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Expanded archive listing

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

• Dcarson (Dana Carson) - Talk - Not seen since 2021-02-20 (marked inactive). US Eastern (UTC-5)

SV removal

In the USD edition of Dilvish, the Damned Reginald3 is correctly SV'd and numbered. In the Canadian printing it has also been SV'd - wrongly. Could someone remove that and mark it N/A. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 22:42, 1 July 2023 (EDT)

adding a publication

Can a publication listing be added before the item is offered for sale? (i.e., I have obtained an ARC with all relevant info, but the book is not scheduled for publication for a couple more weeks) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fabius (talk • contribs) .

The short answer is "yes". To quote Help:Screen:NewPub:

• Future Publication Dates - ISFDB captures records for some publications that have been announced for release in the future.
  • New publications announced for the near future (within the next 90 days) should be given that future publication date.
  • Do not create records for newly announced publications scheduled for release more than 90 days into the future, as these plans often change.

Ahasuerus (talk) 11:38, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

One small note to add - if you are working from an ARC, mention it in the notes (when we work from pre-release records, we note the date for example making it obvious that we are adding pre-publication). Things change between ARCs and the actual book occasionally so that will minimize the risk of us ending with two separate records downstream. Annie (talk) 12:42, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

Second set of eyes please.

I've submitted a publication [deletion] that I'd rather not self-approve as it involves someone else's entry and PV. Thank you in advance. ../Doug H (talk) 23:23, 3 July 2023 (EDT)

After reviewing the data I agree that record 483390 and record 556122 apparently describe the same pub. I see that one of them has been verified by you and the other one by User:Don Erikson, who has been inactive for the last 3+ years.

One way to handle this situation would be for you to delete "your" pub record, then to primary-verify Don's pub, thus keeping both primary verifications. Would that work for you? Ahasuerus (talk) 22:58, 4 July 2023 (EDT)

An obvious approach. I reloaded the cover image as well. Will deleting a publication automatically get rid of the associated image? ../Doug H (talk) 08:46, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

The only effect deleting the publication has on the wiki page is breaking the link back to the publication. I went ahead and deleted it, mod only function, since you reloaded the image and created a new wiki page. John Scifibones 09:23, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

The Mouser Goes Below

Hello. After a long while, I have released this edit [1] for other moderators to have a look. While Willem agrees it's a Novel rather than a Novella, I am not entirely comfortable with affecting the change. MagicUnk (talk) 06:39, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

Examining the text in my ebook collection, I see that the submitter is correct: it contains over 64.5K words. I would make it a NOVEL and leave a canned message on the primary verifiers' Talk pages. Ahasuerus (talk) 08:04, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

PS. Real-life hasn't been nice to me the last couple of months, hence my absence from the site. Not sure when/if I will be back... Regards, MagicUnk (talk) 06:39, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

Sorry to hear about the real life issues! Hopefully things will improve sooner rather than later. Ahasuerus (talk) 08:04, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

I've approved the change to NOVEL and fixed all the translations to be NOVEL types as well. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:37, 5 July 2023 (EDT)

The Hollowing

Hello Mods. I have a question regarding this publication. I made a note that the book has an appendix, which is an in-universe folk tale of Ryhope Wood by Goerg Huxley - i.e. it's fictional. The tale has a title and a note before it making it appear as if it is an out of universe (i.e. a 'real world') tale. Should I add this as content ? --Mavmaramis (talk) 02:07, 8 July 2023 (EDT)

I think your treatment is fine, unless we discover the same story ended up published elsewhere. You might adjust the note to call out that it's a fictional appendix, and its credited author, "George Huxley" is an in-universe character. If you did want to make a content entry for it, I think you'd need to title it something like: "<whatever> by George Huxley" and make the author credit be Robert Holdstock. --MartyD (talk) 07:46, 10 July 2023 (EDT)

Thanks. I'll leave it as is and amend the note per your suggestion. --Mavmaramis (talk) 14:16, 11 July 2023 (EDT)

Who to credit ?

Hello Mods. The can of worms of cover design vs cover photo opens again with the two Gollancz editions of Trillion Year Spree. I made a note for my trade paperback copy that it states "Jacket design by Don Macpherson (over) Jacket photograph by Peter Letts" on backcover. The hardback credits Macpherson wheres the trade paperback credits Letts. So which one of those two get's the cover art credit ? --Mavmaramis (talk) 15:38, 13 July 2023 (EDT)

Macpherson does not get a credit under any circumstances - designers never do. If the hardback only credits "cover: Macpherson", then I'd been inclined to add a "Macpherson (in error)" credit and pseudonym to Letts thus allowing a variant cover and credits as per the books. As long as Letts photographs are on the cover and not the author photo of course. Alternatively, no credit for anyone and just notes (photographs are a bit of a gray area sometimes as Cover Artists but if you decide to credit -- it should be Letts). Annie (talk) 15:46, 13 July 2023 (EDT)

