute/Nicholls give Ivan Howard also as editor -uncredited- on page 589.--Dirk P Broer 23:22, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Based on your response, the record should state "uncredited" in the editor field. You can add further information and their sources in the note field. We can also make a variant title record if enough sources form a consensus about who may have actually edited it. Mhhutchins 23:52, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Corrected for this edition. For the 1962 original there is still an issue.--Dirk P Broer 00:07, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I've left a message on two of the primary verifiers' talk pages. Mhhutchins 01:01, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Cover image on Hard to be a God

Hi. I changed the cover image link on your Hard to be a God submission from http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/edition/?isbn=0413452603 (which is a data page, not a cover image) to http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/514cCCTL9hL.jpg (which is the actual link for the image appearing on that page -- you can right-click on the image to get the link). --MartyD 10:52, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Thanks, sorry for the mistake. Further two Strugatsky uploads are all my own!--Dirk P Broer 10:54, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Make Room!

The HTML link is incomplete in the note field of this pub. Mhhutchins 22:09, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

That link is completely wrong and not the one I submitted!.--Dirk P Broer 22:26, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

In this one, you put the image link in the cover artist field. Mhhutchins 22:10, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

I get the feeling thaT TWO edits are mixed up here. I put Adrian Chesterman in the artist field, and the link where it belongs.--Dirk P Broer 22:26, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Connoisseur's SF

You want to remove a data source from this record. Is every data field actually stated in the pub itself, including cover artist and month of publication? If so, I'll accept the submission. Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:13, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Everything but the month.--Dirk P Broer 22:28, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Then we'll need to retain the source giving the month. I'll accept the submission, but add the source back to the note field. We have to be careful when deleting data, just as much as when adding data. Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:09, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Just noticed the price field. Were books that cheap in 1976? Mhhutchins 23:11, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Nevermind...I just looked at other Penguins for that year...and they were that cheap! Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:12, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Incredible those prices, not? Wish I'd had more money then...But then again, Dutch bookshops added an extra ƒ10,00 to the price, effectively doubling the price those days.--Dirk P Broer 23:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

"Dreamsnake" cover scan

Hi. You notified me on my talk page about the cover scan you added to Dreamsnake. My copy of the book does not have the large notice "Hugo Award Winner 1979" in the lower-right corner. Is this some sort of sticker glued onto the cover of your copy? If it's not then we must have a different printing. Patrick -- Herzbube ^Talk 17:43, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi, It's a sticker, definitely not part of the cover itself, like the "Nebula Award 1978" mentioning in the upper right corner.--Dirk P Broer 19:53, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I made a note of this on the pub record. Patrick -- Herzbube ^Talk 00:29, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

[The] Return of the Breakneck Boys

Is there an initial "The" in the title of this pub? Mhhutchins 20:30, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

HI, as you can see in the cover scan: No, there isn't. Was already there, overlooked it. Sorry!--Dirk P Broer 20:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

It was the cover that brought it to my attention, so I checked OCLC (because covers are known to lie). Mhhutchins 21:33, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but the title reference already was without the "The", so I should have noticed.--Dirk P Broer 21:38, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Confiction Programme

I had to move the data you placed in the price field to the note field for this record. It can't hold that many characters and was cut-off. Changed price field to say "None". Mhhutchins 03:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Lord Valentine's Castle

The date on this record should be zeroed out, unless there's a later printing that states it was reprinted in 1981, or you have a reliable secondary source for the date. Thanks. Mhhutchins 13:43, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Done so. Also uploaded a less tatty cover for this publication.--Dirk P Broer 14:01, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Price and date of purchase (14-06-1986) narrow the publication year down to either 1985 or (first half of) 1986. But for the rest it is a pretty elusive title.--Dirk P Broer 14:12, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

I think you should also remove "Assumed second Pan printing" - I'm pretty sure it was more popular than that would imply. BLongley 16:00, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Oké, on Amazon.co.uk there is some evidence of a 1983 edition (which would have been cheaper than £2.50).--Dirk P Broer 16:07, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

History of the Runestaff

If the number in the ISBN field of this pub is a catalog number place a # before it. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Dautzenberg and other author data

Hi. For your edits to J. A. Dautzenberg and Jo A. Dautzenberg, please include the country on the birthplace. Is Bocholtz the Bocholtz in the Netherlands? By the way, I suggest you pick one to be canonical and make the other a pseudonym instead of duplicating the biographical information. We can always switch them around if we find more information in the future. --MartyD 10:48, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Same pseudoynm comment for Annemarie van Ewijck (which I think should be the canonical) and Annemarie van Ewyck. Also, for these, the Legal Name should be the spelled out name. "A." should no doubt be Annemarie, right? If you don't know what the "G." and "M." stand for, it is ok to leave them. I would also be inclined to pick one form of the Ewijck / Ewyck spelling and use that for the last name in both places, but I'm not a naming expert, so you might want to ask about that on the Help Desk or Rules and Standards Discussions. --MartyD 10:59, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Problem here is that both ways of writing are allowed in the Netherlands and are used interchangebly, e.g. search in the Dutch Wikipedia on both names and find them both in an equal amount. She has also written as Annemarie Kindt (as she is/was married to a mr. Kindt), and as Annemarie Kindt-van Ewijck/Ewyck. The "ij" is one character on the Dutch keyboard and pronounced the same way as the "y" (and the "ei", for that sake) in *most* names but the Frisians, who pronounce it as an "i".--Dirk P Broer 11:07, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

It is also by no means certain that "A" in A.G.M. stands for Annemarie, it could be Antoinette Geerarda Maria for all that I know.--Dirk P Broer 11:19, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally I am inclined to say that the "van Ewijck" spelling is a bit more common, and that we have no idea exactly what A.G.M stands for in the legal name. I've searched all over the internet, but can't find it. Annemarie is her "roepnaam", which may not have to be related to her legal name, just as US Williams are called "Bill", or Richards "Dick".--Dirk P Broer 11:33, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for all the work on Dutch authors. I agree with "van Ewijck", but removed Kindt from the legal name, since Leo and Annemarie were divorced (I think some 20 years ago). I added variant titles for the Dautzenberg, van Ewijk and Evenblij titles published under pseudonym and removed the extra author information from the pseudonyms. Please check the entries again. --Willem H. 14:17, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

And thanks for your updates! We will set Dutch/Flemmish SF on the map, someday. Last saw Annemarie at Confiction 1990! Speaking bout Annemarie: you may want to look at your talk page under "The Last Warrior Queen".--Dirk P Broer 14:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I first met Annemarie in 1974 (beneluxcon in AmerSFoort), when she and Leo were just married, and only saw her once or twice after Confiction. In those days she was the mother of Dutch fandom. One day I'll add her first story (Holland SF vol. 2 nr.5) and find out what the "A.G.M." means.

Saw the "Last Warrior Queen" entry, and responded there. Can do only one thing at a time. --Willem H. 14:48, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry to say that, judging from above, my attempts at improved language support are already doomed. The list of languages includes Dutch and Frisian, but not Flem(m)ish. :-( All I can say is that I didn't create the list of allowed languages, I just used it. (And I'm thankful that the omission of "Klingon" is less likely to cause offence, otherwise it might get me killed.) BLongley 00:30, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Flemmish SF is SF published in Flanders. They use a language almost undistinguisable to Dutch, as e.g Canadian or Australian is to English. So do not be worried about the language support! BTW: I discovered today that the perhaps most famous Flemmish SF novel, "Sam, of the Pluterdag" (aka Where Where You Last Pluterday?)" has also been tranlated into the Swedish and the Hungarian (see the wikipage for the novel, which will redirect you to the [Dutch (language)|Dutch] wikipedia).--Dirk P Broer 01:21, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

The Concordat

I'm going to eat, but I foresee a question coming: Yes, the series consists of four books, not two. Source: Reginald3, pp. 966 and 1381.--Dirk P Broer 16:40, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems you're going to be keen on FR 2811812 "Capture reason or summary of an edit, Part 4". I'm afraid that's still a way off, but it's in the queue. That should be a better way of pre-empting questions from moderators. (And no, I'm not going to approve the edits, I'll leave that for a Moderator that actually has Reginald3.) BLongley 20:37, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Reginald3 says so, it must be true. Edits approved. --Willem H. 20:53, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Bought Reginald3 at a book fair, for a mere 5.95 Euro (new: $200)...:)--Dirk P Broer 00:07, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Lucky you! You do realise he's a fellow editor here? BLongley 00:16, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Which pseudonym will he be using this time? Even Reginald itself is one...--Dirk P Broer 01:26, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

He's here as User:Robertreginald. It's interesting to see that Phil Stephensen-Payne, now also here, has made some criticisms of his published work - I hope they play nicely together! BLongley 12:02, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Read about it in the "Best of Murray Leinster (UK) - Just who is this Brian G. Davis" conversation!--Dirk P Broer 15:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC).

13 Above the Night

Added a couple of notes [there were none] to [this] --~ Bill, Bluesman 19:39, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Terraplane (series)

I found on wikipedia the chronological order for this series, which is support by Jack Womack himself via this link, stating "jack womack Member: Jose has it down exactly right. The internal order, with internal chronology in years:

• Random Acts
  
• Heathern (these roughly concurrent, the former @six months ahead of the latter)
  
• Ambient (@thirteen years later)
  
• Terraplane (@six years after that)
  
• Elvissey(@sixteen years after that)
  
• Going Going Gone (@fourteen years after that)"
  

So now I have to buy 'Going, Going, Gone' asap.--Dirk P Broer 11:32, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Posting new comments on wiki pages

I wondering what method you're using to add new comments to any of the wiki pages, including other editor's user pages. The reason I'm asking is that I always check on the "Recent Changes" page to see what has been added since I last checked. Your new comments appear to be entered without a subject or headline. Do you use the "Edit this page" link, or the "Post a Comment" link? (Some wiki skins also have a "+" tab to add new comments.) It helps those of us who are keeping track of what's going on to know what the subject is first, to determine if it's something we can help with or something that we need to know. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:15, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I mostly use "edit" and in 90% of the cases I use a headline. In those other 10% I have used "+", and people before me haven't used a headline either.--Dirk P Broer 11:15, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

When you "edit this page", your headline/subject line does not appear on the recent changes page. The wiki believes you're merely updating the page, not adding a new comment. (I suppose you're having to add the equal signs before and after your subject to create a headline.) If you use the "post a comment" or "+" method to create a new message the headline/subject line is visible to those who check the recent changes page for wiki updates. It's up to you. Mhhutchins 19:44, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Can you point to a particular message that you or another moderator missed, so I can try to find out what goes wrong when? I mean, in this particular instance I merely react to your message. Are you checking my page to see whether I have reacted, or do you follow "recent changes" to establish that fact? If so, what makes other edits invisible to you or others? Is it the 'Summary' message?--Dirk P Broer 20:55, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Abarat

Would you object to my adjusting the publisher of this book to "Joanna Cotler Books / HarperCollins"? Yours is one of the few primary verified books under this imprint and I thought you should know of my efforts to bring them all under the same name. Thanks. Mhhutchins 01:05, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi, *both* my Abarat books have this exhasperating mentioning on the back cover, the italics and capitals just as they appear in the book:

• JOANNA COTLER BOOKS
• HarperTrophy® An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

While on the title page they say:

• JOANNA COTLER BOOKS
• HarperTrophy®
• An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

By all means set them (Joanna Cotler/Cotler/HarperTrophy) under the same (logical) name!--Dirk P Broer 07:34, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

What's the publisher given on the title page? Mhhutchins 12:11, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

To be 100% exact,

Abarat:

• JOANNA COTLER BOOKS
• An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

(but as stated with HarperTrophy on the back cover)

Days of Magic, Nights of War:

• JOANNA COTLER BOOKS
• HarperTrophy®
• An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

Make "Joanna Cotler Books" a series of the imprint HarperTropy of the publisher HarperCollins? The contact for this construct is www.harperchildrens.com...--Dirk P Broer 13:30, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Black Easter / The Day after Judgment

Have your submission on hold to add a new pub, not because there's anything wrong with it [other than a word misspelt in the title] but it's being added to the wrong title. From [this] page, if you click on the Variant Title, you get [this] page. Then you can either clone the existing or add a new pub. That way your book gets entered under the correct [Variant] title. I can fix your submission with a couple of edits or you can re-do it? --~ Bill, Bluesman 18:59, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Word misspelt? But the cover says: Black Easter and The Day after Judgement (Remember it is UK English!) An temporary example is here.--Dirk P Broer 21:44, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Oops! Balck....--Dirk P Broer 22:01, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, by clicking 'Variant title' at [this] I get to this, and that is not helping me any.--Dirk P Broer 22:06, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Presto, re-submitted. BTW, what was wrong with the Feersum Endjinn that you rejected? You may have noted that Amazon pulled one on us there by replacing all covers with the most recent ones.--Dirk P Broer 23:34, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

You had removed a note about the artist then added the website, so I copied in the website part of the note but retained the portion that would have been lost, in effect keeping both as both were relevant. Your data was still used. Not sure why I didn't drop you a note. Apologies for that. --~ Bill, Bluesman 14:55, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Amazon do that. :-( It's one of the reasons we added the ability to upload a definitive cover-image for a publication here instead. BLongley 23:51, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Uploading Images

The image you attempted to add to A Case of Conscience, did not display. We have no explicit permission to directly link to the James Blish site. A list of the sites we currently have permission for is [here]. The thing to do with such a case is to download the image to your computer then upload in the normal way. Quite a few editors have tried linking to blogspots and they just don't work. FYI Good site, too! --~ Bill, Bluesman 19:14, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Just a mistake on my side, I did not mean to use the picture there, but it appears you can have too much in your RAM cache, and my own picture of A Case of Conscience is now uploaded.--Dirk P Broer 21:41, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Translated titles from a third party language

See this help page. The only foreign language titles which are given variants are English translations of works originally published in another language. Otherwise all title records, regardless of language, are merged into the English language title record. Mhhutchins 21:07, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

Seems inconsistent as compared to the title. The English Collection title [Half a Life] is -in my honest opinion- a variant of the Russian collection title [Ludi kak ludi], as is the Dutch collection title [Mag ik Nina even?]. But the Dutch story titles are to be variants of the English story titles? Or is the Dutch collection also a variant of the English translation, even though the translator translated it form the Russian (considering the different titles and transcription from the name Bulychev [Boelitsjev] there is every reason to asume that he may not even have known about an English translation)? --Dirk P Broer 21:22, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

The Dutch titles are not variants of any title, Russian or English. They can't be entered into the database because the db wasn't designed to handle foreign language titles. We have "adapted" certain features in order to accept foreign language books, but shortfiction titles can not be manipulated easily into the database. Now shortfiction that was not originally English is a different matter entirely. In that case we create an English title variant of the original non-English title. Look at almost any writer's page that did not write originally in English. Any omission is because know one's taken the time to enter the original title. Mhhutchins 22:32, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

From the help page "For works that were originally written in a foreign language, the canonical title is the title of the work as it appeared in that language." So the Russian story titles are to be the canonical story titles.--Dirk P Broer 21:30, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree, and will accept any submissions that make the English titles into variants of the original Russian title. That was never the issue. The Dutch titles should still be merged with the English titles. They should not be made into variants of any title. Neither should the French, Italian, Spanish, or German titles, all of which should be merged with the English title. There are other databases that might better fulfill what you're trying to do here. If that's appears to be anglo-centric, well that's the way it is. Mhhutchins 22:32, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

I already suspected something like this, so entered all Dutch titles, together with the English titles and Russian originals, in the Note field. Deep respect to Hervé Hauck , who has to suffer this far more often.--Dirk P Broer 22:43, 27 May 2011 (UTC)

The Fourth-Stage Polygraph

Hello Dirk, can you have a look at the exact title of this short story in this pub, it's _The 4th Stage Polygraph_ in the original publication (in Analog) and I'd like to know if it's the case in the collection. Thanks. Hauck 10:37, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Bonjour Hervé, it is The Fourth-Stage Polygraph (pp. 19-42.) in the fix-up. I say fix-up because it has no table of contents and no listing for the individual copyrights.--Dirk P Broer 11:00, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the info, I'll modify the original title then make yours a vt. Hauck 12:07, 28 May 2011 (UTC)

R Is for Rocket

I accepted the submission adding this pub, but removed the link in the note field as unnecessary. If you click on each of the stories that had different names you'll find them all recorded in the database. (With one exception, which I just added, the renaming of "King of the Gray Spaces" to "R Is for Rocket".) You won't find those original titles visible in the pub record because they're handled differently than we would normally. The new titles have become canonical, so the variant relationship is reversed. For example, "The Fog Horn" was originally published as "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms", but except for two reprints with that name, there are dozens of reprints as "The Fog Horn". But quantity is not the only factor in determining that variants should be reversed. If an author consistently reprints a story in their own collections with a title different from its original title, we usually reverse the variant. Mhhutchins 15:21, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

You also removed the verification for the artist...--Dirk P Broer 16:25, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

There's a note: "Artist credited". Was there anything that I may have accidentally removed? Mhhutchins 16:50, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

The link in the note field was the place where the artist was credited. The variant names there were just a bonus.--Dirk P Broer 19:08, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry. I thought the link was there ONLY to indicate the variant names. Please add the link again and indicate "Source of the artist credit:" (I'd assumed "Artist credited" meant that the artist was credited in the book itself.) Mhhutchins 19:36, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

The Toynbee Convector

According to the moderator's note you wrote for this pub, the title of "Lafayette Farewell" has a comma. You'll have to remove the content record that doesn't have one, and then add a record with the correct title. Then merge it with the existing matching title record. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:24, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I was in luck: "Lafayette, Farewell" already exists as variant of "Lafayette Farewell".--Dirk P Broer 16:24, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

You now must merge the new record you created with the existing record. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:51, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Nice tool!--Dirk P Broer 19:35, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I accepted the submission that changed the date of the content record within the pub record, but it was not necessary. There's another aspect of the merging tool that you may not have been familiar with: When merging titles you are asked to reconcile any discrepancies between the two records, and in the process you could have chosen the correct date. All of this in one submission instead of two! Nice, indeed. Mhhutchins 19:40, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

The Silver Locusts > The Martian Chronicles

Because you changed the name of this pub from The Silver Locusts to The Martian Chronicles, you 'll have to unmerge it from its title record and then merge it with the correct one. (It should have been entered under the title record for The Martian Chronicles.) Let me know if you need help for the two submissions required to place this record correctly in the db. Mhhutchins 22:40, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Science Fiction Adventures, No. 9

Added interior art data to your verified here. Hauck 16:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Science Fiction Adventures, No. 13

Replaced the Visco scan for your verified here. Hauck 16:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Science Fiction Adventures, No. 14

Replaced the Visco scan for your verified here. Hauck 16:43, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Robert Silverberg's Warm Man

You verified this pub which contains Warm Man and this pub which contains The Warm Man. Are these two stories variants of each other (same story, presence of "The" correct)? Thanks. --JLaTondre 23:45, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Good catch. It is the same story. Science Fantasy #38,v13 has it on the cover and in the table of contents as "Warm Man", but on the title page as "The Warm Man".--Dirk P Broer 14:50, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

