Difference between revisions of "ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard"

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: On "Les soldats stellaires": The right way to change a primary verified publication in this way (stating a credit for contents) is always to contact the primary verifier who can look up the actual credit.
 
: On "Les soldats stellaires": The right way to change a primary verified publication in this way (stating a credit for contents) is always to contact the primary verifier who can look up the actual credit.
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:: He hadn't entered anything, so I gave him something to work with. I found it on the list of primary verified publications without content.--[[User:Dirk P Broer|Dirk P Broer]] ([[User talk:Dirk P Broer|talk]]) 19:15, 23 November 2022 (EST)
  
 
: On the issue of synopsises and pseudo-essays: I don't see how a short(er) (re)telling of a (speculative) fictional happening should be able to change its character into something entirely different. If you take a piece out of an artichoke, by the other logic you would be able to sell it afterwards as meat, just because it's called a 'heart' (but it stays somehow vegetarian, I think). Christian
 
: On the issue of synopsises and pseudo-essays: I don't see how a short(er) (re)telling of a (speculative) fictional happening should be able to change its character into something entirely different. If you take a piece out of an artichoke, by the other logic you would be able to sell it afterwards as meat, just because it's called a 'heart' (but it stays somehow vegetarian, I think). Christian
 
[[User:Stonecreek|Stonecreek]] ([[User talk:Stonecreek|talk]]) 03:05, 10 November 2022 (EST)
 
[[User:Stonecreek|Stonecreek]] ([[User talk:Stonecreek|talk]]) 03:05, 10 November 2022 (EST)
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:: An (historical) essay about the Greek history is not the same as the Greek history. An (political) essay about January 6th is not the same a the assault on Capitol Hill. A fictional essay about e.g. space ships in the Perry Rhodan Universe is the same as an essay on space ships in e.g. the Star Wars or Star Trek universe. A glossary about the Perry Rhodan universe is the same as a glossary for any other series. There is nothing special about Perry Rhodan that warrants other rules to be followed.--[[User:Dirk P Broer|Dirk P Broer]] ([[User talk:Dirk P Broer|talk]]) 19:15, 23 November 2022 (EST)
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::: And an essay about the Dutch slave trade is not the same as the hundreds of years of suffering endured by Africans enslaved by the Dutch, while they considered themselves superior to Americans because some of them could paint pretty pictures. --[[User:Username|Username]] ([[User talk:Username|talk]]) 20:19, 23 November 2022 (EST)
 
::: Telling about a piece of fiction makes it a fictional essay. 'essay' is the subject, 'fictional' the attribute. A fictional essay is an essay about fiction. It can be a foreword, an introduction, a summary, an afterword, or an explanation why a certain story wasn't written.--[[User:Dirk P Broer|Dirk P Broer]] ([[User talk:Dirk P Broer|talk]]) 17:40, 15 November 2022 (EST)
 
::: Telling about a piece of fiction makes it a fictional essay. 'essay' is the subject, 'fictional' the attribute. A fictional essay is an essay about fiction. It can be a foreword, an introduction, a summary, an afterword, or an explanation why a certain story wasn't written.--[[User:Dirk P Broer|Dirk P Broer]] ([[User talk:Dirk P Broer|talk]]) 17:40, 15 November 2022 (EST)
 
:: I hereby request too that the self-approval rights for Stonecreek must be revoked, it's time to stop Stonecreek! (translation by Google)--[[User:Wolfram.winkler|Wolfram.winkler]] ([[User talk:Wolfram.winkler|talk]]) 16:52, 11 November 2022 (EST)
 
:: I hereby request too that the self-approval rights for Stonecreek must be revoked, it's time to stop Stonecreek! (translation by Google)--[[User:Wolfram.winkler|Wolfram.winkler]] ([[User talk:Wolfram.winkler|talk]]) 16:52, 11 November 2022 (EST)
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== Illustrator's name misspelled ==
 
== Illustrator's name misspelled ==
  
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.
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Good day,
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Good day,
 
  
 
The name of an illusterator in the recent issue of GHOSTS & SCHOLARS (no.43) is misspelled.
 
The name of an illusterator in the recent issue of GHOSTS & SCHOLARS (no.43) is misspelled.
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:: If it's misspelled -in the publication- then it should be entered as Carl Lavoir, and varianted to Carl Lavoie. Please confirm that it is indeed in the publication itself. [[User:MagicUnk|MagicUnk]] ([[User talk:MagicUnk|talk]]) 06:57, 18 November 2022 (EST)
 
:: If it's misspelled -in the publication- then it should be entered as Carl Lavoir, and varianted to Carl Lavoie. Please confirm that it is indeed in the publication itself. [[User:MagicUnk|MagicUnk]] ([[User talk:MagicUnk|talk]]) 06:57, 18 November 2022 (EST)
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::: https://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/8104/ghosts-scholars-43.--[[User:Dirk P Broer|Dirk P Broer]] ([[User talk:Dirk P Broer|talk]]) 06:55, 1 December 2022 (EST)
  
 
== NILF ==
 
== NILF ==
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: The good news is that NILF IDs can still be used to link to the same Fantascienza Web pages. For example, the ISFDB record for ''Torre di cristallo'' [https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?404078 given above] uses 107219 as its NILF ID. You can use the same ID to link to Fantascienza by plugging the ID in a URL. In this case the correct URL is [https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi/NILF107219/ https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi/NILF107219/]. (The URL is then automatically expanded to append "torre-di-cristallo", but that's not an issue for us.)
 
: The good news is that NILF IDs can still be used to link to the same Fantascienza Web pages. For example, the ISFDB record for ''Torre di cristallo'' [https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?404078 given above] uses 107219 as its NILF ID. You can use the same ID to link to Fantascienza by plugging the ID in a URL. In this case the correct URL is [https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi/NILF107219/ https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi/NILF107219/]. (The URL is then automatically expanded to append "torre-di-cristallo", but that's not an issue for us.)
  
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: It should be easy to change our software's definition of "NILF External IDs" to use "https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi" instead of "http://nilf.it". My only concern is that Fantascienza's Web page say "Beta" and still advertise nilf.it URLs as valid shortcuts, so it's possible that things will change again in the near future. Still, it's a pretty simple change, so we might as well implement it as a short term solution. If and when their URLs change again, we will revisit the issue. Thanks for reporting the problem! [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 16:56, 19 November 2022 (EST)
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: It should be easy to change our software's definition of "NILF External IDs" to use "https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi" instead of "http://nilf.it". My only concern is that Fantascienza's Web pages say "Beta" and still advertise nilf.it URLs as valid shortcuts, so it's possible that things will change again in the near future. Still, it's a pretty simple change, so we might as well implement it as a short term solution. If and when their URLs change again, we will revisit the issue. Thanks for reporting the problem! [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 16:56, 19 November 2022 (EST)
  
 
:: And fixed. [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 20:26, 19 November 2022 (EST)
 
:: And fixed. [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 20:26, 19 November 2022 (EST)
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https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5492487; Here we go again; did their security certificate run out again or whatever the problem was last time? They seemed to be down for a while today and now this. Not a big deal in this case, that cover is easily found elsewhere, although maybe not so beautifully bright as it is on FantLab. --[[User:Username|Username]] ([[User talk:Username|talk]]) 01:00, 22 November 2022 (EST)
 
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5492487; Here we go again; did their security certificate run out again or whatever the problem was last time? They seemed to be down for a while today and now this. Not a big deal in this case, that cover is easily found elsewhere, although maybe not so beautifully bright as it is on FantLab. --[[User:Username|Username]] ([[User talk:Username|talk]]) 01:00, 22 November 2022 (EST)
 
: Nope, that’s just a different domain. We are allowed to link to fantlab.ru. They seem to have a mirror at fantlab.org (or at least some of their images and/or links also work there - it is unclear if it is a complete mirror) which we had not asked for permission to link to. Just use the .ru URLs. [[User:Anniemod|Annie]] ([[User talk:Anniemod|talk]]) 03:11, 22 November 2022 (EST)
 
: Nope, that’s just a different domain. We are allowed to link to fantlab.ru. They seem to have a mirror at fantlab.org (or at least some of their images and/or links also work there - it is unclear if it is a complete mirror) which we had not asked for permission to link to. Just use the .ru URLs. [[User:Anniemod|Annie]] ([[User talk:Anniemod|talk]]) 03:11, 22 November 2022 (EST)
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::That's a problem, then, because I typed "FantLab" on Google to get to the site like I always do; if that suddenly takes me and others to their mirror site something's messed up, which I suspected when their site timed out for a while yesterday. Maybe someone should ask them nicely for permission to link to the mirror now. --[[User:Username|Username]] ([[User talk:Username|talk]]) 10:26, 22 November 2022 (EST)
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::: Google tries to be clever with its search results. For example, the top link returned by Google when I type "FantLab" is "fantlab.ru/en", i.e the English language version of their site. On the other hand, users with Russian IP addresses and/or their language preferences set to "Russian" are presumably sent to the Russian language version of FantLab's site. Since Google uses highly complex algorithms to determine what users see when they search Google's catalog of the Web, there is no telling what different users may be shown in response to the same query.
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::: For now, fantlab.ru seems to be stable. Their certificate will expire in a week, but hopefully they will have it renewed before it causes issues. [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 17:28, 25 November 2022 (EST)
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== F&SF ==
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https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?7908; The series name doesn't match any of the actual titles, so shouldn't that be changed? If so, what should it be changed to? Also, there are a lot of Archive.org copies of the series, so I decided to start with the last, 24, and even though both editions are PV the title's wrong in both of them here, so I added links to each and then wrote PV of HC and 1 active PV of PB and asked them to check, but since neither seems regularly active these days maybe a mod would like to step in, since I have a feeling as I continue with the series there's going to be a lot more changes needed. Also, I changed the month in the intro to match the HC, but the Searles essay "Lost Rewards" is called a reprint on the copyright page but has the year of the book and doesn't appear anywhere else in his ISFDB record, so that might need checking, too; maybe it appeared under another title in the magazine? --[[User:Username|Username]] ([[User talk:Username|talk]]) 11:14, 22 November 2022 (EST)
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== Covers from archive.org ==
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We have a bunch of submissions switching ''Amazing Science Fiction'' covers from Galactic Central links to ISFDB copies of images downloaded from Archive.org.  A lot of work went into loading those files and making all of those edits, I'm sure.  Before I do a bad thing.... Is there any reason not to approve them?  There's attribution of the original source, and I don't see anything on Archive.org that we'd be running afoul of.  But I figured I should check for additional opinions.  Thanks. --[[User:MartyD|MartyD]] ([[User talk:MartyD|talk]]) 17:46, 23 November 2022 (EST)
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:Galactic Central covers are broken so switching over to local versions is reasonable. As long as the images were uploaded correctly & have a valid template applied, there is no issue. Fair use is fair use regardless of source. -- [[User:JLaTondre|JLaTondre]] ([[User talk:JLaTondre#top|talk]]) 18:54, 23 November 2022 (EST)
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== New editors limited to 101 pending submissions ==
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As per [https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Moderator_noticeboard#Making_variants_to_non-existing_parents_.28that_could_exist.29 this discussion], the software has been changed to prevent new editors from having more than 101 pending submissions. If you come across any issues, please post them here. [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 17:14, 25 November 2022 (EST)
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== External Id Edits with a long queue ==
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When an edit adding a External ID is waiting in the queue and a subsequent edit adds a different ID where the second edit is approved first, the approval of the first edit effectively deletes the second edit.  For example, I made [https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5493068 this edit] adding Worldcat and Reginald3 numbers on November 22.  There was already [https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5490996 an edit] in the queue to add the same Worldcat ID submitted on November 20, but not approved until November 26.  The result of this sequence is that the Reginald3 ID was deleted.  We should probably try to be careful with External ID edits while the queue is so large.  I'm not trying to call out the moderator who approved this, I may have made the same error myself had I been the one to review it.  We probably all should try to be more aware.  I'd also like to ask if there is a software solution that we could implement to catch this sequence.  Either a warning when an edit is submitted if there are already edits in the queue for the record being edited.  Alternatively, a warning on the approval screen if there have been approved edits to the same record after the submission timestamp of the record being reviewed.  I don't know if either of those would be difficult, and how large a problem this is, but if feasible, it could prevent these sorts of data loss. Thanks.  --Ron ~ [[User:Rtrace|Rtrace]]<sup>[[User talk:Rtrace|Talk]]</sup> 18:09, 26 November 2022 (EST)
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: We have {{FR|1453}}, "New yellow warning for conflicting submissions", which would address some -- but not all -- of these issues. The FR says:
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:* Create a new yellow warning for conflicting submissions. It should appear if the displayed submission contains a record which is also contained in another pending submission. The yellow warning should include links to the other submissions.
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: The issue with this FR is that the submission table as it currently exists doesn't store record IDs for pending records in a readily available format. In order to generate the requested yellow warning the display software would have to parse the bodies of ''all'' related pending submissions, in this case "EditPub"s. Given the current size of the queue, it can mean parsing thousands of submissions, which may take a few seconds every time a submission is displayed. I would need to rework the way record IDs are stored in the submission table to make it viable.
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: Re:
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:* a warning on the approval screen if there have been approved edits to the same record after the submission timestamp of the record being reviewed"
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: it may be doable because each approved submission record already has an "affected_record_id" value. I'll look into it tomorrow.
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: Another thing to consider is that the problem that Ron ran into mostly affects "multi-fields" like External IDs and Web Pages. An edit affecting a regular field makes it clear that the current value is about to be replaced with another value. An edit affecting a multi-field just tells you that the submitting editor wants to replace a set of N values with a set of M values. It doesn't tell you whether N is greater than, equal to or smaller than M. It may be helpful to add a yellow warning informing the reviewer about the nature of the change, e.g. "2 unaffected values, 1 value will be deleted, 1 value will be added". [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 19:05, 26 November 2022 (EST)
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::I've been confused on how external IDs are processed. I assumed it captured the additions, removals, & changes only - not the entire contents - so two edits could add different ids without issue. Since external IDs are stored as separate entries in the database, there is no need to do a wholesale replacement. Improving the moderator screen to show diffs based on the current state of the publication (and not the publication at the time of submission) would help with this (as well as [[User_talk:Ahasuerus#Web_Page_Diffs|other issues]]). --&nbsp;[[User:JLaTondre|JLaTondre]] ([[User talk:JLaTondre#top|talk]]) 07:02, 27 November 2022 (EST)
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::: Rereading my responses in the linked discussion, I see that I may not have been clear. Sorry about that! Let me step back and clarify how things work:
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:::* When a submission is created, the software checks each field's data. If no changes have been made for a given field -- be it a single value field or a "mutli-field" -- then that field's data is not includes in the body of the submission. If a change has been made, then the following data is included in the submission:
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:::** For regular or "single value" fields, the changed value is stored. For example, if the current value of the "Publisher" field is "Ace" and the new value is "Ace Books", then <nowiki>"<Publisher>Ace Books</Publisher>"</nowiki> is stored in the submission.
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:::** For "multi-fields", ALL new values (unchanged, changed and newly added) are stored in the body of the submission. For example, if the current values of the "External ID" multi-field are "ASIN: B0001111" and "OCLC/WorldCat: 666" and the new values are "ASIN: B0001111" [unchanged], "OCLC/WorldCat: 123" [changed] and "DNB: 234999" [new], then all 3 External IDs are stored in the submission. https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/dumpxml.cgi?5495781 demonstrates how it works -- the XML contains 2 "External_ID" groups even though the OCLC/WorldCat ID was unchanged.
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:::* "Differences" and yellow warnings are ''always'' generated at the time submission review pages are generated and displayed.
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::: Hopefully this clarifies things. [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 10:42, 27 November 2022 (EST)
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:::: I see that I forgot to explain why submissions include ''all'' entered values for multi-fields as opposed to just the changed/added values. Suppose a publication record has 3 OCLC IDs, specifically "1", "2" and "3", and a submission aims to replace them with IDs "3", "4" and "5". If the software is to store just the "diffs", it needs to include 4 and 5 as new values and skip "3" as an unchanged values. However, it also needs to specify that "1" and "2" have to be removed, which would require special coding. Instead the software stores all of the entered values in the body of the submission. [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 13:01, 27 November 2022 (EST)
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:: Instead of a "2 unaffected values, 1 value will be deleted, 1 value will be added" warning, how about showing the specific changes (similar to how the pub notes field does)? So for the edit I approved, showing "-Reginald-3: 26241 [over] +OCLC/WorldCat: 59151543" which would have stood out. The +/- comparison would also be helpful for the web page entries, especially when people edit a record (typically authors) that have a quite a few. --&nbsp;[[User:JLaTondre|JLaTondre]] ([[User talk:JLaTondre#top|talk]]) 07:02, 27 November 2022 (EST)
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::: That's a good point. [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 13:01, 27 November 2022 (EST)
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=== New Yellow Warning Implemented ===
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As per {{FR|1548}}, pending EditPub submissions now warn the reviewer if another EditPub submission for the same publication has been approved since the currently displayed submission was created. [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 17:30, 27 November 2022 (EST)
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:Thank you. I'm really pleased to see this. I'm not a moderator but, as an editor, I have been affected by this scenario as I reported [https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Kraang#Multi_User_Write_Access_Problem here]. [[User:Teallach|Teallach]] ([[User talk:Teallach|talk]]) 17:47, 27 November 2022 (EST)
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::Yes, thank you.  That was quite speedy and I think will be quite helpful.  --Ron ~ [[User:Rtrace|Rtrace]]<sup>[[User talk:Rtrace|Talk]]</sup> 18:26, 27 November 2022 (EST)
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::: Glad to hear it looks useful. I'll look into the proposed External ID/Web pages "diff" functionality next. [[User:Ahasuerus|Ahasuerus]] ([[User talk:Ahasuerus|talk]]) 08:42, 28 November 2022 (EST)
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::::Just saw it for the first time: "WARNING: This publication has been modified by the following submissions since this submission was created:". Cool. --[[User:Username|Username]] ([[User talk:Username|talk]]) 20:41, 29 November 2022 (EST)
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== Calendars ==
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Hello Mods.
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I was reading the inclusions on the [https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Policy policy] page but it doen't state wheteher calendars with art illutrations are included or not. I have a 1984 Conan calendar with ISBN 0-937782-05-X illustrated by [https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?9599 Bill Sienkiewicz]. --[[User:Mavmaramis|Mavmaramis]] ([[User talk:Mavmaramis|talk]]) 14:35, 2 December 2022 (EST)
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: Same rules apply as any other nonfiction - it is eligible only if it is plausibly connected to speculative fiction: if the illustrations are from fiction books, they are eligible. If they are covers for comics or just art that never illustrated an actual story or just conceptual art for calendar and so on which were never used on eligible books, they are not. [[User:Anniemod|Annie]] ([[User talk:Anniemod|talk]]) 15:53, 2 December 2022 (EST)