Thanks Annie. Maybe you could tell Makwood that as I tried to ask him what his hardback copy said (ghaving quoted him what mine said). See here where he states "So, you're saying the jacket front is a photograph, and not a graphic design? Doesn't appear that way to me". Gonna change the credit. --Mavmaramis (talk) 00:46, 15 July 2023 (EDT)

Brainchild

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5716829; I added 2 ID and a note about page count but it insists that I did something with the title which I didn't. Why is that? --Username (talk) 10:53, 14 July 2023 (EDT)

Checking the raw database data, I see that the main ANTHOLOGY title has a page number, "|1", associated with it. It wasn't displayed when you edited the publication record because the "Page" field is grayed out and not editable for ANTHOLOGY (and other "container") titles. My first guess was that at one point this publication was a NOVEL or another non-container and the non-container title had "|1" assigned to it. Checking Edit History, I see that this pub did have its title type changed to ANTHOLOGY on 2018-10-14, which suggests that my guess was correct.

Once your submission is approved, the "|1" page number will disappear. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:54, 14 July 2023 (EDT)

Change required for variant name: Ren Qing -> Channing Ren

任青 is listed on the Hugo finalist list with the western name "Ren Qing". When I added the tp pub that has their story, I noted that various sources reported them as Channing Ren.

I've now bought the ebook pub, and - Sod's Law - it turns out that Channing Ren is how they are listed in the actual antho, see here.

Could someone update the Ren Qing author record accordingly please? Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:37, 14 July 2023 (EDT)

Done. Also, as an FYI, changing the author name in the English Title record from "Ren Qing" to "Channing Ren" would have deleted the "Ren Qing" author record and created a new author record for "Channing Ren". The new author record would then need to be turned into an alternate name of "任青", but it could be done by a self-approver. Not a big deal, just something to keep in mind in the future. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:31, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Thanks; I did wonder if something like that was doable, but I thought better to just punt it here.

There's another one coming down the line, which I've put off, because I spent a day trying to get my head round it, and trying to write it up to confirm (a) a consensus for that course of action, and (b) how exactly to tackle it, isn't something I'm relishing. I don't think many westerners have realized there are 2 different Hugo finalists called 杨枫 and 杨枫(I), and IMHO we probably have the disambiguations the wrong way round, as the former should probably be an alternate name for 天爵, who isn't in the database yet. Something to look forward too... ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:32, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Wolfe - Der fünfte Kopf des Zerberus - novel and novella dating

Whilst editing two of my own English language pubs of this title I noticed some dating which someone, hopefully, can clarify for me.

There are two novella titles by different translators 1974-11-00 trans. by Yoma Cap and 1982-05-00 by Eva Malsch.

The novel 1974-11-00 trans. by Yoma Cap dating looks ok as does the Eva Malsch translation but I don't see a 1974-11-00 Yoma Cap novella publication - only the 1984-04-00 one as the first instance.

The note in the 1972-04-00 novel title page refers to the German translations but doesn't help me.

So, do we treat the novel and the novella as having the same first instance date? Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:44, 15 July 2023 (EDT)

The sequence of events as I understand it is as follows:

• The novella version of "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" was published in Orbit 10 on 1972-02-16.
• The novella version became Part 1 of the novel version which used the same title, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, and was first published on 1972-04-00.
• Both the novella version and the novel version were subsequently reprinted by various US/UK publishers.
• The second part of the novel version was later reprinted as a separate novelette "A Story" by John V. Marsch in a 1994-07-00 anthology. We have it dated "1994-07-00".
• Yoma Cap's first German translation of the novel version was published as Der fünfte Kopf des Zerberus in 1974-11-00.
• The first part of Yoma Cap's German translation (which corresponds to the novella version of "The Fifth Head of Cerberus") was reprinted in 1984 and then again in 2002. The title date of this title is currently set to "1974-11-00" and matches the date of the first publication of the German novel.
• The third (and final) part of the English novel hasn't been reprinted as a separate novella. However, the third part of Yoma Cap's German translation was published as "V. R. T.", a separate novella on 1983-04-00. The title date of this title is currently set to "1983-04-00".

The problem then is that we have an inconsistency. The separate English appearance of the second part, "A Story" by John V. Marsch, is currently dated "1994-07-00" and matches the date of the anthology in which it appeared. Similarly, the separate German appearance of the third part, "V. R. T.", is dated 1983-04-00 and matches the date of the anthology in which it appeared. However, the separate German appearance of the novella version (which is the same as the first part of the novel), is dated "1974-11-00", when the novel translation appeared, as opposed to "1984-04-00", which is when the separate German version appeared.