Confiction Programme

Are all of those records in this pub actually credited to "Stichting Worldcon 1990"? Also, all of those entered as NONFICTION should be ESSAY. NONFICTION is for book-length works only. Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:30, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The TOC states: "All bylined articles ©1990 by their authors, and printed here by permission. All other articles ©1990 Stichting Worldcon 1990."--Dirk P Broer 00:46, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Copyright can not be used to credit authorship, only copyright. I suggest that they should be entered as "uncredited". If you disagree, you can bring it up on the Rules & Standards page for discussion. Mhhutchins 01:09, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Also check the essays credited to "World Science Fiction Society". Mhhutchins 00:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

They are all signed by Donald E. Eastlake III of the WSFS.--Dirk P Broer 01:00, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The article on page 19: did all the guests of honor get together to write a single biography about each other? Mhhutchins 01:12, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

The title page wants you to believe so: "by Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison, Wolfgang Jeschke, Werner Fuchs, Aldo Bleeker, Ingrid Toth, and Johan-Martijn Flaton".--Dirk P Broer 01:20, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Also, the contents are dated August 1990, while the book is dated 1990. Mhhutchins 01:14, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

I'll date the book August 1990 as well (ConFiction was 23-27 August 1990).--Dirk P Broer 01:20, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Possible Aldiss vt

Hello Dirk. In your verified here, the Aldiss story is titled _Ten-Story Jigsaw_ but in the first publication here, it's _Ten-Storey Jigsaw_. Can you have look at your anthology to see if a vt is needed. Thanks. Hervé Hauck 15:55, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi Hervé, it is _Ten-Story Jigsaw_, both in the table of contents and on the title page of SF: The Year's Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy: 4th Annual Volume.--Dirk P Broer 16:42, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Hauck 16:50, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Budrys' Who

I accepted the submission adding a link to the OCLC record from this pub, but personally feel that such a link is unnecessary, especially for a primary verified pub record. If you click on the Worldcat link under the Other Sites menu, you are linked to the same OCLC record. I'd go even further to say it's unnecessary to do any further secondary verifications once a record has been primary verified. The only exceptions are to note a source for field data that is not stated in the book itself, or to link a pub without an ISBN to the OCLC/Worldcat record. Other editors may have other opinions...this is just my two cents. Mhhutchins 17:45, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Given the fact that today I have edited a book *with* ISBN that was *not* linked with it's OCLC record (because that record lacks the ISBN) this is not always the case.--Dirk P Broer 20:16, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

I was wrong to say there were only two exceptions. You found another one. I just don't see the point in having a link to the OCLC record from an ISFDB record, and the effort made to create an identical link between the same two records. Mhhutchins 21:33, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

In the future I will only make a link when: a. There is none, because of lack of ISBN, or b. The link that is there is wrong (And I've experienced that too before).--Dirk P Broer 22:49, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Infinity's Shore submission

Hi. It looks like your Infinity's Shore submission meant to clone the 8th printing but instead would overwrite it, although I can't tell if you have verified the 8th printing (i.e., prior to your proposed edits) or the 9th printing (i.e., assuming your proposed edits go through). Also, "pnp" is not an appropriate page number. You should either count forward and put the number in brackets or you could use "ep". See Help:Screen:EditPub#Page. If you meant to clone and verified the 9th printing, not the 8th, what I can do to preserve the data you entered is to clone the 8th to make another 8th printing copy, then accept your submission (which you could then fix up) overwriting the original 8th printing. Let me know. Thanks, --MartyD 10:51, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge I cloned the *1st printing*, [Recent edits: "2011-06-04 11:10:20//NewPub//Bluesman//Infinity’s Shore-"], misread the printing line, making it the *8th printing* and on verifying saw my msitake and changed it to the 9th.--Dirk P Broer 12:49, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah. That's even easier, then. :-) The symptom is the same as the somewhat frequent edit-instead-of-clone. I accepted it; sorry about the unnecessary delay. Please do fix up the page number. Thanks. --MartyD 16:27, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

When It Changed

I had to reject your submission to update this title record, with a request that the Retrospective Tiptree Award be removed from it. (Your request would have become part of the record, and would have to removed if the submission had been accepted.) First, that's not the method used to remove an award, or request for a removal. There's a link under Editing Tools to remove awards. Second, it actually was chosen to receive the Tiptree according to the official website here. Yes, We Who Are About To... is recognized as a winner here, but that's a conflict the Tiptree's have to resolve. You might want to post a note on Darrah Chavey's page. He's acquainted with the group that selects the awards. Mhhutchins 05:45, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

For mere mortals like me the is NO such link. I can not add, remove or edit awards for a given title. These are the editing tools:

•Moderator

•Key Maintenance

•Edit Title Data

•Diff Publications

•Delete This Title

•Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work

•Add a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work to This Title

•Unmerge Titles

Edit Title Data gives:

Title:

Author1:

Year:

Series:

Series Num:

Storylen:

Web Page 1:

Wikipedia Entry:

Title Type: [ANTHOLOGY CHAPTERBOOK COLLECTION COVERART EDITOR ESSAY INTERIORART INTERVIEW NONFICTION NONGENRE NOVEL OMNIBUS POEM REVIEW SERIAL SHORTFICTION]

Synopsis:

Note:

So that is why I choose the note field to send a message. I'll contact Darrah Chavey. Dirk P Broer 15:06, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

If you care to volunteer, just drop Ahasuerus a note. I think you're experienced enough now that you shouldn't create more problems than you solve. ;-) BLongley 16:47, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't know that the links were not available to all editors. It doesn't make sense to limit it to certain individuals when it has to be moderated anyway. Or am I missing something? Dirk, you can always leave a message on one of the community pages, either at the Help Desk or the Moderator Noticeboard, and someone can help you or make the necessary changes. The note field in a title record should only be used to add data about a title that can't otherwise be added to any other field. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:58, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

New Writings in SF 14

Found the cover artist for this verified pub in Jane Frank's book. --Willem H. 19:58, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Marvellous! I am going to visit the Josh Kirby exposition in Liverpool this summer.--Dirk P Broer 14:37, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

The Incandescent Ones

New image [no checkerboard effect], slightly expanded notes for [this] --~ Bill, Bluesman 02:25, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

The Inferno

Expanded the notes for [this]. Nice scan! --~ Bill, Bluesman 02:39, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Adrian Chesterman is one of my favourite Penguin cover artists. You know of this site?.--Dirk P Broer 10:09, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I can see I will spend some time there!! Wish every publisher did this. Thanks! --~ Bill, Bluesman 21:41, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

It's a very good site, I'm not sure it's official though. I did work my way though it a year or two ago - Harry Willock and Franco Grignani and David Pelham seemed worthy of a little more attention. BLongley 00:14, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

I even get mentioned in the acknowledgements, as is the isfdb: "Dirk Broer for the 1985 edition of Planet of the Apes; and Al von Ruff, whose Internet Speculative Fiction Database has been an excellent source of bibliographic information."--Dirk P Broer 18:38, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

VGSF

You left a moderator note that "If this is "VGSF / Gollancz" you might as well make all plain "VGSF" entries "VGSF / Gollancz". VGSF logo on front cover and spine". I agree, and there has been plenty of discussion about this imprint and publisher. But if you look at the note left on the publisher's bibliography page, you'll see that others disagree. I've learned to pick my battles, and this one's not very important in the scheme of things. If/when we ever get a separate field for imprint, the controversy will become moot. Mhhutchins 15:56, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

You're the primary verifier of this pub. It's up to you how the publisher should be credited. Mhhutchins 16:15, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather have that all books of a given imprint are entered in the same way, so that you can do a lookup for *all* that has been published under an imprint in *one* lookup, not several, depending on who verified the books under that imprint. But that's me and my ideas about how to enter this kind of data.--Dirk P Broer 16:23, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

"Imprint" support is on my long-term "to-do" list, but now we've mostly stopped fighting over such it's not a high priority. It'll help if people do standardise names a bit more - we have an awful lot of single-publication publishers - but there is this big split over "Keep it Simple" and "Add as much data as you can". I have no problem with noting that VGSF was an imprint of Gollancz, but I'd only note it once, at Publisher Level, not on every individual publication. BLongley 16:27, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Time of the Hawklords

You updated this pub with a note that gives the book's stated publication as 1976, but left the date field as 1977. In the Moderator's note you say Amazon gives the date as August 1977. Faced with the reality of the book's statement and Amazon's knack for being wrong quite often, I would suggest changing the date to 1976, and record the discrepancy of Amazon's dating in the Note field. OCLC agrees that the date is 1976. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:02, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Queens of Delirium

About this pub: when doing a primary verification, it's OK to remove any notes that no longer apply. In this case, the Locus source can be deleted, if every field is verified against the book itself. If only partially sourced from Locus, then specify the field. Does the book give the August 1977 as the date of publication? If not, then you can change the note to read "Month of publication from Locus #205 (October 1977)." You also give in your Moderator note that you believe the cover art could be the work of Adrian Chesterman. It's perfectly OK to note "It's my opinion [Dirk P Broer] that the cover art is by Adrian Chesterman." (Of course, do not credit him in the Cover Artist field.) Remember that the Moderator note does not become part of the record, and I would be the only person to ever read this unless you record it in the Note field. One last thing, I think this book may be incorrectly credited as co-written by Moorcock (there's a note that even attests to this.) From the cover statement, he is not the co-author and should not be credited as such in the record. OCLC doesn't credit him either. Once you decide how to credit the book, we'll have to make matching decisions about the title record and the other printing. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:14, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I've written to Adrian Chesterman, asking him whether he is the cover artist. We'll wait to see...--Dirk P Broer 17:39, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

He replied he was still at art school in 1976, and suggested it could be Philip Castle "... He inspired me to pick up the airbrush!!".--Dirk P Broer 18:43, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I was going to point out that this would have been the earliest Chesterman cover we've recorded and so a bit suspicious, but you've beaten me to it. Glad to see some editors still have enough spare time to contact the sources directly - can you go check with Philip Castle too please? ;-) BLongley 00:06, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Dragonmaster

Did you intend the submission to update the Note field of this pub? There was no changes in the record, only a Note to the Moderator about a bad link. Are you aware that Notes to the Moderator do not become part of the record? If so, then I don't understand the purpose for the submission. I've placed it on hold. Mhhutchins 19:46, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

As I can not edit OCLC links, and suspect (at least some) moderators can, I put the information about the wrong link in the moderator field. A clear case of a wrong OCLC link (pointing to the wrong edition with the same ISBN) as noted a little above on this page.--Dirk P Broer 19:51, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

OCLC links are autogenerated. There's nothing anyone here can do about it. The problem is with OCLC record which combines the ISBN of this title with an earlier title in the same series. I'll add the note to the note field, changing the link to HTML. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:54, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

If we had to ability to change OCLC links, this would not be the best way to let us know. A message on the Moderator Noticeboard would be better. The new field "Note to Moderator" is for the submitter to explain the reasons for the update. This submission made no changes or updates to the record. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:58, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

van Toorn photograph

Hi. I accepted your van Toorn edits but removed the link to his photograph, as this is not a site for which we have linking permission. If the photograph is not covered by copyright, you can download it and upload it to the ISFDB and link to that. Or you can seek linking permission or find a copy on a site where we do have permission to link. Thanks. --MartyD 14:24, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

I've requested permission, now waiting for a positive answer.--Dirk P Broer 14:35, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Science Fiction Omnibus edits

Hi. Do you mean to remove the notes from Science Fiction Omnibus? I have no objection, I just wanted to be sure it is not a mistake. --MartyD 00:32, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I want the notes as they are, they explain why I have not page-numbered the individual stories (would e.g. give two stories on page 29). I wanted to remove things that are not there, "About the Authors", and "A Sort of Introduction" by Vincent Starrett. I also wanted to add a thing that was not there, Preface, by Bleiler and Dikty, written specially for this combined volume.--Dirk P Broer 08:37, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

The edit I have on hold adds the preface, but removes all of the notes. (I had accepted the removals of the titles). I will accept it and put the notes back. You can then take a look and fix up the notes if need be. --MartyD 10:16, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Oké! I'll try do do more at once, or hold my next edit of a record till the previous one is processed next time.--Dirk P Broer 11:08, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

page count in The Unexpected Dimension

User:Nimravus proposes to change the page count on your verified The Unexpected Dimension from 124 to 125, with this note to the moderators: There are 124 numbered pages, then the unnumbered 125th page which contains half a page of text, being the end of the story, "The Executioner".. What do you think? --MartyD 01:57, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

He's right!.--Dirk P Broer 20:53, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. --MartyD 00:02, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

De Verwrongen Wereld

Re the Moderators note for the submission of this pub ("Same cover as Fawcett 1970 edition of October the First is Too Late"): it would seem to be a good idea to include it in the record. What was the decision to make it a Moderators note and not in the record's note field? Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:52, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I was not sure whether it was worth mentioning in the note field, but I wanted the moderator to know that it was more than just a hunch.--Dirk P Broer 15:54, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I've made the cover record into a variant of the original cover. See here. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:01, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Didn't knew that was a possibility within isfdb....Dutch publishers are notorious for their re-use of cover art.--Dirk P Broer 16:04, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

If you're certain the work is identical (not a "re-painting" which some publishers are notorious for), you can make subsequent uses of the artwork into a variant of the original. Mhhutchins 16:38, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Art is less of a priority for us than the Fiction, but sometimes it's fun to spot the same art being reused (and not just in Artist's collections of previous work). I've had a lot of fun with http://www.tineye.com - which indeed confirms your suspicion. BLongley 18:54, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Neat app there. I was able to discover this. Mhhutchins 19:14, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

It is good fun, isn't it? I normally try it whenever I see a cover that looks vaguely familiar. I must figure out how to do a bulk-check of all ISFDB images as I'm sure I've seen the same art on four or five publications but just can't remember where they all were.... BLongley 19:39, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

I've just started with my personal collection of "cover-doubles".....--Dirk P Broer 12:54, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Variant error

I rejected the submission that would make this cover a variant of this short story. Something not quite right there.... --MartyD 13:00, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

? Should be the -not yet credited, but in the submission pipeline- The Secret Galacticts by A.E. van Vogt (Sphere, 1977).--Dirk P Broer 13:27, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Looks like you used the pub's ID as the parent title ID in the variant (instead of the title ID of the pub's coverart), and there just happened to be a title with that ID.... --MartyD 13:37, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

But then I couldn't use the title ID of the pub's cover art, because there wasn't yet any, it was still in the pipline to be moderated.--Dirk P Broer 13:40, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Mission of Gravity

I have the June 1976 edition of A Mission of Gravity, which you've Primary 2 Verified. In the ISFDB entry for the Foreword by Robert Conquest, the copyright date is given as 1976, but in my edition it is given as 1975 on the copyright page. Could you please check your edition to see which is correct? Thanks. Nimravus 18:12, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Good catch! You are quite right. He even signed it with as date October 1974, but it must have gone into printing in 1975, according to the copyright page. Now all that is left for us is to find out where it was published in 1975 (magazine?).--Dirk P Broer 18:23, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Copyright date isn't necessarily the publication date, and should only be the last resort when dating publication. It's quite possible that this is the introduction's first publication. The publication date should remain 1976-06-00 until an earlier publication is found. Mhhutchins 18:31, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Analog 3 and Seven Trips Through Time and Space

I have started a mini-project at Author:Randall Garrett#Johnathan vs. Jonathan and MacKenzie vs. Mac Kenzie. You have two of the publications involved. --Marc Kupper|talk 01:45, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

7 Trips Through Time and Space (Coronet 1973); "Johnathan Blake MacKenzie" given as "Jonathan Blake MacKenzie" in ToC, (as it already says in the Notes) and copyrights. Titlepage says "Johnathan Blake MacKenzie" (Thanks Willem).

Analog 3 (Dobson 1966); On cover as "Jonathon Blake-Mackenzie", in TOC and titlepage as "Jonathan Blake Mac Kenzie".--Dirk P Broer 09:13, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

The Wind's Twelve Quarters (and it's ISBN numerals)

Hi, Yes I am aware that I've switched the ISBN numbers of Vols.I and II. However, I stand by it, as they appear on both front- and back covers and on the copyright pages of the two books. I already have scans of the two front covers in question to prove my point. Looks like the first edition ws wrong -this picture on flicker suggests that the covers of the first edition have both the same ISBN-...I've found the corresponding OCLC records as well.--Dirk P Broer 20:00, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Rocannon's World

I'm a little puzzled about the update for this record. You add the line "[This publication]August 1980." Because you just did a primary verification of it, it's obvious that most of the original note no longer applies ("Info from Locus #237 (September 1980)." which you retain in the record.) Mhhutchins 21:08, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I've removed remarks like that too quick before, so left it standing. If you thiink it can be removed: go ahead.--Dirk P Broer 21:11, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

If everything in the record is stated in the book, then the statement can be removed. If there is any data field not present in the book, amend the statement. My original question though remains: what does "[This publication]August 1980." mean? The record is dated 1980-08-00, so the note field statement seems superfluous. I'll accept the submission and ask you to make any further changes that may apply. Mhhutchins 21:23, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

The Best Science Fiction of the Year #5

Replaced the amazon scan for your verified The Best Science Fiction of the Year #5.Hauck 14:38, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

The Best Science Fiction of the Year #7

Replaced the amazon scan for your verified The Best Science Fiction of the Year #7. Hauck 14:42, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Last Men in London

I added the Preface by Stapledon to your verified pubStonecreek 16:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 4

Replaced the amazon scan for your verified The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 4. Hauck 16:52, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 5

Replaced the amazon scan for your verified The Year's Best Science Fiction No. 5. Hauck 16:55, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

The Metallic Muse

Added interior art piece, with note, to [The Metallic Muse] --~ Bill, Bluesman 20:01, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Artist for Needle

I stumbled on this pub. Nice cover, the artist is Clyde Caldwell (see this pub to compare the signature. We have a nice page called Verification requests for questions like this. There is also the signatures page where you can find a number of scanned signatures. --Willem H. 20:27, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the info! You knew of course that I would have access to both books. I find the signatures page hard to work with when I have no idea about the name of an artist, like with this publication.--Dirk P Broer 08:09, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

You verified both, good chanche you have them both. The signatures page is far from complete of course. The trick is to give the signature scan a name people would search for (like "PAJ" for Peter Jones or "S in a box" for Rick Sternbach). The Hamilton cover could be by Peter Bramley. We had that search before. Can you compare the signatures? --Willem H. 12:28, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

No Bramley, surname starts with D, followed be either e or i, two l's or t's....I'll make a big scan of it and put it on Verification requests.---Dirk P Broer 12:53, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Werelden onder De Horizon by Carl Lans