Revision as of 16:53, 2 December 2022


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Moderator Availability (edit)
Moderator Current Availability Time Zone
Ahasuerus – Talk Daily. Mostly working on automated submissions and the software. US Eastern (UTC-5)
Alvonruff – Talk Daily. Working on a major overhaul of the isfdb infrastructure, staged at isfdb2.org. Self-moderating only. US Central (UTC-6)
Annie Yotova: Annie - Talk Most days, wildly varying hours. Working mainly on Fixer and international titles but available for questions. US Mountain/AZ (UTC-7)
Chris Jensen: Chris J - Talk Available sometime everyday. Pacific (UTC+12)
Desmond Warzel: Dwarzel - Talk Most days, wildly varying hours. US Eastern (UTC-5)
Dirk P Broer: Dirk P Broer - Talk Self-moderating only. Netherlands (UTC+2)
Jens: Hitspacebar - Talk Self-moderating only. Germany (UTC+2)
JLaTondre - Talk Intermittent, mainly evenings. US Eastern (UTC-5)
John: JLochhas - Talk Intermittent, mainly evenings and weekends. Germany (UTC+2)
Kevin Pulliam: Kpulliam - Talk Often missing for weeks and months - Best to email US Central (UTC-6)
Kraang - Talk Most evenings CDN Eastern (UTC-5)
Dominique Fournier: Linguist - Talk Off and on most days, with occasional blackouts (like now); can help on French or other outlandish titles. France (UTC+1)
Marc Kupper: Marc Kupper – Talk Low but not quite zero US Pacific (UTC-8)
MagicUnk - Talk Intermittent. Occasionally going into an editing frenzy. Belgium (UTC+2)
MartyD - Talk Sporadic, but most days. US Eastern (UTC-5)
Mhhutchins - Talk Self-moderating only US Eastern (UTC-5)
Nihonjoe - Talk Weekdays. Sometimes evenings. US Mountain (UTC-6/-7)
Pete Young: PeteYoung - Talk Most days, although time zone frequently varies. UK (UTC)
Ron Maas Rtrace - Talk Most mornings and evenings. US Eastern (UTC-5)
Rudolf: Rudam - Talk intermittent Germany (UTC+2)
John: Scifibones - Talk Most days, some evenings. US Eastern (UTC-5)
Willem Hettinga: Willem H. - Talk Most days, unpredictable hours. Netherlands (UTC+2)
Currently unavailable

ISBN wrong

Record 672711 (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?672711) Le fantôme de Canterville et autres contes shiows the ISBN to be 978-2-253-02346-3. However NooSFere and World Cat has this ISBN for L'enfant tombé des étoiles. (along with Goodreads & Amazon.fr) For Le Fantome de Canterville : et autres contes, World Cat shows the ISBN to be 2253048089 9782253048084 for the 1988, 1997 edition but no cover pics. NooSFere shows editions for 1982, 1988, 1989 & 1991 for LIVRE DE POCHE Jeunesse. No 1986 edition ISBN : 2-253-02346-9 for 1982, ISBN : 2-010-13984-4 for 1988, 1989, 1991. All have the same basic cover that is shown in the ISFDB page. This file was verified by Linguist back in 2018 and I don't want to step on toes. aardvark7 17:41, 1 May 2022 (EDT)

Bruno Elletori / Elettori

Does anyone know if Bruno Elletori is the same person as Bruno Elettori ? --Mavmaramis 03:09, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Bruno Elettori is on Instagram. He has artwork posted there matching these Bruno "Elletori" credits:
and one that is similar but not identical (a face in the eye instead of a skull):
--MartyD 10:22, 2 May 2022 (EDT)
If Elettori (one L) depicts Prisoner of the Planets on his website where the credit on the book has it as two L's - does that mean the the two records on ISFDB for the artist should be merged - or some kind of varianting done ? --Mavmaramis 14:04, 6 May 2022 (EDT)
Yes. I think we should make the two-L, one-T misspelled one a pseudonym of the one-L, two-T correctly spelled one. For your case, we would make a variant. You can verify the printed credit is (mis)spelled with two Ls and one T, and we have definitive-enough evidence it's by the person who spells his name with one L and two Ts. We can research the others and either variant (if actually misspelled, or if we cannot tell) or correct. For example, I found Days of Atonement full scan on archive.org, and it shows "Front cover illustration by Bruno Elettori". So I'll go correct that one. Would you like to do the pseudonym and varianting, or would you rather I did? --MartyD 18:14, 6 May 2022 (EDT)
p.s. I can see for Days of Atonement that Locus1 has the name misspelled, and it uses the same spelling for Facets. That might be the source for misspelled credits in ISFDB. --MartyD 18:17, 6 May 2022 (EDT)
The entry for the artist will need sorting as well as the publications listed under each. --Mavmaramis 11:41, 8 May 2022 (EDT)
Yes. I will take care of it. --MartyD 07:24, 9 May 2022 (EDT)
This is done. I was able to find a good source of "Elettori" (vs. Grafton's misspelled "Elletori") for all but Beastmaker and Beaststalker (for neither of which was I able to find actual artwork, either). Given the bountiful supply of documented misspellings, I decided it's safe enough to start with an assumption that the same is true for those two. I sent Elettori a message on Instagram, but he has not responded. --MartyD 09:53, 10 May 2022 (EDT)

(Unindent) Found images of Beastmaker at Goodreads and Beaststalker also at Goodreads --Mavmaramis 07:19, 15 May 2022 (EDT)

Wrong Riot

Mavmaramis upped a cover for Riot '71 to the Wiki, but it clearly says WALKER on the cover; the real Hodder cover is here; https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Riot-71-Ludovic-Peters-Hodder-Stoughton/19674196786/bd. Editor rarely responds on his board, so I'm letting everyone know. --Username 09:44, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

I was only provided with a photo of the front flap of the dustwrapper by Joachim Boaz which had the Edgar Blakeney credit. He did not state he had a different hardback copy and pointed me to his Ruminations blog for a scan and I did not notice it was a different publisher. --Mavmaramis 05:56, 6 May 2022 (EDT)
Thanks for responding. I assume you'll upload correct cover using my link, and maybe create a record for the Walker edition, too, using your cover. Also, since you saw the front flap and British HC's usually have a price there, was the price obscured, not there, or did you forget to enter it? --Username 10:05, 6 May 2022 (EDT)
As stated I was only send an image of the front flap and nothing else. There was no price printed on it as far as I remember. I have no bibliographic details for the Walker edition nor did Joachim Boaz provide me with any so no I won't be uploading anything - don't shoot me I was merely assisting JB as he's not a registered user here (nor do I suspect he wants to be) and merely uses me to make edits. If you wish to upload the cover you linked then you are free to do so. I cannot create a record for a book I do not own and know nothing about other than the cover artist. --Mavmaramis 16:16, 6 May 2022 (EDT)
OK, I'll upload it. Your friend J.B. has a 2014 review of a 1979 Michael Bishop novel entered on ISFDB, so I'll see if I can find a photo of him to add to his record. Thanks for doing as much as you could. Also, if anyone else reads this and wants to enter any other editions they may own, while checking all this out I saw a paperback cover of Riot '71 with an angry white dude manhandling a black lady, so unlike the almost artistic HC covers the PB cover just went straight for the sensationalism. --Username 18:48, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

Aldiss / Helliconia Winter

I am editing / PVing Aldiss's Helliconia Winter. The only PV is inactive, so this is to advise that I will add sourced notes, remove "Helliconia (map)", import the existing "Helliconia Winter (map)" (because the maps for Helliconia Summer and Winter are slightly different) and replace "Both Reginald and Clute have the Cape edition as the first" with "Reginald has the Cape edition as the first" in accordance with my post 'Clute/Nicholls and "First Edition"' on the Moderators' Noticeboard dated 3 April 2022 Teallach 19:13, 5 May 2022 (EDT)

Uploading issues

I've tried to upload some new images but some of them don't seem to appear - 2 of them did do so after some time (even after refreshing / closing and re-opening the website). The third goives me "Error creating thumbnail: /var/www/html/wiki//bin/ulimit4.sh: line 4: /usr/local/bin/convert: No such file or directory" despite it being within the size limits. --Mavmaramis 14:01, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

The old wiki software the ISFDB uses has a bug in that when you upload a replacement image, it doesn't tell your browser a new version is present and so your browser continues to use its cached version (if the image has already been viewed). You need to force the new image to be displayed (Ctl + F5 on most browsers). Any other user viewing the image will see the new one. As for the convert issue, that can occur even on those images below the size limit. It can be ignored in those cases. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:26, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

Mel O.

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1704977; 3 different PV's, all active; question is whether this is supposed to be Mel Odom (artist). --Username 10:32, 9 May 2022 (EDT)

Yes it is, corrected now. --Willem 13:05, 9 May 2022 (EDT)

Duplicate Publication Record: Adams / So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

I was about to PV the Pan pb 2nd printing of Adams / So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish when I realised it appears to have duplicates: Record 1 and Record 2. Note that the publication date of 1985-05-00 for Record 2 looks incorrect because it is a 2nd printing so the date should be "date unknown". I cannot see a tool for merging publication records, so could a moderator please advise how I go about sorting this out? Do I just delete one of the publication records? I am reluctant to do this because it will result in a loss of information about the PVs. Only 1 of the 4 PVs (Linguist) is active. I have left a note on his talk page pointing him at this topic. Teallach 17:44, 9 May 2022 (EDT)

The covers are different, and both are editor-provided scans. The capitalization in the blurb at the bottom is different, and the second record has a Pan logo in the top left, while the first record does not. --MartyD 09:05, 10 May 2022 (EDT)
Although the cover scan associated with Record 1 is editor provided, I do not believe it has come from a pb edition. Compare it with the scan associated with the Book Club edition. From the imperfections on the dust jacket, they are clearly the same. So one of these pub records has re-used the scan from the other. I strongly suspect the Book Club has the correct scan. The hc eds (Pan trade and Book Club) have the cover with no Pan logo to top left. The early Pan pb's have the cover with the Pan logo to top left. Teallach 19:01, 10 May 2022 (EDT)
Likely by sheer coincidence I entered the OL ID for the first (?) printing recently, so if a mod would like to accept that edit then that book can be looked at. Hologram covers, FTW. --Username 19:17, 10 May 2022 (EDT)
Hello, and sorry I only saw the notification to-day. Indeed, both "2nd printings" are identical, Record 1 having the wrong cover. It would have to be deleted, of course, but I don't know whether there is a way to preserve the PVs. I'll ping Ahasuerus about it, he should know if it's possible. Linguist 11:02, 21 May 2022 (EDT).
Unfortunately, Ahasuerus says it's not possible. So I'll suppress one and change the date of the other to “unknown". Cheers, Linguist 04:34, 22 May 2022 (EDT).
Linguist: all looks good now. I have also PVd the kept record. Thanks for cleaning this up. Teallach 06:41, 22 May 2022 (EDT)

To merge or not to merge?

Same title, same publisher - merge these or not? Suggestions? Thanks! MagicUnk 14:31, 11 May 2022 (EDT)

This is why adding a note to excerpts (if possible) is valuable. A simple statement 'Excerpt consists of first two chapters' for example. Glenn is a PV for two of the three. He can tell you if this one and this one are identical. John Scifibones 18:15, 11 May 2022 (EDT)
They're the same... about 3 pages worth. --Glenn 19:03, 26 May 2022 (EDT)

Author L Chan

We have two summary bibliography pages L Chan and L. Chan for this author. Under our rules 'L Chan (no period) is the correct canonical name. Many of the entries under 'L. Chan' should have been credited 'L Chan' initially. I propose to change any title where I can see that it was recorded as 'L Chan' in the publication. Question, where our only source is secondary, should I change those or leave and make 'L. Chan' an alternate name. Obviously, the author only uses 'L Chan', but we show what is actually in the publication. Opinions? John Scifibones 10:43, 13 May 2022 (EDT)

For any of those entered as "L. Chan", if there's a PV, ask them to verify how it's entered in the book. For those without a PV, we can simply variant them to "L Chan" and make "L. Chan" an alternate name to "L Chan". ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:24, 13 May 2022 (EDT)
For the secondary-only cases, it can be helpful to look for scans -- Amazon Look Inside, archive.org, Google Books, etc. I think if the scan contradicts the secondary source, it's better to correct and include a note about the discrepancy and source of the information used to override the official/blessed secondary. If no scan is available, then I agree we're stuck with keeping the secondary's credit and making a variant. Because we know for sure that some publications used "L.", we cannot assume a mistake on the part of the secondary source. --MartyD 08:43, 14 May 2022 (EDT)

Araminta Station

There is a note onm this record that states "First version, do NOT merge with the second version." but I cannot find the alleged second version listed or depicted anywhere. The note may be there to warn but doesn't actually help in pointing you to the other cover so you can visually see the differences. --Mavmaramis 15:14, 14 May 2022 (EDT)

Dirk P Broer added the note per the Edit History so you can try asking him. It is possible that at one time there was a miscredit in the database or a wrong cover image displaying on one of the editions that made it look like two separate covers. If so, it could have been corrected and the note is now superfluous. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:11, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Wiki Covers

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Image:THNCHNTDNN1975.jpg; So someone uploaded cover with a huge crease running all the way through it, I found one that was uncreased, some other person reverted it back to the creased cover, and this had the fortunate side effect of me finding a better cover than the one I uploaded previously, which is not only uncreased but slightly bigger in dimension yet smaller in size than the creased cover, plus it doesn't have black mark over price like my previous cover. however, am I supposed to do something else now? I ask because it still has the name of the original uploader as the scanner. --Username 09:44, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

The image you uploaded was vastly inferior to the original (smaller, less bright, less sharp, price unreadable), so naturally it had to be reverted. The new one is still less sharp than the original. You could have contacted the (active) primary verifier of course. --Willem 10:41, 16 May 2022 (EDT)
It may not be 100% as sharp as the original, but it also doesn't have a huge fault line running through the entire cover. Does anyone else have an answer to my question above? I'm guessing the "edit" at the top could be used to insert my name in place of the original uploader, but I hesitate to do that since obviously some people are very touchy about anyone improving their work. It's surprising how many terrible book covers/author photos were uploaded to the Wiki over the years when certainly in most cases better ones were easily found online; in the future I'll try to remember if I'm going to upload a better image to only do so for images uploaded by people who aren't here anymore so as not to upset anyone. --Username 11:08, 16 May 2022 (EDT)
Yes, if you replace a cover on the wiki, you should edit the page and change the uploader name to you. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:27, 16 May 2022 (EDT)

Strange Horizons

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/note_search_results.cgi?OPERATOR=contains&NOTE_VALUE=at+strangehorizons.com; I was checking the 6 August 2001 review of The Best of Cemetery Dance and the ISFDB link doesn't work, but online Google search found the issue; note search above gave same problem when I clicked the first link, so possibly all of these links don't work. --Username 11:54, 17 May 2022 (EDT)

Peter Sís

The artist Peter Sis should have an acute accent over the "i" in his last name. Would a moderator change it? --Rosab618 04:15, 18 May 2022 (EDT)

Rob C.

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Rob_Crausaz; I'm uploading a better cover of his PV to A Glass of Stars; hasn't been around since 10/2018 and so should probably get a "no longer active" message. --Username 10:48, 18 May 2022 (EDT)

Duplicate Publication Record: Adams / Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

The Pan pb 4th printing of Adams / Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency has duplicate pub records: Record A and Record B. I propose to delete Record B but it has two PVs, neither of whom are active, hence this post. I have edited / PVd Record A and transferred across all the additional notes from Record B so that no information will be lost. May I please proceed with the delete? Teallach 16:31, 20 May 2022 (EDT)

No objection, seems OK to me. Linguist 07:40, 22 May 2022 (EDT).

Luisa Preißler

Greeting! I have no idea on how to do this but--- Could Author Record # 321880 be merged with Author Record # 232592 isnce they are the same person.

Author Record # 232592 also has Luisa Preissler & Luisa J. Preissler attached and this would join all 4 versions of her name together and hopefully also put all of the book titles together as a group. aardvark7 09:04, 24 May 2022 (EDT)

Done, see here. It's actually quite easy to do. First you make the variant author a pseudonym of the canonical ("Make/Remove Alternate Name" under editing tools), then you variant the titles under the pseudonym to the canonical author. --Willem 10:19, 24 May 2022 (EDT)

Dennys

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5326614; On a roll of adding prices to Canadian publisher's books; this one had a price that looked funny, so I checked and it was 95, not 96, but has active PV's so I cancelled it. If anyone wants to fix this very minor thing the Google link is at the bottom. --Username 08:11, 25 May 2022 (EDT)

Is there a reason that you are mentioning this here instead of reaching out to the verifiers, both of whom are active? I'm sure either of them would be happy to check the price, though you'll have to use the email system to contact Mhhutchins. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 10:53, 25 May 2022 (EDT)
Well, besides the fact that I've made it clear recently that I'm not re-doing rejected edits anymore and cancelling my edits that turn out to have active PV so as to avoid the waiting for a response/PV complaining about my fixing of incorrect info, which I believe you thought might be a good idea, both of the PV for this book had particularly less-than-positive responses when I've contacted them to let them know I added or fixed something in their edits, as you can easily see if you go on their boards; Mr. W especially still stands as probably the rudest response I've ever gotten, which is really saying something. You and others are always going on about etiquette and such but when I do the "right thing" often I'm met with hostility for daring to correct something, regardless of the fact that usually it's justifiable, so maybe you should let other PV know how they're supposed to respond. This is a very minor fix, so if nobody wants to change it it hardly matters. --Username 11:30, 25 May 2022 (EDT)

Satanic Panic

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1317298; After nearly 2 weeks my extensive edits for these books were accepted, but 1 that removed something was rejected with no comment but "Why?" and the same mod removed something himself from the original edition; I can barely remember the convoluted importing and fixing I did for these, so someone look these over if you can spare the time and make sure everything's where it's supposed to be. --Username 18:27, 25 May 2022 (EDT)

Rejected Why?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5318733; Can someone un-reject this? The old pic's already on Wikipedia, he's turned to the side, and it's very small; the one I entered isn't on Wikipedia, he's facing forward, and it's quite a bit bigger. Also this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5318770, which was rejected even though there's no PV. Also this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5318771, which wouldn't have been rejected if the previous edit had been approved, because that's clearly where the date came from. Also this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5319524, because previous editor entered #6 incorrectly as both series # and ID. Also this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5319526, because that's what previous editor's note and WorldCat (ID already on book's record) say. The same mod rejected all of these; he also rejected my replacement of E. Nesbit's Tales of Terror cover with the full wraparound cover (featuring art continued on the back) but I'm going to let that one go because there was an actual PV for that one. --Username 15:12, 26 May 2022 (EDT)

