EditBug:10065 Variant Titles

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EditBug:10065 Variant Titles

  • New Novel: Test Title 1 by Test Author 1
  • New Novel: Test Title 2 by Test Author 2
  • Make Pseudonym: Test Author 2 is a pseudonym of Test Author 1
  • New Novel: Test Title 1 by Test Author 2
  • Make Variant: TT1 by TA2 is a vt of TT1 by TA1
Unless I'm missing something, that should have caused the Test Author 1 biblio to show two version of Test Title 1; one by Test Author 1 and one under the pseudonym of Test Author 2. I'll leave these records out there in case they're needed; let me know if I can delete them. Mike Christie (talk) 10:47, 23 Dec 2006 (CST)

After each step:

  • New Novel: Test Title 1 by Test Author 1
 Author1:
   Test Title 1
  • New Novel: Test Title 2 by Test Author 2
 Author1:                         Author2:
   Test Title 1                     Test Title 2
  • Make Pseudonym: Test Author 2 is a pseudonym of Test Author 1
 Author1:                         Author2:
   Test Title 1                   Alternate Name Used By: Author1
                                    Test Title 2
  • New Novel: Test Title 1 by Test Author 2
 Author1:                         Author2:
   Test Title 1                   Alternate Name Used By: Author1
                                    Test Title 2
                                    Test Title 1
  • Make Variant: TT1 by TA2 is a vt of TT1 by TA1
 Author1:                         Author2:
   Test Title 1 (as by Author2)   Alternate Name Used By: Author1
                                    Test Title 2

Which is as intended. Are you saying you want to see: 

 Author1:                         Author2:
   Test Title 1                   Alternate Name Used By: Author1
      Variant: Test Title 1         Test Title 2
      (as by Author2)

Alvonruff 07:00, 9 Jan 2007 (CST)

The current display seems to match my current understanding of ISFDB. Test Author 1 shows
And it does show both the version of Test Title 1; one by Test Author 1 and one under the pseudonym of Test Author 2. Test Author 2 shows
I personally would like it if Test Author 2’s bibliography also showed the variant title so that you could look at a pseudonym bibliography and see all of the works written under that pseudonym but believe that's unrelated to what you reported.
I also posted a question to Al about this as I’m still uncertain as to just what the step “Make Pseudonym: Test Author 2 is a pseudonym of Test Author 1” does to the database but think it’s buried in the queue User_talk:Alvonruff#Help_for_the_pseudonym_editor. Marc Kupper 18:36, 10 Jan 2007 (CST)
Here are two titles from Aldiss's bibliography:
  • Non-Stop (1958)
  • Variant Title: Starship (1985)
  • Variant Title: Starship (1960) [as by Brian Aldiss ]
  • The Primal Urge (1961) [as by Brian Aldiss ]
For "Non-Stop", Aldiss published the first edition as by "Brian W. Aldiss", and then some subsequent reprints in three forms:
  1. as "Non-Stop" by Brian W. Aldiss
  2. as "Starship" by Brian W. Aldiss
  3. as "Starship" by Brian Aldiss
Perhaps because the vts are a different title here as well as a different name, the biblio says "Nonstop (1958)" and does not say "[as by Brian Aldiss]".
For "Primal Urge", on the other hand, the first edition (and the only independent publication recorded in the db to date) was as by "Brian Aldiss". It makes sense for this to show "[as by Brian Aldiss]".
What is good about the Aldiss presentation of the two vts of "Non-Stop" is that I can tell from this that "Starship" was published both as by BWA and by BA. That's the information that is lost in the Test Author display, because it does not use the vt display with as separate line for each title/author combination.
Hence I think what I'm asking for is that a title section in a biblio should not imply (via the "as by") that a book was only published under that variant name. (Ideally it could also report differently depending on which name was used for first, or canonical publication, but I realize that isn't possible as we don't identify first editions directly.) How about if the biblio were to say "also as by" if the biblio's author name is found (along with the pseudonym) in the pub list for the title? For "Primal Urge", no change is necessary since we don't record a version of it as by "Brian W. Aldiss". For the first line "Non-Stop", no change would be necessary as there was no version of "Non-Stop" by "Brian Aldiss" under the original title. However, the second line could then be:
  • Variant Title: Starship (1960) [also as by Brian Aldiss]
For the original display question, it would read
   Author1:
     Test Title 1 (also as by Author2)
These are actually two changes; the change to vt display may not be even desirable since it doesn't add new info, and loses the separate date info that is there now. The change to main (non-vt) title display would add info, though.
This is probably a feature request, not a bug. Al, do you agree? Do you think this is desirable, and well enough defined for me to move over to the feature list? Mike Christie (talk) 05:10, 13 Jan 2007 (CST)
I got confused about what Mike wrote and so will do some thinking out loud:

>Perhaps because the vts are a different title here as well as a different name, the biblio says "Nonstop (1958)" and does not say "[as by Brian Aldiss]".