Re this collection: story titles should be in the language in which they were originally published. Mhhutchins 17:23, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Your own words "the db wasn't designed to handle foreign language titles. We have "adapted" certain features in order to accept foreign language books, but shortfiction titles can not be manipulated easily into the database. Now shortfiction that was not originally English is a different matter entirely. In that case we create an English title variant of the original non-English title."--Dirk P Broer 19:08, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Those instructions were for a collection of stories that originally appeared in English and had been translated into another language. In that case you retain the original English titles as content records. This is an entirely different case. This collection, as far as I know, never appeared in English. There is no need create an English variant, because the stories haven't been published in English. It is never necessary to translate non-English titles into English. Once they're published in English, the English record is made a variant of the original language record. Mhhutchins 21:48, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Oké. This book should by the way, have been reprinted for the 1990 WordCon, as most of the stories take place in a future The Hague that never will be.--Dirk P Broer 22:37, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Cold Cash War

I accepted the submission, since the series-related changes looked appropriate, but I'm curious why you added the subtitle to Cold Cash Warrior on the title, but then didn't put it on the publication, instead of the other way around (not on the title, just on the publication). Looking only at the cover on Amazon (the one to which you provided a link), I think that is not even a subtitle -- it looks like a blurb/announcement. If you don't have access to the book, I suggest omitting it, leaving its addition to someone who has access to the title page. --MartyD 11:11, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I wanted the title to be in line with the others mentioned here.--Dirk P Broer 13:19, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Ah, makes sense. I didn't notice that. I like consistency. --MartyD 14:42, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Cover credit for The Status Civilization

If you look at the record, even after the acceptance of your submission, the two credits remain. This is a bug in the cover credit software. I know of only one way around it. Remove ALL cover art credit in one submission, then add back a single credit with a subsequent submission. (Does any other moderator know another way of doing this?) Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:13, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

At the pub level, remove all but one. Once that's approved, edit the cover art title (not the pub) and add the other artist(s) -- on the title, you can add them all at the same time. --MartyD 12:30, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

This wasn't the case where there were three credits: two for one artist and one for the other. This pub had two credits for the same artist. Dirk had made a submission which "removed all but one". It didn't work, so I told him my method. Any progress on repairing this bug? Mhhutchins 16:35, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh. I didn't know about that bug. That should be easy to fix. I'll see what I can do. --MartyD 10:26, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

HTML

Just an FYI: <br /> is no different than <br>. Unlike italics, bold or <ul> a 'break' does not need to be 'closed'. Cheers! --~ Bill, Bluesman 21:16, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Had a very persistent moderator at the Dutch Wikipedia replacing all my <br> with <br />, claiming benefits in the next html-standard.--Dirk P Broer 21:20, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Really? I can't think of how a 'break' can be anything but a 'break' ... Guess there's always going to be those trying to fix what ain't broke. ;-) Wonder what the space is for and why the backslash is after the 'br' instead of before like all other instances of its usage? Most curious. --~ Bill, Bluesman 23:07, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Really! here is a special forum about it. Seems Wikipedia is heading towards XHTML when they advocate the use of <br />.--Dirk P Broer 23:13, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

You should use a nowiki tag (open and close) if you're going to write HTML in a Wiki environment. Otherwise it's unreadable, as you can tell by the above statement. Also, I can't understand why any new html standard would retroactively require the closing of breaks. It's not been necessary since I started writing HTML back in the mid 90s and there are millions of pages in HTML on the web. Browsers will have to learn how to cope with the differences in HTML and XHTML. Not the other way around. Mhhutchins 23:18, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, Microsoft and Google and Apple and everyone else will come round to our ISFDB ways in time. ;-) BLongley 01:31, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

How to remove the frames around Amazon images...

...as in this record: starting with the "dot" before the file extension (usually jpg) of the URL, remove all the characters that precede it until you come to the next dot, leaving only one dot. So http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lzyxAJdxL._SL500_AA300_.jpg becomes http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51lzyxAJdxL.jpg. This is what it looked like before. Here's what the image will look like after you change the URL. Mhhutchins 01:01, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, wasn't aware of that.--Dirk P Broer 01:11, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing intuitive about it, just one of those tricks that's passed along from one person to another. Pretty neat though. Mhhutchins 02:19, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Variant submission for Aye, and Gomorrah

Your submission to make this title a variant of this one will have to be rejected. The titles should be merged instead, since both title and author are spelled exactly the same. In this case, you won't find them with the "Check for Duplicate Titles" option, since the second is already a variant title, but you can use either "Show All Titles" on the author's summary bibliography, or the advanced search. If you need help with this, please say so. --Willem H. 10:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Oké, thanks for the clarification on this. Sought at the wrong spot (duplicates).--Dirk P Broer 10:55, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Would you please cancel your held Make Variant submission? I forget if my accepting the merge first would leave that in a bad state due to the deleted title. Thanks. --MartyD 11:40, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Done so.--Dirk P Broer 11:55, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant cancel the submission that Willem has on hold. I was then going to accept the merge you submitted; I wasn't sure what accepting it before dealing with that held submission would have done to that held submission. --MartyD 11:59, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Oops, forgot to reject the submission after Dirk's answer. The submission is gone now, so the titles can be merged. --Willem H. 12:08, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I merged them. Apologies again for causing extra work. --MartyD 14:21, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Cover art credit for Nova and Nova

Thanks for identifying Eddie Jones. Please remember to add notes about the source of your edits, in this case Cobra Strike. A publication should always show the data as it is in the book, data from secondary sources must be explained in the notefield. Thanks, --Willem H. 18:27, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

The relation between the two instances of use of this artwork has also been pointed out here, I'll add your two Nova's to it.--Dirk P Broer 20:18, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

If adding notes is too much trouble for you, you should let me add the data to my verifications. --Willem H. 21:20, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

I was just poiting out that there is also a way of establishing a relation between the instances of use of cover art at a higher level. For just how many of the Bantam editions of Nova would you want to add the same information? Seems a bit redundant to me.--Dirk P Broer 00:12, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

To answer your question, every edition of Nova you add the artist to should reflect the source of the credit, unless the artist is credited in the pub. Merging of varianting cover art does not show on the publication listing. If you don't see the benefits of one of the rules, you can always start a discussion on the Rules and standards page. --Willem H. 18:09, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Cover Variants

I'm not sure why you're creating variants of cover artwork title records which are identical in both publication title and artist credit. A variant indicates a change in one or both of these. In cases where publication title and artist credit are identical (and the art itself is the same regardless of the typography of the book), we merge the title records. So Nova, Nova, and Nova should be merged. Mhhutchins 13:12, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Should be possible now.--Dirk P Broer 21:07, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Cover art merge

I would be willing to bet you did not intend to merge the cover art records for Nova and use the '0000-00-00' date? Rejected that submission. --~ Bill, Bluesman 21:30, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

The 0000-00-00 should already have been changed to a 1975-06-00 before I a did the merge (when I checked the publication records for Nova it was). I was surprised to see the 0000-00-00 still pop up when I did the merge.--Dirk P Broer 22:36, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Fixed the date and re-entered the submission.--Dirk P Broer 21:08, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

The Best of Sci-Fi

I'm holding a submission that clones this pub, but I can see no difference between the pubs. Am I missing something? Mhhutchins 16:46, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Yep, reprinted 1963.--Dirk P Broer 20:31, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind

I added notes (there were none) to this verified pub, and made one change. The Pamela Zoline title was a variant of another title, where author and story were spelled exactly the same. I undid the variant and merged them instead. Thanks, --Willem H. 19:26, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I only have one instance of the story and had not yet been able to check whether it warranted the status of variant (and I did not make it a variant).--Dirk P Broer 21:06, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

King Penguins

I'm accepting the submissions making this into a series instead of a publisher. In my research, every pub so far is shown as 20 cm. in the OCLC records, which would indicate they're trade paperbacks (thus the "King" part). Mhhutchins 13:17, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

And on the title page of my copy of Pavane it says "A King Penguin", followed by "Published by Penguin Books" (Argh! That annoying "books" suffix, which gives so much more unneeded publisher names, Corgi (Books), Panther (Books), etc.).--Dirk P Broer 13:23, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Robert Sheckley's "Monsters"

You verified this pub which contains Monsters. The other three verified versions of that pub (Untouched by Human Hands) all have it as The Monsters. Can you check the absence/presence of the "The"? Thanks. --JLaTondre 21:00, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Corrected my mistake.--Dirk P Broer 22:30, 30 June 2011 (UTC)

Crediting sources

Hi, I'm approving your submissions of updates with information from Pardey. You should include sources other than the book in the publication notes, not in the moderator notes -- we want the entry to record where the information came from. I am moving the info to the notes as I go along, so just keep that in mind for future submissions. Thanks. --MartyD 11:08, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay, but what's up with The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories? --Dirk P Broer 11:23, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The Bloody Chamber submission

Hi. I have your submission of a 1981 Penguin edition (ISBN 0140054049) of The Bloody Chamber on hold. Could that 1981 date be a mistake? Or the ISBN? We have this trade paperback from 1987 with the same ISBN. I checked that, and it matches Locus1. I also Googled and found several hits for that ISBN for 1987 but none for 1981. Thanks. --MartyD 11:23, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Then you have the 2nd printing of the king penguin edition as OCLC record 489675327 for the 1981 edition proves.--Dirk P Broer 11:29, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Yet another king penguin for that series too.--Dirk P Broer 11:30, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks. I added the OCLC number to the notes while adding the Pardey source info. I'll leave you the Worldcat verification, since you did the work. :-) --MartyD 11:47, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Notifying / Querying primary verifiers

Hi. I notified User:Unapersson, the primary verifier, of your date change to Pavane. In general, you should notify primary verifiers of additions from other sources as a courtesy unless they request otherwise at the top of their talk page. Once in a while, this practice catches a discrepancy. I have on hold your second submission that would change the format of the same pub. For CHANGES to verified information, you must confirm with the primary verifier first. If your information does not agree, you may have a different publication. If the verifier is inactive or non-responsive, then the change can be made and you can take over the verification. But in this case, the verifier is active and responding to queries, so confirmation should be requested first. (I have asked). Thanks. --MartyD 11:39, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

I hadn't yet come around to do it, but I have added a request for a check for another King Penguin as well for User:Unapersson.--Dirk P Broer 11:44, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Carl Lans cover art

I believe you have a list of re-used cover art? Look here and here for the Luitingh editions of Testbemanning. Both are by Jack Gaughan. --Willem H. 15:37, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Well..not exactly a list. I believe all cover art from the early Luitingh series is re-used. It's just hard to identify the artist sometimes. I believe one of Leinster's Sabotage covers is done by Richard Powers (and also used on Best of Sci-Fi 3), but how can I verify that?--Dirk P Broer 15:45, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

By the way: Thanks for identifying these covers! You've said earlier that you are in the possession of pretty much all SF published in Dutch up to a certain point, can you perhaps add the missing data for the Luitingh "Tijgerpockets" (price, ISBN)? And perhaps you own Testbemanning: 13 stappen naar de redding, the original Omnibus edition published by Konings and printed by Libra of Kontich, Belgium? In that case you can also pinpoint the publication date of this series....Should we enter he radio play as well? --Dirk P Broer 15:51, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Some you recognise, some you don't. I have a lot of the originals and a few meters of artbooks. You're right about the first of Leinster's sabotage covers. Proof is here. The second is probably by Paul Lehr (can't find the image now) and the third is by Jack Gaughan (again), used here (mirror image) and here.

Some answers: I've been waiting with the Dutch publications for full foreign language support. The first steps have now been taken, but it's not yet enough for me. I'm trying to avoid having to do things twice (or more, like translator, short fiction etc.). You can add anything you like, I'll add the data from the pubs when I'm ready. Remember to use the new language field for title records. I think the Dutch title for translations (novels at least) is now accepted, but it must of course be made a variant of the original.

About Testbemanning: 13 Stappen Naar de Redding is not an omnibus, but the Belgian edition of the first part (De Coördinator). I have a copy (no dustjacket alas), but there's no information about the publication date (probably 1963, but who knows...). The radio play is available on CD (published by Rubinstein in Amsterdam, who also did Sprong in het Heelal and De Triffids Komen). If I ever get that far, I'll enter these in the database. --Willem H. 19:19, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

this webpage gives the impression that Testbemanning: 13 Stappen Naar de Redding was published in the 1950ies and contained both paperbacks. But as you have the physical copy -that has only about 264 pages- that carries much more weight. At least I don't have to hunt for that title anymore. More work to do about the Dutch translations as you explained, got some variant titles coming up.--Dirk P Broer 19:31, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. Confusing, but my copy tells the truth. Since the radio play was first (1961/2), the book can't have been published in the 1950's. --Willem H. 19:54, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The Proteus Operation

Hello, Dirk. I just added the 'Technical Note' by Hogan to your verified pub. Stonecreek 19:51, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Ah, one of my earlier ones. I just did the primary verifying then. Nasty cover to scan (silver).--Dirk P Broer 19:54, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

The Ultimate Threshold

I added notes to this verified pub and changed the credit for the Anatoly Dnieprov stories from Dnieprov to Dneprov (as stated on copyright, contents an title pages). --Willem H. 19:40, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Wright death date

Hi. What is your source for the 2010-01-01 death date of Lan Wright? In trying to confirm it, I found this notice stating the death date as 2010-10-01. I wonder if either "01" or "10" is a transcription error.... --MartyD 11:45, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Sheesh. Never mind again. I see you have a 10. Sigh. Don't mind me. --MartyD 11:47, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

My source: Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Working Text Preview.--Dirk P Broer 11:50, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

The Weird Ones / The New Women of Wonder

I added a note about the cover art to this verified pub. --Willem H. 17:22, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

The same for this pub. --Willem H. 17:18, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

"A Dip in the Swimming-Pool Reactor" in New Worlds SF, September 1965

User:P-Brane proposes changing the above title in your 2-verified New Worlds SF, September 1965 from a shortfiction instance in a series to part 2 of a serial novella (see the submissions I have on hold). What do you think? I have cross-posted this to User:Chris J (the primary verifier) as well. Thanks. --MartyD 10:54, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

I am presently on holidays. I will check as soon as I get back. But it looks right for what I know off now, Bill, the Galactic Hero - Series Bibliography already shows a part 1 of 3 and a part 3 of 3.--Dirk P Broer 17:53, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, per this discussion and because it didn't sound like you had any objections, I approved the changes. If you decide that's not right when you get back to your books, please let me know. --MartyD 10:28, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

The World's Best S.F. No. 1

For this verified pub I clarified the note about the title, added a note about the page numbering, changed the number of pages from 320 to 319 (the last numbered page), added the page numbers to the contents and added a note about the publication date. If you have a source for the publication month, please replace this note. --Willem H. 13:29, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

You are quite right about your alterations and I am presently at a loss as to where I found the information for the publication month. May take some digging in my reference material.--Dirk P Broer 10:01, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

The Year's Best S-F: 5th Annual Edition

In this verified pub I changed the credit for Me from Hilbert Schenck to Hilbert Schenck, Jr., added the missing Jack Sharkey story on page 87 and added notes (there were none). --Willem H. 09:27, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! One of my earlier confirmations again, when I was more focussed on adding my own collection of anthologies as quick as possible to the database, without giving too much attention on the actual content of what was there. You are again quite right of course.--Dirk P Broer 09:41, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

SF: The Year's Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy: 4th Annual Volume

After this discussion I added the Asimov essay after the poem "The Thunder-Thieves" to this verified pub under the title "The Thunder-Thieves (afterword)". Hope you can agree. Thanks, --Willem H. 14:10, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Internal consistency is what separates good databases from bad ones.--Dirk P Broer 09:38, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Cantine: Holly vs Holley

Can you check this pub for the spelling of Holly/Holley Cantine's name? I think the canonical name should be Holley (my edition of Judith Merril's anthology, Contento and the NESFA-index and even Amazon.com agree. If all verified publications have the same name, I can change it. Thanks, --Willem H. 15:19, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Another fine catch!. It is indeed Holley. Note also the spelling of Fredric Brown in the TOC when you update the record for this publication.--Dirk P Broer 09:35, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

As I suspected, all verified versions were as by Holley Cantine. A little unmerging and remering put them all together here. Holly is gone now. Can you add a note about Fredric Brown yourself? I have another edition of this book. Thanks, --Willem H. 19:33, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

Fantasfeer: Bibliografie van Science Fiction in het Nederlands

This pub record credits the full name of each author, while the title record gives the author's first initials. Can you confirm how the book is credited on the book's title page, and change either the pub record or the title record to conform to that credit? Much appreciated. Mhhutchins 21:02, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Changed the publication record to initials, as per title page. Changed the authors records to reflect their legal names.--Dirk P Broer 09:27, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Looks good. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:44, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Judith Merril's SF 12

In this verified pub I changed the credit for "They Do Not Always Remember" from William S. Burroughs to William Burroughs, as stated on title page and contents page. Also added a note about the spelling of Thomas Disch. --Willem H. 18:26, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! One of my earlier confirmations, when I was more focussed on adding my own collection of anthologies as quick as possible to the database, without giving too much attention on the actual content of what was there. You are quite right of course.--Dirk P Broer 09:17, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Robson edition of Men, Martians and Machines

Can you recheck the ISBN for this record? It's coming up as an invalid number. Thanks. Mhhutchins 14:43, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

You are right, last digit should be 0. --Dirk P Broer 14:46, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Donnerjack

I added the cover artist (from the hardcover) and some more notes to this verified pub. --Willem H. 20:16, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

Podkayne of Mars

I don't think you meant to keep the note giving Locus as the source when you cloned another record for this undated printing. Mhhutchins 23:42, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

No indeed. It must have been below on a new line, hadn't seen it while editing. --Dirk P Broer 23:46, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Wilbert Wadleigh

I should not have accepted the submission to update author data for this author. I saw that you'd added a legal name and date of birth, but failed to notice that you'd also changed the canonical name as well to simply "Wilbert". In doing this, all records in the db for the author were changed, and I should have caught that before allowing the submission to go through. I can update it, but wanted you to see it first. If you want to correct it, go ahead. Keep in mind, the canonical name should be in the exact order in which the author is credited, unlike the legal name field. The "Last Name" field is solely there to build the Author Directory (I think) and has no other purpose. Sorry. Mhhutchins 17:46, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

To the best of my knowledge I added a year of death (1931) and a legal name. Nothing more. I will correct the present situation, but i have no idea how it came to be. --Dirk P Broer 18:51, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure it was inadvertent. Here's a history of the submission. Thanks for the correction. Mhhutchins 19:18, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

I've seen it. I would have sworn I only changed two fields, not three. Strange. Like the time I cut information from synopsis to place it into note and was left with the same information twice: I almost seems that while processing ctrl-x and ctrl-c become mixed-up. --Dirk P Broer 19:21, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

And now I am sure that the interface goes nuts when adding the legal name. Tried to update Boeli van Leeuwen and discovered that the canonical is emptied when adding the legal name van Leeuwen, Willem Cornelis Jacobus (or when changing the surname from Leeuwen to van Leeuwen). --Dirk P Broer 14:54, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

And again: . --Dirk P Broer 23:35, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

No, that's OK. Green fields are kept, pink are discarded. I know it's inconsistent with the History display Mike demonstrated - and the History display is probably what we should aim for in the longer run as it's clearer. But so far we've only got that working for Author Edits, and displaying past entries is probably lower priority than improving future ones. BLongley 03:46, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Entering Omnibuses