I have asked Biomassbob to respond here. Ahasuerus 11:53, 27 May 2022 (EDT)
Username doesn't bother to complain to me because I'm unlikely to buy his arguments. For example, the photo he chose is poor, slightly out of focus, and the existing photo is better. Most of his suggested changes had no explanation of why the existing information was bad, and I rejected them with the question "Why?". He apparently doesn't think he can possibly be wrong, he doesn't want to notify PVs when he makes changes. I liked the cover for Tales of Terror, but he really needs to contact the PV. Another of his favorite tricks is to remove an entry in a pub, then in his next submission, replace it with something he likes better. It would really make things easier for monitors if he would just edit the entry instead of tossing it out before we can know why he wants to remove it. He's a difficult editor to review, obnoxious and arrogant, but he works hard and I'll keep reviewing his submissions. But he should learn to submit reasons for his suggested changes. Bob 19:50, 27 May 2022 (EDT)
Dude, you haven't even approved any edits by me for months; I actually thought you'd given up moderating here because you were barely around for a long time and your attitude when you did work on my edits last year suggested you were doing so under protest or something, rejecting many of them because of some silly reason like "no movie-related info in the notes", which was a common excuse, apparently not noticing the countless other movie-related notes entered by other editors. If you think my Abe photo was poor then you must really think the already-on-Wikipedia, tiny, dark, profile picture currently there is horrible, right? I'm going to find a really great one now just to make you happy. As for PV, there are many things I assume they should know like looking at existing notes or clicking external ID's to verify my edits without me having to spell everything out like I'm working with slow adults, but apparently I give them too much credit. I have explained many of my edits where necessary when the info was something not apparent. As for being wrong, please see the many messages I've left on the boards where I chastise and insult myself as an idiot for making silly mistakes; like the recent Stephen King "Weeds" situation. I already explained that I'm letting the Tales of Terror rejection go because it actually has a PV (unlike your rejection of my importing of something into Dark Energies, which has no PV but only secondary verifications, which don't require contacting the person who did those, as you should know being a PV and all) and I don't feel like waiting for an often really long time for a response just to add a better cover, especially since a lot of the PV left years ago but whoever's in charge of tagging them as "no longer active" never did that. As for the "tricks" you mentioned, I don't even know what to say about that because I have no idea what you're talking about; removing wrong info and importing correct info is a very common thing that I've done many times because that's what you're supposed to do. Your abusive "obnoxious and arrogant" comment would bother me if I cared what you thought about me, which I don't, and recalling from the dim mists of time your attitude when you were a regular moderator and worked on many of my edits long ago, all I can say is: pot, meet kettle. The one thing I agree with you about is that I work hard, since in the slightly less than a year-and-a-half I've edited here I've made more than 25,000 edits, and encouraged others to do many more, all the while putting up with all the constant complaining and insults from others who "work" here while getting almost nothing in the way of feedback about anything I write on the boards. But I shouldn't be surprised about any of this because from reading recent and not-so-recent writings on the boards it's clear many editors have stopped editing here because they couldn't get along with other editors/moderators; as I mentioned somewhere recently, the fact I'm still doing this at all should be cause for gratitude. I think that's about it, so now that I'm going to replace the Abe picture and not bothering with the Tales of Terror cover, see what you can do to approve those other edits you wrongly rejected, or let someone else approve them if you don't want to. --Username 20:42, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

The Other Glass Teat

I found an advert in the back of The Glass Teat refering to this book with blub, size (210 x 140mm) and giving the ISBN as 0 86130 005 X. No evidence this publication from Savoy ever appeared - it doesn't appear on Savoy's website listing of publications - nor does the ISBN appear to exist so should it not be listed as "unpublished" under Savoy's publisher page ? --Mavmaramis 11:43, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Shape of Fear

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Image:THSHPFFR1971.jpg; I uploaded a better image to this book but didn't get the usual "do you want to replace", apparently because back in 2009 Bluesman entered a too-big image or something, so can a mod get my image, https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Image:THSHPFFRDJ1971.jpg, to show up in the book's record? --Username 12:26, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

The original image was at the "wrong" location. I edited the pub to add the new image and deleted the original. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:59, 31 May 2022 (EDT)
[1]; uploaded this, and again old one was not replaced because it's a different URL. --Username 14:51, 2 June 2022 (EDT)
Same for this one, edited the pub to point to the new image, then deleted the original. John Scifibones 15:28, 2 June 2022 (EDT)
https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Image:THMNWHFRDL1942.jpg; It's not replacing the old image because it has an extra "L" in the URL. --Username 12:48, 12 June 2022 (EDT)

Once Again

Unnecessary rejections: 1) https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5327115; New image has different URL with "SSL" which is, according to mods, the preferred Amazon image address now, but also new image doesn't have the "copyrighted material" bugs at top and bottom, which I replace whenever I see them if I find a cover without them. Un-reject this edit. 2) https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5327678; New image replaces old image with "P" in the URL which, according to mods, should be replaced. Un-reject this edit, too. I'm really getting tired of my edits being rejected incorrectly, especially these very minor image replacements, and having to waste time writing these stupid notes in order to get them un-rejected when that time could be used to actually make more edits. Somebody inform this particular mod that there's a reason to replace old images besides the fact that they "look better". EDIT: Same mod rejected another replacement of a cover with "P" in the URL, saying the new cover looked worse than the old one, but I'm going to let that one go because new cover I got from OL has a proper URL but also has some slight cover differences so I'm just going to make another edit from Amazon where the cover with proper URL looks exactly like the old cover. Most alarmingly, however, is this rejection, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5326695, where mod left a long note about stuff including the page count change, when there's an Archive link in the edit which leads to a copy of the book where it's obvious that the much higher page count I entered is the correct one. Un-reject this edit, too. On the plus side, while checking into all this I noticed at the very top of the copyright page the name of the illustrator for Wells' book, so that's been added in another edit; every dark cloud has a silver lining. I don't know what's going on here but let's try not to let this keep happening. --Username 19:05, 2 June 2022 (EDT)

Please add Goodreads Choice Awards "Science & Technology" category

I can't imagine this is going to get much use (especially as they seem to have dropped this category for their most recent iteration), but could we have this category added so that this nominated title can be added to it? I think this is a moderator or bureaucrat task?

Thanks. ErsatzCulture 16:41, 8 June 2022 (EDT)

Any moderator should be able to add a new category to an award type. Only new award types require bureaucrat intervention. Ahasuerus 17:27, 8 June 2022 (EDT)
Done. Ahasuerus 18:03, 8 June 2022 (EDT)
Thanks! ErsatzCulture 18:04, 8 June 2022 (EDT)

Chavey

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?325318; After constant complaining about adding info about cover images to this guy's PV books at the bottom of a long list I've added a couple recently, but just noticed there's a warning about the length of it being way too long and some browsers possibly not being able to handle displaying it properly. So someone should contact him and advise him on how to break it up or whatever's needed since he rarely checks it. --Username 19:35, 9 June 2022 (EDT)

Our Wiki software is quite old, which is why it displays a warning about the 32K limit, which is not an issue with modern browsers. Al is currently working on upgrading the Wiki software. Once he is done, the warning will disappear. Ahasuerus 11:56, 10 June 2022 (EDT)

Ruleless Stonecreek?

Do the rules for editing PVs only apply to me or do they also apply to Stonecreek? Data was changed and added by him without contacting me. I've been warned for breaking the rules like this, but apparently Stonecreek has fool's liberty, look here.--Wolfram.winkler 09:57, 12 June 2022 (EDT)

Did you read the note: "Adding missing relevant data: date, content, pub. series, sources, links & notes"? All of these were missing - as usual - from the stub record you provided. Christian Stonecreek 11:39, 12 June 2022 (EDT)
Is there no one who can give me a reasonable answer?--Wolfram.winkler 16:52, 13 June 2022 (EDT)
Apparently there is no one who has the courage to comment here. That's sad. --Wolfram.winkler 13:28, 17 June 2022 (EDT)
Stonecreek's self-approver privileges were revoked on 2022-06-14 -- see the link for details. Ahasuerus 16:30, 17 June 2022 (EDT)
I can't comment on your question, but I thought you'd like to know that Stonecreek entered another Hobbit Presse book by Mr. Sullivan, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?901899, in case you own that and can also PV. --Username 13:44, 17 June 2022 (EDT)
Interesting information, but I can't see any connection to my question/complaint.
I'll rephrase it: Do the rules regarding editing PV's data apply to all users?
@ Username: I can't see how this information can help to clarify my question. Please explain that to me.
BTW the next rule violation from Stonecreek here (Google translator).--Wolfram.winkler 11:35, 21 June 2022 (EDT)
Well, the missing answers confirm my assumption that there is a two-class society here. I'll give you one piece of advice along the way: stop Stonecreek.(Google).--Wolfram.winkler 12:45, 4 July 2022 (EDT)

How to enter

Very shortly I will be having a box set of four books by different authors (published by Puffin) delivered. My question is how I enter this - would it be OMNIBUS ? --Mavmaramis 15:20, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

Yep. And I would also add each of the books individually (so 5 publications) because these box sets tend to get separated... Annie 15:33, 15 June 2022 (EDT)
Thank you Annie. The four books contained within the box set are already on ISFB anyway (it's an early 1970s set) but I'll still add them as content. --Mavmaramis 10:34, 17 June 2022 (EDT)

Paul Jacquays vs Paul Jaquays

Author Record # 9645 Paul Jacquays is in reality Author Record # 8705 Paul Jaquays. I think the name Jacquays was most likely misspelled when entered. The art for one of the books under Jacquays, Star of Cursrah, can be found on the artist's Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Jennell.Jaquays.Artist/photos/1583624091905697. Paul Jaquays now goes as Jennell Jaquays. aardvark7 10:15, 16 June 2022 (EDT)

Mick Van Houten

In email correspondance with this artist in relation to some cover art identities he has informed me that (quoted verbaim) "‘Mike' was a consequence due to 3rd party ignorance, thankfully corrected later, although often I’d still see ‘Van' instead of the correct ‘van'." Would a moderator edit his canonical and legal name to show the correct 'van' please ? --Mavmaramis 10:37, 17 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for looking into this. Since we don't create alternate names based on capitalization, I have changed "Van" to "van" in all three versions of the name and added notes. Ahasuerus 16:43, 17 June 2022 (EDT)
No worries and thanks. I'd initially contacted him in regards to Jane Gaskell's The Serpent and he sent me a lengthy reply explaining the error(s). --Mavmaramis 18:53, 17 June 2022 (EDT)

Andrew Robinson / Andrew J. Robinson

The listing for Andrew Robinson includes this interview which should be this Andrew J. Robinson. I have no idea whether any other items listed under the former belong to the later. --Mavmaramis 07:53, 19 June 2022 (EDT)

Fixed. Interviews should always uses the canonical name of the author so I updated the record. They look like two different people. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:13, 19 June 2022 (EDT)
I'm the one who recently added the photo to Andrew J. Robinson's page from Clive Barker's Hellraiser (1987); however, he's more famous for playing the Scorpio killer in Dirty Harry (1971). I also just now added Andrew Robinson cover credits to the 2 other Windrusher books because he did all of them. --Username 08:46, 19 June 2022 (EDT)

Fantasyworld

Can one of you do something with this, https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Username#Fantasyworld? I think I entered info properly as can be seen in the edit history, but the Michael Trevillion cover credit ended up being on his author page but not actually added to Fantasyworld, then mod deleted something, then the Trevillion author image which I also added showed up on his page where it hadn't been when I checked a few minutes earlier. I wrote to explain this and mod deleted the Fantasyworld author credit so now it doesn't show up anywhere. Someone restore my info as I entered it. Thanks. --Username 19:53, 19 June 2022 (EDT)

Frontispiece

I could swear I've seen other editors add "fp" when adding a frontispiece; I've done it rarely but still have done it several times. A moderator asked about this on my page, so if it's not OK to add that then how to go about searching ISFDB for all "fp" and getting rid of them? --Username 12:42, 26 June 2022 (EDT)

Help section Regular Titles subsection Page, bullet point Special designations clearly identifies the allowable abbreviations. The fact that some other record may contain the same error is not justification for ignoring our standards. As always, you are free to propose a change in Rules and Standards. John Scifibones 13:12, 26 June 2022 (EDT)
I asked if there's a way to search for all page fields with "fp" so I can see how many I've done, if others have really done it, too, and to delete them all if that's not a proper page entry; someone with that knowledge hasn't responded yet, assuming anyone will. Also, it's "Rules", not "Rusles"; I'll correct that for you. --Username 13:23, 26 June 2022 (EDT)

Artie Conliffe

In refeerence to this map. It is signed "Arthur Conliffe" so should not not be his true name and "Artie" a variant ? --Mavmaramis 16:21, 26 June 2022 (EDT)

Romanian Names

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=filipa&type=Name; 2 Titus. --Username 09:39, 27 June 2022 (EDT)

Keeping Up With the Joneses

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=james+jones&type=Name; James Jones' 1 British cover art credit should probably be with the 2 British cover art credits under James Jones (artist), and the American Shadows artist is likely a whole different person. --Username 09:58, 27 June 2022 (EDT)

Joe D. Ripper

I added Joe DeVito cover credit to the 1988 anthology Ripper! using www.jdevito.com Bibliography page. 2 PV, 1 active and only responding by e-mail, which I'm not using. EDIT: Oddly, the Ripper credit doesn't appear in the extensive cover list but only in a card list further down the page; doing a quick check of the other credited covers, it seems the Ripper credit was the only one missing on ISFDB, except for this late one, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?69942, which I just made an edit for to add the credit. EDIT: Many more DeVito cover credits/merges/variants done, pending approval. He also seems to have done the covers for a few of those men's adventure series (American Nightmare, Steele, etc.) but it's not clear if he did all the covers in each series so I didn't touch those. --Username 08:36, 30 June 2022 (EDT)

Machen Dupe

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?37144; I replaced cover for 1 edition and noticed now that there's another which seems the same, but there's different info in each, in case anyone thinks info should be combined in 1 record and the other deleted. --Username 15:49, 30 June 2022 (EDT)

Christian Vs Chris McGrath

I have been working on artist Christian (Chris) McGrath on my Pinterest account and have been finding a number of titles where his has not been attributed as the cover artist and have been updating those. A number of titles have a preview where you can see that the artist is named as Chris McGrath and in those cases I have been using that name. Under Christian McGrath there are a number of titles where it list the book, then again with the addition "with Chris McGrath"

There are two titles (one by me, one not) that are listed under Chris McGrath but not Christian McGrath. How do I get those titles listed under Christian McGrath with the addition "with Chris McGrath" as well as the others I have submitted?

They all should be listed under Christian McGrath with that note the artist is named as Chris McGrath. aardvark7 09:57, 2 July 2022 (EDT)

We are using Christian McGrath as the canonical name and Chris McGrath as an alternate name. So if you have something credited to "Chris" McGrath, you should record it that way, then once that record is in place, make it a variant of the same title but credited to "Christian" McGrath. Where your record is used, it will say "by Christian McGrath (as by Chris McGrath)". On the Christian McGrath bibliography page, you will see the title listed with either "[only as by Chris McGrath]" if that is the only reference or "[as by Chris McGrath]" if publications are using the canonical record or any other variant.
For each of the two titles you cite, go to the title's page and choose "Make This Title A Variant" in the Editing Tools menu at the left. In the dialog that comes up, scroll down to the bottom half (there are two forms on the page -- use the second one), and change "Chris McGrath" to "Christian McGrath" and submit. After that is approved, you will see the title on the Christian McGrath page, with the "only as by Chris McGrath" annotation. If there were already a record credited to Christian McGrath, you would use the top half / first form to link the Chris McGrath-credited title to the existing Christian McGrath-credited one. If you make a new one and one already exists, that's ok, too. The two records credited to Christian McGrath can be merged without losing any of the Chris McGrath links. --MartyD 16:40, 3 July 2022 (EDT)

RIP FP

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?27947; https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Frederick_Patten. Change in status needed. --Username 18:33, 6 July 2022 (EDT)

Primus

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?27215; I found Archive copy and fixed the Scientists book by adding Donald I. Fine to the publisher among other things, am going to ask PV of other book to do the same, but that last book is obviously not the same publisher, so mods can decide how to differ it; what language is that, anyway? --Username 15:11, 7 July 2022 (EDT)

The Mists of Avalon

Hello mods. I have been sent details of a copy of this book - the Alfred A. Knopf edition - however it has the number 05925 printed in a white box on the rear of the dustwrapper, it has no gutter code on page 875 (or on any of the 10 adjacent pages), neither does it have 1/83 on the rear flap of the dustwrapper. Since it is a lot cheaper than the Michael Joseph UK or the "proper" Knopf (non Book Club edition) I've gone ahead and ordered it. I'm going to make a big assumption that it is infact a Book Club edition but one that has not yet been recorded on ISFDB. --Mavmaramis 14:17, 8 July 2022 (EDT)

Gollancz / Victor Gollancz

Ok so I've noticed some discrepancies in regards to some publications from this publisher. Eg. The Instrumentality of Mankind is noted as "Victor Gollancz" yet The Rediscovery of Man is "Gollancz". Title pages for both have "Victor Gollancz Ltd". Gollancz editions of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick all have publisher as Gollancz and again titles pages have Victor Gollancz. Can someone explain why they are all just "Gollancz" and not "Victor Gollancz" ? --Mavmaramis 06:07, 10 July 2022 (EDT)

Author Photo Links

Per this discussion, https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:JLaTondre#Non-ISFDB_Author_Photo_Links, a warning when someone adds a non-ISFDB friendly author image might be warranted. I fixed a few but only because I chanced across the cleanup report's mention that there were several dozen that were unacceptable links. --Username 12:41, 10 July 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the heads-up. Let me see what the software is currently configured to do. Ahasuerus 12:25, 11 July 2022 (EDT)
After reviewing the linked discussion, I think I see what's going on. The software as it currently exists does warn you if you try to add an image hosted by a site that we don't have permission to link to, e.g. see this 2017 submission -- note the yellow warning. What the software doesn't do is notify the reviewing moderator that the current -- and about to be replaced -- image URL is not allowed.
If you think about it, this is how yellow warning work for all fields. None of them notify you about issues with the about-to-be-replaced data. I suppose we could change the software to do it, but it would have to be done across the board. Ahasuerus 13:00, 11 July 2022 (EDT)

Wrong cover image uploaded

Uploaded and replaced cover scan for this. Not the same edition. --Mavmaramis 12:00, 11 July 2022 (EDT)

Moderator view of certain submissions tweaked

"Moderator review" pages have been enhanced to display links to "Public View" and "Raw XML" views of unapprovable submissions. This applies to rejected submissions, previously approved submissions, and submissions created or held by other moderators. Ahasuerus 17:29, 11 July 2022 (EDT)

"Next Submission" behavior modified

The behavior of the "Next Submission" button on submission review and post-approval pages has been modified. It now skips submissions created by self-approvers. You can still see and access them via the "New Submissions" page. Ahasuerus 13:18, 12 July 2022 (EDT)

P.S. User:JLaTondre has suggested that it may be useful to color-code submissions created by self-approvers the way we color-code submissions created by other moderators. What would be a good color to use? Ahasuerus 13:24, 12 July 2022 (EDT)
What colors are currently being used? I know there's green for new editors, yellow for moderator entries, and blue for the entries of the person viewing the page. Maybe cyan? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:55, 18 July 2022 (EDT)
That's right. Submissions created by other moderator use "#FFFF00", your own submissions appear as "#3333FF" and new editors' submissions are "#00FF33". I assume "cyan" would be the same as "aqua" or "#00FFFF". I have no preference since I am colorblind. Ahasuerus 16:21, 18 July 2022 (EDT)
Yes, that would be the same as cyan. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:29, 18 July 2022 (EDT)
Hearing no objection, I have made the change. Moderators may need to do a full reload of the "New Submissions" page (Control-F5 in most browsers) in order to see the new color. In addition, an explanation of all used colors is now displayed at the bottom of the page. Ahasuerus 12:54, 22 July 2022 (EDT)

Some Summer Lands

There is a listing for Jane Gaskell's Some Summer Lands. Note states "Library Edition" but using the ISBN provides absolutely zero results from ISBN search or any other book dealing websites. It doesn't appear as if Macdonald ever published it in hardback - no library copies seem to exist. Is this a ghost (unpublished) publication ? --Mavmaramis 14:55, 12 July 2022 (EDT)

This ISBN has been verified against Locus1, which does list it as a:
  • Reprint (Hodder & Stoughton 1977) fantasy novel, conclusion of the “Atlan” series. Library edition.
The 1984-1998 Locus Index was compiled based on the monthly "Books Received" column in Locus Magazine. I suppose it's possible that this ISBN was listed by the publisher in a standard "review package" sent to industry reviewers, but was never distributed to libraries for whatever reason. Given this uncertainty, I think the best we can do is document what we know about this ISBN, i.e. where our data comes from and the fact that no online catalog lists the ISBN as of 2022, in the Note field. Ahasuerus 15:16, 12 July 2022 (EDT)
It may well appear in Locus as you pointed out but ISBN search tells me "Sorry, we could not find any information for this book" when using the ISBN 0-356-12118-6. No libraries have a copy (at least none that I could find), OCLC/WorldCat and other bibliographic sites don't find it. If it did exist surely there would be more evidence than a printed note in Locus ? --Mavmaramis 00:46, 13 July 2022 (EDT)
Well, if the totality of the available evidence -- including the fact that https://www.addall.com/advanced/ finds no traces of this ISBN -- suggests that it was never distributed to libraries, we can change the publication date to 8888-00-00 and add a note explaining our sources. Ahasuerus 09:04, 13 July 2022 (EDT)
That seems to be a very reasonable course of action to take. --Mavmaramis 14:33, 14 July 2022 (EDT)

Tripods Trilogy Macmillan / Collier editions

I have been sent photographic evidence of Roger Hane's signiature (very readadable) for The White Mountains and City of Gold and Lead. --Mavmaramis 14:09, 13 July 2022 (EDT)

UNHOLD button tweaked

The behavior of the UNHOLD button has been modified. Instead of displaying a "dead end" Web page, it now re-displays the submission review page.

