User talk:Iansales

Welcome!

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

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

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! Mhhutchins 21:38, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Jupiter #28

I'm holding the submission adding this issue to the database. We've never come across a situation where each issue of a magazine is given a different name, so no standard has been established. If you'd like to join the discussion go here. Once that issue's been decided, I'll accept the submission. Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:02, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Submission was accepted but a few changes were made. Magazine series are created differently than publication series, so I removed the pub. series that you placed it in and created a new series. (Had to disambiguate because we already have a series titled "Jupiter".) I titled it giving the magazine name, the issue number, the issue name, and the date. Issue-dated magazines should also give the date in their title. According to the publisher's website, this is dated April 2010, so I gave the issue date as 2010-04-00. The contents would also be dated the same as the issue if they're original to this publications. If they were previously published we would give the contents the date of the original publication. (See this help page about entering publications, which encompasses magazines as well.) Here's a link to the pub record. Please check it out to see if everything's OK. You can upload an image of the magazine using the link on that page. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:02, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I was guessing when I entered it, given the magazine's titling policy.Iansales 08:13, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Interzone title updates

Hi. I've put a couple of your submissions of Interzone updates on hold (the ones that would change the title of March/April 2009 to April 2009 and July/August 2009 to August 2009). I took a look at the TTA Press site, and this #221 cover and this #223 cover suggest the issues were two-month as the original titles indicate. What makes you want to change them to single-month? Thanks. --MartyD 13:52, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Interzone has been bimonthly for years, but only a handful of the issues are shown in isfdb as such - most of them have the second month as the publication date. I left a note about this on the magazines discussion page. Iansales 14:18, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

There is a difference between the title, which should, I would think, show the cover months, and the pub date, which can only be one date, whether it is the first or second month. Note that if a magazine is bimonthly but its cover issues show, say, Jan, March, May, July, Sept, and Nov, those would be I would think the dates used in issue titles, whereas if the covers show Jan-Feb, March-April, etc, then those ought to be used as the titles. Marty can correct me if I am mistaken. See Magazine talk:Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy‎#Issue Dates for the otjher discussion. -DES ^Talk 01:14, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes. swfitter has provided several details in that other discussion. For the title, we use the months shown (usually on the cover). So here, we can see that #221 listed March and April, but #222 listed only June. If the publication date is unstated (sometimes the title/copyright page will give an explicit publication date), we usually use the earlier month. So, now, a follow-up question. In those two submissions I have on hold, you also propose changing the pub and content dates to the later month. In light of the other discussion, are those date changes correct, or should they be reverted? My plan is to accept the submissions so what we want to keep doesn't have to be reentered, but then I'll fix up the parts that should be different (e.g., I will put both months back in the titles and replace "/" with "-" to conform to the current standard). Thanks, and thanks for working on this set of magazines. --MartyD 10:46, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Interzone, July-August 2010 - cover art

It is our policy not to link to online art without permission from the source. We do have permission for these covers although they are no up to date. Another option is to upload your own image. The main advantage to this method is that we have a permanent copy in our database.--swfritter 13:56, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry. Didn't know that. I can download the covers, and then upload them. If permission is required from Andy Cox, I can always email him.Iansales 15:26, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Story lengths

You may also want to update the story lengths - short story, novelette, novella, etc. As with any other data you are not required to enter any more data than you wish but I suspect you are probably interested in doing a complete job.--swfritter 14:00, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, it would be guesswork. I could estimate based on the number of pages, and average wordcount per page.Iansales 15:27, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Something that you can go back to if you want. After rummaging through a number of issues you will probably get a better idea of which stories are less than 7500 words (short story), between 7500 and 17500 (novelette), and between 17500 and 40000 (novella). Usually it is pretty obvious but the borderline cases take a little more work. Definitely do not count on any such designations given within a magazine. Publishers often overstate the lengths of the stories.--swfritter 21:23, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Reviews

Reviews should only be entered for works that are valid database entries. See the Policy Page. That means no Graphic Novels, movies, etc. You can either document the reviews of items not in the database in the pub notes or by entering an essay entry instead of a review. What I generally do before entering a review is check and see if the work in question is in the database. If it is not and it passes policy standards I add the work before entering the review. The review section of a magazine can often take more time to do than the rest of the magazine.--swfritter 14:06, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