You don't have to put in an OMNIBUS content type, that's done automatically. Doing so causes duplicates, as you noticed. I've fixed them for you. BLongley 15:09, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry! --Dirk P Broer 15:12, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

The NOVEL contents will be duplicated too, so those needed to be merged. (Again, I've done that for you.) There was no point adding the series info to the duplicates as that can be kept during the merge anyway. BLongley 15:16, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I mostly refrain from buying omnibusses, as I miss the artwork of the individual titles. To the best of my knowledge all my omnibusses are entered now... --Dirk P Broer 15:59, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Moon Base

I have changed the Wildside edition from "pb" to "tp" since Amazon claims that it is 9 inches long. Could you please confirm? Also, the Mayflower-Dell edition was originally added to the main Title record ("Window on the Moon") rather than to the "Moon Base" VT (variant title), so I moved it after approving. Ahasuerus 14:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Amazon also claims 21 December 1960....but they might be right as to the inches. I got my information from Barnes and Noble, which just says "paperback", and has no clue as to the size. The Mayflower-Dell is indeed a "Moon Base". --Dirk P Broer 15:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I went back and ran a few searches on the internet. WorldCat knows nothing about this ISBN and used.addall.com thinks that it's an Ace edition. I wonder if it was one of those Wildside Press titles that were announced and then canceled circa 2000? Let me ask Robert Reginald about this mystery item... Ahasuerus 22:11, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Robert Reginald (aka Prof. Michael Burgess)? He is quite knowledgable about Wildside/Borgo....He might even have the complete Wildside catalog (and that's quite a bit of titles that we haven't got yet). --Dirk P Broer 23:46, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Amazon keeps spamming me with Murray Leinster chapterbooks from the Wildside press, at least three of them not seen on isfdb. --Dirk P Broer 23:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Rob (he now goes by "Rob") is a contributor. He finished entering/updating the Wildside/Borgo Press titles just a few days ago, which is one of the reasons why I suspect that this may be "vaporware". Ahasuerus 00:03, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, we have our answer -- see Rob's response -- and the record has been updated. Just goes to show that it can be hard to tell whether certain Wildside Press titles ever appeared... Ahasuerus 18:05, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

"Mortal Engines"

Does the cover of this pub really say "briljant" rather than "brilliant"? Ahasuerus 00:01, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, that's my Dutch creeping in. It is the Dutch way to write Brilliant....--Dirk P Broer 00:02, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

No problem, fixed! Ahasuerus 00:06, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Élisabeth Vonarburg

According to the FictionMags Index, Élisabeth Vonarburg's legal name is Élisabeth Ferron-Wehrlin Morché Vonarburg. I have tentatively changed the record to reflect their data. Ahasuerus 14:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I read an interview with her (in French) where she states that she prefers her married name (Vonarburg) above her name by birth (Ferron-Wehrlin), which is the name of her father. To be complete her mother's family name is Morché, so she likes her name by birth to reflect Ferron-Wehrlin Morché. But when we talk legal name: What is written in her passport? --Dirk P Broer 15:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

That's a very good question, but I am not sure how we could find the answer. People change their legal names all the time, e.g. when they get married, and writers have been known to change their legal name to what originally started out as a pseudonym, e.g. Nicholas Yermakov is now legally Simon Hawke. Ahasuerus 18:29, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

New pub of Toyman

What is the source of your data for this record? If it's a copy in hand, please let the moderator know in the "Note to the Moderator". Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:28, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

You may have noticed I have volumes 1 till 26 of the Dumarest daga, none earlier than 1976. (Read 1 till 26 within one month as well, sheer fun!). --Dirk P Broer 00:14, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Nope, I didn't notice that. Please do a primary verification when you get a chance. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

It's a great series but vol's 30 & 31 are very hard to get, especially 31 which is a ridicules price.Kraang 02:05, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

What about the prices for nos. 32 and 33? --Dirk P Broer 18:39, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I purchased #32 when it first came out at $20 US. A quick look on Amazon has two for sale between $250 & $300, none for sale on Abeboooks. Don't have #33 and it appears to be going in the same direction. Time will put more on the market and the prices will come down. Numbers 30 & 31 are now cheaper than 5 years ago. A used(reading copy) 31 is only $12! Yikes!!Kraang 01:59, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Gone are the days when you could order all your missing books in one go at Bookservice By Post (well...not all, and they still owe me some money. Ordered once some 16 missing Dumarest books with them and received 12 or so). --Dirk P Broer 08:08, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Dead end link for Tubb's Escape into Space

The link you added to this record isn't working. Mhhutchins 18:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Same situation with this record and this one. Mhhutchins 18:26, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

There may be a temporary problem with the website. I can't get the search to work at all. Mhhutchins 18:29, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

The search only works if I back out of the website entirely, then enter through the US portal. Now that I've done that the links work OK. Strange. I wonder if someone linking directly from the ISFDB record would have the same problem. Mhhutchins 18:32, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Works fine at my side of things..--Dirk P Broer 18:40, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't work for me:

Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result 
resource in /home/ulverscroft/ulverscroft.com/user/htdocs/title.php on line 124

BLongley 18:56, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Can you try on a machine that has no MySQL installed? --Dirk P Broer 18:58, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Not easily, and I'm pretty sure Mike has already done that. Like him, going to the Ulverscroft website and selecting a home country eventually allows the link to work - but I wouldn't want to encourage such links in notes that depend on people having visited the site before. If you can persuade them to fix their API then we could link more safely - but I don't want to play favourites with publishers, so we'd want something back like Image linking permissions or someone there willing to work on their pubs that we have. I recall that Amazon often does things like crediting their pubs as both "AUDIO" and "LARGE PRINT EDITION" which made me wonder whether they do an especially LOUD audiobook. :-/ BLongley 22:56, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

We don't link to most sources in the notes, the only exceptions being links to OCLC and LCCN records, both being nonprofit. Why not just give the source for your data like we do when we source Amazon or other commercial ventures, without a (possibly unstable) hyperlink? Mhhutchins 23:17, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Oké by me. --~~

Importing contents

Are you familiar with the Import Contents function? Instead of creating new content records for this pub, which requires that you merge each of them with the current title records, you could have used the Import function from another Ballantine printing: for example this one. This would save you from entering all of those new content titles and from making 13 additional submissions to merge each of them (and the moderator as well). Let me know if you want me to approve the submission on hold, or you can cancel it and redo it. Mhhutchins 01:47, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Not familiar, no. But I know it exists. I had decided not to use it because the value of the pagenumbers -at first- showed only 160, while the older editions have a story that begins at 161. During the enteroing it appeared that the 160 that was used to create the record for this edition was at fault, and had to be corrected to viii+166. Can you approve the submission without too much work on your side, or do you prefer me to redo it? --Dirk P Broer 08:03, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Approving it's just a click of the mouse. Do you want to create 13 more submissions to merge the duplicated story records? Keep in mind: you don't have to import the page numbers from the source record. You have that option. Mhhutchins 14:52, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I think I will cancel and opt for the import solution! Thanks for pointing to the extra work involved (the merging of each and every story) and the fact that you don't have to import the page numbers. I was not aware of that. --Dirk P Broer 15:39, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Imperial Earth

I approved the submission of the update of this pub so that you can see what happened. Looks like you repeated the URL of the cover image. Mhhutchins 01:48, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I indeed must have done so. Thanks for catching it. --Dirk P Broer 07:58, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Removing the white space from Amazon images

I approved the submission adding a link to Amazon's cover image for this record, but you'll notice a white frame to the left and right of the image. This is easily removed: Copy the original URL http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51czkDswD%2BL._SL500_AA300_.jpg and remove all characters between the last dot (.) and the previous one, leaving one dot before the file extension. In this case you'd enter the URL as http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51czkDswD%2BL.jpg. Look at the difference between the two images: here and here. This is pointed out on the help page for image-linking permissions under Amazon's listing. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:00, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I must have forgotten it. You did point me to this once before (you can either see it above, or in my archive), and I usually remove the white space. I could not use my own (Robson) scan, as it shows the spine with Robson logo. --Dirk P Broer 15:33, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Yep, 25th of June --Dirk P Broer 15:34, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to have wasted both of our time then. It's hard to keep track of what I've told who and when. Guess that comes with the job. Mhhutchins 15:44, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

No problem! Better been told twice than not at all... --Dirk P Broer 15:51, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The People Trap

Found artist for your verified here. Hauck 17:14, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Once you know it, it's obvious. Who else at that time would paint a space ship with coloured parts in that way? --Dirk P Broer 18:43, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The Night Shapes

Found artist for your verified The Night Shapes. Hauck 20:23, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again, this one was not so obvious! I had already found a suggestion on the web for Foss as artist for this title, but could not yet get it confirmed. --Dirk P Broer 20:39, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The last book of Foss' illustrations here is not only superb (and not that expensive) but is also very useful for this. Hauck 12:27, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Rockets in Ursa Major

Found artist for your verified here. Hauck 16:32, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I am amazed. Must be very early Foss. --Dirk P Broer 16:34, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Venus Equilateral: Volume One

Found artist for your verified Venus Equilateral: Volume One and two. Hauck 10:58, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks again. You know of course that they partially overlap, forming one piece of art from the Foss book. --Dirk P Broer 11:18, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Antoniorrobles

It appears that Antoniorrobles is the canonical name, as there are no publications as "Antonio Robles". I think we need to remove the variant. What do you think? Mhhutchins 16:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree if there are no publications as "Antonio Robles". --Dirk P Broer 19:20, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Worldcat holds two records for "The Refugee Centaur" under "Antonio Robles"; one where it states written by Antoniorrobles (pseud.) and one where Antoniorrobles is given as author name. --Dirk P Broer 19:53, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

If all of his writings were under Antoniorrobles, as this Wikipedia page suggests, it should be the canonical name, and Antonio Robles would be the legal name. Mhhutchins 20:43, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Except that his legal name is Soler, Joaquin Antonio Robles. My guess is that although his writings in Spanish are all under "Antoniorrobles", it may not be the case in other languages. I'd make Antoniorrobles canonical and Antonio Robles pseudonym, just to be sure. --Dirk P Broer 20:51, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree, but we can't make Antonio Robles a pseudonym until there is at least one book credited to that name in the database. The one book in the db is in English, and it's credited to Antoniorrobles. Mhhutchins 20:55, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Oké, it's clear then. We just have to do more input. Busy with Poul Anderson right now, will take a while before I get to Robles. --Dirk P Broer 20:59, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

New Worlds, August 1966

Can you check page 81 please? The Author is normally Kippax rather than Klippax. BLongley 16:15, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Typo I guess. --Dirk P Broer 19:05, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Corrected, one single-story author less. Thanks for catching! --Dirk P Broer 19:16, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

And another problem removed from Fuzzy_duplicate_finder_on_all_Authors. Thanks! BLongley 21:55, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Subtitle of Enemies of the System

What is the source for your submission to change the title of this record? The OCLC record doesn't give that as a subtitle, and they're notoriously good at recording the complete title from the book's title page. Also do you have a copy of F&SF, June 1978 to compare the text to determine if it's the same as the book publication? We may need to change all of the book records from novels into chapterbooks and add a shortfiction content record. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:39, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

If you give "enemies of the system aldiss" at worldcat you see a whole different story. You also see the subtitle on the title page on (I hope) each and every verified publication, I've asked BLongley and Bluesman to check their copies. It is in any case confirmed in Clute/Nicholls (p. 12 of the 1995 edition) and Reginald3 (p. 13). to be the official title and I could confirm it for my copy. --Dirk P Broer 18:53, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The OCLC record that I cite above was the one that linked directly to the ISFDB record. So I didn't look any further. I'll accept the submission. Mhhutchins 19:42, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I do not have a copy of F&SF, June 1978, but it seems only half the length of the novel with the same name. --Dirk P Broer 18:58, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The number of pages in each publication shouldn't be a determining factor. Only a side-by-side examination can determine that they're the same or not. That's why I asked if you had a copy of both. I've discovered that a story published in some magazines can often take up twice the number of pages when published in a book. And you can't tell from a magazine's table of contents the number of pages of the story. They often continue on later pages. (BTW, in one of the sources you cite, Clute/Nicholls, it's called a novella.) Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:42, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I just read that the novel is expanded from the Hugo-nominated novella. --Dirk P Broer 19:44, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Variant of Aldiss's SF Art

I rejected the submission to make this record into a variant of this one. The first is only in the db for the award record with no publications attached. I'd recommend merging the two records, giving preference to the full title as it was published. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:43, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I had proposed to make it a variant due to the difference in title. Have merged the records now (once it has been accepted) as you suggested. --Dirk P Broer 18:46, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Submission accepted. The award title record was an "orphan", so it was probably created from some list that chose to abbreviate the title of the book, making its source a secondary one, meaning the book was never actually published as SF Art. Variants should not be based on secondary sources, only primary ones, unless there is no other recourse. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:53, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Now What Seems to be the Trouble?

Without doing any actual research, I'd bet money that these are not the same work, and shouldn't be merged. The major clue: they'all all in issues of the same publication. They appear to be column titles that the editor failed to disambiguate. A couple of them have been primary verified so it might be a good idea to ask the verifier. Mhhutchins 19:46, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Oké, seems fair. This popped up while trying to merge SF Art with Science Fiction Art (failed attempt, had to do list all titles). --Dirk P Broer 19:52, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Gawsworth

The source for J. Gawsworth is an anthology in which almost all of the authors' contributions are given with initialed first names. I suspect the editor who entered this record probably based it on a stub record created by a librarian. Here is a more complete record (created by another librarian) which gives the full names. I'm going to update the record based on this OCLC record, and that will make moot your submission to have "J. Gawsworth" into a variant if John Gawsworth. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:15, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Oké! --Dirk P Broer 22:31, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Just cancelled the request, it being moot. I hope your update will unearth some other single-story authors as well. --Dirk P Broer 22:58, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem here is whether some of these stories may not actually be spec-fic. I'm going to have to do more research before adding the full names. Thanks again. Mhhutchins 01:13, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

R. Reginald has a listing for the book, so that's good enough for me. Mhhutchins 01:19, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Saw Reginald1 real cheap on amazon.com few weeks ago. Pitty it weighs so much (7.8 pounds)...:( --Dirk P Broer 01:22, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's ridiculously heavy. I have to be extra careful when removing it from the shelf which is over my computer. It's not the number of pages, it's that the pages are made from very heavy stock. Good thing because it will still be around when my bones have turned to dust! Mhhutchins 01:36, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Rafi Zabor

Rafi Zabor (born Joel Zaborovsky, August 22, 1946). See also [this. --Dirk P Broer 00:51, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Oscar de Mejo

Born in 1911, when Trieste was still part of Austria-Hungaria. Only after the Armistice of Villa Giusti (1918) Trieste became part of Italy. --Dirk P Broer 00:51, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Alexander Bogdanov

Alexander Aleksandrovich Bogdanov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Алекса́ндрович Богда́нов; born Alyaksandr Malinovsky, Belarusian: Алякса́ндар Маліно́ўскі; 22 August 1873 [O.S. 10 August, Hrodna, Russian Empire (now Belarus) –7 April 1928, Moscow) Hrodna is more commonly known as Grodno, and was in 1873 part of the Russian Empire. --Dirk P Broer 00:51, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Edward "Ed" Valigursky

From http://www.pulpartists.com/Valigursky.html: Edward Ignatius Valigursky was born October 16, 1926 in Arnold, Pennsylvania. His father was Jakub Valigursky and his mother was Anathasia Valigursky. --Dirk P Broer 14:16, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

William E. Terry vs. W.E. Terry

The first, William E. Terry, stills lives and writes (e.g. Druiad), the latter (W. E. Terry standing for Willis E. Terry) is dead and was illustrator. I had confused - like http://dbr.nu/sf/artists/sf_details_2011.php?id=34 - one with the other. --Dirk P Broer 20:41, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

To confuse things still further there is a still living illustrator Will Terry. --Dirk P Broer 20:42, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Sybil Lawson

What is the source of your submission that "Sybil Lawson" is a pseudonym for Robert Reginald? He reviewed the book under the pseudonym "Peter Harding", but I could find no evidence that he was also the author of the book. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:07, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

You'd never guess: My source is Reginald3 and isfdb itself! (pity you have no note to moderator on author edits). There is a single book listed for Sybil Lawson in Reginald3, The Possession of Tamara (Star Distributors, 1977) and the review entry for this publication by "Peter Harding" says Variant Title of: The Possession of Tamara (by Robert Reginald) --Dirk P Broer 19:03, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

The review record you link to has a variant, not the novel record. Check again. (Click on the novel title's link, then click on the "Variant Title of" link.) Possibly confusing, but that's how a variant record of a review record is displayed. Mhhutchins 19:12, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Is it an idea to have it phrased as Variant Title of: The Possession of Tamara (by Sybil Lawson) Reviewer: Robert Reginald?

Just my 2c, but I really fell for this...will cancel the request and go on searching for the identity of ms. Lawson. --Dirk P Broer 19:17, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Please make the request for a change in display on the community portal. I'll back you up. And good luck trying to find the identity of Lawson. It's rare that anyone will admit to writing pornography. Check out this pretty good overview of SF Pornography. One of these days, if I ever get some free time, I'm going to enter these titles in the database (some of them, like the Lawson novel, are already in the db.) Mhhutchins 19:28, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I will make the request -and already found the overview. You'd be surprised how much of the soft-core -by then standards- already has been entered. Personally I found Blown by Phil Farmer and The Gas by Charles Platt more arousing than most of these titles however. --Dirk P Broer 19:38, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Also feel free to request "note to moderator on author edits". I'd have submitted such already, but there's a change already in the queue for FR 2823394 "Improve handling of foreign languages: set a Working Language for each author" which affects that area, and I don't want to make things even more complicated than they are until Ahasuerus can catch up a bit. BLongley 19:56, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Tabatha/Tabitha Jervis

You're probably working on authors from Reginald3, but before assuming he's always right, I would suggest some more research. The Kenneth R. Johnson bibliography has this author as Tabatha Jervis, and so does Reginald himself in his review here. I have your submission on hold for now. --Willem H. 20:02, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I was indeed. Searching for a cover scan right now to see if we can verify. --Dirk P Broer 20:08, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

No scan to be found, and far more mentioning of Tabatha Jervis than of Tabitha Jervis. Another cancelation for this moment. Will I ever find the book and want to buy it then? Better have a good cover. --Dirk P Broer 20:44, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Reed's Seven for the Apocalypse

The hardcover version of this title exists (we have a pub record for it, and copies are being sold on Abebooks.com), so you should remove/amend the title note based on the Locus listing. Thanks.

