User talk:JLaTondre/Archive 2011

ATom = Arthur Thomson

I'm holding the submission making ATom a pseudonym of Arthur Thomson, because I believe he is better known and had more work published as "ATom". If this is true it would be better to make "Arthur Thomson" the pseudonym. There are precedents for this approach: William Tenn, John Wyndham, Hal Clement, etc. If you disagree, I will keep the submission on hold and we can bring it up on the community board. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:21, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a preference. It's fine with me if you prefer ATom as the parent. --JLaTondre 17:25, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I suspect we'll end up with far more ATom entries when all his artwork is included. It would probably be a good idea to redirect the Wikipedia article as well. BLongley 17:32, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll reject the submission and create one reversing the pseudonym. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:52, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

There is also an essay that is credited to Arthur A. Thomson. The essay already has a variant relationship, but not the author. I just submitted a change to make that a pseudonym of ATom as well. --JLaTondre 18:10, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Troll's Eye View

I added a content item to your verified Troll's Eye View for the "Further Reading" essay at the end, although I agree with you that the two "About the Author's" aren't quite work noting. I also added a note on the Canadian price. Chavey 22:30, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

You credited it to Datlow and Windling. How did you come up with that? I don't see any credits on the essay title page, the copyright page, or the table of contents. As such, I believe it should be "uncredited". --JLaTondre 19:27, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll agree with you. It was probably by them as editors, but for now it should be left as "uncredited". I'll ask Ellen Datlow when I see her in a few months, but for now it should be "Uncredited". I've submitted that change. Chavey 22:16, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

By Blood We Live

This story in this pub. Isn't Valente the translator rather than the author? as in this pub.--swfritter 15:52, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

It's fiction written by Valente as if she translated a non-fiction essay by a fictional author. Take a look at annapetrescu.catherynnemvalente.com which is where the story was originally published and which also contains a resume and biography of "Anna S. Oppenhagen-Petrescu". While at first glance it looks realistic, a reading quickly shows it's fictional - ex. I don't believe there is a University of Budapest, but even if there is, I doubt it has a vampire amongst its bloodthirsty (sanguinary) faculty. I am impressed with the details she put into it, however. I'll update the title record notes to make that clearer.

Based on the Bane on-line version which has the title as

Exsanguinations: A Handbook for the Educated Vampire

by Anna S. Oppenhagen-Petrescu

translated from the Romanian by Catherynne M. Valente

I suppose there is a case for leaving it credited to Anna S. Oppenhagen-Petrescu and making that a pseudonym of Catherynne M. Valente. However, I cannot remember of the book credited it the same way or not and, unfortunately, I don't have it with me at the moment and probably won't be able to check until Monday. --JLaTondre 00:15, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

By Blood We Live has the exact same credit on the title page. I've submitted a change to merge the two records since they should be handled the same way. Since this is a fiction story written in English, I think titling it Exsanguinations: A Handbook for the Educated Vampire by Anna S. Oppenhagen-Petrescu and crediting it to Catherynne M. Valente (like I did) makes the most sense. However, if someone prefers crediting it to Anna S. Oppenhagen-Petrescu and making that a pseudonym of Catherynne M. Valente, I won't object. --JLaTondre 18:29, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Tor Books merged into Tor

Please see this message when you get a chance. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:36, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

Unusual Suspects: Stories of Mystery & Fantasy

Just a note that I have approved your changes to Unusual Suspects: Stories of Mystery & Fantasy and then set up Johnathan Barket as a pseudonym of Johnathan Barkat. Thanks! Ahasuerus 03:09, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. --JLaTondre 03:10, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Bureau 13 cover image

I replaced the Amazon UK cover image with an actual cover image for your verified Bureau 13. AndonSage 23:26, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Very Best of F&SF: 60th

Thanks for adding the contents to this pub, but it was not necessary to go to the trouble of zeroing out the dates of the stories. Because each of them will have to be merged with the database's current title record for the story, the date will be changed in the reconciliation of the merge. Mhhutchins 16:57, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I know. It makes it easier to merge them, however. The "Duplication Finder" screen is sorted by date so the 0000-00-00 one will be at the top (no need to search for it). And on the "Title Merge Results" screen, it makes it real easy to identify which is the the original record vs. the new record. Takes little effort to copy-n-paste in, but (at least for me) saves time and reduces chance of making a mistake. --JLaTondre 17:05, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Interior art and maps credit for The Dragon Reborn