I also considered making the same change to the behavior of the HOLD button, but I am not sure that it has the same workflow. Suggestions? Ahasuerus 08:36, 16 July 2022 (EDT)

Jack Sullivan and Penguin

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?275516; 3 active PV, I just added OL ID for the Archive copy and a note mentioning the Brit price on the front flap (US price not seen but likely bad framing because there's a photo online that clearly says $29.95 at the top), but info on bottom left is obscured; what does it say? If it's the month that could be entered. --Username 13:01, 17 July 2022 (EDT)

Checked my copy. Number bottom left on front flap is: 07288086. Make of that what you will. Price definatley $29.95 printed at top but my copy is price clipped bottom right (presumably UK price). --Mavmaramis 15:20, 19 July 2022 (EDT)

Publication to delete

I had entered Land of Always-Night by Kenneth Robeson and noticed this copy which seems to be the same pub entered under Lester Dent, rather than varianted. I'm happy to moderate and stand behind my own submissions, but would rather a moderator cleaned this one up. Thanks. ../Doug H 22:32, 18 July 2022 (EDT)

A tricky one

The FictionMag lists The Bards as having two authors: "Álvaro de Sousa" and "Holstein Ferreira". This turns out to be incorrect. The actual author is "Álvaro de Sousa Holstein Ferreira". Now, since I don't know whether or not the name is misprinted in the publication itself, or is a typo in the FictionMags entry, I cannot just update the author of The Bards to Álvaro de Sousa Holstein Ferreira. One option could be to variant both "Alvaro de Sousa" and "Holstein Ferreira" to the canonical name - would be awkward though. Any suggestions on how to deal with this situation instead? See also submissions here and here. Thanks! MagicUnk 12:02, 19 July 2022 (EDT)

How do we "know" the attribution is incorrect and the poem was written Álvaro de Sousa Holstein Ferreira rather than two (other) people? Given that our credit relies exclusively on a secondary source and it's rather difficult to properly represent this particular type of mistaken attribution, I would be inclined to change the title to have the single Álvaro de Sousa Holstein Ferreira credit and record in the notes that secondary source FictionMags credits this as the work of two separate authors but secondary (and hopefully more authoritative) source XYZ credits it to just the one person; thus it seems likely the FictionMags dual credit is the result of a transcription error. With no primary verification, it's clear this has not been determined from the publication itself. Note that going any sort of variant/alternate name route mapping this poem to Álvaro de Sousa Holstein or Álvaro de Sousa Holstein Ferreira is relying on the same "knowledge" that this poem is in fact the work of one person, not two. So to do that, we still need a source. --MartyD 12:01, 21 July 2022 (EDT)
A Couple of observations: Miller/Contento also has the credit for this poem as by two separate authors. My understanding is that FictionMags is built off of Miller/Contento and other indexes. Strangely, Locus1 (another index related to FictionMags) skips issue 7 of SPWAO Showcase. However, they do list de Sousa and Ferreira as separate authors in their record for Frontier Crossings. We have it as a single credit, which I believe to be correct. I can see how someone would consider the credit in FC to be two authors. The names are in all caps and the column where the essay occurs is narrow enough so that "Álvaro de Sousa" appears on one line with "Holstein Ferreira" on the next. The credit for the essay in Worldcon 75 Souvenir Book is clearly a single name. I expect we are talking about a single person and that it is entirely possible that there is an error FictionMags for SPWAO Showcase is similar to that in Locus1 for Frontier Crossings. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 18:24, 21 July 2022 (EDT)
https://www.scribd.com/document/28902577/Nebulosa-1; author is mentioned several times using 1 name. --Username 18:48, 21 July 2022 (EDT)
Thanks for the advice - I've updated the publication accordingly. Regards, MagicUnk 12:13, 26 July 2022 (EDT)

Carole Nelson Douglas / Probe

I am editing / PVing Probe and am posting this note because I am changing the Format field on a pub that only has an inactive PV. This book is definitely a small tp: 20 x 13 cm. Note that Locus1 incorrectly lists this as a pb which is probably the source of the error in the ISFDb pub record. Teallach 15:31, 20 July 2022 (EDT)

Re-Adding Author Info

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?348714; I fixed first guy's name to how it is in the book, but now all info on his old name's page is gone. Here's the cached page, [2]. --Username 23:07, 22 July 2022 (EDT)

There are two problems here. First, and most importantly, this edit should not have been made. The edit removed the comma between the author's name and the suffix "IV". This is incorrect regardless of how it appears in the book. Please see this template under "Ranks, suffixes, prefixes" where it indicates that suffixes are regularized to include the comma no matter how they are printed in the book.
The second problem is the "deletion" of the additional author data. When an author is updated in a title and publication record, this does not result as an edit to the existing author. Rather, the old author (in this case "W. E. Butterworth, IV") is removed from the record and a new author (William E. Butterworth IV) is created. In this instance, the author record for "W. E. Butterworth, IV" only occurred on the records where it was removed by the edit, it left that author record (with all of the other data) without any publications or titles, and thus it was deleted. Had this been an appropriate edit, it would have been better to update the author record to remove the comma, which would have preserved the additional date.
Since this edit should not have been done, I would recommend that you update the author data to re-add the comma. The additional data (legal name and notes) will also have to be re-added and can be done at the same time. I suspect the wiki notes (Additional Biographical Data) which are still present will re-link by themselves after the the author name is corrected and matches the wiki again. However, I've never added an author where the wiki notes preexist, so it will be an interesting experiment. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 18:33, 24 July 2022 (EDT)
I made a couple of edits, first re-adding legal name and note about being the son of..., then an edit adding comma to author's name twice in the book's record. --Username 20:36, 24 July 2022 (EDT)
That won't work. Your first edit will add the author information back. You second edit will will create a new author and since the author you updated with the first edit will have no titles or publications associated with it, it will again be deleted. If they are approved in the opposite order of how they are submitted, I believe the edit to the author record would require a hard reject as the author record edited would no longer exist. I guess my recommendation wasn't clear. All the changes, to the author name, legal name and notes should all be done with a single edit to the author record. That will get everything back to the way it was. I assume an author name can be edited by an editor (i.e. non-moderator). Please let me know if the field is locked for you. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 21:28, 24 July 2022 (EDT)
Yes, it's locked. I can only change the name by going into the book's record; author's record, no. --Username 21:48, 24 July 2022 (EDT)
OK, I accepted your author edit, rejected the title/pub update, and updated the name on the author record to include the comma. I guess the moral here is that if an author has a single title publication, you'll need to ask a moderator to update the name field if that is required. Thanks. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 22:29, 24 July 2022 (EDT)
Ron, I renamed the Wiki Bio page to match the new canonical name. While the wiki page correctly links back to the new author summary page, the author summary does not show the bio page. What am I missing? John Scifibones 10:16, 25 July 2022 (EDT)
The use of wiki pages to document author information has been deprecated. They were used from before there was a notes fields on the author record. Links to old one are maintained, but new links are no longer created. The data is supposed to be migrated into the database and the pages deleted. As there is nothing on this wiki page that is not already on the author record, I will delete it. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:05, 25 July 2022 (EDT)

weblink no more

The webpage conglomeration.info on Kevin Ward, Authur record 9505 is up for sale. aardvark7 21:07, 23 July 2022 (EDT)

Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine doesn't have a copy of http://www.conglomeration.info/2013/03/announcing-the-conglomeration-2013-featured-artist-kevin-ward.html on file, so I had to delete the link :-( Ahasuerus 11:48, 25 July 2022 (EDT)

La grande anthologie de la science-fiction

Hi I have been around this beautiful site before and today I am looking for info about Publication Series: La grande anthologie de la science-fiction at https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?1898+2

My question is : why are there several entries for some of the books. For example, the 2-253-00060-4 is listed 7 times.

Thank you. Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Bilboquet (talk • contribs) . 00:00, 27 July 2022 (EDT)

We include entries for every printing of every eligible book. In this case, there are several printings of the titles, so there are several entries. I hope that helps. Also, please remember to sign your comments using ~~~~. Welcome to the site! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:14, 27 July 2022 (EDT)

To add or not to add that is the question.

Hello Mods. I'd like opinions regarding Megastructres as to whether it does or does not qualify for inclusion on this site. It's a Kickstarter funded book that has been published in two states - a regular edition and a premium edition with faux carbon fibre boards and chrome foil emblam. I have purchased the premium edition and await it's delivery from the USA. --Mavmaramis 04:45, 30 July 2022 (EDT)

Unless you can find an art piece tied to some fiction, it will be out IMO. Non-fiction (of any type) and art are only eligible when there is a connection to eligible fiction (unless the author is above threshold) or (for art) when it is a cover for eligible book. I suspect we may need to wait for you to get the book and see if there is links to fiction in some/all explanations and that may change things. But from what I am seeing, it is out of scope. Nice book though :) Annie 16:15, 1 August 2022 (EDT)
If that's the case can you explain why this publication is included ? --Mavmaramis 12:29, 2 August 2022 (EDT)
Ask the moderator who approved it. I don’t think it is eligible either unless the images are connected to eligible fiction titles or bssooks. But then we do have a scope creep in some areas (especially around art). If other moderators agree that if is in scope, feel free to add it. For me it is out of scope. But it is a collective project. :) Annie 13:11, 2 August 2022 (EDT)
I was the one who added and approved that one; according to the linked review it has connections to eligible fiction: it seems there are also art pieces of sf magazines included (or was that a wrong understanding?). Christian Stonecreek 13:21, 2 August 2022 (EDT)
I'd consider Megastructures to be eligible given that it is speculating about near future possibilities. That bumps it into science fiction. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:52, 2 August 2022 (EDT)
But it is not fiction - look at our ROA. Which category would it be eligible under? Annie 13:07, 2 August 2022 (EDT)
It's nonfiction speculating about possible future stuff, some of which would (currently) be clearly science fiction. It's not speculative fiction stories, but nonfiction about speculative fiction. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:59, 2 August 2022 (EDT)
I own a copy of Soviet Space Graphics and as noted all the interior illustrations are covers of Russian magazines. Website for the publication os here - the 'About this Book' has "This otherworldly collection of Soviet space-race graphics takes readers on a cosmic adventure through Cold War-era Russia" and "Presenting more than 250 illustrations - depicting daring discoveries, scientific innovations, futuristic visions, and extraterrestrial encounters". So according to Annie's interpretation none of the images depict any "connection to eligible fiction" or are "cover[s] for eligible book[s]" they are merely visions of a potential future - ones that may or may not happen (i.e. "speculation") and if this a database SPECULATIVE fiction surely art depicting speculative future technoolgies, structures, whathaveyou ought to be included. I'm going to enter the publication anyway when it eventually turns up and see what happens. --Mavmaramis 16:52, 2 August 2022 (EDT)

Merge Authors???

Since David Cherry #78701 is the same person as David A. Cherry #21265, shouldn't someone merge the records of 78701 with 21265??? aardvark7 16:06, 1 August 2022 (EDT)

Nope. We record authors names as they are used (with some regularization as per the rules). In this case some of the books have the initial "A", some don't. So we keep two separate records and we mark one of them as a pseudonym/alternate name for the other. This is already done here. Annie 16:10, 1 August 2022 (EDT)
I guess I was expecting to see the books under David Cherry also listed under David A. Cherry with "(as by David Cherry)" as I have seen else where. aardvark7 15:05, 2 August 2022 (EDT)
The records under David Cherry need to be varianted to David A. Cherry. It doesn't happen automatically. If someone enters a new credit under an alternate name, the variant needs to be manually created. If the submitter & moderator are not paying attention, then they are left dangling. We have a cleanup report to find them. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:20, 2 August 2022 (EDT)
So I see that the all of the Dave Langford reviews I added need to have a variant created. Is there way to create them more than one at a time? Tom 11:16, 7 August 2022 (EDT)
No, you have to create them one at a time. John Scifibones 11:28, 7 August 2022 (EDT)
Any chance we could get the variant link in the header like the edit link. Scrolling over and over to find the variant link in the editing tools makes the whole process more challenging. Tom 17:54, 7 August 2022 (EDT)

The Purple Pirate

Does anyone know a reason as to why this publication has not been included in this series given it's published by Zebra Books/Kensington Publishing Corp. and has "Volume 4" prominently on the cover ? --Mavmaramis 14:39, 4 August 2022 (EDT)

Because it appears to be the same book as #6 in the other series. Titles can only be in one series and if you put it in the "Tros of Samothrace (Three separate volumes)" series, it cannot be in the main series as well. In cases like that, the original series usually take precedence to later reprints... but there are exceptions.
If there are two books with the same title, they need unmerging. If it is indeed the same book, we choose one of the series and you can use the MultiS template to note that there is a second series and add its name... Annie 15:10, 4 August 2022 (EDT)
Is that something you can do. Copies of those Zebra editions are not cheap - someone on Ebay is selling them (with Queen Cleopatra) for £35 but the postage is a whopping £65. --Mavmaramis 15:32, 4 August 2022 (EDT)
Notes added here and here. That's the best we can do. Let me know if I can assist further and feel free to edit if you want to add details. Annie 16:23, 4 August 2022 (EDT)
Fabulous. Thanks. Does make it clearer. --Mavmaramis 16:19, 5 August 2022 (EDT)

LCCN Help

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Username#Please_revert_edit_for_Kingsbane; Recently I noticed a Playboy Paperbacks book I was working on had an LCCN on the copyright page so I entered it, and then saw it wasn't on the LOC site; I own a few horror anthologies from the publisher and saw that none of the LCCN on their copyright pages were on ISFDB, and none were on the LOC site, so I entered those, too. I also searched Archive.org for books by the publisher and entered some missing LCCN from those, too. There was 1 PV, but since they entered LCCN as a note I thought I would move it to its proper field since many editors over the years have entered info in the wrong places and I try to fix them when I notice them, but this PV obviously doesn't agree and apparently didn't make a mistake but actually wanted it in the notes. I had a chat with a mod recently who mentioned that he remembered from years ago that the LOC site treated paperbacks as unimportant compared to hardcovers and never entered many of them on their site, just storing them away in boxes, but that doesn't change the fact that they were given an official # in the books themselves, and just because they don't show up on the site now doesn't mean they won't in the future if and when they decide to enter them; I highly doubt after I'm finally gone from here that anyone else is going to go back and check to see if they were ever entered on the site and enter the #'s themselves. So the question is, was mod (MagicUnk) right to approve my edit, and, if not, what about the others I entered? I'll remove the # from this particular one, anyway, since I was asked to. --Username 18:45, 5 August 2022 (EDT)

Please see Help:How to create a link to a US Library of Congress (Loc) record. If the LCCN is not in the catalog, it should be listed in the notes & not as an external id. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:35, 6 August 2022 (EDT)
I've gone back and fixed my edits where I added LCCN to ID, moving them to notes; while doing so I found these, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?629621, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?274049, the first of which made the same mistake I did and the second of which called it the "LCCN website" instead of LOC, a mistake I made in all my edits which I fixed at the same time I was fixing the ID, so if anyone wants to follow up on those two, there they are. --Username 10:17, 6 August 2022 (EDT)
Clearly my mistake, should not have approved the edits. Apologies.
On a side note: reading the help text, it occurs to me it is a bit ambiguous, and may need clarification. Invalid link is defined as ... an invalid LCCN (one that does not resolve to a LoC catalog record). In that case, it should be noted in the publication notes, along with the explanation that it is invalid, rather than in the external links. There are two categories of invalid LCCN's: 1) real, valid but not available online, and 2) erroneous, invalid (eg because of a printing error). So far so good. The help text goes on to state If the correct number can be found, it should be placed in the external links. This implies that an invalid LCCN can only be an erroneous one, and that a valid one is available, if only we could find it.
So, I would be in favour of adding/rewording so that it's clear that it is for all invalid links, not just the ones that are erroneous (as in, printing error). Add If the LCCN is not in the catalog, it should be listed in the notes & not as an external id. ? MagicUnk 06:10, 10 August 2022 (EDT)

The Ghatti's Tale: Book One: Finders-Seekers

This publication title doesn't follow the current standard of not including series names in titles. I'm getting ready to edit the record and would like to change the title to simply "Finders-Seekers" which would match this title record. Both the cover title and regular title for this record already use only "Finders-Seekers". This record isn't a variant. The two PVs for this publication record are both inactive. Would there be a problem with my making this change? I'll also need to add notes about the LCCN and WorldCat records which show the full existing title. Thanks! Phil 22:34, 20 August 2022 (EDT)

No issue go ahead and make the change.Kraang 13:12, 22 August 2022 (EDT)

Doug(las) Smith

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?97985; Ruins Extraterrestrial recently uploaded to Archive.org, I entered page numbers, Doug Smith's story actually by Douglas Smith, only Oceans of the Mind appearance is Doug (the other Oceans story is only by Doug, so that's OK), so unmerging and renaming is needed after my edit goes through. --Username 11:02, 26 August 2022 (EDT)

Order

orider is what's shown under Content when you edit something; should be order, right? --Username 13:14, 29 August 2022 (EDT)

I mean, you're right, it should be "order".--Wolfram.winkler 16:29, 29 August 2022 (EDT)
When typos attack! Fixed, thanks. Ahasuerus 18:30, 29 August 2022 (EDT)

Award Type and Award Category submission review pages upgraded

All Award Type and Award Category submission review pages -- Add, Edit, Delete -- have been upgraded to use the new submission review software. No major user-facing changes although you may notice some minor display differences. Ahasuerus 18:24, 29 August 2022 (EDT)

The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales

Here's something strange: there's quite obviously the second author, Wilhelm Grimm, missing (according to the entries at OCLC). Also, the collection is marked as 'juvenile', which shouldn't be so, since it's a translation of "Kinder- und Hausmärchen". And also, all contents are missing.

Unfortunately the sole verifier and supplier of the 1974 publication (which has the ominous note 'Introduction to Padraic Colum') seems to have left us, at least for a span of time ("I have found it too stressful trying to work with moderators here, & am taking a break from it." - commentary on his talk page on 2022-07-14). His last activity was more than three weeks in the past.

I'll submit the predating of the title to 1944 (according to the notes in the 1974 publication), the deletion of the 'juvenile' flag and the varianting to the original title. How shall we deal with this regarding the other problems (can someone do something about it, please)? Christian Stonecreek 06:38, 31 August 2022 (EDT)

How to treat a collection that contains a novel?