Just when I was so happy to own the trade paperback... Having a pub record doesn't prove actual existence, but being sold does. --Dirk P Broer 23:17, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Capitalization

The system doesn't recognize the difference between "Vincent Di Fate" and "Vincent di Fate", or for that matter even "vincent di fate". Once an author's name is in the database, the software disregards any capitalization in the name when it tries to match it with other records to display results. The only way to change the capitalization of a name is from an edit of the Author Data, which would change every record in the database for the author, or in this case, artist. This should only be done in rare cases. Mhhutchins 13:50, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Oké, I had thought this to be an instance of: "Case. Case should be regularized. A few magazines and books had typographical conventions that include, for example, printing an author's name in all lower case, or all upper case. These should convert to leading capitals. If a name includes an element that typically is not capitalized, it should be uncapitalized regardless of how it is presented in the publication. For example, if a magazine gives a story as by "L. Sprague De Camp", the name should be entered as "L. Sprague de Camp". Author names that vary only in capitalization are not tracked as variants." analogue to this "Vincent di Fate". --Dirk P Broer 13:58, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Once a name is in the system, capitalization doesn't matter. You couldn't change the author credit in the title record of a story which appeared in a publication that gave "L. Sprague De Camp" as the author, even if you wanted to. The system corrects it. And the opposite would be true if you changed the Author Data to "L. Sprague De Camp". All subsequent entries under this name, even if entered as "L. Sprague de Camp" would be "corrected" to match the current name. That help documentation doesn't address this situation, only in the entry of names after a canonical name has been established. Mhhutchins 14:30, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Brian Moore

Wouldn't it be more clear to indicate the place of birth of Brian Moore as "Belfast, Ireland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland"? I'm not sure, but wasn't Ireland considered a separate entity at this time, as much as Wales and Scotland were? After all, we add states for US authors, and counties for English authors. Mhhutchins 14:22, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Prior to 1922 there was another UK than we have now, and the whole of Ireland formed part of it. Problem with Belfast is that it lies in two counties: County Antrim and County Down. --Dirk P Broer 14:30, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not referring to the last part of the birthplace (the kingdom), only that the island of Ireland was still called Ireland, regardless of which kingdom occupied it. Mhhutchins 14:36, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

For those exact same reasons I named it "Belfast, Ireland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland", stressing the Ireland part of Belfast. Belfast, Counties Antrim/Down, UK does seem a bit odd. --Dirk P Broer 14:55, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

No. Actually, you removed "Ireland" after "Belfast". That was the whole point of my message. Please look at the data again, and re-read my first message. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I must have hesitated about the redundancy of "Ireland" in the name, but "Belfast, Ireland, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland" seems the best way of putting it, as you already pointed out. --Dirk P Broer 15:23, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd love to discover an author who was born in the South (USA) between April 1861 and April 1865, just so I can record his country of birth as CSA (Confederate States of America). I wonder what kind of reaction I'd get from that! Mhhutchins 18:12, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, ask for a query for all writers with a birth date in that time frame and look up to see any Southerns I'd say. Technically they are indeed born in the CSA. --Dirk P Broer 18:26, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Manhattan

Although many people (including its residents) may think it's a city, Manhattan is only a borough of New York City. Mhhutchins 18:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

As Holland is only the west of the Netherlands, you just need to know....--Dirk P Broer 18:09, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Then you'll need to correct this author, this one, and perhaps this one, the only authors in the db that give Holland as the country of birth. There are ten authors who have "Manhattan, New York, USA" as their birth place. Mhhutchins 18:29, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

There are over 150 authors who have "Brooklyn, New York, USA" as their birth place. You don't mess with anybody from Brooklyn, so I'll just leave them be! :) Mhhutchins 18:33, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

What do these guys from former Breukelen (Now Brooklyn) have that those of Manhattan (island of the many hills) have not? --Dirk P Broer 18:42, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't get it either. It's only across the East River, which isn't really a river, but don't tell that to any native New Yorker, regardless of which side they were born on. :) Mhhutchins 19:38, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Sold - For a Spaceship

Replaced amazon scan for your verified here, shouldn't the title be entered as _Sold-For a Spaceship_ (without spaces) ? Hauck 09:33, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

For this edition there are indeed no reasons to have the spaces, they might have been inherited from the first edition (The Robert Hale Hardcover). --Dirk P Broer 10:02, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, done. Hauck 10:07, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Updating Pseudonyms

I've come across a few submissions in which you update the author data (adding legal name, dates and websites), and then making a subsequent submission to make that name into a pseudonym. We don't record legal name, dates, birth place, website links, etc. for pseudonyms. I've removed the data from the pseudonym record and transferred it to the parent name. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:29, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I've indeed making that observating about myself: It is sometimes in the process of updating a record that I think, hmm wait a minute, have I seen this before? And then on re-checking I come across the already existing record that is the real name of the record I've just have edited (e.g. for James Barr and Katharyne Machan). --Dirk P Broer 19:33, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

James Angus Evan Abbott Barr

Look at the listing under 21 March 1963 on this page. It would be too much of a coincidence not to be the same man. Mhhutchins 17:35, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I almost didn't believe my eyes, I would have sworn someone had glued the man's real name and pseudonym to each other. Explains the origin of the pseudonym in this case. --Dirk P Broer 19:38, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Cancelled the request as you had it -luckily- still on hold. --Dirk P Broer 19:41, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Will B. Aarons

There's not much information provided on the website linked to Will B. Aarons. Do you think it's even worth linking? We have a lot more information on him and the series he writes here. Mhhutchins 17:41, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

That is, indeed, far more complete. --Dirk P Broer 19:39, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Country name advice

I've noticed some authors' birth place are given as "The Netherlands", but the majority are simply "Netherlands". Is this similar to how my country is called "the United States of America" (although we never capitalized "the"), but entered as "USA"? Thanks for the help. Mhhutchins 17:27, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes and no. "The Netherlands" can describe my country, but can also be used for (and literally means) "the low countries (les Pays Bas)", also including parts of Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and even France. Technically we shouldn't capitalize the 'The' either. --Dirk P Broer 18:48, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

For the purpose of the database, we're surely not going to use the "meaning" of the word, but the actual country, right? So should it be "Netherlands" or "The Netherlands"? Mhhutchins 19:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd vote for "Netherlands". --Dirk P Broer 19:25, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:30, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Duplicate images, improved scans, etc.

I see you've uploaded a a new image for the Panther edition of The Early Asimov, Volume One. It is identical to this earlier image except yours is a much better scan. (I would not have known this except for the submission to change the image on this record). In cases like this it would be better to replace the old image instead of adding a new one. (This is when the covers are IDENTICAL, not just the same art.) That way, the new, better, image becomes part of all records that link to it. This also keeps you from having to update any of the records with the new URL, because the system still links to the same URL, which remains the same when a new, better image is uploaded. As it is now, only the one record linked above will have the benefit of the new, improved image, and you had to do a manual update of the record in order to do that. Records that already have an image linked to them have the link titled "Upload new cover scan" which we would hope that users will interpret to mean "a better scan". Thanks. Mhhutchins 20:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I used the "Upload new cover scan" link - provided at the 1979 edition that I verified. It replaced the scan from the 1975 edition that I had cloned for my edition. --Dirk P Broer 20:15, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

You only replaced the link to the image by doing a manual update to the record. The old image still exists and is linked to the 1975 record. If you had replaced the image you would not have needed to replace the URL of any records and each would have the better image linked to it. Mhhutchins 20:38, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree, but I would have to notify each and every first and later verifiers of those records for having done so (replaced the cover scan with a better). --Dirk P Broer 20:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

No, you would not have had to do that. The covers are identical so it's not necessary to notify "each and every first and later verifiers". I can't imagine any verifier who would demand to know that a cover image has been replaced by a better one. Have you come across an editor with such a request? I've looked at the talk pages of the top twenty verifiers (who have verified more than 90% of the verified records in the database). Many of them ask to be notified if you add a cover image, none ask to be notified of a change to an upgraded image. As I state above, you're not actually changing any verified record when you replace the image. That process, like all Wiki-based processes, isn't even moderated. When you replace a Wiki image, you don't even know which database records link to the file unless you go back to the database and check each of the pub records to see which ones have the URL of the image you upgraded. No one would expect you to do that, not even the most uptight verifier around (me!) Mhhutchins 21:08, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Washington DC

Although it's ISFDB policy to completely spell out the name of the state of birth for US authors, it's better to indicate this city as "Washington, DC, USA" rather than "Washington, District of Columbia, USA". The District is not a state, and the full name of the District is seldom given in print, and even more rarely spoken. The de facto ISFDB standard is to keep the initials. There are currently no author records that give the name in full. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:13, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I had taken it over from the author's IMDB's entry. I think that 90% of the foreigners do not know what the "DC" in Washington DC stands for, so I thought it a good idea from IMDB to spell it out. Likewise I always spell out the abbreviations of US state names, because even for myself it is hard to have them all 50 or so at hand (inluding overseas territories). --Dirk P Broer 18:20, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

But if we have a standard, let's keep it for all sake, because standards makes it easier for everyone in the end. --Dirk P Broer 18:21, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

When I got some spare time lately, I went through the db spelling out completely the names of US states. I think I've changed more than a couple hundred in the past week or so. Hopefully, we're close to having all states completely spelled out. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:45, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Tom Swift

With one submission you're changing the publication author, and with a subsequent submission, you're changing it back. I'm holding off accepting the submissions until you can take a look at what's happening. Check out numbers 10, 11, 13, 14... of the series. Mhhutchins 16:53, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Nope, With one I am changing the Title's author, with the other the Publication's author. I needed to when both needed to be changed (because both were given as Harriet Stratemeyer Adams when neither was done by her). --Dirk P Broer 20:29, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

The problems were mainly due to the pub-updates of Dana Carson's verified pubs. These did need changing, but you should have unmerged them from the canonical parent first. I've fixed those for you, I think. BLongley 18:19, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Two other comments - on the community portal, you mentioned Jim Lawrence wrote 23 of the 33, but after all our edits we show he wrote 25. Can you double-check please? And as you mentioned that "Reginald3, page 655 states that the Richard McKenna that wrote the last three Tom Swift Jr. books is *NOT* the writer Richard Milton McKenna (1913-1964)" I've made that author "Richard McKenna [2]". There are problems with using those brackets though - e.g. try adding a note to the Author wiki-page - so if you can suggest a better way of disambiguating the two let me know and I'll update the Author. BLongley 18:19, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I already double-checked. The website, that you pointed out as less reliable than Reginald3, is wrong. I will try to find out more about Richard McKenna (2), even if that means I have to contact Robert Reginald himself. --Dirk P Broer 20:29, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

He's handily available: User_talk:Robertreginald --MartyD 22:02, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I have just asked him. --Dirk P Broer 23:41, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

If only Tuck and Bleiler were as easily contactable... Or Clute, Grant and Nicholls as helpful. :-/ BLongley 01:26, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, at least Tuck and Bleiler, seeking the infinite truth of the Great Cosmic Maw, have an excuse...Mhhutchins 05:48, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Artemis Fowl

I accepted your submission of the Artemis Fowl 12th printing, but I think this should be a date unknown / 0000-00-00, not 2002-00-00. I believe the "Published 2002" probably refers to the original publication. You could see what Bill thinks and how the number line is presented in his. --MartyD 22:43, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

New Worlds from the Lowlands

Do you know if the dates that you're giving for the stories in this anthology are for the first English publication or the date of their first publication in their original language? Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:15, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the dates i've been given were of their first publication in their original language. I was misled by several stories that had the same date as in Contento1. --Dirk P Broer 06:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I might be wrong, but I fear that only one story was ever translated before if Contento1 is to be believed: A Sunrise, but even that story did not appear earlier in English than 1979. --Dirk P Broer 12:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

If these, for the most part, are the first publications of the English translations, they should be dated the same as the book. For example, yesterday I discovered that Poor Little Witch Girl (2006) by Marie Desplechin was first published in French in 1996 (as Verte). When I created a title record for the French title, I kept the date of the title record for the first English translation as 2006. I know that currently this dating method is not used consistently throughout the database, but with full implementation of the foreign language feature, we'll have to make sure that the title record for each language is dated as its first appearance in that language. Mhhutchins 13:47, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I forgot to ask: do you want me to accept the submission (it adds the page numbers and a new content record)? If so, you'll have to make another submission with the corrected dates. Thanks. Mhhutchins 13:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I will set all dates to 1982 for the English translations, except for A Sunrise, that was already translated in 1979. That goes for this anthology, but also for the title records (quite a lot of those..). --Dirk P Broer 15:07, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Submission accepted. Proceed to correct the dates. Most of them can be done with a single pub record edit, not title record edits. Mhhutchins 15:40, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Shaw's The Shadow of Heaven

Hello, Dirk. I just added a cover scan to your verified pub. Stonecreek 19:21, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

John/Jack Boardman

I accepted your edit to John Boardman, but I suspect Wikipedia is incorrect about his legal name. "Jack" is a nickname for "John". I find a lot of the propagation of "Jack Melton Boardman", but on his doctoral thesis, he's John Melton Boardman. I didn't find anything official, though, one way or the other. --MartyD 10:22, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I would rather have my name spelled correctly on my doctoral thesis, as Dirk Pieter, no matter what people call me (just Dirk or Dick). We'd better go for "John Melton Boardman" then. --Dirk P Broer 10:26, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, me too. I changed it. Thanks. --MartyD 00:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Kate Wilhelm - Let the Fire Fall - Panther edn

Hi, A new editor - [2theD [2]] - has added prices to the publication [3] you verified. He/she is a secondary verifier. The prices looked likely, so I approved (now in Price field & Notes field). Please check when you have a minute. --clarkmci / j_clark 02:40, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Prices are right, except perhaps for noting them in pennies and cents instead of Pounds, the various Dollars and Rands. But that's no problem in the note field, is it? --Dirk P Broer 10:12, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Not a problem in the Notes field. Personally, in the Notes field, I prefer them in pennies & cents, when that's what's on the book. ... --clarkmci / j_clark 10:46, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I do prefer to keep the "other prices" in notes as stated, rather than trying to convert them. That saves me trying to convert "RO" or "R0" publication prices for South Africa, for instance. (Although we might usefully agree a standard for half-penny prices in future.) BLongley 01:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Jersey/Guernsey

Strange as it may seem there is no such thing as "Channel Islands, England" The Channel Islands (Norman: Îles d'la Manche, French: Îles Anglo-Normandes or Îles de la Manche) are an archipelago of British Crown Dependencies in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey, neither of which is part of the United Kingdom; rather they are considered the remnants of the Duchy of Normandy. --Dirk P Broer 16:13, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Even stranger, Jersey is considered British enough to have hosted the British Science Fiction convention twice. This being "in Great Britain, but not in the UK" does show that the full name for the United Kingdom should be something like "United Kingdom of most of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" or suchlike. This is why I tend to omit a "United Kingdom" or "Great Britain" suffix when it's England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, the country is enough. For the Channel Islands, I tend to just add "Channel Islands" - especially to Jersey, to distinguish it from similarly-named US places. BLongley 18:09, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

All the same, an edit from me changing "Jersey, Channel Islands, England" into "Jersey, Bailiwick of Jersey" is still pending. The Bailiwicks have been administered separately from each other since the late 13th century, and although those unacquainted with the islands often assume they form one political unit, common institutions are the exception rather than the rule. The two Bailiwicks have no common laws, no common elections, and no common representative body (although their politicians consult regularly). There is no common newspaper or radio station. --Dirk P Broer 19:35, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Technically the two bailiwicks are not even in Britain, they are British Crown Dependencies. They are also not part of the EU. --Dirk P Broer 19:47, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, they are not part of the EU. I'm not sure on what basis we had two Eastercons in Jersey - maybe "British Crown Dependency" counts as British enough. I hope people aren't waiting for a decision from me - I may be the only active moderator from England, but I barely consider myself British, let alone part of the UK or Europe. I don't do political discussions about nationhood. My view is that "Channel Islands" is good enough, and if a French editor wants to make it something French I'm not going to object. Removal of "England" is certainly fine by me. Explaining "Bailiwicks" is probably going to go down as well as suggesting that the US editors explain which US states are actually "commonwealths". :-/ BLongley 01:19, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, someday, we French are going to repossess this rightful parts of our national territory ;-). Hauck 06:40, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

No, doing that will ruin the cheap booze on British Science Fiction conventions. I do not want that to happen to BritCon visitors, Cons are expensive enough. BTW: the Isle of Man has the same status as Jersey and Guernsey. --Dirk P Broer 10:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the cheap booze was what got the first Helicon voted for - many fans could cover the extra travel costs by savings on their Real Ale consumption. The second probably got in because we remembered the good weather, the good food, and the excellent chocolate from the first. (Apparently we took home over a ton of chocolate, as the Hotel de France was willing to sell us their 5Kg bars directly.) It's probably been the best hotel I've ever stayed in at a convention. BLongley 16:41, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Canonical names and diacriticals

Please check [this] discussion. I've rejected the submission that prompted it. Cheers! --~ Bill, Bluesman 15:31, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

But my change was solely for the Legal Name, not for the Canonical. --Dirk P Broer 15:51, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

We probably need to address this sooner rather than later. E.g. "å" is being confused with "[" in the Simple Author searches. :-/ BLongley 18:19, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

So NO diacriticals in the Canonical name as a rule. But this all should not mean that the legal name could not be written as it should be. --Dirk P Broer 18:33, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

That's a good rule for now, but obviously we want to fix it properly in the long term. We have very few developers with multi-alphabet skills though. :-/ BLongley 19:11, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks to me like you will want to make use of the UTF-8 capabilities of MySQL. --Dirk P Broer 21:04, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

And I suppose everybody can work with that fine Windows tool "Character Map", and I am sure it has a Linux variant as well. ♖♜--Dirk P Broer 21:58, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we need to migrate the database from Latin-1 to UTF-8, but that's a much more daunting proposition than it may appear. I looked into it at some point and ran away screaming... Ahasuerus 19:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

What's the problem? You install a new version of MySQL for ISFDB and along the install choose for UTF-8 instead of Latin in a test environment and wait what happens. Most likely nothing, except you now have UTF-8 support. --Dirk P Broer 17:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I've read up on it too, and (only mentally) ran away screaming. There would be few or no problems for me as I don't do "funny characters". :-( But we're getting more and more editors that do need such support. I'm happy to help out if I can, but I really wouldn't know how to test the changes. And it looks like we would need to update the Wiki too, as your last but one comment ended with little boxes with "2656" and "265C" in. :-( BLongley 23:27, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

But I see them as a white and a black tower (chess). Maybe you just have to change your default code page (in Windows: View - Encoding - select 'Autoselect'. Mine comes up as UTF-8.☺ (smiley) --Dirk P Broer 01:37, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure we want to go that far - maybe on the Wiki, but not in the database. And when it comes to chess, I still prefer "N-KB3" over algebraic notation. But I'm an old fogey and realise that I'll have to give way to newer editors eventually. BLongley 02:21, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

And even your correction from "knights" to "towers" (we tend to call them "Rooks" or "Castles" in England, if I've got your intention right) doesn't make it any better - they still don't display. :-/ BLongley 00:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

We have several problems: MySQL defines character-sets at "Instance", "Schema", "Table" and "Column" levels. All need checking. In fact there's seven different variables for MySQL as they cover communication with the MySQL server as well - we could store everything correctly and still have it automatically converted. Then we have to cope with the software delivering that data. Python may convert stuff for us, but it's more likely that we have some code that depends on string-lengths in bytes rather than in characters. That's a lot of code that needs checking. And even then, as you pointed out, people need to have a web-browser set to cope with it. Mine IS set to 'Autoselect' and comes up as "UTF-8". It gets worse - if we did go to UTF-8 then we'd have to consider FOUR-byte encoding as allowed in MySQL 5.5. Which we'd need to upgrade to, as our version is so old I think you can't even download it anymore. :-( Then we need to test such changes - which is probably past the skills of any one person here to cover completely, and we don't have a public test server available to spread such a workload around. Does that explain why we run away screaming? BLongley 00:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Alexander Kazantsev

Re: the proposed change of Alexander Kazantsev's birthplace from "Akmolinsk, Russian Empire" to "Akmolinsk, Russian Empire (now Astana, Kazakhstan)", we typically only record the name of the place as it existed when the author was born. Hence we state that Léopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in "Lemberg, Galicia, Austria" and Stanislaw Lem was born in "Lwów, Poland" even though the city is now known as "Lviv". Ahasuerus 20:07, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Oké, clear. --Dirk P Broer 20:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Pilgrimage to Earth

Hi, there! I'd like to add a pub date (1957-11-00) to this verified pub using data from this verified pub. What do you think? Cheers, P-Brane 08:48, 14 September 2011 (UTC).

