User talk:Bgibbard

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Welcome!

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

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

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! --MartyD 03:13, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

The Hobbit

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

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

Linking to uploaded cover images

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

Thanks Marty, I was originally expecting that the process of uploading the covers would cause the linking to happen automatically, so was very puzzled when the pictures did not show up (and I suspect most people would probably make the same assumption I did; perhaps a suggestion for a future upgrade.). Later I concluded that maybe it was just because it needed to be approved by a moderator. After that I figured out that something had to be entered in the link field, but I did not find a good description of just exactly what should go there and made an inaccurate guess. --Bgibbard 15:09, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
An additional request for clarification: Are there any "quality" standards required for scans of covers? As an example, the book I am just beginning to read has an obvious price-tag from the used bookstore I bought it from stuck right across the front cover. Is that a problem, or is any version of a cover pic better than no pic? The same issue would arise if I entered records based on library paperbacks, which usually have a bunch of stamps and/or stickers covering bits of the front cover.

Changes to Primary-verified pubs

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

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