Any advice on how to treat a collection that appears to contain a novel? See this submission that wants to convert a single contents title from Novella to NOVEL. It affects the collection The Knight and Knave of Swords. I seem to remember that we've had this discussion before, but can't find it right away. Thanks! MagicUnk 09:54, 31 August 2022 (EDT)

It stays a COLLECTION, like in this example ("If This Goes On —" is marked as a NOVEL). Christian Stonecreek 10:37, 31 August 2022 (EDT)
Thanks. Do you happen to know where I can find that old conversation (If you remember, that is)? MagicUnk 11:57, 31 August 2022 (EDT)
I believe there was a discussion along these lines re. Binti ~2 years ago, but nothing comes up if I do a Wiki search on that :-( ErsatzCulture 12:21, 31 August 2022 (EDT) EDIT: a 2019 item on my talk page; I'm sure there was a wider discussion relating to that though. ErsatzCulture 12:40, 31 August 2022 (EDT)
Sorry, but no, I don't. I do remember that being an item this year (which had the same outcome), but in my memory it was discussed on a personal talk page. Maybe Annie has a better memory (she's quite good with those discussions). Christian Stonecreek 12:25, 31 August 2022 (EDT)
I agree, it's a collection. 2001: A Space Odyssey COLLECTION vs. OMNIBUS is the only recent thread I could find. John Scifibones 12:27, 31 August 2022 (EDT)
Hehe, thanks for the pointer John - re-reading my own comments that confirm it should remain a COLLECTION... :) MagicUnk 12:38, 31 August 2022 (EDT)
There was a question on the Help Desk in April that is now gone. See https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php?title=ISFDB%3AHelp_desk&diff=632012&oldid=630968 . The help (go down to OMNIBUS) cites this example for having a COLLECTION containing a NOVEL. --MartyD 13:12, 31 August 2022 (EDT)
The discussion was archived here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:52, 31 August 2022 (EDT)
My usual rule is “you need 2 full length works for an omnibus”. So 1 novel with a bunch of stories will be a collection (or anthology). See the word “multiple” in the definition of an omnibus which also specifically calls out a collection with a novel (and defines it as a collection). PS: Which is what Marty said - sorry, small screened phone :) So that’s just a confirmation. Annie 15:12, 31 August 2022 (EDT)

<type 'exceptions.NameError'>

Drawing the mods attention to the error message that appears here --Mavmaramis 16:35, 31 August 2022 (EDT)

Fixed -- thanks for report! Ahasuerus 16:45, 31 August 2022 (EDT)

Strange Brew

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=hitchcock%27s+wi&type=All+Titles; Just mentioning that Hitchcock anthology Witches' Brew was published several times from 1965 onwards and some person(s) here jumbled the contents, which differed entirely from original edition to later one. So when somebody gets to those that explains why there's an edit where the entire contents of a book were deleted and replaced and a bunch of things had their dates fixed and such. I think I got everything, but maybe not. --Username 14:51, 2 September 2022 (EDT)

Worldcon Special Committee Award

ISFDBspecialAward.jpg

Last Thursday, at the opening ceremony for Worldcon 80, the ISFDB received a special committee award. Thanks to the Chicon committee for the recognition, and congratulations to everyone here. The ISFDB would not be possible without the community effort of all the moderators who ensure the veracity of the user submissions. Alvonruff 07:40, 5 September 2022 (EDT)

Well, that's pretty cool. (^_^) ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:27, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

IMPORTANT: Server Move

We've been working this year on updating the ISFDB components (Linux, Apache, Python, MediaWiki, etc) in order to modernize and enable HTTPS. At the same time, our hosting provider (FutureHosting) was sold to another hosting service (Nexcess), and they want us to move ASAP to a new server. Since everything is ready to go, we'll begin this migration the morning of 9/6. It takes about 24 hours to convert the old MediaWiki tables to their new formats, and it may take several hours for the isfdb.org domain name to migrate throughout the Internet. As such, editing will go offline 9/6 at the old server. It will go back online at the new server as early as 9/7 or as late as 9/9.

The old MediaWiki uses MD5 password encoding, while the new version of MediaWiki uses PBKDF2. Since the ISFDB uses the password hashes generated by MediaWiki, this means you'll need to login to the Wiki first (which will force a generation of the new hash), and then the ISFDB second.

You can track the status of the move here: User:Alvonruff/ISFDB_Move. Alvonruff 06:44, 6 September 2022 (EDT)

Image Deletion 2022-09-06

Please delete the old image here. Thanks Henna 08:52, 6 September 2022 (EDT)

Done, John Scifibones 09:16, 6 September 2022 (EDT)

Moderator editing enabled

Moderators (and only moderators) should be able to edit ISFDB records now. If you run into any issues, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:11, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

Post-migration bugs and discrepancies found by moderators

Title Merge

Title merge not taking selected conflicting items. I submitted a title merge and selected "Small Gods - 2022" for the title and "2022-00-00" for the year. The opposite selection is what ended up being submitted and showing on the approval screen. I tried twice with the same results. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 13:32, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

I should have left the edit unapproved, as it is now showing as unavailable. That may be a separate issue. Ron ~ RtraceTalk 13:50, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
A "Title Merge" submission appearing as "no longer valid" is expected post-approval. The submission display software tries to pull up the records which existed at the time the submission was created. It then discovers that all but 1 of them no longer exist, so it gives up. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:12, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Investigating... Ahasuerus (talk) 14:55, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
The bug has been recreated on the development server. Debugging... Ahasuerus (talk) 16:33, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
I believe the bug has been fixed. Please let me know if you run into any issues. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:08, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Looks like it's now fixed. Thanks. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 17:18, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Excellent! :-) Ahasuerus (talk) 17:29, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

Wiki Toolbar

I'm not seeing the toolbar in the wiki, nor do I see a preference for that. I had to lookup the signature code unless it is now automatic. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 13:32, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

I did a little digging on the toolbar and it looks like it is no longer provided with this version of MediaWiki. It looks like there is some sort of add on and Wikipedia edit boxes have it. Definitely not a priority item. Thanks. Ron ~ RtraceTalk 13:50, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Which toolbar? Or what add on? Alvonruff (talk) 15:20, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
I have added: wfLoadExtension('WikiEditor'); to LocalSettings.php. That gives something similar to the toolbar blocks that were visible just above the edit window. Try editing and see if that is what you were missing. Alvonruff (talk) 15:32, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Yes, that is the one that I was seeing referenced. Unfortunately, it doesn't have the signature tool. Wikipedia seems to have the same toolbar, and it also is missing there. Oddly, their documentation does show it. Looking more closely, it's there when you're editing a talk page, but apparently not a project page. I can get used to adding 4 tildes, but I did notice a comment on the community board looking for the same tool (I guess you noticed the same comment). I was more used to using the tool, but I did know there was wiki markup behind it. Anyway, thanks for the quick response. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 16:27, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Ok. It is possible to enable the signature widget via $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces. Hitting the normal page, user pages, and talk pages was pretty easy, but the page we are on is a custom namespace (ISFDB), so it was hard to find what standard namespace covers that. So the new elements entry is $wgExtraSignatureNamespaces = [ NS_MAIN, NS_USER, NS_TALK, NS_PROJECT ];. And I was able to sign this response by clicking on the signature widget in the toolbar. Yay. --Alvonruff (talk) 17:00, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Perfect! Thanks again. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 17:21, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

Import of Multiple Titles

When importing multiple titles (Option 2), the titles show up in the reverse order in the next page where you can assign the order with the page numbers. It used to keep the order as added in the list of the import page. Not sure if this is a result of the upgrade or a different change - had not needed to import for at least a week... Annie (talk) 14:25, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

Scratch the "reverse". The order is really random once you land on the second page. Which is a pain when you are importing a lot of titles. Annie (talk) 14:31, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Investigating... Ahasuerus (talk) 14:55, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
I have been able to recreate this problem on the development server. It works one way under Python 2.5 and the other way under Python 2.7. Debugging... Ahasuerus (talk) 15:11, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
I believe the ordering bug should be fixed now. Please let me know if it isn't. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:07, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Seems to work now (or at least worked on 1 collection). Will keep an eye on it and will let you know if I see it misbehaving again. Annie (talk) 16:19, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Great! Ahasuerus (talk) 16:21, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

Publication Comparison Bug

The "Title Merge" bug and the "Title Import" bug reported above had the same root cause. After scanning our software for other instances of the same problem, I found that the only other Web page that was obviously (emphasis on "obviously") affected by the issue was "Publication Comparison". It's a fairly minor bug as such things go: the data is displayed correctly, but the publications are not organized by publication date the way they were on the old server. I'll try to get it fixed later tonight. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:04, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

The bug should be fixed now. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:32, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

Next Submission button

Something is weird with the "Next Submission" button after a submission is approved - occasionally it will throw you somewhere else in the queue and not to the immediate next. For example I just approved 5414271. The next one, still open at the moment is 5414273. But "Next Submission" after the approval of 5414271 went to 5414299 instead. It happened more than once today - and it appears to be random - sometimes it goes to the immediate next, sometimes it jumps somewhere. Not sure if me jumping around the queue has anything to do with that but this one happened after a refresh, with a single tab open to the single submission (5414271) - I was trying to isolate it because it felt like doing it but I had too many tabs open to be sure I am not seeing things... Annie (talk) 13:15, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Investigating. Thanks for the report. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:24, 8 September 2022 (EDT)
It turns out the software responsible for the Next Submission button was implicitly relying on undocumented database behavior in MySQL 5.5. Apparently the behavior is not guaranteed to be the same in MySQL 8.0, which is what we are running on the new server. I have changed the code to explicitly sort by submission ID, which should hopefully resolve the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:51, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Site Map Broken Links

I don't know if we're still using this topic to report new issues, but I came across a few links in the wiki Site Map page that are broken:

I had thought the last two were due to the reports not running on the new server yet, but the fact that Top Contributors shows is inconsistent with that theory. I have fixed the two that seemed obvious as noted above. Thanks. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 18:54, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the heads up. I have changed all HTTP links to HTTPS and fixed/removed broken links. That said, Site Map hasn't been updated in years, so it's only a very rough approximation of the current functionality. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:04, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Publications with an Invalid Page Count

Looks like a small problem with the Publications with an Invalid Page Count report. John Scifibones 11:16, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the report. I see what the problem is and will fix it after wrapping up the performance enhancements that I am currently working on. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:47, 10 September 2022 (EDT)
Fixed. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:09, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

Wiki search

Wiki search seems to have disappeared from the toolbar. I don't use it very often, but it was very good in searching for old discussions. --Willem (talk) 07:14, 14 September 2022 (EDT)

I think it's at the top right now. --MartyD (talk) 07:33, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
That's not the same. It has no option to refine the search (Help, User Talk etc.). Searching for a topic like "Lord of the Rings" gives no results. --Willem (talk) 07:46, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
There is Special:Search, which lets you refine search parameters. Should we add it to the toolbar? Ahasuerus (talk) 07:52, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
Thanks! It was there, but I just couldn't find it. No need to add it to the toolbar for me alone. :)--Willem (talk) 08:50, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
Special pages has been beefed up considerably. I haven't explored everything that it links to yet, but some pages look useful. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:18, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
A random thing I noticed about the Wiki search while looking at this.... It behaves unexpectedly differently if you enclose the phrase in quotes. Searching for lord of the rings yields this nonsense but searching for "lord of the rings" yields this as you might expect. --MartyD (talk) 10:59, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
I seem to recall many users complaining about the supposedly counterintuitive way Search behaved in earlier versions. Perhaps the default behavior was changed to address their complaints? Ahasuerus (talk) 12:18, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
I don't know what they did, but the fact that searching without quotes around the phrase does not find any of the examples that are found when the phrase is wrapped in quotes is beyond counterintuitive. It's downright bizarre. --MartyD (talk) 12:43, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
I agree with Marty, but I would never search a phrase without quotes. Searching for "lord of the rings" under 'Everything' yields these 4 results, where there should be hundreds. At first glance, the search misses all the archived pages (and probably all sub pages). I tried again under 'Advanced', checking all the boxes, but the result was the same. No high priority of course, but it is annoying. --Willem (talk) 14:18, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
Al ran a full rebuild of the search index, and I think now you'll find results much more in line with your expectations. --MartyD (talk) 17:07, 16 September 2022 (EDT)
Saw the post on Al's page. Thanks! --Willem (talk) 04:19, 17 September 2022 (EDT)

ISFDB Statistics and Top Lists

When you have a minute, check the graphs under 'Title Statistics' and 'Publication Statistics'. They appear to be showing incomplete data. It's been this way since we migrated.John Scifibones 17:50, 7 October 2022 (EDT)

Bug 818, "Title/Publication Statistics graphs are broken", has been created. Thanks for identifying the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:57, 7 October 2022 (EDT)
I believe I have fixed the problem with the software. The graphs will be corrected when the weekly process runs next Sunday (2022-10-16.) Ahasuerus (talk) 08:25, 10 October 2022 (EDT)
The charts are back to normal. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:14, 17 October 2022 (EDT)

Rendering Delays on the New Server

We've discussed in email, but placing here for broader visibility: I've gone through about 3 days of authors born on a specific day, and about every fifth author I encounter a rendering hickup, where the non-bibliographic areas of a page successfully render (title bar, navbar, rendering canvas), and then encounter a 5 to 6 second delay before the author's bibliography renders. This seems to coincide with the mysqld process taking more than 100% cpu. Alvonruff (talk) 15:19, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

After reviewing what MySQL processes do under the hood, I suspect that the main culprits are "Fiction Title Search" and "All Title Search" in the regular "Search" box. When you enter a value in the "Search" box, the database has to scan all of the records of the specified type. For publishers, series, pub. series, tags and awards, it's not a big deal because we have less than 150,000 records of each type. We have 239,000 author records, but it's still manageable. On the other hand, we have over 2,000,000 title records, so it takes the database engine a couple of seconds to go through all of them looking for matches.
Crucially, all other database lookups that touch title records have to wait while the search is running, which means that their Web pages "freeze". This includes publication pages, title pages and author pages. When the search finishes, the rest of the accumulated queries have to be processed at the same time.
The best way to handle this issue would be to improve the way the database engine searches title records, but that can be tricky. A more straightforward short term solution would be to limit regular title searches to exact matches, which is what most searches are likely about anyway. We could then display a message telling the user that "For title searches, the results are limited to exact matches on the entered value. Use Advanced Search if you want to search for titles that contain the entered value". The main downside to this approach is that users would need to register in order to use Advanced Search. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:21, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Has the storage engine changed? cf "MyISAM hasn't been the default storage engine for years. The default_storage_engine was changed to InnoDB in MySQL 5.5.5, which was released in 2010-07-06." and locking issues as covered here and here? ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:00, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
That's a pretty interesting observation. The titles table is indeed MyISAM. In fact 84 tables are MyISAM, and 16 tables are InnoDB. Is the recommendation to convert the MyISAM tables to InnoDB? That's an experiment we can try over at isfdb2.org. --Alvonruff (talk) 17:15, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
That was the first thing that I checked. There have been no changes that I can see. The core ISFDB tables are still MyISAM while the MediaWiki tables are the same mix of MyISAM and InnoDB that we had on the old server. Granted, the MediaWiki update added a couple dozen new tables and it's conceivable that their current engine type doesn't match what MediaWiki recommends. We'll have to take a closer look.
Re: recommendations, last time I looked into these engines they each had advantages and disadvantages depending on how you were searching/updating your database. It's possible that things have changed over the last 5-10 years and one of them pulled ahead. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:28, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
(Following was written a reply to Alvonruff, but I got somewhat beaten to the punch.)
TBH, I don't know - my only reasonably current MySQL experience - well, MariaDB for what difference it makes - is running a local copy of ISFDB, and that only gets used one query at a time, so I wouldn't particularly notice any locking issues. I did briefly experiment with converting the database engine a couple of years ago, but that was only in the context of abusing the engine that uses transactions to allow for easy rolling back of database changes, as part of having code in a test framework.
From what I can recall of that, and from skim reading the links above, I think the performance "hack" would be to get things moved (back?) to MyISAM - but maybe the relevant tables are (still) in that form? Having a mix of MyISAM and InnoDB does sound a bit off though?
Some of those links implied that you can add stuff to SELECT queries to not lock tables - I dunno if that's something that could be looked at? (I just checked my local DB, and all tables are MyISAM, but I don't have the mediawiki stuff.) Or perhaps it's something where the database function being used defaults to running queries in transactions that lock stuff, and maybe you can stop it from doing that? ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:39, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
(This comment is perhaps aimed more at Ahasuerus)
Is it possible to (temporarily) disable the title_views updating? I've only briefly looked at the code related to that, but my recollection is that any title viewing will cause a write to that table, which could have some impact on reads? I found this page about MyISAM locking, but I didn't spot any "smoking guns" that might hint to a cause/solution. ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:14, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
That's an interesting and possibly relevant article. It states, among other things, that, for MyISAM tables:
  • SELECT operations place a READ LOCK on the entire table.
  • INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE queries place a WRITE LOCK on the entire table.
  • Multiple READ LOCKS can exist on a MyISAM table at the same time. This means that several SELECT queries can run at the same time.
  • A WRITE LOCK can only be placed on a MyISAM table if there are no active READ LOCKS or WRITE LOCKS.
However, when I run SHOW PROCESSLIST on the new server, I frequently see something like the following snapshot taken 5 minutes ago:
  • Executing: select distinct t.* from titles t where t.title_title like [user-entered search value]
  • Waiting for table level lock: update titles set title_views='117' where title_id='1372235'
  • Waiting for table level lock: select * from titles where title_id = 166111
  • Waiting for table level lock: select * from titles where title_id = 1249781
The "executing" query is one of the "Fiction Search" SELECT queries that I mentioned earlier. The UPDATE query is one of the "title_views" updaters which ErsatzCulture mentioned immediately above. So far everything matches what the article said. However, the last 2 queries are different. They are simple SELECT queries, so they shouldn't be waiting for the "Fiction Search" query to finish according to the article. The fact that they are suggests that there may be more going on, e.g. once an UPDATE query gets stuck behind a long SELECT query it may be blocking other SELECT queries.
I'll need to read more about this stuff. If it turns out that "UPDATE title_views" queries are the culprit, then the obvious solution would be to move the title_views field to a separate table, which should be easy enough to do. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:26, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

(unindent) I have run a few dozen SHOW PROCESSLIST commands to see if the pattern described above held. Sure enough, it did. Every time there was a bunch of outstanding database requests queued up, there was a "Fiction Search" query executing followed by an "UPDATE title_views" statement followed by a bunch of SELECT queries, all sitting idly and waiting for the "Fiction Search" query to finish making its way through 2,000,000+ records. The following description of MyISAM locking provides an explanation:

  • If a table is being read from when a write request arrives, the write request cannot be processed until all current readers have finished. Any read requests that arrive after the write request must wait until the write request finishes, even if they arrive before the current readers finish.

That's our culprit right there. Every time a user runs a "Fiction Search" and another user requests a Title page, this scenario occurs and everyone else gets locked until the "Fiction Search" finishes.