Can you verify that the interior art and maps in this pub is credited to "Ellisa Martin"? According to an Amazon "Look-Inside", they're credited to Ellisa Mitchell. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:12, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Just checked again, and saw that Amazon has a later printing. So it's possible she changed her name between your first printing and the one shown on Amazon. If so, I'll need to make "Ellisa Martin" a pseudonym of her canonical name. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:15, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

I double checked & they are both credited as "Ellisa Martin" per the copyright page. --JLaTondre 20:55, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

You requested a feature

I've submitted some enhancements I thing you may like: see ISFDB:Moderator_noticeboard#Mary_Austin.27s_.22The_Readjustment.22. Am I going in the right direction? BLongley 00:10, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes indeed, thanks. I appreciate you taking that on. --JLaTondre 19:51, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The Bone Palace

I changed the type of the record you added for the map in this publication from SHORTFICTION to INTERIORART. Mhhutchins 21:48, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that. --JLaTondre 22:08, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Stone of Farewell

I corrected the pagenumbering and added the "Synopsis of the Dragonbone Chair" and notes about the maps and the foreword to this verified pub. --Willem H. 18:36, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, to me, the synopsis is part of the novel in the same way as the forward. However, I see quite a few broken out in ISFDB so I won't argue that. They should be handled consistently though. At the moment, they are a mix of shortfiction and essay. I'm posting a note at Rules and standards discussions to address that. Thanks. --JLaTondre 14:10, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

The Dragonbone Chair

I added the artwork (cover and inside front cover) to this verified pub. --Willem H. 18:45, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Title updates that don't

I'm holding six submissions to update title records, and all of them make no changes in the title. Not sure what your intentions are. Mhhutchins 00:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Each of those titles has an extra space which my edit removes. For example, this essay is entered as "Lost<space><space>Horizon". When displayed, the extra space doesn't appear as HTML ignores it. However, it impacts searching. If you search All Titles for "Lost<space>Horizon", it doesn't match so it isn't listed. --JLaTondre 10:29, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll accept the submissions. Funny thing is that the moderator's view of the submission gives no hint of an extra space in the title. Mhhutchins 17:57, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Does this mean you're going to fix the other 217 as well? BLongley 13:17, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but only a little bit here and there. I don't see myself knocking them all out at once. It will be filler work. At least for the straightforward "Word<space><space>Word" cases (which I assume is your 217 count otherwise it would be much higher). There are other combinations such as "Title:<space><space>Subtitle" that I don't plan on changing. While the organizer part of me would like to see them all standardized, those don't seem to be as likely to impact users. I suppose if somebody copied it from somewhere else, it could cause some confusion, but I think most people wouldn't bother searching on the whole thing. --JLaTondre 14:05, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The 217 was just searching Fiction Titles for <space><space> and discounting the six you added. Yes, there's more when you make it all titles. It's not really worth a project as anyone can search for such and do a few as and when they feel like it. BLongley 17:27, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

The Fires of Heaven

I replaced the Amazon cover image with an actual scanned cover image, and formatted the notes for your verified The Fires of Heaven. AndonSage 06:32, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Going Deep by James Patrick Kelly

This title was a Nebula Award nominee as a short-story, but your verification has it as a novelette. Would you care to check the length? BLongley 18:13, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Short fiction length is a bit of black art as far as I'm concerned (people really have the patience to count?). If there is a prior verification (as in this case), it's not something I tend to worry about. The book is a larger trade paperback with "standard" margins and text sizes (i.e. not more than normal white space). The story consists of 12 full pages & 2 half-pages. While that is less than the rough guideline provided on the help page (which inconveniently doesn't mention if that is hc/tp or pb pages since they are typically very different), I see Mhhutchins' response to your query has an estimated word count above the novelette threshold. I would recommend adding a note to the title record stating there is a discrepancy between the Asimov and Nebula designation and that the Asimor designation was used. --JLaTondre 19:11, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Have done, thanks. Sometimes I regret adding all the extra Primary verifications, queries like this can take ages and I don't particularly care about lengths myself. But I was adding contents to the 2011 Nebula showcase (I do care about books we're highlighting on our main page) and this came up. As did some poems, which is another area I really don't care much for. Still, it's bettering than moderating more "Fairy" books. BLongley 20:19, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Galactic Warlord