You can link titles to reviews manually. For instance, if this review were not linked you could click "Link Review to Title" under "Editing Tools" and enter the record number from this title - in this case 385811 from the end of the web address for the title. Lot's to learn but it will all get easier.--swfritter 14:32, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

I've only added the book reviews individually, on the assumption that any book reviewed in the magazine would be in the database. If I've got the titles wrong, I can easily change them to the canonical version.Iansales 15:28, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

One of the reasons we want the reviews is to indicate books that we've missed - so that's not the right assumption. Please do check that the books are here once the magazine edits are approved: and do check that we're linking to the right publications. The ISFDB software often links to a Short Story rather than a Collection with the same name - sometimes even an Essay with the same name as a NONFICTION title. :-/ Stick to the titles as entered in the review, and link to the correct ones if slightly different. For misspelled authors that wouldn't exist otherwise, correct those to the nearest version that already exists and leave a note on the review record. For instance, I correct all Vector reviews of titles by "L. E. Modesitt" to "L. E. Modesitt, Jr." as the former doesn't exist - but it's OK to leave Stephen Donaldson as a reviewee as that exists, no need to change to Stephen R. Donaldson. BLongley 18:58, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Contining essay series

Like "Ansible Link" in this pub. Essays are usually disambiguated by adding the issue to the title. In this case somebody has merged the essays by year. That is a totally non-standard way of doing essay series; something that should have discussed before so doing. Usually essay series look more like this.--swfritter 14:14, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

k. Will get sorted. Thanks.Iansales 15:29, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

There's a comparatively recent Rules and Standards discussion about that very column if you'd care to join in. BLongley 19:05, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Page counts

The page counts for magazines should also include the covers. Some magazines give the cover a page number of 1. To get consistent page count entries we also use count the covers for those magazines which do not start the page count with the cover. Hope you are not getting overwhelmed. Good work. For Example, this issue has 160 internal pages but 164 is entered as the page count.--swfritter 14:18, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Ah. Sorry. Then it seems Interzone has a standard pagecount of 68. Having said that, I did see one issue shown in the database with a pagecount of 64+4...Iansales 15:30, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

We are a creative lot. And by our standards it should be 68. Contento would use 64++ for a magazine that does not start with page 1 as the cover; he would use 68 for a magazine that does start counting pages with the cover.--swfritter 21:17, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Gah. Now you've confused me even more :-) For Interzone, page 1 is the generally the contents page, so the cover/inside cover and back cover/inside back cover are not numbered. I'll update the page count to 68.Iansales 21:20, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Again the deceptive publishers. Some of them try to make you think you are getting more pages than is actually the case. This one had me shaking my head a little at first to. But you've got it right.--swfritter 21:32, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

Introduction title

I approved your edit of Conflicts, and have one remark. You added the introduction as "Introduction". It is customary to add the pub title in parentheses to this kind of essay, so I changed the title to "Introduction (Conflicts)". The reason for this is, that on the author's summary bibliography there would now be five essays called "introduction", without an easy way to see the difference. --Willem H. 09:06, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Noted - will remember to do that next time.Iansales 10:53, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Interzone Numbering

Hello, I rejected your proposed changes of the two last issues of Interzone. I'm in the process (I'm at #34 for now) of specifically inserting the issue number in every title (see why in this discussion), I think that it'll be quite unefficient to have someone erasing this data. Please remember that it is customary to inform the contributors of any modification on the publications they have verified. Thanks. Hauck 16:33, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

I wouldn't have reverted it if I'd known there was a change of policy. Since I'd added the details for the last two years run of Interzone, it would have been nice to have been informed. Iansales 14:45, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we can only see whose work is being adjusted if they've Verified it - there is no easily accessible Edit history for publications. But if you verify them, then Editors and Moderators can tell whose work is being affected and make sure they're informed of significant changes. BLongley 17:00, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Lyre

I approved the submission but adjusted "Laurence Sutin" to "Lawrence Sutin". If the review really credits him that way, please leave a note in the publication record or the review record - we don't want to create a stray author due to typos. BLongley 17:32, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Please adjust the settings on your printer or graphic software to limit images to no more than 600 pixels on the longest side and no more than 150kb in size. Exceptions are made for wraparound cover art. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:07, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Have resized the image and will try again.Iansales 18:48, 23 March 2011 (UTC)