As I mentioned above, the solution is obvious and easy to implement: move the "view counters" (there are 2 of them) to a separate table. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:49, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

Fix deployed -- see the announcement on the Community Portal. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:09, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

Bookmarks

In case anyone runs into same issue as me: If you have bookmarks that start with http://isfdb.org/, you will probably need to update them to https://isfdb.org/. Not sure exactly what is happening, because server looks like it is correctly redirecting http: to https:, but if I access a bookmark that is http:, I show up as not logged in. If I hit any link on that page, it will then show me as logged in on the new page (since the link is https:). However, if the bookmark is to a page that is restricted to editors (or moderators), I see a not logged in error vs. the content desired. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:01, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

Yes, updating all ISFDB bookmarks to use "https://www.isfdb.org" would be for the best. The new server has some residual issues with redirecting from "http" to "https", e.g. certain redirects will send you to "isfdb.org" instead of to "www.isfdb.org". Due to the way our HTTPS certificate software works, this is a messy area which took Al a long time to get to work at all. The current setup is fragile, so we can't easily fix it. The current plan is to debug it on a separate server and only update the main server when we can be sure that we won't make things worse. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:11, 7 September 2022 (EDT)
Linking Templates used in the Wiki result in the same problem. However, they appear to work fine in the database. John Scifibones 08:57, 8 September 2022 (EDT)
That's a very good point. I have updated all Wiki-based linking templates to use HTTPS. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:43, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

99-0?!?

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php?title=ISFDB:Community_Portal&action=submit; I added a recently uploaded Archive copy of The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film in an edit, linked to my old Portal discussion about the book, got that stupid message above asking me to solve a math problem that a brain-damaged idiot could do, this reminds me of Google's nonsense where they falsely accuse you of being a robot if you search for something too many times in a row and make you do the slide puzzle thing, matching images that don't even work properly a lot of the time and you keep having to do it over and over until you get just the right images that will let you continue on their crap site, I hope this isn't going to be a regular feature of ISFDB now, does anyone even know this is happening or am I the only one? --Username (talk) 11:22, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

These math "puzzles" are generated by "ConfirmEdit", an anti-spam software package which comes with the new version of the Wiki software. ConfirmEdit can be configured to ask math questions, match stylized letters or do any number of other things to confirm that you are human. It's currently enabled, but we can either disable it or (I think) configure it to only challenge new users as opposed to established users. Let me ask Al to stop by. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:45, 8 September 2022 (EDT)
We can configure it to do something else, but the default is the simple math question, which is one of the least irritating modes. The other two simple modes are FancyCaptcha, where "Users have to identify a series of characters, displayed in a stylized way" and MathCaptcha, where "Users have to solve a math problem that's displayed as an image". The other three are more difficult, with a presumably higher degree of aggravation. I've disabled ConfirmEdit for now, and we can see how irritating the spam problem becomes. There are other available modules and methods for fighting the spambots.--Alvonruff (talk) 14:13, 8 September 2022 (EDT)
I have enabled the QuestyCaptcha version of ConfirmEdit. It asks a simple text question real people should know the answer to, and it is configured to trigger only when creating an account, so no one should see it while editing. --Alvonruff (talk) 14:50, 8 September 2022 (EDT)
Since we're still getting a fair number of spam bots in the system, I have dropped the old easy questions, added numerous SF-related questions, and enabled QuestyCaptcha on both createaccount and createtalk. --Alvonruff (talk) 09:39, 11 September 2022 (EDT)

54+1?!?

Jesus Christ, I had to do the same thing in the topic I just added because I included the link to the message about solving the math problem, then I couldn't go back and edit the previous topic because I was logged out, thus the reason for this new topic. What's happening? --Username (talk) 11:35, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Post-upgrade minor behavior change - add regular titles

After the upgrade, adding additional new regular titles to a pub doesn't consistently result in the new title type defaulting to SHORTFICTION. Sometimes it does, sometimes it defaults to something else. Phil (talk) 06:37, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Investigating. Thanks for the report. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:25, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
I have tried a few things but have been unable to recreate the problem so far. Is it possible that you saw this behavior when adding Content titles to NONFICTION or OMNIBUS publications? By design, new title types default to ESSAY for NONFICTION pubs and to NOVEL for OMNIBUS pubs. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:55, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Yes, I think it was a NONFICTION title. I haven't dealt with many of them so this was unexpected. Sorry for the snipe hunt! Phil (talk) 11:49, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
No worries, it's better to err on the side of caution :-) Ahasuerus (talk) 12:00, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Unmerge issue

I don't know if this problem already existed or is a result of the upgrade. I was trying to do an unmerge on this title and wanted to select the pub with date 1992-06-00 and ISBN 0-451-45163-5. That pub record was not shown in the list of titles to unmerge. There are two pub records with a 1992-06-00 date and only the first one is showing in the list. Phil (talk) 06:56, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

The second is not on the list because it's a variant title. Only the "Christopher Kubasik" titles have been merged, the title record you want is here. Hope that helps. Willem (talk) 07:02, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Thanks. I didn't think that the title with the author as Chris Kubasik had been made a variant. In fact, I'm fairly sure that the Chris Kubasik title should be the canonical title and the Christopher Kubasik title should be the variant based the Chris Kubasik title having the oldest pub. However, I'm not sure how that would work with the canonical author name being Christopher Kubasik. Phil (talk) 09:34, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
See here for how a canonical name is determined. To see an author's total production on one page, everything published under pseudonym or alternate name is then varianted to the canonical name. Does that make sense? Willem (talk) 10:26, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Yes. Thanks. Phil (talk) 11:51, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Donald Trump's biographical data: birth place and occupation

Submission 5413877 was created by User:Username on 2022-09-06 00:59:17 and rejected by moderator User:Dirk P Broer on 2022-09-09 07:39:04. The submission would have changed Donald Trump's birth place from "Queens, New York City, USA" to "Jamaica Estates, Queens, New York City, USA" and added the following note: "45th President of the United States of America." The rejection reason was "Too much honor".

User:Username disagreed with the stated reason for rejection and wrote:

"too much honor" isn't a legitimate reason to reject anything

He also re-submitted the data in submission 5415175, which is currently being held by me. I responded to User:Username's post on the Community Portal as follows:

Even if another moderator approves the edit, there is nothing stopping the original (or another) moderator from removing the data later. When a submission is rejected for an invalid reason, it's important to make sure that the moderator who rejected it is understands why it shouldn't have been rejected, otherwise he or she may do something similar again. I'll post on the Moderator Noticeboard.

On to the substantive issues raised by the rejected submission.

The first thing that stands out is that "Queens, New York City, USA" should be "Queens, New York City, New York, USA". Re: the addition of "Jamaica Estates", we have 10 other author records which specify which subdivision of Queens the author was born in. It makes sense since Queens is home to well over 2 million people.

Re: the addition of "45th President of the United States of America", we generally state authors' profession(s) and then add any particularly notable positions that they may have held. For example, Rt. Hon. W. M. Hughes, P.C., M.P.'s note says "Former Australian prime minister"; Shujiang Li's note says "Vice-president of the University of Ningxia in China & writer"; Téofilo Braga's note says:

Writer, playwright & politician. Leader of the Republican Provisional Government after the overthrow of the last Portuguese king, Manuel II, and was also elected the 2nd President of the Republic of Portugal.

Based on this pattern, I propose the following version:

  • US politician, businessman and media personality who served as the 45th President of the United States.

Ahasuerus (talk) 12:34, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Sounds good to me. I would be fine with the original wording, too, though the latter wording is more detailed. I agree that politics shouldn't have anything to do with anything (for the most part...I'm sure there will be an exception) here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:57, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
I once made a more detailed submission than 'city, state/province, country' and was told there there is a standard to which we comply. "We do not need the very doorknob" I was told. "Jamaica Estates" is such a doorknob to me. 'Former US president' or 'Former president of the United States of America' should be enough in my eyes, '45th President of the United States' implies in my eyes that the previous 44 also have entries.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 15:18, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
I don't think "the 45th President of the United States" implies that we have the previous 44 in the database any more than the fact that we mention that Téofilo Braga was "the 2nd President of the Republic of Portugal" implies that we have the first one on file. That said, we could change it to "who served as President of the United States between 2017 and 2021", which is probably more informative than a number like "45".
I agree to that.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 16:47, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Re: the "City, Administrative division, Country" standard, it's true that it's the language used by Template:AuthorFields:BirthPlace. However, we currently use "Queens" and "Brooklyn" even though they are "boroughs" and not "cities". Similarly, we have a number of author records which list the subdivision ("arrondissement") for authors born in Paris. This is something that we probably want to discuss on the Rules and Standards board. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:35, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
I agree to that too.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 16:47, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
OK, I have approved the change and edited the text as per above. I will start a discussion of the use of subdivisions shortly. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:07, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Discussion started. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:23, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Image Deletion 2022-09-12

Please delete the old image here. Thanks Henna (talk) 06:26, 12 September 2022 (EDT)

Done! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:45, 12 September 2022 (EDT)

The Faded Sun Trilogy

Hello Mods. Could someone explain how I determine which version of this publication I have as publication does not have a month printed on copyright page ? --Mavmaramis (talk) 12:51, 14 September 2022 (EDT)

What does it have on the copyright page? If impossible to determine, go for the one without a month (I'd say to move the month into it and credit locus but there is a possibility for more than one printing in this month so may not be safe). Annie (talk) 13:09, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
Copyright page has "First published as a single volume 1987" otherwise ISBN, price, page count are idenetical to this --Mavmaramis (talk) 12:31, 15 September 2022 (EDT)
Which is also identical to this. As I said - it is very very possible it is the same publication so I would go for the one without a month (and which has verifiers) in case we decide to consolidate downstream and move the month based on Locus. The only thing is that we are unclear if the second printing WAS in the same year - if we find the second printing is later, we know these two are the same... Annie (talk) 12:48, 15 September 2022 (EDT)
I'm not a moderator but I'm weighing in anyway :-)
My experience of Methuen pb's of this era is that:
A 1st printing would have something like, for example, "First published in Great Britain 1987" with no mention of reprints
A 3rd (say) printing would have something like, for example, "First published in Great Britain 1987 / reprinted 1987, 1988"
So if your copy does not mention reprints then I think you have this pub: 187677 because the pub notes for this pub: 313545 specifically state "Reprinted 1987" so it is a 2nd printing in the same year as the 1st printing. Teallach (talk) 19:00, 15 September 2022 (EDT)
That's usually true but as it is an omnibus, the reprinted MAY apply to reprint of the novels. Considering all the PVs, it is very suspicious of them to all be on the reprint. And then there is the problem of "is that April book (the one without any PVs) we have the first or the second printing?". These 2 books records are just confused at this point :( Annie (talk) 19:13, 15 September 2022 (EDT)
Alrighty thanks for the input. I'm going to switch verifications from this edition to this edition.--Mavmaramis (talk) 10:21, 17 September 2022 (EDT)

Moderator Queue - performance enhancements

The software that displays the Moderator Queue has been rewritten. The new version should be significantly faster, especially when there are a lot of outstanding submissions in the queue. Also, the name of the "Status" column has been changed to "Held By". It no longer displays the letter "N" when there is no holder. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:16, 15 September 2022 (EDT)

title note hover box

Hello, the link in the translator's hover box no longer works properly. For example The Voyage of the Space Beagle {{Tr|{{A|Jesco von Puttkamer}}}}. Thanks Henna (talk) 06:27, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Investigating. Thanks for the report. Ahasuerus (talk) 06:59, 16 September 2022 (EDT)
Should be fixed now. Please let me know if you come across any problems. Ahasuerus (talk) 07:44, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Image Deletion 2022-09-19

Please delete the old images here and here. Thanks Henna (talk) 05:25, 19 September 2022 (EDT)

Done. :) --Willem (talk) 05:39, 19 September 2022 (EDT)

Image Deletion 2022-09-21

Please delete the old images here. Thanks Henna (talk) 06:20, 21 September 2022 (EDT)

Done! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:10, 21 September 2022 (EDT)

Chavey Cover Info

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Chavey/Changes_to_Verified_Pubs#Adding_Images.2FNotes_to_Pubs_Verified_by_Chavey; I added a few recently, and today noticed there's 2 messages at the bottom that are in the wrong place, from O'Fearna and MOHearn, which should probably be moved to the list in the appropriate date slot, if anyone wants to bother doing such a minor thing. --Username (talk) 15:36, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

cover image file

Many times the cover image for the hard, soft and ebook versions is the same. Let us say I first upload the hardback as it came out first. After it is approved I then upload the image file. I then proceed to upload the softback & ebook versions. When these are approved I need to upload the cover images. I enter the form and select upload new cover scan. It gives the image a file name, tells me to select the image. I select my image which is the same as the hc. The software now tells me this image is the same as "blah" and gives me three option: 1st to change the image file name. NOt sure what it means. The software has already assigned a different name for the image I uploaded the 1st time. I can rename my file on my computer but the software still seems to know its the same image. 2nd I can tell it to ignore and upload the new file anyway and 3rd to cancel. My question, should I tell it to ignore and upload my new file under the new name the software gives or should I go to my original upload and copy then paste that link into the new book version? aardvark7 (talk) 10:27, 24 September 2022 (EDT)

You can upload another copy and give each publication record its own, different, cover image link, or you can make the records share the same Wiki image link. FYI, the latter is what ends up happening when you clone a publication record that has a cover image URL and you don't change it. Outside of the cloning process if you want to share the one cover image, do not use the "Upload new cover scan". Instead, go to the other publication record and copy the image URL, or go to the Wiki page of the image you uploaded and copy the image link from there. If you want each record to have its own, separate cover image (which is fine, even if they are identical), then use "Upload new cover scan." If that operation tells you the file already exists, then there already is an image with that generated file name. A common way for that to happen is if multiple printings are recorded having the same publication date -- the name generation algorithm will produce the same name for all of those. You could cancel and go check and see if you want to make your publication record share that image. But if you want to use the image you have, you should not ignore-and-upload-anyway, as that would replace an image being used by other records. Instead, you need to change the destination name for your image. A simple way to do that would be to add a "-" and the printing number or a counter to the end of the generated name, before the extension/file type. E.g., "XXXXX.jpg -> XXXXX-2.jpg". --MartyD (talk) 08:21, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

Robert Silverberg Pseudonym

Somebody mentioned that Silverberg's sixties novel Hot Beat, published as by "Stan Vincent", was being reprinted soon under his own name, so I entered the original book from the lone copy on eBay. Same person apparently made Vincent a variant of Silverberg but didn't do it for the book, so I did it just now, only to see that there's now this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/adv_search_results.cgi?START=0&TYPE=Title&USE_1=author_canonical&O_1=exact&TERM_1=Stan%20Vincent&ORDERBY=title_title&C=AND, because they created a separate record for the book a few days ago. So I don't know, merge or something is probably needed. Also, I'd like to ask if there's any way head mods can fix other mods' lists or queues or whatever they're called, because while I currently have 500+ edits awaiting approval, some editors do them in order, skipping over the ones they're not sure about, while others approve edits I just made 5 minutes ago that are at the top of the list, like they're seeing the list backwards or something. --Username (talk) 19:39, 24 September 2022 (EDT)

I merged them. As for ordering, I cannot say if this was the reason at the time you saw it, but if/when multiple moderators are working on approvals at the same time, a lot of time can be wasted reviewing a submission only to find out another moderator has just processed it. An expedient way to avoid that, once encountered, is to start working the queue from the opposite direction. --MartyD (talk) 08:04, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

Moderator Changes

I'm just going to post stuff like this on the general mod board now; it's too random getting on individual boards these days. https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?282910; unstable Amazon G image needs replacing, MartyD or Hifrommike65. --Username (talk) 23:42, 26 September 2022 (EDT)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?249827; Bane of Nightmares needs unstable Amazon G cover replaced, GlennMcG; FantLab has a good cover and also shows the back cover. --Username (talk) 13:43, 28 September 2022 (EDT)

Page Layout

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?3677; Irene Shubik record links to Brian Hayles because he supposedly ghost-edited the anthology with her name on it, but while her page here looks normal Hayles is missing stuff, like those boxes separating things, if you know what I mean. Might be nothing, might be something. Are there others; any way to search? --Username (talk) 20:26, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

An html error in the Notes - missing closing quote on the link - fixed now. When you see something like that, the first thing to check is if there is an html issue in one of the fields when you edit the record. Annie (talk) 22:03, 29 September 2022 (EDT)
I've got a sneaking suspicion this might have been my doing, if so apologies. (I worked on one or both of the Shubik and Hayles entries a few months ago, can't recall exactly what I did though, and I can't see author edit histories.)
Do you recall if this showed up in the cleanup reports that list dodgy HTML? I try to remember and check those at least every other week, and I don't recall seeing anything for authors. Although I suspect detecting unclosed quotes would probably need the HTML to be properly parsed, and I think the current reports are just using regexes or similar? ErsatzCulture (talk) 08:26, 30 September 2022 (EDT)
I know mismatched quotes is one of the things that reports looks for. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:46, 30 September 2022 (EDT)

Just wanted to make sure this one didn't slip through the cracks

From two weeks back-- https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5428249

Thanks!