I made a universal change of the publisher "Atheneum / Argo" to "An Argo Book / Atheneum" to maintain the ISFDB standard of "imprint / publisher". This changed the publisher of your verified record of Galactic Warlord. Let me know if this is incorrect or doesn't match your copy of the book. Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:06, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

It matches. Thanks. --JLaTondre 23:54, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Gamer Fantastic

Replaced the amazon scan for your verified here. Hauck 13:37, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Silicon Dreams

Replaced the amazon scan for your verified here. Hauck 13:56, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Firebirds Rising, ed. by Sharyn November

I'm updating the existing "Firebird" published books to "Firebird / Penguin" to follow the ISFDB standard of "imprint / publisher". This changes the publisher of your verified publication. According to the "Look Inside" feature of Amazon, this agrees with the imprint statement in this book, but please let me know if this doesn't match your copy of the book. Chavey 01:37, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Triplanetary variant

Hi. I have your proposed variant of Triplanetary on hold. The proposed new parent is identical to the existing one. Did you perhaps mean the author credit for the new parent to be "Edward E. Smith"? If so, there's already this. --MartyD 01:53, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I must have copied and pasted the wrong title record. Yes, 1197 was the one I meant. I canceled that submission and re-submitted a new one with the right parent. --JLaTondre 02:47, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

The Dragon Book - cover and notes

I replaced the default Amazon UK cover image with a scanned image, and added notes to your verified The Dragon Book. AndonSage 02:15, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Grails: Quests of the Dawn

I expanded the notes somewhat for this verified pub. --Willem H. 19:27, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Do you think you're ready to become a Moderator?

4,000 contributions over 3 years seems to be a good sign of patience and persistence, and you seem to ask before doing anything controversial. Do you think you're ready to at least do some of your own approvals? We won't throw you in the deep end, we will still support you, but I think you've shown enough competence that we can start you off on the next step. There's another big learning curve for new moderators but I think we can rely on you not to abuse the powers. If you're willing, I'll start the nomination process. (I think the only reason we haven't done so already is because we don't actually know that much about you personally - I've no idea what country you're in, what languages you speak, etc.) BLongley 00:34, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

I reviewed Moderator Qualifications & Help:Screen:Moderator (those where what caught my eye when I searched the wiki on "moderator", let me know if there are other moderator specific pages I should review). Based on those, yes, I would be willing. I don't have a large collection so I don't add a lot of new books, but I don't mind finding and fixing obvious problems. I'd be willing to help with moderator tasks as well. I'm American and only fluent in English. --JLaTondre 01:34, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, those are the right pages - if your nomination is successful then we'd encourage you to put the ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard on your watch list as well (feel free to read through that in advance and see the sort of questions we moderators have to deal with). BLongley 14:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

I've started the process, good luck! BLongley 14:46, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations, you are now a moderator! Ahasuerus 03:39, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Welcome aboard! Remember, you can still ask for help at any time, and if the Moderator help pages are confusing, out-of-date or incomplete, let us know. A fresh pair of eyes is usually the best way to find the faults. BLongley 15:00, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, we're all constantly learning! Congrats! --~ Bill, Bluesman 19:28, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks all. If I have any questions (and I'm guessing I will), I'll be sure to ask vs. guess. --JLaTondre 22:45, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Take your time to learn the new tools at your disposal now, and when you're ready, add an entry to the "Moderator availability" section. (You might have noticed that most moderators don't declare themselves available 24/7, we appreciate that we all have a real life too. OK, I don't have much of one, but that's my problem, not yours.) BLongley 00:33, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Title level changes

I have the submission to change [this], removing the period from the title, on hold. While it may not be there in the edition you have [you don't specify which one that is] the notes clearly give an earlier publication. In the [OCLC] record for that publication, the story is shown with the period. This would, normally, mean that the instance of no period would be a Variant of the one with the period. Unfortunately, one can't make a Variant of a title that's not in the db. The OCLC record could be used to create a new pub, just showing [for now] this one title as a spec-fic content [though more than one author seems to have other spec-fic works...], then creating the Variant. In general, it's not wise to change things at the title level with multiple editions involved [even here there are other editions than the Night Shade ones] as doing so changes the title in all of them. --~ Bill, Bluesman 01:46, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

