Feature:90137 Multiple verifications

Feature:90137 Multiple verifications OPEN How about allowing multiple people to verify a publication? That would increase confidence in the verifications, allow multiple checking, and enable people with small collections that have already been verified to still contribute if they want to. Mike Christie (talk) 12:34, 24 Feb 2007 (CST)

I'll definitely second that plus it would be nice if a one-click primary verification was available. Most people don’t own copies of the secondary sources meaning they all are doing an extra two clicks to go to the verification page, select primary, and then to hit [Submit].

Related to that would be a way then to undo a primary verification. A thought that comes to mind is the existing verify.cgi could show multiple rows for each of the primary verification instances and would show the date/person in a new column to the right. To undo a verification you move the radio button back to “Not Verified.”

This could also allow people to use a "My Verification" page (which needs to be added) as a "My Library" list. Marc Kupper (talk) 13:10, 27 Feb 2007 (CST)

Ooh, yes, nice idea! Eventually I want my library to match... and I can see the day when I want to unverify something when I've typo'ed and a Mod hasn't caught it.. BLongley 16:59, 27 Feb 2007 (CST)

Amen. Multiple verifications are generally a good idea, and being able at least to export one's library catalog would be very nice. Although I must note that one could verify from books he (I wanted to be PC, but SF collecting/bibliography isn't really a female hobby, right?) doesn't really own: borrowed ones; or I was just buying one for a friend who lives out of the city, but intend to enter it before it goes to him; and one can also, if lucky, use Amazon Search Inside.

I recall a discussion about that recently: ISFDB:Community Portal/Archive/Archive06#Amazon Look Inside as a Source: I just don't understand what Marc meant by 'instead of flagging these as "p" (physical or primary verification) I would use "q"' - I don't know of any letter codes, there are just radio buttons; are letters used within the database somewhere? I'm not sure whether "Amazon Search Inside" should be then added as one more category; it is after all primary source where one has to add value / process the data oneself, just it's not physical one. But of course it is conceivable that the scans would be bad, or incomplete, or perhaps even from different copies and publications, and mismatched with the data on the main Amazon page, so some caution/note is in place, and mentioning it in Publication notes as I do isn't quite clean a solution, especially if multiple people start to verify. Anyway, now it occurs to me that rather adding "Amazon" as a new verification cathegory it would be better to add it as a state of the Primary category: Physical / Amazon / Unverified (N/A doesn't make sense here).

Anyway, back to the topic: I don't know how exactly verifications are handled in the database structure, and what is needed to allow multiple ones, but I'm sure it is quite feasible, as well as a bit for "my collection" - as soon as any features are edit at all; in fact more difficult might finding a good way for displaying such multiple verifications. Support for displaying/exporting the collection catalog can be added later - after all one could always download the MySQL dump (if such data are there) and process it himself. I'd love to be able to toy around with some more features of those fancy social Web2.0 apps like LibraryThing (which I tried and left in disgust, not only because because the free version is crippled, but also because I just wasn't able to find how to select which particular publication of a given title I own - it kept showing a wrong one), and it might attract more editors, but I know that that would be too much to want, until crack programmer teams and/or venture investors start raining from the stars. Anyway, it might not be good to attract too much public and the proverbial "wisdom of the crowds" or rather great unwashed: LibraryThing is chock-full of misspellings, variations in punctuations etc. (They have some tool for grouping them together, but not really merging, so the stuff is still there and appears at the most appropriate moments.)

Re Marc's idea of one-click primary verification: it would be easy (again, I mean in principle; it would require ten minutes' work of somebody knowing the basics of Python, and Al's commit of the result on the server) to pre-set the radio button on the verification screen to "verified" so one wouldn't have to click it manually. Similarly, where the publication date or type is outside the scope of a given reference source, its button could be pre-set to "N/A"; or even better not displayed at all. --JVjr 13:29, 23 Mar 2007 (CDT)