I suspect the reason it does not say "[as by Brian Aldiss]" is because the first publication in ISFDB had an author credit of "Brian W. Aldiss." Note - ISFDB does not have the first publication which was by Faber and Faber, London and credits "Brian W. Aldiss" but the point is - the current ISFDB display seems to be correct but you may have a point in that if the first publication did happen to be credited to "Brian Aldiss" that ISFDB may not display it correctly.
I did a title search to see if there were any entries for "Brian Aldiss." It turned out there were three title records for "Non-Stop" - all for Brian W. Aldiss. I merged one of them into the original novel and took the second which had no publications and made it a vt using the author name "Brian Aldiss." The bibliography now shows
  • Non-Stop (1958)
    • Variant Title: Starship (1985)
    • Variant Title: Non-Stop (1958) [as by Brian Aldiss ]
    • Variant Title: Starship (1960) [as by Brian Aldiss ]
and if I understand what Mike brought up - it should show
  • Non-Stop (1958) [as by Brian Aldiss ]
    • Variant Title: Starship (1985)
    • Variant Title: Starship (1960) [as by Brian Aldiss ]
Basically, the code needs to look for a VT with the same title and same date and if so display it on the first line. VTs with later dates or different names would get nested.
Or maybe this would be better as it would clearly show that both Non-Stop and Starship have been published (See Aldiss' site) using both Brian Aldiss and Brian W. Aldiss.
  • Non-Stop (1958)
    • Non-Stop (1985)
    • Pseudonym: Non-Stop (1985) [as by Brian Aldiss ]
    • Variant Title: Starship (1969)
    • Variant Title: Starship (1960) [as by Brian Aldiss ]
Mike - I got confused again by your summary. Could you please post a copy of the Aldiss Non-Stop/Starship bibliography as you would like it shown? I'll leave the extra title record in there so you can use it if needed though we should delete it when we're done with this discussion. Marc Kupper 23:49, 13 Jan 2007 (CST)
This is confusing, I agree. I started to answer some of your comments inline and then decided that would be even more confusing. So here's a fresh summary, with reference to some of your points above.
First, I think the biblio for Aldiss now looks as it should. It looked fine with the 169112 title; I've now deleted that and it looks fine now too. In the display you list above, it shows that there was a publication as "Non-Stop" by Brian W. Aldiss, and another publication under the same title as by "Brian Aldiss". That's accurate. Deleting the bogus title eliminates the vt line, as one would expect.
Second, as far as I can tell the Test Author display does not do quite the same thing. This biblio makes it appear that "Test Author 1" wrote "Test Novel 1" as by "Test Author 2", which is correct; but it's not apparent that TN1 was also written as by TA1. And I made sure that TN1 as by TA1 is 2005 (both title and pub record) while the version by TA2 is 2006. So this biblio does not show that. However, your example biblio for Aldiss does show that: you have a "Non-Stop" line and a "Non-Stop" (as by Brian Aldiss) line.
Before you posted, I thought the problem was that a vt that matched in title but not author simply caused the display of the first title to show "as by". That would have meant the "Test Author" display was as designed, but undesirable as it hides the fact that there was ever a pub as by TA1. However, for some reason the Aldiss display doesn't behave that way. It does show two lines for "Non-Stop". (At least it did before I deleted the title; maybe I was too hasty in deleting it. We can add another with a bogus pub and then delete that, if we need to.)
So now I am confused as to the reason why the Aldiss display appears to function differently to the Test Author display, but I believe the latter is misleading. I think Test Author 1's biblio should make it apparent that TN1 was published under two different names.
-- Mike Christie (talk) 07:02, 14 Jan 2007 (CST)

Marc Kupper 15:22, 14 Jan 2007 (CST)

(unindent as it's getting a little messy)

Mike wrote:

> However, for some reason the Aldiss display doesn't behave that way. It does show two lines for "Non-Stop".

That's because Non-Stop has more than one VT. I added a second VT to your Test Title 1 and the display switched from all on one line to instead being three lines (Test Title 1 followed by two indented lines for the VTs). I deleted the extra VT so it's back to one line at the moment.