The edition I have is the one I verified which is the original Night Shade tp publication (which came out at the same time as the hardcover). As primary sources trump secondary and the audio book data came from Amazon (which isn't the highest reliability), it seemed reasonable to go with the primary data on-hand and let variants be worked out latter as primary sources are obtained for the other works. However, I'll cancel my edit, add a new version to the publication, remove the existing record, and then make the new version a variant of the existing. --JLaTondre 02:18, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Quite true that Primary sources trump Secondary ones, but only if they are for the same publication. Here the OCLC record [whether it is 100% accurate or not ...] is for the original appearance of the story, which would 'trump' all later appearances. Any Variant should [until such time the first appearance can be verified] make the first publication the canonical title. --~ Bill, Bluesman 02:29, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I didn't think we made variants based on the use (or non-use) of a period in an abbreviated honorific (Mr., Mrs., Dr.) I don't know the number of times I've merged records when the only difference is the period. It seems that British publications are more likely not to have the period and American publications always have the period. This was discussed several years ago on the wiki (although I'd be the last person who could find the actual discussion). Perhaps it needs to be brought up for discussion on the Rules and Standards page, and this time, the result should be documented in the help. It may be there, but I have no idea where to start looking for it. And that's pretty sad. There have been several changes in standards during discussions that somehow never were documented. Mhhutchins 02:53, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

From my understanding of the help, that is the case for author names (at least that is how I interpret Help:Screen:NewPub's "Other prefixes and suffixes should follow analogous rules" line from the Ranks, suffixes, prefixes subbullet under Author), but I don't recall seeing anything in the help about that for titles. --JLaTondre 03:04, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Ing's Tight Squeeze

It looks like something may have gone wrong here, so I put the submission on hold. The submission wants to delete this CHAPTERBOOK title because it's a duplicate of title record 1274862, but the latter no longer exists. Two submissions colliding, perhaps? Ahasuerus 16:49, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I thought I had canceled it. Instead of deleting it, I merged them. We don't have a history function so it doesn't really matter (and it probably doesn't even matter if we did), but for duplicate title records, I still prefer to merge them if they are empty. That just seems more consistent to me. Anyhow, canceled it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:30, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good! Actually, we do keep the history of Author records, but Al went on hiatus before we could add it for other record types. One of these days... Ahasuerus 21:18, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

It might be a nice side-project to develop "who did what to which title or pub, and how and when", and "who let it in, and when", but it would be very difficult to test unless at least some of the "Submissions" table was available for testing - every time I refresh my local copy for off-line queries I wipe out all my submission history from past testing. :-/ BLongley 00:48, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Don't worry, Ahasuerus, I won't submit such for consideration until you've caught up a bit and the political discussions from the last lot of changes have died down. BLongley 00:48, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I can make the submissions table available to you, Bill, as a separate download. There is nothing terribly secret stored in it since real user data is stored in a separate set of tables. The major reason not to include submission history in the publicly available backup was its size -- and most people don't need it anyway. Ahasuerus 03:15, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes please, that would keep me busy for quite a while. (Learning to extract the titles or pubs from the XML would be a good start, turning it into something useful could take days, maybe weeks!) And do share your opinions on how much semi-privacy we want - I recall that when I submitted "My Primary Verifications" you wanted to make sure it was only that user that could view it, although that information is easily available to anyone downloading the backups and checking against the online version. BLongley 03:44, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Still, if I put my "website security expert" hat on we'd not get a single change in for years - we are incredibly vulnerable to all sorts of attacks. Which I will certainly not detail on the Wiki, although I think I may have to review the latest help changes DES has made. BLongley 03:44, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Keep in mind that what you will find in the Submissions table won't be materially different from what you can create locally. Well, unless you go back a few years and then the format may be different. If all you want is to preserve the contents of the Submissions table when you restore from the backup file, then it's probably easier to export it to a flat file and then re-import it. Ahasuerus 04:30, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

It's the creation of test data that is the big time-sink, so real data is better. I can create test cases but I'm sure that whatever I can think of, someone else will come up with some other use-case I haven't thought of. I don't fully understand the ISFDB software, I'm pretty sure you're wary of some areas still, and Marty has done some miracles I daren't even dip into yet. And it looks like we've scared Al away almost entirely.... :-( BLongley 04:57, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

One for the Morning Glory

Scanned in a new image, added Canadian price to [this]. --~ Bill, Bluesman 02:26, 30 December 2011 (UTC)