ISFDB:Community Portal/Archive/Archive05

Duplicate Titles Created By Adding Contents to a Pub

After adding the contents to this book [1] I noticed that all the stories which were already in the isfdb have been duplicated. That is to say, the original instance of them with whatever pubs it already had, and a new one that only has the pub I just edited, and thus requiring an orgy of merging. Is there any way to add contents to a book without this happening? (I just looked at the instructions for adding a new pub to a title, and it looks like the same problem would occur, i.e., creating a whole new title, rather than adding the story to an existing one.)Jefe 15:41, 11 Jan 2007 (CST)

There is a way around this in some cases, but contents do still have to be manually merged in some situations.

First, if you're adding a new publication of an existing title, if you choose to clone one of the publications, instead of "Add Pub to Title", then you will get a screen that looks like the addpub screen but it will be already filled in with much of the data. Adding page numbers and submitting/approving the result will cause an automatic merge for each content item.

If you're adding a pub and there are some differences, it's often most efficient to clone, then use "Remove Title" where necessary, and finally "Edit Pub" and add contents as needed, manually merging these last items.

Cloning has limitations, though. You can't use it if you want any differences in the title of the book, or the author's name. If you have a "Brian Aldiss" pub in your hand, and the existing title in the ISFDB is by "Brian W. Aldiss", then you're going to have to enter it from scratch.

There's an outstanding feature request to allow selection of stories to automerge with on submission of new pubs, but I don't think it's easy and so it may not arrive in the near future.

-- Mike Christie (talk) 20:24, 11 Jan 2007 (CST)