Nice catch! If only all publishers behaved like that....--Dirk P Broer 08:57, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Done. Cheers! P-Brane 14:18, 14 September 2011 (UTC).

The Inheritors / Gateway to Never

Added scan for your verified The Inheritors / Gateway to Never. Hauck 16:53, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! My 2nd hand copy has had too much sun-damage for a decent scan. --Dirk P Broer 18:20, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

OCLC verifications

Would you please put the OCLC record number used for a Verification in the notes. A link is not necessary, though preferred. Of all the Secondary Verification sources, OCLC is the only one that might have dozens of records pointing at the same publication/edition but not necessarily all the same. The difference in the amount of data between some of their records is significant, and as more library catalogs get added to their over-all database that number grows constantly [and they never seem to purge 'stub' records, of which there are thousands]. All other Secondary sources point to single records, so adding the number for Reginald isn't needed, as an example. Thanks! --~ Bill, Bluesman 16:19, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

As you already noticed, I've done so for all novels in the 'Novels of Tomorrow' series. Strange enough this series also has some short story collections... --Dirk P Broer 17:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for linking the one I had missed. Been catching them as I find them. Was the series extensive? --~ Bill, Bluesman 17:04, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Worldcat comes up with 17 titles, but has some doubles amongst them. --Dirk P Broer 17:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

The Complete Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy Lists

I added notes (there were none) and the introduction to this verified pub. --Willem H. 19:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

One book that could do with a table of contents...--Dirk P Broer 19:26, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, and an index. :) --Willem H. 19:51, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Blue Adept - notes and roman numeral numbered page

I added notes, and fixed the unnumbered roman numeral pages, to your verified Blue Adept. AndonSage 02:00, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

oke✔.--Dirk P Broer 08:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Juxtaposition - notes and unnumbered roman numeral pages

I added notes, and fixed the unnumbered roman numeral pages, to your verified Juxtaposition. AndonSage 02:12, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

oke.☑ --Dirk P Broer 08:09, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Medusa: A Tiger by the Tail

I'm holding your edit to add a 7th printing to this title. I think we already have one in the database here. Can you check this again? --Willem H. 21:06, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

But mine is without this "This edition has the US price and a sticker was applied over top, it has the initials "R.H.C." (Randam House Canada) and "Price in Canada" $4.75." --Dirk P Broer 22:48, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The presence or absence of a sticker doesn't make it two different editions. It's just something that needs to be in the notes. (you could make it "part of this edition has the US price etc." and ask the primary verifier to take a look). --Willem H. 09:17, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Oké, I'll do that. --Dirk P Broer 09:19, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Looks like Uzume already asked more or less the same from Kraang on 28 February. --Dirk P Broer 19:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Around this time period Del Rey had CDN & US printings and the covers of both can have different prices because of the currency difference. They went to duel pricing like present but carried on with the different printings for awhile then in the late 90's stopped the CDN printings.Kraang 00:58, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I think that Willem H. does not think that the stickered edition warrants a seperate entry (Like I proposed when I wanted to add a US priced 7th printing), that is why he asked me to ask you to slightly alter the text in the notes. --Dirk P Broer 07:23, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I updated the note last night and used what you suggested.Kraang 00:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

And I since used the entry to do my verifying, thanks! --Dirk P Broer 07:40, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

The Time Mercenaries - Tandem Edition

I added notes to your verified The Time Mercenaries. Deagol 20:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Paddy Chayevsky

I don't think we want a pseudonym in this case, the author only exists due to this review. It would be better to get the Verifier to adjust the author name in the review and note that the spelling in the review is slightly different from the usual. This saves us a lot of extra authors created from typos and different translations. BLongley 16:26, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

The Eddie Bertin in The Science Fiction Writer's Bulletin#7 is by no chance Eddy C. Bertin? --Dirk P Broer 13:43, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Jim Grimsley

There's a conflict about the author's birth place between Wikipedia and Literati.net websites. Do you know of another source that would be more authoritative? The most compelling source I could find is this biographical piece in a book on Southern writers. The "Meet the Author" section on this B&N listing also gives Rocky Mount. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:13, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Solved: he was born in Rocky Mount, and grew up in Pollocksville. --Dirk P Broer 16:25, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Good detective work. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:47, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Venture SF series

I noticed you have verified most of the books in the Venture SF series. The missing artist name is Eddie Jones. He did the illustrations for all 25 books in the series. See this page - down near the bottom of the page. Deagol 20:17, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

The Timeliner Trilogy

Please notify the primary verifier that you have added cover art credit to this record. Mhhutchins 20:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Just after posting this I noticed the message above from the verifier. Don't know why he didn't just update the record himself, being the primary verifier. Never mind. Mhhutchins 20:29, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Morgen

I'm assuming you don't have copies of this periodical (the page numbers aren't given.) If you don't, please note the source of your data. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:31, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

My source is, firstly, De Boekenplank, the same as for the covers. When I go hunting for more detail (such as the number of pages or the right price), I google till their servers (google's) go down. --Dirk P Broer 17:35, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

You should note the source in the record itself. We shouldn't expect a user to know this or expect them to do the research. If we're going to use another person's research the least we can do is credit them. Sorry if I'm sounding more shrill than usual today, but this whole business about noting sources is really getting me frustrated. (And believe me, you're not the only editor to whom I've had to restate this.) I'm taking your last sentence to be a joke, as I've never known Google's servers to go down. :) But I suppose it's possible. :( Mhhutchins 18:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I count down as taking 5 minutes to come up with an answer, or 5 minutes waiting when i hit back. Mind you, isfdb goes frequently down too at these standards. ;) --Dirk P Broer 18:53, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The ISFDB slows down early in the morning (about 2-3am EST) and will time out, but I've never known Google to time out. Does Google have different servers in different countries? It may be a local problem. Mhhutchins 19:42, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Google has many different servers in many different countries. I find it more available than ISFDB though - ISFDB does seem unresponsive at certain times, and not just the backup periods - I suspect that some people have found how to do an advanced search that cripples our server for a few minutes. :-( We're not really in a position to provide a fix for such though - the few remaining developers and testers experience different results for the same fix on their local systems, and nobody is paying for a Test ISFDB server configured exactly the same as the Live one. (Paying for the Live one is already generous enough.) BLongley 01:22, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

J(aap) Verduyn

I placed your submission for "De Grafzerk van Uaxatún" on hold to check my copy of the book. The main reason was that you entered the pub author as Jaap Verduyn, and the author for the contents as J. Verduyn. First, this creates a second record for the author, while you're not sure what spelling is used in the book, and makes a number of additional edits neccesary to correct this. Second, it should make you a bit more carful about these submissions for pubs you don't own. Don't trust "De Boekenplank", "Fantasfeer" or "Fandata" to use the same criteria for entering data that we have. The three secondary sources all state Jaap Verduyn as author, but the titlepage of this pub has the author's name as J. Verduyn. I'll correct this one, but I don't plan to do this research for everything you submit. Please be a bit more careful! --Willem H. 20:07, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

In the Note to Moderator I already have stated "Jaap Verduyn writing as J. Verduyn", judged by the cover of the book. Knowing Dutch publishers you have little chance of finding a full name within the publication (as you prove with the title page). But we know that J. Verduyn and Jaap Verduyn is the same person. I had hoped that entering the publication as "Jaap" and the stories as "J." would have circumvented the problem by placing that link automatically. --Dirk P Broer 20:22, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

You should by now also know we use the author's name as stated in the pub. If you're not sure of the effect of your edits, ask before you submit. --Willem H. 20:25, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for sorting it out, it appears just like I had intended. Sorry for the extra work on your part, and glad you have a copy yourself :) I only have about 1% of my collection in Dutch, about 40 books or so. But I promise to buy at least the complete Ganymedes series. A former math teacher of me has published in it, and I still cannot find him. His real name is Visser. --Dirk P Broer 21:58, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Promise of the Witch King - correct title?

Can you please check your verified Promise of the Witch King to see if the title should be Witch-King (with a hyphen in the middle)? I'm pretty sure it should have a hyphen. Thanks. AndonSage 01:03, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Hyphen day today! Yes, you are right. --Dirk P Broer 09:48, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

New Writings in SF

Several of our records for books in this series may have incorrect titles, including some that you have verified. Please see this discussion for full details. The following books are the ones where I suspect the title is incorrect. I'd appreciate it if you could double check the form of the title in your copy.

• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-1", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—1"? Willem H. has checked his copies of the Corgi editions and indicated that the they should have an em-dash (alt 0151) instead of a hyphen (except #24).
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-3", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—3"? (hyphen vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-4", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—4"? (hyphen vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-5", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—5"? (hyphen vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-7", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—7"? (hyphen vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-6", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—6"? (hyphen vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-- 8", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—8"? (double dash vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-9", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—9"? (hyphen vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-10", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—10"? (hyphen vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in SF 11", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—11"? As this is the first printing I have already set up the canonical title assuming an answer of yes, but not the publication record.
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-12", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—12"? (hyphen vs em-dash) As this is the first printing I have already set up the canonical title assuming an answer of yes, but not the publication record.
• Dobson edition as "New Writings in SF 13", should it be "New Writings in S-F 13"? As this is the first printing I have already set up the canonical title assuming an answer of yes, but not the publication record.
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.--14", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—14"? (double dash vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in S.F.-15", should it be "New Writings in S.F.—15"? (hyphen vs em-dash)
• Corgi edition as "New Writings in SF-16", should it be "New Writings in SF—16"? (hyphen vs em-dash)
• Dobson edition as "New Writings in SF 17", should it be "New Writings in S-F 17"? As this is the first printing I have already set up the canonical title assuming an answer of yes, but not the publication record.
• Dobson edition as "New Writings in SF 18", should it be "New Writings in S-F 18"?
• Dobson edition as "New Writings in SF. 19", should it be "New Writings in S-F 19"? As this is the first printing I have already set up the canonical title assuming an answer of yes, but not the publication record.

Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 20:44, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I've changed the Dobson editions to the "New Writings in S-F nr" format. The Corgi editions do not have one format, but

most go "New Writings in S.F.—nr", em-dash (in my collection #1, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #12 and #14.
#16 has as format "New Writings in SF—16", em-dash. Note however that I would support the format "New Writings in SF2" for my Bantam edition as well. --Dirk P Broer 09:34, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've edited the volumes where I've heard from all the primary verifiers (or they are inactive). If I don't hear from everybody else in the next couple of days, I'll go ahead and update the remainder.

Sorry to be pedantic, but I want to make sure that the Bantam edition of #2 does not have a space between "SF" and "2" on the title page of the book. The only volume that I own in this series is the Bantam edition of #8 and while is is "SF8" on the cover, the title page has it as "SF 8". If you're certain that it is "SF2" on the title page, we can go ahead and and ask Swfritter as the other active primary verifier and get the records changed. Thanks again. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 23:05, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

That's not pedantic, but good isfdb practice. You want me to double-check, and I did. On cover, spine and titlepage the '2' cannot be any closer to the 'F' of 'SF' than it is (just as close as the 'S' of 'SF'). Please ask Swfritter for his opinion, if he disagrees we may have yet another variant on our hands. --Dirk P Broer 22:23, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Year of the Comet

Added notes and month to [this]. Nice scan! --~ Bill, Bluesman 01:11, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Dissembler / Fixer / Amazon

If you are working from the book (such as here, it is ok (and, in fact, recommended) to delete the note(s) talking about the data's being from Amazon or being entered by Dissembler or Fixer. These are robots, crawling mostly Amazon to get information about books we don't already have. We care that an entry's source of data is them (versus having been entered from an actual book or by an actual person), only so editors know it is ok to be skeptical about anything the entry says. Once we have information taken directly from the book itself, we no longer want editors to be so skeptical. :-) --MartyD 10:35, 25 September 2011 (UTC) ~

I am not skeptical, it is just that the exact date is not to be found in the book. Should I change it to "publication date via Amazon.com"? --Dirk P Broer 11:22, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, yes, that would be good. The statement "Data from...." or "Entry generated...." usually applies to the entire record. Otherwise one should note secondary sources for specific fields. --MartyD 18:37, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

That's generally what I do too. Just some comment that 'Date' or 'Month' or which ever bit of data was solely from amazon. Kevin 19:33, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Emlyn Wiliams

Despite "Emlyn Wiliams", with one "l", being in a verified pub, I think it is indeed a typo. DES (DESiegel60) is/was a notorious mis-typer. I found a couple of entries in Google Books for the 1978 publication that show the name as "Williams" (see, for example, this). On Amazon, I also found this and this, where "Williams" on the cover (at least) is quite clear. I'm going to reject the proposed pseudonym and change the credit and leave DES a note. --MartyD 11:14, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Thomas E. Sanders (Nippawanock)

Hey - I put your pseudonym submission on hold because normally, the addition of a parenthetical addition to a name means that it doesn't appear in the printed work, and is added only for disambiguation. Normally what you would want to do is change the name on all items in Speculations by Thomas E. Sanders, to the name Thomas E. Sanders (Nippawanock). In this case I'm not sure... because I actually found some (Non-Spec Fic) publications where he styles himself as "Thomas E. Sanders Prince Nippawanock" on a title page. Also.. I couldn't find another Thomas E. Sanders in speculative fiction writing that we need to disambiguate against (Though there is a Thomas E. Sanders who works on spec-fic movies in the IMDB)

I think the best way to get a warm and fuzzy about this is to ask someone who has verified a publication with Thomas E. Sanders (Nippawanock) and see if they were using this as a name.. or as a disambiguating name. I took a look and every other instance of the name with Nippawanock has been verified by Mhhutchins, so I've asked him to weigh in and let us know if this was disambiguation, or something else. The solution might end up being combining all the works to the 'non'-Nippawanock name. Thanks Kevin 15:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

It's that I found out that Contento1 has this record as by SANDERS, THOMAS E., (Nippawanock), that I asked for a pseudonym. I do not ask for the name to be replaced. --Dirk P Broer 20:49, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Every instance of the name Thomas E. Sanders (Nippawanock) that I verified is exactly how it was credited in the publications, including the interview. The last part of the name was not added to disambiguate it. Please make no attempt at "combining all the works". If this is determined to be the same person who edited the anthology Speculations, then that name should be made into a variant, as the man was more widely known in his later career by this full name to indicate his American Indian heritage. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:31, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. That was the confusing part... normally parenthetical's are for disambiguation... and the parentheticals show up in the Contento database. Shrug. Submission accepted. Thanks! Kevin 05:00, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Sally Gearhart

Birthplace as "Pearisburg, Virgini, USA"? The state is Virginia, easy enough, is the town/city spelled right? Looks odd. --~ Bill, Bluesman 20:06, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Yep, Pearisburg, Virginia, USA (with an 'a' at the end of Virgini). --Dirk P Broer 21:58, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I'll accept it and add the 'a' to the state. Couldn't find the city in my world atlas, thought maybe Pearlsberg, which would be more 'American'. Cheers! --~ Bill, Bluesman 00:09, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

I've never seen the name of this city spelled out completely. Wikipedia gives it as "Sault Ste. Marie." Even the city's official website gives it that way, and not once as "Sault Sainte Marie." I'd think they would be the final arbiter in any dispute of how the name is spelled. Can we expect a change to all authors born in St. Louis, Missouri to "Saint Louis"? Or those born in St. Paul, Minnesota, or St. Petersburg, Florida? :-) Mhhutchins 17:29, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I do not think non-English (or non-French) speakers will always recognise Ste. as standing for "Sainte" (st. or St. for both male and female Saints is far more common), thereby the name was originally given as Saut Ste. Marie, without l. For Dutch cities like Den Haag we Dutch can also take the longer 's-Gravenhage, for Den Bosch the longer 's-Hertogenbosch. Surely you Americans can do likewise. Funny that you state "Even the city's official website gives it that way, and not once as "Sault Sainte Marie.", as a completely spelled out Sault Sainte Marie is even in the url itself. ;-) --Dirk P Broer 18:07, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

I give you that, but the URL is not visible on the website (just on your browser's address window), and the only name given is the city's official name: Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. Mhhutchins 23:48, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

G. H. R. von Koenigswald

I'm afraid you've discovered (along with me) that the birth place field is limited to an extremely large number of characters, just not enough for this author. Mhhutchins 23:46, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

And the same situation with all the other author updates. You may need to abbreviate some of this birth place. Mhhutchins 23:55, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Maybe it'd be enough to drop 'Province of' or 'Kingdom of'. I'd prefer the latter, because we also usually don't add 'Confederation of' or 'Democratic Republic of'. (Just my line of thoughts, of course). Stonecreek 03:21, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I prefer the dropping the "Province of", to be able to distinguish the "Kingdom of" from the "Free State of" in this particular case. In case of countries like Korea or Congo it might be very illumination adding 'Democratic Republic of', IMHO. --Dirk P Broer 08:33, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

It would be fairly trivial for Ahasuerus to increase the limit from its existing 64 characters. BLongley 15:07, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

But where would be the next limit, and who is to discover that? Besides, database-wise it involves extending the field 'Birth place' for each (already existing and yet-to-be) record. I can live with 64 characters! --Dirk P Broer 19:38, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Final Shadows

In this verified pub I changed the author of "Island of the Seals" from Samantha Seal to Samantha Lee. Also added some notes. --Willem H. 18:44, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Must have been one of my less sharp days, thanks for catching the error. --Dirk P Broer 19:35, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Martha Absher

Hi. I exchanged some email with Martha Absher at Duke, confirmed she's the author in the database, and also confirmed the details in your proposed submission do not apply to her. So I'm going to reject your submission and supply the few details she gave me. Sorry this took so long. --MartyD 01:59, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

No problem, glad that you could verify my proposed submission, even when it turns out that I was wrong: now at least we're certain. Thanks for contacting Martha Absher! --Dirk P Broer 08:49, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Gerben Hellinga (,Jr.)

