Help:Contents/Purpose

The ISFDB Wiki supports the ISFDB, and provides additional information, index pages, and a way to record and view information about the bibliographic work that is done in the ISFDB.

How the ISFDB Wiki supports the ISFDB

The ISFDB itself is a user-modifiable database of speculative fiction publications, and their associated bibliographic data, such as awards, pseudonyms, and series connections. The ISFDB provides editing tools that permit users to add, delete and modify all the records associated with this information. These modifications are reviewed by users with "moderator" privileges, who may choose to approve or reject the modifications. This step is necessary to avoid vandalism to the database.

The purpose of the ISFDB Wiki is to support this editing process. Several ways in which the Wiki can support the ISFDB have been identified, but this is not an exhaustive list.

• Help pages, such as this one, live in the ISFDB Wiki and can be freely updated by an editor.
• Index pages such as Magazine:Amazing Stories, which provide a single point of access to all issues of a magazine.
• Communication with other editors
• Project pages, to coordinate the actions of a group of editors interesting in improving related bibliographic data. Four types of project have been identified:
  • Author projects. For example Author:Robert A. Heinlein is a page at which editors who are interested in and knowledgeable about Heinlein can keep track of work that has been done on maintaining Heinlein-related data in the ISFDB. The organization of information on a project page is up to the project team members.
  • Series projects. Where a series spans multiple authors, as is the case with some shared world anthologies, such as Series:Thieves' World, the author project organization is not the most natural way to manage the data.
  • Magazine projects. The magazine pages, such as Magazine:Amazing Stories, can also be used to keep track of the bibliographic verification work that has been done on those magazines.
  • Publisher projects collect information about a publisher, such as DAW Books, and also catalogue/list their works in ways to help identify “points” that can be used to identify when a book was published or other information that may not be readily apparent from a publication.

What the ISFDB Wiki is not

The ISFDB Wiki is not a place to record author biographies. It's harmless to add biographical information to these pages, but it may be deleted by editors who work on the bibliographies of those authors. Wikipedia is an excellent place for biographies of sf authors, and the ISFDB has a facility for adding a link to the Wikipedia article for each author.

Editing the Wiki pages

The ISFDB uses the MediaWiki software package, which is also used by Wikipedia. Almost every page can be edited by anyone who is logged in. Simply click the "edit" tab at the top of the page, or one of the "edit" links at the top right of a section. For information on how to edit wiki pages, see Help:Editing and the other pages in Category:Wiki Help