Settdigger (talk) 15:02, 3 October 2022 (EDT)

It won't - it is on the board so it won't get lost. But as it will require quite a lot of post-approval work (from the way the editors are credited, through the dating (we date magazines based on cover date, not based on when they come out) to the lack of sources (someone will need to chase down the publisher site (hint - adding it to the moderator notes is VERY useful) and some capitalization issues (As and Is are always capitalized for example) plus probably a few more things I missed at a glance. So it will require someone who has the time to work on it to approve it - and with the number of pending submissions at the moment, it just can take awhile. Sometimes things get delayed for one reason or another. Patience :) Annie (talk) 15:25, 3 October 2022 (EDT)

Submission Search modified

Submission Search (moderator only) has been modified. In the past, it was limited to approved submissions. Now you can select either "Approved" or "Rejected" from a drop-down list. The default is "Approved". Ahasuerus (talk) 18:15, 3 October 2022 (EDT)

How to get the Wiki software to ask for confirmation when rolling back Wiki changes

Moderators can "rollback" Wiki edits. By default, clicking a "rollback" link takes effect immediately. Since rolling back a Wiki change is rare, most moderators probably want to have the Wiki software ask to confirm that the rollback is intentional and not a misclick. Here is how you can make your Wiki account ask for rollback confirmation:

Access Wiki "Preferences" at the top of any wiki page. Click "Appearance" and scroll to the very bottom of the page. If you are a moderator, you will see a checkbox which should say "Show a confirmation prompt when clicking on a rollback link". Check it and "Save" the page. The Wiki software will prompt to confirm rollbacks from that point forward. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:49, 10 October 2022 (EDT)

Datlow Anthologies

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1027250; Since someone at Archive.org recently uploaded #6 of her old YBF&H I added it and #2 and #17 which were uploaded not too long ago, but then I noticed that whoever entered the nearly 2 dozen volumes here just entered everything in a big mess, with dates and stuff randomly entered properly or not. I'm trying to fix this (there's going to be several dozen edits at the top of my queue which just change a date, annoying but necessary since they can't be changed from within the books themselves all at one time because each volume has at least 2 editions), but that particular link above requires an unmerging or something, so if anyone wants to take care of that. --Username (talk) 19:51, 10 October 2022 (EDT)

Thomas Bailey

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?201640; 2 different people, I think. --Username (talk) 10:42, 18 October 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for this finding! There's now a differentiation between the two Thomas Baileys. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:32, 18 October 2022 (EDT)

Entries for "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" are messed up

ISFDB tells me that "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea", by Ursula Le Guin, is a variant title of "Another Story". This is incorrect. The story's (unfortunate) title is "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea". It isn't called "Another Story" anywhere. This is well beyond my abilities to fix. Can someone take a look? Thanks, Danbloch (talk) 02:10, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Hello! We do have a piece titled 'Another Story' here. I don't know if both are the same by content, but it might be so. Do you have additional information both are different? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 05:33, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
Looks like there are some others, too: here and here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:00, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
Thanks for the responses. The 1994 "Tomorrow Speculative Fiction" publication is the initial appearance of the story in question. I still believe that it appeared there under the long title, based on sources like sfadb and the fact that its second appearance, in Le Guin's collection "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" later that year, used the long title, but I guess I can't be sure. Do you have access to the magazine to confirm it? If not I could buy a copy. Danbloch (talk) 16:05, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
I do not. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:53, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
I'll get back to you in a week or so. Danbloch (talk) 17:44, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
ISFDB is right, the original magazine appearance was called "Another Story". The only change I can argue for now is that "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" would be better as the primary name. Regards, Danbloch (talk) 15:30, 28 October 2022 (EDT)
We generally use the title of a piece's first appearance as the parent. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 15:38, 28 October 2022 (EDT)

Suspected Duplicate Authors report

I found out Amanda Faye and Amanda Kaye arn't the same person. --Zapp (talk) 08:12, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

I have "ignored" them. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:12, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Expedition to Earth

Hello Mods. I picked up a copy of [3] this exact edition. Dated 1978 on copyright page, priced at £1.95, ISBN 0-283-98623-9 but has a Danny Flynn wraparound cover - this cover not listed under Flynn either. It's this artwork. Do I clone the existing 1978 edition with the Tim White cover or edit it to reflect the book I have in my hand ? --Mavmaramis (talk) 12:59, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

You can clone it, but uncheck the box for the cover art on the interim page before you get to the the page where you can edit the publication. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:01, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
Except that the only difference is the cover art. Otherwise everything is identical hence my query as I very much suspect that publication record has had the Tim White cover art attached to it by mistake. --Mavmaramis (talk) 13:09, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
Yes, that's why you can clone it: because everything but the cover is the same. If you uncheck that box I mentioned above, then it will clone everything except for the cover art. You can then add the correct cover art information. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:21, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
Or are you saying that the publication is already in the system here, and that the cover art information is incorrect on it? If so, then you'd need to remove the cover art from that publication using "Remove Titles From This Pub", and then edit the existing publication to add the correct cover art info. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:23, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
I'm saying that my edition matches exactly the 1987 publication already in the system except for the cover art. Publisher is Sifgwick & Jackson (as stated on title page) not New English Library (this only noted on cover). --Mavmaramis (talk) 13:32, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
The cover was added here based on notes in a nonfiction book published in 1981. This book is from 1987 - unless someone had a crystal ball in 1981, the credit is NOT for this edition. Who knows what cover was there before that (it is pre-history). But as it is impossible for a 1981 book to know what a 1987 book will use as a cover, it is safe to say that this credit is bogus and is probably done based on the image visible in the work back when the edit was done - which if it was a /P/ Amazon image, was based on ISBN... or maybe someone just looked at a wrong edition or something. It may have been the correct image for a previous printing? If you are sure you have the January 1987 printing/edition, fix the cover, eject this COVERART record from it and clean up the note. Annie (talk) 14:09, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
PS: The cover and credit belongs to 1983 reprint and earlier ones; apparently in 1987 changed the cover if everything else matches (they would not publish both a reprint with the old cover AND one with a new cover in the same year using the same ISBN I'd think but who knows). If you are still unsure clone and add notes in both records that they are possibly the same... Annie (talk) 14:14, 19 October 2022 (EDT)
I've gone the safe route and cloned the existing 1987 entry. --Mavmaramis (talk) 14:03, 20 October 2022 (EDT)

Flock of Flamingos

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?26820; The recent book doesn't belong with the other 3; publisher should be changed in some way while not conflicting with the several other Flamingo publishers already here. --Username (talk) 19:39, 20 October 2022 (EDT)

The picture book is by an Penguin Random House imprint. I have updated the book & added notes on the new publisher record. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:56, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

More Broken Images

Adding to all the other broken images, I noticed an O'Fearna image broken the other day, and today saw this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?87709, so is her site not HTTPS, is this already known here, etc. --Username (talk) 11:54, 23 October 2022 (EDT)

Her site's HTTPS certificate is configured for "secure.hostingprod.com" instead of "ofearna.us" and/or "books.ofearna.us". Browsers see it as a security violation, so we have to continue using HTTP links until her certificate is fixed. We have 78 pubs which use "ofearna.us" URLs. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:22, 23 October 2022 (EDT)

First Parameter Not Specified

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5466606; I get the above message when I click the blue box; that can't be right. --Username (talk) 20:11, 27 October 2022 (EDT)

That looks like a bug. I'll take a look tomorrow morning. Thanks for reporting the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 00:03, 28 October 2022 (EDT)
The bug has been identified and will be fixed in the next patch. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:00, 28 October 2022 (EDT)
Fixed. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:33, 1 November 2022 (EDT)

2 Old Flames

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?854043; I almost filled in the missing info for that first record until I noticed the same book is further down, and I see that I filled in info for that some time ago. The first one was entered by people a very long time ago, so someone came along and entered the later one without noticing, I guess. So I think the first one can safely be deleted by a mod. --Username (talk) 11:45, 4 November 2022 (EDT)

Per the publisher's website, this came in the $40 limited edition and the $175 traycased lettered edition (which is typical for this publisher). I converted the first one to the traycased lettered edition since we did not have a record for it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:51, 5 November 2022 (EDT)

Feature request: Filter the Moderator Queue per submitter

When working the queue, it is useful to be able to see all the submissions from the same editor - seeing what they already submitted in multi-edits processes or seeing what else is there so you know how to followup makes it easier to process and not to leave things unfinished (or sometimes even processing in a different order to clear warnings before approving (re-dating contents being one of the big example - the updates tend to come after the initial submissions, when the editor had seen the yellow warning). I tend to search on the page and just look through them this way to see what is coming later and what needs fixing on the spot but it will be easier to see them if they can be filtered so a moderator can only see them. Thanks! Annie (talk) 13:29, 7 November 2022 (EST)

This would be extremely helpful. Even if it's a list of usernames at the top, or a drop-down list, being able to do this would be super helpful. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:35, 7 November 2022 (EST)
I can see how it would be helpful. One thing that comes to mind is that moderators already have access to a Submission Search menu option. Currently, it lets you search for "Approved" or "Rejected" submissions for a given user, but we could easily add the ability to retrieve a list of "New/Pending" submissions for the specified user.
Once we do that, we could add a link (something like [all]?) to the "Submitter" field of the New Submissions page. Clicking the link will take you to the list of the selected user's "New/Pending" submissions as described above.
We could also display a list of all submitters with outstanding "New/Pending" submissions at the bottom (or top) of the "New Submissions" page. Each name would be linked to the user's list of "New/Pending" submissions as described above. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:44, 7 November 2022 (EST)
I really like the "(all)" link idea. It could be a simple link to the search results for a feature we already have, too, so shouldn't be that difficult to implement. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:59, 7 November 2022 (EST)
Yep, that can work. I also like the idea of the list of the people who have active submissions somewhere on the page - that way we can find the new/infrequent users submissions faster when the queue get busy (as they usually won't be around in a few days to check on what happened)... Annie (talk) 19:04, 7 November 2022 (EST)
FR 1544, "Filter Moderator Queue by submitter", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:25, 10 November 2022 (EST)

Outcome

Submission Search has been updated to support searching for "Pending" submissions. The Queue page has been updated so that all "Submitter" cells link to submitter-specific lists of submissions. A new table, "Counts of pending submissions by submitter", is now displayed at the bottom of the Queue page. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:09, 14 November 2022 (EST)

Any chance to slightly modify the lower table to show how many of these are already on hold? I find it useful to see both the on holds and the really open ones when I go to the filtered page but when everything for a user is on hold, it will be useful not to need to manually check the page to see if something may need attention. Annie (talk) 19:45, 14 November 2022 (EST)
Good point. I'll take a look tomorrow. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:25, 14 November 2022 (EST)
Done. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:53, 14 November 2022 (EST)
Thanks! Annie (talk) 11:25, 15 November 2022 (EST)

Acceptable moderator behavior?

Greetings! Lately, one moderator (Dirk P Broer) has taken to the habit to change publication types without consent of the primary verifiers or even their notification. In addition this has lead to one highly questionable and one wrong attribution.

The questionable one was done here, changing from novel to chapbook (and then varianting to the novella "A Bicycle Built for Brew") with the statement that it's a translation of the novel "The Makeshift Rocket" stated in the notes.

The wrong one was done numerous times, for example here, with the publication well-defined as a CHAPBOOK according to the help pages and a 2020 discussion (of which Dirk was informed of).

In addition, he added insufficient content data (and changed the publication type) here, also without informing the PV; insufficient it was because he added author credits (one author for each one of the novellas) without asking about the actual credit, and didn't use the agreed upon 'Première partie :' / 'Deuxième partie :'.

To add to the list, he rejected numerous valid submissions (for example here), without checking back if they might contain in fact speculative fiction (which they do). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 05:56, 8 November 2022 (EST)

I have asked Dirk to comment. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:58, 8 November 2022 (EST)
Very childish behaviour of a former moderator that won't play by the rules and constantly keeps making a chapbook from a collection -see the history by changing back the prologue from ESSAY (fitting for supporting fiction in a CHAPBOOK) to SHORT FICTION, fitting in case of a COLLECTION. When I honor his short fiction and do make it a collection he changes it back to CHAPBOOK, when I change it back to ESSAY (always explaining why) he changes it back again. He seems to think that 'in world' always means that it is fiction -see his many fiction type 'Glossar' (glossary) entries in the Perry Rhodan series, but so it the Tourist Guide to Lancre, or Nanny Ogg's Cookbook. The so-called questionable change takes place after a series of requests from JLochhas and Mellotronman, who want to make a novella of both 'A Bicycle Made for Brew' and 'The Makeshift Rocket' (a mere 114 pages in my copy), pointing out in their change requests that they are the same. The statement that Stonecreek attributes to me was the 'Note to Moderator' from Mellotronman Translation of 'A Bicycle Built for Brew', published in book form as 'The Makeshift Rocket'. I hereby request that the self-appoval rights for Stonecreek can be revoked, as he can't even distinguish short fiction from an essay.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 17:49, 8 November 2022 (EST)
Dirk, the one you are citing (Le piège de glace should be a chapbook based on the changes we made into the chapbook definition a few years ago, namely:
  • "The following types of SHORTFICTION titles are ignored when deciding whether the publication is a CHAPBOOK: :
    • Supporting and incidental material such as excerpts, synopses, and fictionalized essays
    • Up to one bonus short story, poem or short serial installment, but only if the publication's title page lists only the main title and the main title's author(s)"
The full help page is here: chapbook description. That extra story at the start fits this description thus making the whole thing a chapbook - regardless if it is a story or an essay. Or are you seeing something that I am missing which disqualifies the book from being a chapbook under that provision? Annie (talk) 18:00, 8 November 2022 (EST)
What's wrong with entering a fictionalized essay as an ESSAY? Why entering a mere story outline as SHORT FICTION, and not as an ESSAY? If we have looser rules for CHAPBOOKs, why is the maintenance report not as loose? Or should we disregard maintenance reports altogether, because of the false flags they are raising?--Dirk P Broer (talk) 19:40, 8 November 2022 (EST)
I am not commenting on the type of this text (fictionalized essays had been recorded both ways), I am just mentioning the current rules for the chapbooks. We have an ignore option on this report specifically so we can ignore in these kind of situations. The report cannot be made looser because a human needs to see the two pieces of fiction and see if they qualify - not all books with two stories qualify as chapbooks. Fixing reports’ entries by making the data incorrect is never a good idea - a lot of the reports should really be treated as “take a look at this, it may be incorrect” and not as “fix it now so it disappears from the list”. If the report has the ability to have an entry ignored, it is almost always that “look at it, it may be wrong” case. Which does not mean to just ignore all entries you don’t want to deal with of course :)Annie (talk) 22:16, 8 November 2022 (EST)
What's wrong with entering a fictionalized essay as an ESSAY? If you read closely, Dirk, the answer is already given in your question (I'll point you towards it: fiction is part of both words, 'fictionalized' and 'short fiction', so they cling together like a real essay in our definition (article, report, listing etc.) and nonfiction.
It looks like you think you can freely mix subject and attribute. You can't, it is a logical error, if not a downright a factual lie -try exchanging those. A fictional essay is an essay about fiction. It can be a foreword, an introduction, a summary, an afterword, or an explanation why a certain story wasn't written, as in the piece of Stonecreek.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 17:40, 15 November 2022 (EST)
And you didn't answer why you changed it again after having been pointed toward our current rules (disregarding that a moderator should know about this rule).
Please also do leave a comment on entering insufficient content to "Les soldats stellaires" and not cecking back on the actual crediting. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 08:46, 9 November 2022 (EST)
When did I get pointed toward our current rules, and when did I change it back? I did not know about two pieces of short fiction possible in a chapbook until this issue here. Why does the maintenance report use more than one as a criteria, when it should be more than two?
I took my info for "Les soldats stellaires" from Noosfere and made that change because this anthology was until my change without any content whatsoever. Based upon Noosfere, I really don't know what else to enter, but is seems like the Perry Rhodan sub-section of isfdb follows additional rules that I am unaware off. I think I'll take a break till somewhere deep in 2024 to catch up on reading rules and standards -and I am behind on Goodreads challenge, too.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 19:47, 9 November 2022 (EST)

(unindent) It looks like there are at least three separate issues here, two of them substantive and one procedural. The substantive issues are:

  1. whether a CHAPBOOK pub can have an additional fictionalized essay entered without the pub becoming a COLLECTION
  2. whether we enter fictionalized and "in universe" essays as SHORTFICTION or as ESSAY

The CHAPBOOK issue is addressed in Help as per the quote above. The SHORTFICTION/ESSAY issue is subjective and has been handled differently by different editors depending on the context.

The procedural issue is the one that worries me the most. When two editors who can approve their own submissions disagree about the best way to enter certain types of content, an "edit war", i.e. reverting each other's edits, is never the right way to handle the issue. Not only does it irritate everyone involved, but it's also completely pointless because the other editor may revert the changes yet again a week, a month or a year later.

The right process is to approach the other editor on his or her Talk page and try to come to an agreement. If an agreement cannot be reached, then the issue should be presented on the Moderator Noticeboard. If a Moderator Noticeboard discussion reveals a gap or an ambiguity in Help, a follow-up Rules and Standards discussion may be needed. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:02, 9 November 2022 (EST)

On "Les soldats stellaires": The right way to change a primary verified publication in this way (stating a credit for contents) is always to contact the primary verifier who can look up the actual credit.
He hadn't entered anything, so I gave him something to work with. I found it on the list of primary verified publications without content.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 19:15, 23 November 2022 (EST)
On the issue of synopsises and pseudo-essays: I don't see how a short(er) (re)telling of a (speculative) fictional happening should be able to change its character into something entirely different. If you take a piece out of an artichoke, by the other logic you would be able to sell it afterwards as meat, just because it's called a 'heart' (but it stays somehow vegetarian, I think). Christian

Stonecreek (talk) 03:05, 10 November 2022 (EST)

An (historical) essay about the Greek history is not the same as the Greek history. An (political) essay about January 6th is not the same a the assault on Capitol Hill. A fictional essay about e.g. space ships in the Perry Rhodan Universe is the same as an essay on space ships in e.g. the Star Wars or Star Trek universe. A glossary about the Perry Rhodan universe is the same as a glossary for any other series. There is nothing special about Perry Rhodan that warrants other rules to be followed.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 19:15, 23 November 2022 (EST)
And an essay about the Dutch slave trade is not the same as the hundreds of years of suffering endured by Africans enslaved by the Dutch, while they considered themselves superior to Americans because some of them could paint pretty pictures. --Username (talk) 20:19, 23 November 2022 (EST)
Telling about a piece of fiction makes it a fictional essay. 'essay' is the subject, 'fictional' the attribute. A fictional essay is an essay about fiction. It can be a foreword, an introduction, a summary, an afterword, or an explanation why a certain story wasn't written.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 17:40, 15 November 2022 (EST)
I hereby request too that the self-approval rights for Stonecreek must be revoked, it's time to stop Stonecreek! (translation by Google)--Wolfram.winkler (talk) 16:52, 11 November 2022 (EST)
I tried to warn you. Grudges long-held, even by people who quit long ago. Welcome to Hell. --Username (talk) 18:17, 11 November 2022 (EST)

The Haunted Gay

Weird thing happened today; I clicked my errored out edits and there was a new one, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5459741, where the record does exist but is a stray publication because it apparently got cut off before the Regular titles part got filled in, so if someone can fix that. A work of such literary quality must be preserved. Also, spell check says "errored" isn't a word; anyone else see the same? --Username (talk) 19:19, 8 November 2022 (EST)

It happens occasionally when things error out at exactly the wrong moment - all it needs is an EditPub to add the missing title.
PS: errored is very much a word, pretty common in computing: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/errored even if the spell checker does not like it. Annie (talk) 19:28, 8 November 2022 (EST)

Making variants to non-existing parents (that could exist)

There are a number of submissions in the queue to make a COVERART a variant of an INTERIORART record that has yet to be entered into the database (e.g. this). In these instances the publication containing the INTERIORART is there, but was added with a single INTERIORART record for all the illustrations for the work. I've seen similar edits rejected with a note that the individual INTERIORART record should be added in a publication before the variant relationship is made. I'm a bit less certain, and want to make sure that we are all moderating similarly. I see no harm having a parent INTERIORART record that we don't have in a publication, so long as it is mentioned in the notes. If others feel strongly that this shouldn't be done, I can live with that too. Even if it is not allowed, it should be acceptable to create the variants first and then import the parents into the publication record where they belong. Regardless of whether orphaned records are allowed, I would also that we should not have a mix of individual and comprehensive INTERIORART records in a single publication record, i.e. if we are converting to individual records, we should do all of them. Thoughts? Thanks. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 18:43, 15 November 2022 (EST)