Hello Dirk! I just added this pub of Coriolis, and I'd like to submit the Dutch variant title. One (or two) problems I have with it, though. It is copyrighted to Gerben Hellinga, but in German it was published as by Gerben Hellinga, Jr. Do you, by chance, know under which name it was originally published? And do you have some advice in determining which name should be the canonical? Stonecreek 14:31, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

You really got the jackpot with Gerben Hellinga, because there are two of them, and they are both related. There is Gerben Hellinga who was born in Samedan, Switzerland in 1937 and there is his nephew Gerben (Graddes) Hellinga, who writes mostly as Gerben Hellinga, Jr. and who was born in Zaltbommel, Netherlands 1938. Coriolis was written by Gerben (Graddes) Hellinga, who as said mostly writes/wrote as Gerben Hellinga, Jr. Confusing, I admit. --Dirk P Broer 14:41, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

So, as I understand the two Wikipedia pages, we can safely assume that all the speculative fiction work in ISFDB can be attributed to Gerben Hellinga, Jr. as canonical name? Stonecreek 16:58, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Gerben Hellinga, Jr. alias Gerben Graddes Hellinga is the speculative fiction writer of the two. --Dirk P Broer 19:13, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

"Revolt and Rebirth", by Jefferson Swycaffer

I'm trying to standardize the publisher information for various books from "New Infinities". It is, in almost every case, listed as an imprint of Ace SF, hence I'm changing the publisher listings to "New Infinities / Ace". But "Revolt and Rebirth" is listed by Amazon as being from Berkley, not Ace. And while Ace is owned by Berkley, their books are usually listed as by them. Since you verified this book, could you check whether it's listed as published by Ace, by Berkley, or both? Thanks, Chavey 15:36, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Jefferson Swycaffer's "Revolt and Rebirth" has on it's copyright page the remark "The "BSM" logo is a trademark belonging to Berkley Publishing Corporations, Inc." (the BSM logo features at the top of the spine of this publication) and "Distributed to the book trade by Berkley Publishing Group, 200 Madison Avenue, New York 10016". --Dirk P Broer 15:48, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I found a couple of other "New Infinities" which also clearly said Berkley (or BSM) instead of Ace, so I think there have to be two "standards" for them. Chavey 06:58, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

OCLC verifications [2]

.... and you're [still] not putting in the numbers ..... --~ Bill, Bluesman 03:34, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, started the day redeeming myself. Wish there was a way to find out which records I have OCLC-verified without letting a number behind in the notes field.....but then again how do you distinguish that from the titles I negatively verified, as I could not find the edition in Worldcat, even though there was a link in some cases (to another edition)? --Dirk P Broer 09:08, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Ask Bill Longley. He's written scripts for particular searches before. There is also "Recent Verifications" but that's very time-consuming, pages only scroll 100 at a time. --~ Bill, Bluesman 15:17, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Used "Recent Verifications" this morning to check last 200 verifications. --Dirk P Broer 18:33, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Going back on Brian Aldiss would probably catch a hundred or so ..... --~ Bill, Bluesman 16:48, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

A Hunderd? Can't be all mine, I have no more than 40 books or so by Brian Aldiss. But I will start at Douglas Adams, and re-work the 'A' in my collection. --Dirk P Broer 17:40, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, but you did go through Aldiss from Reginald and Clute, and there are lots of OCLCs with no numbers! :-)) --~ Bill, Bluesman 17:49, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Guilty as charged I'm afraid. I'll give each and every missing OCLC number, and link those who have no ISBN, or a link that does not point at the right edition. --Dirk P Broer 18:00, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Lester del Rey - Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, Second Annual Collection

I corrected the entry in Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, Second Annual Collection for "Miscount" to be 'as by C. N. Gloeckner', instead of by Caroline Gloeckner. This matches my copy in hand. Thanks Kevin 18:45, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Good catch! I think that it may have been correct in the past, and changed due to this entry for C. N. Gloeckner, transferring all entries onder that name to Caroline Gloeckner. --Dirk P Broer 22:19, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Robert H. Davis

You just did an author update on Robert H. Davis, which included adding a birth place of Brownsville, Nebraska, and also included a link to his IMDB page, which claims he was born in Montréal, Québec. May I suggest adding a bibliographic note for him commenting that you believe the second web link that you added more than you believe IMDB? Chavey 14:10, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Will do, as I indeed consider the second source more reliable than IMDB (and could verify Brownsville, Nebraska via another source). --Dirk P Broer 15:30, 11 October 2011 (UTC)

Ruth Manning[-]Sanders

Hi. What is your source for proposing "Sanders" as the legal last name for Ruth Manning-Sanders, instead of "Manning-Sanders"? Thanks. --MartyD 10:13, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

It is the logical consequence of the fact that she was born as Ruth Vernon Manning, and married George Sanders in 1911. At least every other female author has been treated that way so far when it comes to the legal name. I stay away from the canonical name, but she was -after 1911- Mrs. Sanders, legally. Her father was not named Manning-Sanders, nor were her children. --Dirk P Broer 10:21, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

When it comes to names, it's a matter of choice , not logic. There are many women who retain their maiden name after marriage by hyphenating it to their husband's last name, making the hyphenated one their legal name. I'm not saying that's what happened in this case, but we need to get the real facts before jumping to a "logical consequence" of facts. Mhhutchins 15:23, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

There may be many in everyday life, but this is the first I encounter (while editing) in isfdb (and I've seen a few). --Dirk P Broer 15:41, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Did a query for the hyphen in the legal name field and came upon more than 100 cases. Some involved aristrocracy, others married women. --Dirk P Broer 21:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I have a friend whose legal last name is a hyphenated form combining her maiden and her husband's name (and in the opposite order). It's important when entering information not to guess or make assumptions, especially in places where we have no capacity for notes within the data record. Thanks, and by the way, thanks for all the work you are putting into filling out the author records. --MartyD 09:36, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I did a check on her published work and saw that she used the hyphenated form of her name, unlike e.g. Alice Sheldon(-Bradley), a.k.a. as James Tiptree, who is used as example in the how-to. --Dirk P Broer 09:41, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Steve Savile

According to Wikipedia, Tyne and Wear didn't exist until 1974. When Savile was born in 1969, Newcastle was in the county of Northumberland. Mhhutchins 15:32, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

I'll check other instances of Tyne and Wear...--Dirk P Broer 15:39, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

And not all Tyne and Wear was formerly Northumberland either...All in all, a good catch for a day, thanks for correcting me.--Dirk P Broer 15:51, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Margaret Newcastle

There is no pub record under this name, only a title record. As you suggested ("if I had the ability to merge these name") in your submission to make that name into a variant of this one, I'm going to merge the two titles, (not the names), retaining the title of the second record credited to the second name. This will, in effect, delete the first name, as there will be no titles under it. (The db automatically deletes names once all title records associated with it are deleted.) See, you had the ability to merge, only you thought you needed to merge names, when all you needed to do was merge the title records. After I've merged the records, your submission will be invalid because the name will no longer exist in the db. Mhhutchins 02:44, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

The netto effect will be the same, so I have no no problems with it. BTW: I do encounter names without associated titles or publications now and then. If I am not mistaken Mogan Savile is one of them. --Dirk P Broer 07:47, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there will be "stray authors" (authors without associated titles), usually because there's a review for a book that has no pub record in the db, or if a pub record's author credit doesn't match the title record's author credit (which creates a "stray title"). Can't find Mogan Savile though. Someone else may have cleared it out? Mhhutchins 18:37, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I have left a biographic comment for Morgan Savile, which is a pseudonym for a collaboration that we don't yet have (an Ace Double sort of thing). --Dirk P Broer 18:40, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Paul Scheerbart

Hello, Dirk! I approved your submission on Scheerbart, but - since the German wikipedia says so - would like to change Karl into Carl. Would that be alright for you? And keep them author updates coming. Stonecreek

German Wikipedia takes precedence on German authors. --Dirk P Broer 09:01, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Chester Cuthbert

Hi. I have your proposed Chester D. Cuthbert modifications on hold. Do you have a source for the legal name "Manchester"? I could find only one reference, and that makes it sound like he changed his name to Chester (although it is not at all clear whether that's what is meant). Thanks. --MartyD 11:35, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

I've named my source here, but it may mean he just changed his calling name, at least that's what it means to me. Digging further to answer this brought us Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada as place of birth and a memorial with his full name. --Dirk P Broer 09:42, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

I saw the Sol Rising piece, and it is hard to tell. Nice find of the memorial. Its using Manchester lends to the idea that he adopted "Chester" in use but remained Manchester. Thanks. --MartyD 11:10, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

New Writings in S-F 17

In this verified pub I changed the number of pages from 189 to 190 (from the help text: "It is fairly common for the last page of text in a book to have a different graphic layout which may not include a page number. The "last printed page number" rule would then use a page number before the end of the work. In these cases, count forward to the end of the text and use that as the last page number."). Also dropped the note "pagination of contents from Contento1" and added the cover artist and notes about the artist and the ISBN. --Willem H. 18:10, 15 October 2011 (UTC)"

Also added a coverscan. --Willem H. 14:21, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

New Writings in S-F 19

In this verified pub I added the cover artist, publication month and notes. --Willem H. 18:36, 15 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, you have a copy with dust jacket. All my Dobson titles for New Writings in S-F sadly have to do without. I hope your cover is suited for a cover scan to go with the publication record. --Dirk P Broer 09:21, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

Cover scan is added now. --Willem H. 14:22, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! Always wanted to know how it should look like. --Dirk P Broer 14:24, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Sam Nicholson - Captain Empirical - An Analog Book

I added your verified pub Captain Empirical to a publication series An Analog Book Thanks Kevin 03:48, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Author updates

I accepted the submission that changed "Yves Thériault" to "Yves Theriault" before I realized you'd removed the accent. I've restored it. Certain letters are searchable with or without an accent. That's why you can search for "Philip Jose Farmer" and get "Philip José Farmer" in the results. I can't tell you which accented letters remain searchable, but I'm sure that é and á are. This same applies to Felisberto Hernández. I'll accept the submission, but restore the accent. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:32, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I removed the accent because you can not get back from the biographic and bibliographic comments of an author that has an accent in his/her canonical name. --Dirk P Broer 19:50, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

That's a bug in the template that creates the back-link. Maybe someone familiar with wiki template writing (not me!) can fix it. Removing the accented letters is a bandage that helps in the short run, but actually changes the way a work is credited, which is more detrimental in the long run. Fixing problems on the wiki side should not hurt the database side. Mhhutchins 20:12, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I thought I fixed that template back in January. If you give me an example of one that's not working, I'll take a look at it. --MartyD 13:04, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Look at the name that was originally cited in this message: Yves Thériault. The Bio link doesn't work from the db summary page. (It thinks you're editing the page if you click on it.) And on the wiki page (here) the link back to the db summary page comes back with "Author Not Found". As Dirk (and I) suspect, it has something to do with the accented letters in the author's name. Thanks for looking at it. Mhhutchins 14:41, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see. This isn't a template problem. The link goes to a page with the unencoded "é" (notice when you follow the link from the author's summary, you end up at http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Bio:Yves%20Thériault...). The page, however, is in the wiki with some sort of 2-byte encoding ("%C3%A9", with each "%" representing a byte) for that letter, and the browser displays that as "é", but it's not. And then the back-link tries to go to a name we don't actually have. The forward-link is in "edit" mode because the page it's expecting to find isn't in the database, even though the Wiki then matches it up (our query isn't doing what the Wiki's query does). I think we can probably move the Wiki page, and all will be ok; then the question will be how did the Wiki page end up there with that encoding. I will experiment and try to figure it out. --MartyD 10:28, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the wiki page was created from the link on the author's summary page. I know nothing about the software that creates those links or the template on the wiki page that creates a link back to the db record, so I take your word that it's not a template problem. This will have to be fixed before we start adding all of those names with non-standard alphabet characters when support for non-English records is fully implemented. Thanks for working on it. Mhhutchins 02:40, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

I tried "Move"ing the page to a plain "e" and then back to the "é", and the Wiki's form itself produced the "%C3%A9" encoding we see. The odd thing is my browser's default encoding uses "%E9" (one character). So we may need both a Wiki change and a software change that knows about what the Wiki is doing. I will keep playing and will let you both know if I figure out anything useful. --MartyD 01:18, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

So you suspect that a mere update of the Wiki to accept UTF-8 encoding itself will not be enough? --Dirk P Broer 19:44, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it will not be enough. I think our best bet will be to change the ISFDB side's pages to use UTF-8 and then change how the software looks for pages in the Wiki part of the database. It will take a little experimenting, but I hope it will not be too difficult to do. I asked Ahasuerus if he has tried any of this in the past, in case there is some experience to help us out. --MartyD 01:15, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Follow-ups on pseudonym creation

I'm not sure if you're aware (and you may actually already do it), but when you create a pseudonym, you should go back to the pseudonymous author's page and make variants of all of the title records to the canonical author's name. Of course, it's better to wait until the original submission creating the pseudonym is accepted. Just in case you're not familiar with the protocol. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:43, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I would consider it a bit premature to make titles variants before the change is accepted, and NO, I was not familiar with the protocol. But if the variant making needs to be done after the acceptance of a pseudonym/variant name: can't that be automated? Just my 2c. --Dirk P Broer 19:54, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a software designer, but I don't think it can be programmed automatically, Especially since a pseudonym can be shared by more than one author. Mhhutchins 20:05, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

You got me there. --Dirk P Broer 20:07, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Michael's point about "a pseudonym can be shared by more than one author" is the sticking point - it's not safe to do it entirely automatically. It would be possible to add an option, recommended default OFF, that would allow such a mass update if the editor and moderator are sure about it, but then there's the problem of canonical titles that already exist: it would be dangerous to make assumptions so there could still be many merges to do. If somebody has a good reason for such a feature, e.g. they want to clean-up Philip Stephensen-Payne, then I can look into developing such, but it probably needs a lot of warnings and double-checks to make sure it's safe. BLongley 16:04, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

If no one wants to go through the effort of creating hundreds of variant records for the "Philip Stephensen-Payne" titles, we can just declare that "Phil Stephenson-Payne" is an Englishman who publishes as "Philip" in the UK and "Phil" in the US, as it appears to be a pretty solid line between the two credits. Of course, I'm only joking here. Eventually someone will have to create the variants and a moderator will have to accept the submissions... Unless some enterprising software designer can figure out how to do all this is one submission. Mhhutchins 14:48, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

It is indeed a staggering amount of titles that has to be proccessed. --Dirk P Broer 16:31, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I know, I entered a load of them after acquiring a long run of "Paperback Parlour" and "Paperback Inferno" - the followups are daunting. And he hasn't yet expressed a preference - that's my excuse for not doing them yet! ;-) (Also that it should be amenable to a software solution when Ahasuerus gets some time to check it.) BLongley 17:54, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

O'Neal Gear - vs - Gear

I notice that at the top of Gear-Gear that the heading is simply "Kathleen and Michael Gear". Is there some push or statement available online that Kathleen O'Neal Gear she wants to alphabetized in the O's, while her husband and writing partner is alphabetized in the G's? Perhaps something that they have published where the name is hyphenated as O'Neal-Gear? I've got your submission on hold pending further details. Thanks Kevin 15:29, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

At that exact same website you can see that she publishes her present books under the name Kathleen O'Neal Gear, which is as far as I remember -I have no means of seeing into my edits- the way I have proposed to write the name. --Dirk P Broer 19:34, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

To make things more clear: she definitely does not sign her books as Kathleen Gear. The O'Neal part of her name is a surname, so I guess this is an unhyphenated married name O'Neal Gear, Kathleen Myrtle. At least, in my eyes it is. --Dirk P Broer 23:18, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

The part of the submission I am hesitant about is changing the last name from "Gear" to "O'Neal Gear". (I hadn't realized that you couldn't see your own submission.. sorry about that). I agree that she definitely includes "O'Neal" as part of her name... the part I'm not seeing documentation on, is including it as part of her last name. My own mother for instance considers her maiden name to be a second middle name. She did not hyphenate her last name.. she added a new last name onto the end as in first old_middle maiden_(new/2nd_middle) husbands_surname. This appears to be what Kathleen O'Neal Gear has done as well. I checked the Library of Congress data, and they classify her with a lastname "Gear". Furthermore a specific search at the LOC for "O'Neal Gear, Kathleen" finds a redirect to "Gear, Kathleen O'Neal". I checked a few amazon 'look insides' to see the LOC submission data, but all the shared books just submit her husband as the primary author (In lastname, firstnames format). Can you find any documentation that indicates the author considers her last name to be "O'Neal Gear"? Thanks - Kevin 04:33, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

She is alphabetized in the new Science Fiction Encyclopedia under Gear as well, and when it is custom to consider the maiden name to be a second middle name in the US, when not hyphenated (it definitely is not here), then I have to withdraw that part of my edit. --Dirk P Broer 10:16, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

No problem, and I don't know about The Custom... it seems we have so many of them when it comes to the question of "What to do with the maiden name?". My wife's maiden name was Smith so it's pretty much disappeared. Others can and will vary (shrug). - Thanks again Kevin 23:48, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Around here names cannot disappear, unless you do so in court, and the name of birth always is in the legal name (wheter you use it in daily life or not). --Dirk P Broer 23:52, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Herminie Templeton Kavanagh

For Herminie Templeton Kavanagh, do you have a source for changing her legal name from "Kavanagh, Herminie Templeton" to "Kavanagh, Herminie Allen McGibney Templeton"? I don't find a reference that indicates she maintained her maiden name (McGibney) as part of her legal name once married. And while typically women maintain their birth middle name, since she used her first husband's lastname as her middle name once she re-married, it is possible she dropped it. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:55, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

You do not "drop" a part of a legal name, you have to go to court in order to change it. As to what name you want to use in daily life that's up to you, but a legal name is not like a shirt and your name of birth stays with you until a judge decides you are right to legally change your name. A marriage adds to the legal name and does not take away. If a name of a re-married lady is to change it will the name of a previous husband that can be dropped. If the name of the previous husband is retained there is no reason to assume that the name of birth is dropped instead, at last not where I live. --Dirk P Broer 16:57, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Not quite. That is not true for English common law which would apply if she was married in Iowa as one source states and I think also applies if she was married in Ireland as the other sources state. Definitely in the US (except for Louisiana), a married woman's legal name is whatever she puts on the marriage license and a judge has nothing to do with it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:17, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

"whatever she puts on the marriage license"... Unheard of in the Netherlands. It is easier to get a new social security number here than have your name changed (and it costs less). Makes genealogical research a real pain in the ass I suppose. --Dirk P Broer 17:20, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

It does cause some genealogical problems, but it's rare that the process is used for a dramatic change in the legal name. For example, my wife had her name legally changed from "Margaret" to "Peggy" by simply writing "Peggy Rita Chavey" on the marriage license when we were married. A friend of mine, "William Post" had his name changed to "William Danos" when he married "Johanna Danos" by the same process. And a couple I know, whose last names were "Emer" and "Mertz" created a new last name of "Emertz" on their marriage license. But this is a fairly modern tactic among marrying couples (at least in the US), where genealogical research is easy to do. The traditional use of this provisio has been primarily used, as you might expect, to decide whether to drop a previous last name, to replace (or add) a previous last name as a middle name, etc. Thus genealogy isn't a problem; but bibliography IS a problem. Chavey 19:02, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