On Aldiss – You had deleted the VT title record for “Non-Stop” by Brian Aldiss. There are real-life publications that use that pattern. See Aldiss’ site for images of a couple. I looked on Amazon, found one publication of Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss, and found we had a publication though by Brian W. Aldiss. I fixed the author name and at the moment the publication is filed under the Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss title.

This looks ok with me in that we have a title record called “Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss” and it shows publications for

  • Non-Stop by Brian W. Aldiss
  • Non-Stop by Brian Aldiss
  • Starship Brian W. Aldiss
  • Starship Brian Aldiss

A thought is when we are dealing with small variations of an author’s name, rather than actual pseudonyms, that we don’t bother with variant title records but rather file these “variant publications” under the title record for the canonical version of the author’s name. We would need to figure out how to deal with people entering new publications under “Brian Aldiss” rather than going to the Brian W. Aldiss title and selecting “Add Publication to This Title.”


As for Test Author 1 – Right now the bibliography shows

I agree it's misleading in that it's not apparent that publications exist for Test Author 1. Here's an idea. The display logic would look at Test Title 1 and if there are any direct (not VT) publications it would display as:

Test Title 1 (2005)

That would make it clearer that publications exist for both Test Author 1 and 2.

I thought about if there are no direct publications under Test Title 1 we would display

That means though that it would be hard for future editors to add publications of Test Title 1 by Test Author 1. If there are no Test Author 1 publications though it would be nice though to be able to better indicate that Test Title 1 was only written under the name "Test Author 2" other than it's on a single line in the bibliography. Maybe this would do the trick:

and perhaps if publications exist to use

Test Title 1 (2005) (1 publication)

--Marc Kupper 15:22, 14 Jan 2007 (CST)

OK, I think we're agreed on the behaviour and also that the current display, though not strictly incorrect, is misleading. Your approach is fine; I'd also be happy with "(also as by Brian Aldiss)". Either one would work. So should we close this down as a bug and move it to a feature request?
Also, with reference to that pub you found that uses "Brian Aldiss" for "Non-Stop"; unfortunately you can't tell from the cover what you're going to find on the title page. I've been going through my Aldiss and entering it, and I've found a good half-dozen that say "Brian Aldiss" on the cover but "Brian W. Aldiss" inside. Still, no harm in leaving the one you entered there till we get someone to verify it physically -- it very well could be that way. Plus, as you pointed out, it improves the title display. Mike Christie (talk) 17:56, 14 Jan 2007 (CST)


Thank you Mike - I had been wondering why so many book lists say "Brian Aldiss, Brian W. Aldiss" for the authors. That they have one on the cover and the other on the title page would explain this. Yes, I can't say the existing display is "buggy" and so it would go into the feature request queue. Marc Kupper 00:16, 15 Jan 2007 (CST)

A workaround

I just added a couple of John W. Campbell books and used VT to get them linked to John W. Campbell, Jr.'s page. At first the bibliography looked pretty terrible as it showed

  • The Mightiest Machine (1965) [as by John W. Campbell ]

and it was not clear the title was available under both Campbell and Campbell, Jr. I did a hack in that from The Mightiest Machine Campbell, Jr. I used "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work" to make a new title called The Mightiest Machine by Campbell, Jr. Now there more than one VT record and the display looks like

  • The Mightiest Machine (1965)
    • Variant Title: The Mightiest Machine (1965)
    • Variant Title: The Mightiest Machine (1972) [as by John W. Campbell ]

The first one is not really a "Variant Title" but it seems clearer that the story was published using both "John W. Campbell, Jr." and "John W. Campbell." --Marc Kupper 23:34, 25 Jan 2007 (CST)

Marc, my own feeling is that it would be better not to hack these, though the display certainly looks better after you've done so. After all, if/when Al implements this feature, the correct data would look good at that point. Alternatively, are you keeping track of which titles you've changed in this way, so you can change them back later? Mike Christie (talk)
I agree that it'd be better if the hacks were not done. So far I've only done it once. The idea occured to me because there was another Campbell story, The Ultimate Weapon that was displaying "messy" on one line as it was written under both the "jr" and standard names. In that case the book publication's title was different than the orignal magazine serial. I thought about for a bit and realized I could add a new-title VT with the title Uncertainty (the magazine serial title) and the resulting display looked great and I realized I could use the same thing to deal with The Mightiest Machine even though in the latter case the magazine serial title was the same as what was used for the book titles. Marc Kupper 14:12, 26 Jan 2007 (CST)
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