Let's start with the obvious for the one you linked: I am almost sure that a Brazilian artist, who mainly worked for French language publications, did not have an illustration called "The Martians fire their gas-guns" in a French book in 1906 unless that was a plaque from an English book and that needs explaining somewhere... It is possible of course but very unlikely. And that is part of my issue with this type of parents creation - their titles will need to match the title as shown in the book they originated in, in whatever language they were there and not whatever Wikipedia or other sources call these in English these days.
I generally do not like creating titles outside of publications unless we have to (parent titles for translations and canonical names for example) and even less for art titles (which may or may not be imported later). I think I rejected one yesterday (this one) and then decided to leave the rest alone and think a bit on how we should be handling these (and you beat me on posting about them). Part of the reason of wanting to go the other way around is that verifying that these are named correctly will require to look at the original work where it appeared - at least this one was in the correct language but I prefer the active PV we have to check the title of that illustration for us.
If we decide to approve these, then we will really need to pay attention to titles and languages... which is much much easier if they get added where they belong first. :) Annie (talk) 19:07, 15 November 2022 (EST)
PS: Apparently the English caption came from the English language PGA/RGL edition which includes the illustrations from the French edition (the one linked from Gutenberg Australia) and from the Pearson's Magazine edition. But that does not make this the original title of the illustration back in 1906 in that French book where it originated. If we are going to make up titles or use later titles for the illustrations, we are better off doing it in notes and not creating titles IMO. Annie (talk) 19:28, 15 November 2022 (EST)
I agree with Ron. Allowing the creation of the parent title seems consistent with how we treat non artwork titles. As far as requiring all the titles to be entered, I'm ambivalent. Choosing to require all the artwork to be included necessitates an additional incomplete template and the corresponding exception report, specifically for artwork.
This submission is incorrect for the reasons Annie points out. The language and title are both wrong. Here is the illustration in the original text. In the credits, ILLUSTRATIONS HORS TEXTE, it is clearly identified as 'La Fumée Noire'. John Scifibones 20:38, 15 November 2022 (EST)
As long as the approver tracks down each of the ones they are approving into its original book and verifies the title and language, I’d be fine with that - there is the argument that having the data is better than not having the data after all. But these will be very labor-intensive because I really don’t trust any of the titles used in these - they belong to a version of that illustration but not necessarily the first one and we want the one in the original book after all. Annie (talk) 21:07, 15 November 2022 (EST)
After thinking some more on this, here is what bothers me in the whole situation. I agree with Ron that we should not be mixing individual and comprehensive INTERIORART records in a single publication record. And here lies the difference between INTERIORART and any other type as INTERIORART is the only type that allows this type of different usage. With any other type, if we create a parent and we have the book the parent is supposed to go into, someone can import it into the book (if it gets created outside of it). With the parents we are discussing here, if the book they belong into uses a single comprehensive INTERIORART record, they will never be importable unless the book is reworked to use individual records. And as using comprehensive INTERIORART records is permitted, that will leave us with a title which belongs inside of a publication but cannot be imported into it and without a link from the publication or any of its titles to the title itself.
With that being said, if the consensus is to allow these, I will of course follow the consensus. But I really dislike the idea of having titles which are unimportable even when the books they belong into are in the DB. Annie (talk) 11:49, 16 November 2022 (EST)
I like the idea of not mixing, BUT.... If we have a situation where we do not have a source for identifying all of the individual art pieces present (say, the typical "Illustrations by XYZ" credit but no PV and no access to the book's interior) and we discover good evidence in another pub identifying one of the pieces, it seems to me we'd want that one piece's details recorded in the original pub, even if we do not know the rest. As for submission order, adding the title to the original publication first, then making the variant later sure would make the review and approval process a lot easier. It is difficult to recognize mistakes when a disconnected parent title is proposed, and requiring approver research is not a good way to direct the work load. --MartyD (talk) 13:00, 16 November 2022 (EST)
I suspect that, as Annie suggested earlier, the underlying issue that we are struggling with is that we use the INTERIORART title type to describe two different types of content: individual illustrations vs. publication-wide artist attributions. In most cases we only have information about one OR the other type of content. When it happens, the context is typically clear, so using the same INTERIORART title type to document two different scenarios is not too confusing. However, when we have information about the publication-wide artist attribution PLUS information about one or more (but not all) individual illustrations, using the same title type becomes problematic.
In retrospect, it may have been better to create separate title types for the two scenarios or to come up with a disambiguating naming convention, e.g. a parenthetical addition like "La Guerre Des Mondes (publication-wide)". It's probably too late for a separate publication type, but perhaps we could come up with an INTERIORART disambiguator to use in pubs which have a mix of publication-wide and illustration-specific INTERIORART records? Ahasuerus (talk) 15:46, 16 November 2022 (EST)
I think that at this point we have two separate but related discussions going on here - how do we want to treat art pieces when we know only some of the titles of the record (which we maybe should move to R&S) - and that is the one that will determine if we make these parents or not and if we do, how we import them - and the pure moderator discussion about what we do with all of these submissions (which lack the details for the proper sources to determine the title easily and will take a lot of time to research in order to approve properly). Approving them as they are without verifying the credit is out of the question IMO. Which possibly opens a somewhat more generic discussion - just how much do we want to do the work for editors who throw a huge number of incomplete or incorrect submissions on the board and when we stop and reject and ask them to redo the work properly (as much as I hate losing data, spending all the available moderator time on essentially doing someone else’s homework and full research is going to burn everyone out from working the queue). I don’t mind helping a new or very infrequent editor when they don’t know what they are doing yet and show them how to improve (and do the leg work for them a few times to show them how it is done) but if an experienced editor sends something like what started this thread? I may approve and fix a few but after the first few, I will send it back for them to be redone. As Marty said - if we need to do that much research to approve, the work load will become a huge problem. Maybe we need to have a restriction in place for number of open submissions by new editors so we don’t get flooded with another 10k, in groups of hundreds of similarly incorrect or incomplete submissions again - high enough not to discourage people (100 for example) but low enough to only come into play when we have another case like the current one. Tie it to a flag on the account or to number of approvals or something like that (although number of approvals would have been high quickly here). Just thinking aloud. Annie (talk) 17:25, 16 November 2022 (EST)
It would be easy to prevent editors from creating new submissions if the number of their pending submissions exceeds a certain threshold value. We could start with 1,000 and see how it goes. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:46, 17 November 2022 (EST)
Since I currently have almost 1,300 edits pending in the queue, I'd vote no on that. I've been considering taking a break after Thanksgiving next week, so if you could wait until then to make your changes that would be great. Or maybe only block ElectricStarboard from making any more until all others are done, since he/she has about 80% of all pending edits, many of them being rejected/resubmitted because they're not done right, and is one of the (many) reasons why things are the way they are right now. --Username (talk) 10:19, 17 November 2022 (EST)
We could set a low number for automatic implementation as Annie suggests. If 100 is too low, maybe 200. Then make the flag editable on the bureaucrat menu same as the self-approver and moderator flags. John Scifibones 11:06, 17 November 2022 (EST)
OK, we can limit the proposed functionality to "new" (green background) editors, which are currently defined as editors with a low count of Wiki edits. I haven't been feeling well the last week+, but I'll see what I can do. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:29, 17 November 2022 (EST)

Shadow World series info

Hello. I've noticed some missing information on this series.

The series is written by Ian Hammell (or Roxanne Longstreet) pen names of Rachael Cain

I don't know if I need to provide more info. I have the books on paper, I could supply scanned version of the credits if needed.

Thanks

--cibersheep.com (talk) 08:29, 17 November 2022 (EST)

This would be welcome (supplying the credits, I mean): Wikipedia lists only the fourth title in the series as to have been written by Rachael Cain, and to date we think it's possible that Ian Hammell may have been used by other authors as well. Stonecreek (talk) 08:38, 17 November 2022 (EST)
Well, I just found that another Wikpedia page tells about other authors being responsible for the other novels. Do you have different informations? Stonecreek (talk) 09:21, 17 November 2022 (EST)
Ah, now I understand the issue here. I was assuming that Ian Hammell was always used by the same person. Now it makes sense (as the style is different...) ok. Focus :). I have a different source:
* Shadow World (Book 1): The Burning Goddess  Author: Ian Hammel (Clayton Emery) source
* Shadow World (Book 2): Clock Strikes Sword  Author: Ian Hammel (Stephen Billias) source
* Shadow World (Book 3): City of Assassins   Author: Ian Hammel (Clayton Emery) source
* StormRiders (1st edition, 1990) Author: Roxanne Longstreet source
* Shadow World (Book 4):Stormriders (2nd edition, 1996)  Author: Roxanne Longstreet, Ian Hammel (Roxanne Longstreet) source
How does this look? (In the physical books there is only the pen name, here are the credit pages --cibersheep.com (talk) 12:56, 17 November 2022 (EST)
Thanks, that does fit to the information stated at Wikipedia. I'll add the actual author's names. (It's not as seldom as one would think that a pseudonym is used by several people, it happens more often if there's a franchise behind it, like in this case).
Thank you also for bringing this up. Stonecreek (talk) 10:42, 18 November 2022 (EST)
Awesome. Thank you. Now I also know the correct way of reporting :)
Do I need to delete this section? --Lo CiberSheep (talk) 15:18, 18 November 2022 (EST)
No, we keep it (and archive it eventually). Stonecreek (talk) 04:19, 22 November 2022 (EST)

Illustrator's name misspelled

Good day,

The name of an illusterator in the recent issue of GHOSTS & SCHOLARS (no.43) is misspelled.

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?922187

Instead of 'Carl Lavoir', it should be: Carl Lavoie.

There's already a page for him:

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?269730

Could the name please be corrected and the illustration credit linked to the illustrator's profile?

Thank you, and have a wonderful day!

Sincerely,

-Carl Lavoie

—The preceding unsigned comment added by Jahrel (talk • contribs) 09:58, November 17, 2022‎ — John Scifibones 10:35, 17 November 2022 (EST)


Done so.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 11:05, 17 November 2022 (EST)
If it's misspelled -in the publication- then it should be entered as Carl Lavoir, and varianted to Carl Lavoie. Please confirm that it is indeed in the publication itself. MagicUnk (talk) 06:57, 18 November 2022 (EST)
https://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/8104/ghosts-scholars-43.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 06:55, 1 December 2022 (EST)

NILF

It seems that https://www.fantascienza.com has changed its link addresses. If You chose an external NILF link "x" of a pub, fantascienza doesn't show the pub but answeres "NILF/x". Try for example Torre di cristallo. --Zapp (talk) 14:40, 19 November 2022 (EST)

Apparently the URL structure has changed. https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/info/ still links to https://www.fantascienza.com/nilf/ , but the latter URL is no longer available. http://nilf.it redirects to https://www.fantascienza.com ; NILF URLs no longer work.
The good news is that NILF IDs can still be used to link to the same Fantascienza Web pages. For example, the ISFDB record for Torre di cristallo given above uses 107219 as its NILF ID. You can use the same ID to link to Fantascienza by plugging the ID in a URL. In this case the correct URL is https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi/NILF107219/. (The URL is then automatically expanded to append "torre-di-cristallo", but that's not an issue for us.)
It should be easy to change our software's definition of "NILF External IDs" to use "https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi" instead of "http://nilf.it". My only concern is that Fantascienza's Web pages say "Beta" and still advertise nilf.it URLs as valid shortcuts, so it's possible that things will change again in the near future. Still, it's a pretty simple change, so we might as well implement it as a short term solution. If and when their URLs change again, we will revisit the issue. Thanks for reporting the problem! Ahasuerus (talk) 16:56, 19 November 2022 (EST)
And fixed. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:26, 19 November 2022 (EST)
Thank You --Zapp (talk) 05:03, 22 November 2022 (EST)

FantLab Issue, Part ...

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5492487; Here we go again; did their security certificate run out again or whatever the problem was last time? They seemed to be down for a while today and now this. Not a big deal in this case, that cover is easily found elsewhere, although maybe not so beautifully bright as it is on FantLab. --Username (talk) 01:00, 22 November 2022 (EST)

Nope, that’s just a different domain. We are allowed to link to fantlab.ru. They seem to have a mirror at fantlab.org (or at least some of their images and/or links also work there - it is unclear if it is a complete mirror) which we had not asked for permission to link to. Just use the .ru URLs. Annie (talk) 03:11, 22 November 2022 (EST)
That's a problem, then, because I typed "FantLab" on Google to get to the site like I always do; if that suddenly takes me and others to their mirror site something's messed up, which I suspected when their site timed out for a while yesterday. Maybe someone should ask them nicely for permission to link to the mirror now. --Username (talk) 10:26, 22 November 2022 (EST)
Google tries to be clever with its search results. For example, the top link returned by Google when I type "FantLab" is "fantlab.ru/en", i.e the English language version of their site. On the other hand, users with Russian IP addresses and/or their language preferences set to "Russian" are presumably sent to the Russian language version of FantLab's site. Since Google uses highly complex algorithms to determine what users see when they search Google's catalog of the Web, there is no telling what different users may be shown in response to the same query.
For now, fantlab.ru seems to be stable. Their certificate will expire in a week, but hopefully they will have it renewed before it causes issues. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:28, 25 November 2022 (EST)

F&SF

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?7908; The series name doesn't match any of the actual titles, so shouldn't that be changed? If so, what should it be changed to? Also, there are a lot of Archive.org copies of the series, so I decided to start with the last, 24, and even though both editions are PV the title's wrong in both of them here, so I added links to each and then wrote PV of HC and 1 active PV of PB and asked them to check, but since neither seems regularly active these days maybe a mod would like to step in, since I have a feeling as I continue with the series there's going to be a lot more changes needed. Also, I changed the month in the intro to match the HC, but the Searles essay "Lost Rewards" is called a reprint on the copyright page but has the year of the book and doesn't appear anywhere else in his ISFDB record, so that might need checking, too; maybe it appeared under another title in the magazine? --Username (talk) 11:14, 22 November 2022 (EST)

Covers from archive.org

We have a bunch of submissions switching Amazing Science Fiction covers from Galactic Central links to ISFDB copies of images downloaded from Archive.org. A lot of work went into loading those files and making all of those edits, I'm sure. Before I do a bad thing.... Is there any reason not to approve them? There's attribution of the original source, and I don't see anything on Archive.org that we'd be running afoul of. But I figured I should check for additional opinions. Thanks. --MartyD (talk) 17:46, 23 November 2022 (EST)

Galactic Central covers are broken so switching over to local versions is reasonable. As long as the images were uploaded correctly & have a valid template applied, there is no issue. Fair use is fair use regardless of source. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:54, 23 November 2022 (EST)

New editors limited to 101 pending submissions

As per this discussion, the software has been changed to prevent new editors from having more than 101 pending submissions. If you come across any issues, please post them here. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:14, 25 November 2022 (EST)

External Id Edits with a long queue

When an edit adding a External ID is waiting in the queue and a subsequent edit adds a different ID where the second edit is approved first, the approval of the first edit effectively deletes the second edit. For example, I made this edit adding Worldcat and Reginald3 numbers on November 22. There was already an edit in the queue to add the same Worldcat ID submitted on November 20, but not approved until November 26. The result of this sequence is that the Reginald3 ID was deleted. We should probably try to be careful with External ID edits while the queue is so large. I'm not trying to call out the moderator who approved this, I may have made the same error myself had I been the one to review it. We probably all should try to be more aware. I'd also like to ask if there is a software solution that we could implement to catch this sequence. Either a warning when an edit is submitted if there are already edits in the queue for the record being edited. Alternatively, a warning on the approval screen if there have been approved edits to the same record after the submission timestamp of the record being reviewed. I don't know if either of those would be difficult, and how large a problem this is, but if feasible, it could prevent these sorts of data loss. Thanks. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 18:09, 26 November 2022 (EST)

We have FR 1453, "New yellow warning for conflicting submissions", which would address some -- but not all -- of these issues. The FR says:
  • Create a new yellow warning for conflicting submissions. It should appear if the displayed submission contains a record which is also contained in another pending submission. The yellow warning should include links to the other submissions.
The issue with this FR is that the submission table as it currently exists doesn't store record IDs for pending records in a readily available format. In order to generate the requested yellow warning the display software would have to parse the bodies of all related pending submissions, in this case "EditPub"s. Given the current size of the queue, it can mean parsing thousands of submissions, which may take a few seconds every time a submission is displayed. I would need to rework the way record IDs are stored in the submission table to make it viable.
Re:
  • a warning on the approval screen if there have been approved edits to the same record after the submission timestamp of the record being reviewed"
it may be doable because each approved submission record already has an "affected_record_id" value. I'll look into it tomorrow.
Another thing to consider is that the problem that Ron ran into mostly affects "multi-fields" like External IDs and Web Pages. An edit affecting a regular field makes it clear that the current value is about to be replaced with another value. An edit affecting a multi-field just tells you that the submitting editor wants to replace a set of N values with a set of M values. It doesn't tell you whether N is greater than, equal to or smaller than M. It may be helpful to add a yellow warning informing the reviewer about the nature of the change, e.g. "2 unaffected values, 1 value will be deleted, 1 value will be added". Ahasuerus (talk) 19:05, 26 November 2022 (EST)
I've been confused on how external IDs are processed. I assumed it captured the additions, removals, & changes only - not the entire contents - so two edits could add different ids without issue. Since external IDs are stored as separate entries in the database, there is no need to do a wholesale replacement. Improving the moderator screen to show diffs based on the current state of the publication (and not the publication at the time of submission) would help with this (as well as other issues). -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:02, 27 November 2022 (EST)
Rereading my responses in the linked discussion, I see that I may not have been clear. Sorry about that! Let me step back and clarify how things work:
  • When a submission is created, the software checks each field's data. If no changes have been made for a given field -- be it a single value field or a "mutli-field" -- then that field's data is not includes in the body of the submission. If a change has been made, then the following data is included in the submission:
    • For regular or "single value" fields, the changed value is stored. For example, if the current value of the "Publisher" field is "Ace" and the new value is "Ace Books", then "<Publisher>Ace Books</Publisher>" is stored in the submission.
    • For "multi-fields", ALL new values (unchanged, changed and newly added) are stored in the body of the submission. For example, if the current values of the "External ID" multi-field are "ASIN: B0001111" and "OCLC/WorldCat: 666" and the new values are "ASIN: B0001111" [unchanged], "OCLC/WorldCat: 123" [changed] and "DNB: 234999" [new], then all 3 External IDs are stored in the submission. https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/dumpxml.cgi?5495781 demonstrates how it works -- the XML contains 2 "External_ID" groups even though the OCLC/WorldCat ID was unchanged.
  • "Differences" and yellow warnings are always generated at the time submission review pages are generated and displayed.
Hopefully this clarifies things. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:42, 27 November 2022 (EST)
I see that I forgot to explain why submissions include all entered values for multi-fields as opposed to just the changed/added values. Suppose a publication record has 3 OCLC IDs, specifically "1", "2" and "3", and a submission aims to replace them with IDs "3", "4" and "5". If the software is to store just the "diffs", it needs to include 4 and 5 as new values and skip "3" as an unchanged values. However, it also needs to specify that "1" and "2" have to be removed, which would require special coding. Instead the software stores all of the entered values in the body of the submission. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:01, 27 November 2022 (EST)
Instead of a "2 unaffected values, 1 value will be deleted, 1 value will be added" warning, how about showing the specific changes (similar to how the pub notes field does)? So for the edit I approved, showing "-Reginald-3: 26241 [over] +OCLC/WorldCat: 59151543" which would have stood out. The +/- comparison would also be helpful for the web page entries, especially when people edit a record (typically authors) that have a quite a few. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:02, 27 November 2022 (EST)
That's a good point. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:01, 27 November 2022 (EST)

New Yellow Warning Implemented

As per FR 1548, pending EditPub submissions now warn the reviewer if another EditPub submission for the same publication has been approved since the currently displayed submission was created. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:30, 27 November 2022 (EST)

Thank you. I'm really pleased to see this. I'm not a moderator but, as an editor, I have been affected by this scenario as I reported here. Teallach (talk) 17:47, 27 November 2022 (EST)
Yes, thank you. That was quite speedy and I think will be quite helpful. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 18:26, 27 November 2022 (EST)
Glad to hear it looks useful. I'll look into the proposed External ID/Web pages "diff" functionality next. Ahasuerus (talk) 08:42, 28 November 2022 (EST)
Just saw it for the first time: "WARNING: This publication has been modified by the following submissions since this submission was created:". Cool. --Username (talk) 20:41, 29 November 2022 (EST)

Calendars

Hello Mods. I was reading the inclusions on the policy page but it doen't state wheteher calendars with art illutrations are included or not. I have a 1984 Conan calendar with ISBN 0-937782-05-X illustrated by Bill Sienkiewicz. --Mavmaramis (talk) 14:35, 2 December 2022 (EST)

Same rules apply as any other nonfiction - it is eligible only if it is plausibly connected to speculative fiction: if the illustrations are from fiction books, they are eligible. If they are covers for comics or just art that never illustrated an actual story or just conceptual art for calendar and so on which were never used on eligible books, they are not. Annie (talk) 15:53, 2 December 2022 (EST)
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