I rejected this edit, but I updated the record to include the website you were also adding. If you do find a source, feel free to resubmit. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:10, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Oké, the wikipedia article cited various articles of the Chicago Tribune, but I haven't found a marriage anouncement, or any article in the archive that bears upon this case, sofar. Better luck next year, or when I find her birth date. --Dirk P Broer 20:16, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Margaret Aldiss

Hi. I have one of your author updates on hold. Do you have a source for Margaret Aldiss' carrying her maiden name as a middle name? I found Locus1 and Reginald claim her name to be "Margaret Christie Aldiss" (the SFE does as well, but I don't know how authoritative it is. I found some references to her having works published as Margaret Manson and her maiden name's being Manson, but nothing indicating she didn't drop the Manson when she got married. Thanks. --MartyD 13:49, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

But don't we already have the Canonical Name as the name a writer actually uses? How 'legal' is the Legal Name we use? In my eyes the legal name is the name authorithies would use to address you, the name that would be on your passport and/or wedding certificate. But, when SFE does not use the maiden name in the corresponding name, I bow to their {John Clute c.s.) authority. --Dirk P Broer 20:00, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Name the person uses WHEN WRITING is different from the name the person uses legally (although, of course, they might be the same), most likely their full name. Our canonical name is for the most common name by which the author is credited. Legal name is for their full, legal name. There is no hard rule about what marriage does to a maiden name. Three examples: My wife changed her legal name to use my surname, dropping her maiden surname while keeping her middle name (A B C -> A B D, not A B C D). A friend's wife changed her legal name to a hyphenated form combining her maiden surname and her husband's surname (A B C -> A B D-C). And another friend of mine did not change her name at all when she got married. So there's no way to judge by looking at a proposed name whether it's correct. All I was asking is in what source did you find "Margaret Christie Manson Aldiss" cited? I couldn't find it. Thanks. --MartyD 21:46, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

I guess I'm thrown off by the use of the word 'legal'. Law is not the same everywhere. As I explained earlier you have to go to court here in the Netherlands to drop your maiden name from your legal name. As I found no use of Aldiss-Manson or Manson-Aldis I thought she kept it, American-wise, as a middle name. --Dirk P Broer 21:51, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you saying then you made it up and have no source for it? If that's true, I will have to reject it. We don't want to be recording guesses. --MartyD 21:59, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

You may reject it. I wanted to record her maiden name, but I can use the biographic note for that. --Dirk P Broer 22:09, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, that sounds good. Thanks. --MartyD 11:01, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I think this is the right decision. In the UK, it's far more common NOT to keep the maiden name after marriage. In fact, by the next generation it's considered obscure enough to have "what is your mother's maiden name?" as a security question! BLongley 02:30, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Clone

Found/added an image to [this]. --~ Bill, Bluesman 18:33, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

I think I will supply a better scan soon, but this one will do nice for the moment. --Dirk P Broer 23:33, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Road to Corlay

Found an image, added month [Locus1] for [this]. --~ Bill, Bluesman 23:06, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

K. J. Wignall

Your update on this author's birthdate is given as 0000-03-15. Do you have the correct year? Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:12, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

The author is less than clear "The birthday seems clear-cut - March 15th (though some sources cite March 2nd - either way, he's a Pisces for those who hold with such things). The year is less clear - 1965, 1966, 1967 or 1970." --Dirk P Broer 21:46, 14 November 2011 (UTC)

Moffett = Moffatt

I checked the issue in which this piece appeared and see that the couple's name is incorrectly credited at the top of the piece, but that it appears correctly spelled at the bottom. I'm going to correct the credit in the record and note the two spellings. You can cancel the two submissions creating the pseudonyms. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:02, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Oké! The mistake has been made more often, just check http://www.amazon.com/Sherlock-Holmes-Mystery-Magazine-ebook/dp/B0062NUP18 Amazon.com] or Amazon.co.uk for "You Are My Sherlock". --Dirk P Broer 21:41, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

I imagine that happening often. Moffett is a much more popular spelling than Moffatt. Mhhutchins 23:11, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Author data for pseudonym

There should be no author data (birth place, dates, web page links) for pseudonymous authors. All of that data should entered for the canonical author. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:33, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

The Lynn Beach/Katherine Lance/Kathryn Lance pages are pretty mixed up. I'm going to be working on them for the next hour or so, and hopefully they should be straightened out. Thanks for bringing this situation to my attention. Mhhutchins 19:53, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Discovered it by accident, going over all authors/artists with a birthday or day of death of 26 November -like Berkeley Livingston/Lester Barclay and Lynn Beach/Katherine Lance/Kathryn Lance-. The deeper I go into a person, the more likely I am to discover a situation like Lynn/Katherine/Kathryn, often only after having edited one of them, helas. --Dirk P Broer 20:30, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Finished with the project. I even added five or six titles published as "Lynn Beach" that wasn't in the db. I also cleaned up the Berkeley Livingston/Lester Barclay pages, removing the author data from the Barclay page. and varianting the stories by B. E. Liston and Burt B. Liston. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:19, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you perhaps know of a way to query for authors/artists born on a given day that is not today? All my known wildcards give me just people with 0000-00-00 in their dates. I have missed two days in my current project because I was having a short brake and I have found no way other than entering each and every year between 1700 and 2011 for those two days. --Dirk P Broer 22:20, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I made the same query several years ago and at that time it wasn't possible to search for a specific date. I found this query made last year and it wasn't possible then either. I hate your having to go through all that trouble to find authors with specific dates. Let me know in the future if you're away from the database and I can do screenshots for the days you're gone. Mhhutchins 22:43, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

It just occurred to me that the list posted on the main page must be generated by a script which changes every day. Maybe one of the editors who have a local copy of the database might be able to re-generate the list using a script. Mhhutchins 22:46, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Happy to help. Let me know what days you want. --MartyD 23:10, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

9650 author records in the 2011-11-19 backup have a birthdate that includes both a month and a day. I could make you a spreadsheet (or a CSV file) of all of them, if you want. Just let me know what fields you'd like. --MartyD 00:17, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

At this moment it is about two days in October, but it occured to me that I might be able to retrieve the information by re-setting my computer date, or is that a bit too nifty? --Dirk P Broer 00:36, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

If you have a local copy of the database and you run off that, re-setting the computer date will work. But the scripts are going to run off the computer the server is on, not the computer that the client is on. So changing your computer date and logging into isfdb.org won't fool it. Chavey 05:27, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

(unindent) Send me your email address (you can use "E-mail this user" on me), and I'll send you a file with the query results for all days. --MartyD 14:09, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Brian Lumley

Hi Dirk! The Brian Lumley image didn't come out right[4]. Thanks!Kraang 03:12, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

And I updated the link because it -the original- didn't come out to begin with...--Dirk P Broer 09:06, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Looks like this has the same problem as Amazon links. You have to remove the text between the last two periods, thus http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTI4MjI1OTkwNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzEyMzM3MQ@@._V1._SY314_CR34,0,214,314_.jpg becomes http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTI4MjI1OTkwNl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMzEyMzM3MQ@@.jpg for the image to display right. Another thing, I don't think we have permission to link to IMDB images, at least they are not on the list. --Willem H. 11:03, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I was already afraid that would be the case. --Dirk P Broer 11:07, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Anne Murphy

Looking at the new page you provided in the submission for Anne K. G. Murphy, it looks to me like her last name should now be "Gray", not "Murphy", and I doubt very much "Murphy" should be included in her legal name -- that is from her previous marriage. I notice here she refers to herself as "Anne Kimberly Gray", with no "Gay", either. Since you found an email address, you might send her mail and ask. I have the submission on hold. Thanks, --MartyD 12:46, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I found in SF December Birthdays a listing for her as Anne K.G.M. Gray, hence the inclusion of 'Murphy'. I also think that at least some of her writing is published as Anne Murphy, perhaps even all that we have in our database so far. --Dirk P Broer 13:03, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I got an answer: "Thank you for asking! I had considered retaining the Murphy as a middle name in addition to Gay in the Anne KGM Gray configuration, but decided against it, and also dropped my maiden name when I got married to avoid confusion and return to the (3) initials I was born with, AKG. My legal name is now Anne Kimberly Gray. I'm not sure what if any mechanisms isfdb has for keeping track of former names. Since my reviews were published when I was Anne KG Murphy, it would be nice to make it clear that Anne Kimberly Gay Murphy and Anne Kimberly Gray are the same person. (as an aside, I never used periods for my middle initials in print when I had two of them, preferring the appearance of Anne KG Murphy to Anne K. G. Murphy. I do, however, use a period in Anne K. Gay and Anne K. Gray - my maiden and current names, respectively) I hadn't actually realized I was in isfb, so this is an honor as well as a favor." --Dirk P Broer 13:28, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Very nice! I will accept the submission and alter the legal name. I'll leave to you to decide whether you want to act on the "KG" vs. "K. G." and do some more varianting. --MartyD 17:21, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The Wiki bio page you created for Anne K. G. Murphy became moot when you changed the author's canonical name to "Anne KG Murphy". You can copy the data and then create a new bio page for the new name. And to follow-up on the two submissions that I rejected: once you changed the canonical name, all db records credited to her were changes as well. So it was not necessary to follow that with submissions changing the credits in the pub records. Mhhutchins 21:00, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, if the name automatically changes with the publications once you edit the canonical name, can't the same mechanism not be applied to the Wiki? I guess it's much harder to do so, but it is not impossible. And I actually first made the changes to the publications before changing the canonical name, just to be sure. --Dirk P Broer 00:49, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

We should be able to "Move" it (one of the tabs at the top of the page) to the new name. The Wiki will create a forward reference, should anything still be pointing to the old name. I will do that. --MartyD 02:48, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see a new one is there already. Oh well. I left the old one alone. Keep "move" in mind for the future. --MartyD 02:51, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

Lancelot Hogben Link

I rejected your change to Lancelot Hogben as the added webpage URL produces an error. Please check the URL and resubmit a corrected one. The link being added was: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=162693§ioncode=6

Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:42, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

the correct url is http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=162693&sectioncode=6. I'll re-submit and look what else I can turn up. --Dirk P Broer 21:45, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Upon submitting it again presents itself as http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=162693§ioncode=6, leaving out 'sect'. --Dirk P Broer 21:52, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

As I'm assuming you did a straight copy, it's probably some type of encoding error. I've put the submission on hold and will point a developer towards it. That way they will be able to see the problem and perhaps fix it if the error is on the ISFDB side. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:56, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Listed it at ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard#Submitted_Link Error. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:05, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Right, it's not outputting "&section" correctly. I'll see if I can fix it tonight... Ahasuerus 22:09, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick action. Funny that it leaves out 'sect' and keeps 'ioncode=6'. --22:48, 9 December 2011 (UTC)~

"&sect" is a reserved HTML combination which means "§" -- see this page for details. The page would also have problems with a dozen other character sequences after "&", you just happened to run into one of them. This is a part of a larger problem, but I may only be able to fix this particular bug tonight. Ahasuerus 22:53, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Aha, a case of faulty page design on the side of www.timeshighereducation.co.uk, this must give problems in more places than just isfdb. --Dirk P Broer 10:57, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The link doesn't display correctly, but it is stored correctly and will work properly even though it is rendered as the section symbol, so it should be safe to approve this. I checked, and subsequent edits will maintain the proper value, too -- it's just a display issue on the page and in the moderator screen. --MartyD 14:01, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Glad it's only a display issue. --Dirk P Broer 14:03, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Okay, I went ahead and approved it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

It's not a fault with www.timeshighereducation.co.uk. The ampersand is a valid URL character and is a standard parameter separator. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:17, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

See this page for details, as Ahasuerus pointed out. I'd advise against ampersands in url's....--Dirk P Broer 14:20, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

That page is about HTML and not URL. See this page for an explanation of query strings. Ampersands are a valid in URLs and are widely used. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:48, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

"&sectioncode" is a properly formed URL segment, but our software doesn't display it correctly. It displays "&sectioncode" rather than "&sectioncode", which would then be displayed by the browser as "&sectioncode". It's just a small part of a much larger problem with the way we escape (or fail to escape) various HTML and Unicode characters on many pages. Since we use more and more Unicode characters, we'll need to beef this part up soon. 20:53, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Pierre Louys

Hello, Dirk! Was your submission right to delete all birth and death data concerning this author? (And what is the reason behind this?) Stonecreek 18:31, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Christian, when you see this days birth dates there is a Pierre Louys and a Pierre Louÿs . Removing the data from the first Pierre removes him from that view. The first already is a name variant of the latter, and all publications are under him. --Dirk P Broer 20:29, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Ah, yes, thanks! I noticed today that there was a double, but had already forgotten which one it was. Stonecreek 20:37, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

No problem. Funny spelling by the way, Louÿs. In Dutch you are forbidden to place a diaeresis (double dot) on a i grecque. --Dirk P Broer 20:49, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Der letzte Tag der Schöpfung

I added the 'Vorwort' by Frank Schätzing and the pub. series to your verified pub. I hope I did it right. I wonder if there's a cover artist mentioned, maybe on the copyright page? Stonecreek 11:26, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Hi Christian, I've added Jürgen Rogner a the cover artist. The same illustration is also before the numbered pages, but in full. --Dirk P Broer 16:50, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Also added Wolfgang Jeschke's afterword to the 2005 edition of this title. --Dirk P Broer 17:16, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you! If you don't mind I'll add the 'extra' cover art as [2] pages, one art page, one blank. There was also a preface by Brian W. Aldiss in earlier editions, but I guess that got skipped. Stonecreek 19:14, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

No Brian Aldiss anymore in the 2005 edition. --Dirk P Broer 20:45, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Author web page links

When you get a chance can you look at the three links on this list leading to the orlando.cambridge.org website? All three authors had birthdays on November 14, and I thought perhaps that you'd added the links to their author data. It looks like you have to be a subscriber in order to access the pages, so I removed them from author's summary pages. It's possible at the time they were linked that anyone could access the pages without logging in. Thanks for looking. Mhhutchins 21:37, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

The three ladies all died on a 14th of November, and it looks like access to the Orlando pages was free around the 14th of November, but not anymore so. --Dirk P Broer 23:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Ooh, that's a user-vicious site indeed! :-( I might qualify for access via one of my two library-memberships, or one of our more academic editors might have institutional access, but with Terms of Use like these I think we might as well give up. Shame really: it looks right up Darrah Chavey's street. BLongley 06:55, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

You're right; that's right up my alledy. But I checked, and my institution doesn't have access to that database. My librarian gave me a few replacements that we do have access to, and which may not have the "You can't use anything you get from us" terms of use. Chavey 21:36, 1 March 2012 (UTC)

Raft

If you have a fourth printing of [this] a new record with 0000-00-00 should be created. --~ Bill, Bluesman 20:36, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

The 4th printing is actually one pound cheaper (£5.99) than the first (£6.99). --Dirk P Broer 20:48, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Same with 'Ring' which you cloned but didn't change the date. That one I fixed. --~ Bill, Bluesman 20:37, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Meant to change things after verification. --Dirk P Broer 20:48, 14 December 2011 (UTC)

Cawthorn's illustration for The Distant Suns

Hello, Dirk! I rejected (probably mistakenly) your submission for making the second illustration by Jim Cawthorn into a variant, thinking it were two illustrations by him in the book, so that the second would have better titled with a [2]. But I hope I undid my mistake by directly merging it. Stonecreek 13:52, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually the book, if my 1989 NEL edition has the same number of illustrations as the 1975 edition, is quite richly illustrated. You better ask the first verifier for this edition, Willem H, about his idea behind the two entries for 1975. BTW: the cover of the 1975 edition was also by James/Jim Cawthorn. --Dirk P Broer 14:03, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

The probable reason for the two entries may be just that they were two times entered, which led to two titles. But I'll ask Willem. Thank you! Stonecreek 14:25, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Might be because of the pseudonym (Jim/James Cawthorn) and I just forgot to delete one of the entries. Looks good now, thanks! One other thing, is the introduction to the 1989 edition really shortfiction? --Willem H. 16:13, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

An essay, of course. Thanks for the spotting!. --Dirk P Broer 21:24, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Breaking Dawn

I am afraid I had to reject your proposed addition of "Twilight/New Moon" to this pub. "Twilight/New Moon" is a regular series, not a publication one and the Title record is already a part of it. By the way, the Amazon image appears to be dead, would you happen to have a better source for it? Ahasuerus 21:52, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

There is a title record in it, but not this one at the moment I submitted it. It was under 'Novels', not under the series (there was only one ATOM edition then -at least for November 2011-, now suddenly six -two of which for November 2011). --Dirk P Broer 21:57, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

We had two title records for Breaking Dawn, one in the series and the other one as a standalone. I merged the two as part of the cleanup, so now all of their pubs appear together.

However, your submission was created via the "Edit Publication" page, which doesn't let you add/modify series information for Title records. It only allows you to add/edit publication series information, so if I had approved the submission, the software would have created a new publication series, "Twilight/New Moon", which would have been unrelated to the regular series of the same name. Ahasuerus 22:27, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Right, that was my mistake, should have done a merge of the two title records, like you did. Editing titles has become a bit rusty after 3000 authors. --Dirk P Broer 23:58, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Hey, author records need love too! :) Glad you are working on them! Ahasuerus 07:29, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Link should be this --Dirk P Broer 21:57, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Added, thanks! Ahasuerus 22:27, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Alexandre Chatrian

As you have been active in updating author information, I'm wondering if you are the one who added this link to Alexandre Chatrian. If so, I wanted to let you know that links with semicolons in them don't work on ISFDB as the ISFDB software currently uses the semicolon to separate multiple links. That link results in the author page displaying three separate (broken) links:

• Webpage: http://gw5.geneanet.org/tibo29?lang=nl
• Webpage: p=charles+louis+gatien+alexandre
• Webpage: n=chatrian

I have removed those links since they don't work. Even if you're not the one who added it, can you please take a look at it (I believe it's Dutch?) and decide whether a bio page on the wiki should be created and the link added there? Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:43, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that was an addition by me. I didn't notice the semicolons in the address when pasting. The page is partly in French, but mostly in Dutch and gives the places of birth and death and the full legal name (plus family relations). I'll place the link in a bio page. --Dirk P Broer 13:51, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Fantasfeer

I changed a few things about Fantasfeer for my P2 verification. I moved your Reginald notes to the title record, and added notes about the publication. Also added Rinus Gaasbeek's foreword and made the initialled names of the authors pseudonyms of the full names and corrected the number of pages and Gorreman's first name (Georges). Hope you can agree. --Willem H. 22:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Except for the copyright year 198 everything is better than it was before -but perhaps I made that mistake myself. I can find links to George Gorremans without s, but you may know him personally I think. --Dirk P Broer 22:12, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Copyright year was my mistake, corrected now. I met Georges a few times before they were researching for Fantasfeer, one of the first fans who had computer printouts of his collection. It's definitely Georges, see the foreword to Fantasfeer, Info Sfan 1, Currey and Google search. --Willem H. 07:56, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Glad that this is a clear-cut case. An acquaintance to cherish. --Dirk P Broer 16:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)