Based on the above, I would suggest changing the title date of the novella version of "Der fünfte Kopf des Zerberus" from 1974-11-00 to 1984-04-00. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:17, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Thanks for taking such a careful look at this and your elegant answer. It resolves my uncertainty about novella/novel treatment and confirms where I thought the problem lay - your 6th bullet point homes in on that. I've submitted the change 1974-11-00 to 1984-04-00 as you've suggested :) Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:07, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

The submission has been approved, thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:14, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Great! Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:44, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Mod Bob

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Template:Moderator-availability; Bob should be removed from the list. --Username (talk) 22:58, 15 July 2023 (EDT)

Done, thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:04, 15 July 2023 (EDT)

Elizabeth Spencer

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?131734; https://www.amazon.co.uk/Elizabeth-Spencer/e/B01MFH59N3; Last 2 stories are by a young lady with the same name. --Username (talk) 23:27, 15 July 2023 (EDT)

It looks like Stonecreek has already changed their author from "Elizabeth Spencer" to "Elizabeth Spencer (I)". Ahasuerus (talk) 18:30, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Yes, except he added her image to webpage field by mistake, so I've just moved it to the right field, pending approval. Also, the older Spencer has a photo under "Movies, TV and Bio" on Amazon but as usual with "S" URL photos like those ISFDB won't accept them with or without the trailing stuff before .jpg, giving an unsupported message. --Username (talk) 19:22, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Your submission is approved. John Scifibones 20:08, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Image delete x2

Could someone please delete the older images here and here. Uploaded by mistake. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 18:14, 25 July 2023 (EDT)

Deleted as requested. John Scifibones 18:36, 25 July 2023 (EDT)

Thanks John. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:44, 25 July 2023 (EDT)

Dawson

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1968198; I added link to Hodder and created a new record for Crowell, it's W. J. Dawson in both, author name neeeds changing. --Username (talk) 09:29, 27 July 2023 (EDT)

Pawsey ? Hayes

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5719001; I am not entering all of that info again just for a minor publisher name change so if someone knows how to preserve the one sentence in the publisher record then my edit can be un-rejected. Seems to me it would have made more sense to accept the edit and then cut-and-paste the sentence into the publisher record afterwards. --Username (talk) 09:53, 27 July 2023 (EDT)

I first went to the publisher record and changed the name there. Then that portion of your submission effectively became a no-up (changing the existing name to the same thing, so no publisher deletion), so I was able to un-reject it and approve it. --MartyD (talk) 10:05, 25 September 2023 (EDT)

Johnsgard

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5718012; I made another edit adding all info except name change, cover artists entered with alternate name for the man so after it's accepted that can be used as the parent, I guess. --Username (talk) 09:59, 27 July 2023 (EDT)

Change made and submissions approved. Submit an edit to import the cover art credit into the tp and I'll approve it. John Scifibones 10:18, 27 July 2023 (EDT)

SJS

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=solomon+j&type=Name; 1 credit each for the last 2 guys, your decision which is parent and which is variant. --Username (talk) 17:23, 27 July 2023 (EDT)

Done. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:28, 28 July 2023 (EDT)

Islands in the Sky cover art

Entry for cover art for this publication shows two different images, although the spacestation is the same the approaching rocket has been replaced by a boy on the 1984 edition - both images are by Peter Andrew Jones. Should the later edition's image not be seperated out and varianted ? --Mavmaramis (talk) 12:40, 28 July 2023 (EDT)

We variant for author, title, language and title type (artwork & serials only). We do not variant for a difference in the artwork. It's the same and we merge or it isn't. The same meaning "all or part of one appears in the other". John Scifibones 13:47, 28 July 2023 (EDT)

Alrighty. I only queried since there is a substantial difference between the one signed 'PAJ 80 Solar Wind' and the one signed 'PAJ 81' --Mavmaramis (talk) 15:15, 28 July 2023 (EDT)

If you think they are different enough, you can unmerge them and add notes on the reasons for it. I think they fall under our "is contained in" or "is part of" rule so they are ok as they are but the rules in that area can be interpreted differently. As John mentioned, they cannot be variants though so the choice is between what we have now and 2 separate unconnected entries. Annie (talk) 15:21, 28 July 2023 (EDT)

It's fine. I made a note in regards to the difference on the publication, plus the difference is obvious when viewing the cover art entry. --Mavmaramis (talk) 01:52, 29 July 2023 (EDT)

Matheson's Musings

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Zapp#Musings; Do mods agree that it should be changed to an essay? --Username (talk) 08:26, 31 July 2023 (EDT)

Author name change needed

The spelling for author LJ Cohen is currently "L. J. Cohen" sic. Would a moderator please change it to her preferred spelling of "LJ Cohen"? That is the spelling she uses on her website and which appears on the titles currently recorded in ISFDB. I think the current spelling is a holdover from old spelling rules. Thanks. Phil (talk) 08:22, 1 August 2023 (EDT)

The rules are still valid especially because these are initials (so not really old spelling rules) - but they also allow for author's preference to take precedence. I've changed it and added a note on the page so someone does not "fix" it. As you are the only PV of any of her book I saw, consider this also a notification for the changed in your PVd book :) Annie (talk) 13:24, 1 August 2023 (EDT)

Thank you. Phil (talk) 16:54, 1 August 2023 (EDT)

(Slightly) clashing pending edits for author Juleen Brantingham

I just submitted 5730414, but I get a yellow warning for 5730402 which makes a similar change. My edit is a superset of the latter - adds a more details place of birth, obit link and expanded note - so could someone reject 5730402, or at least apply it before my edit 5730414 gets applied, so nothing gets lost? Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:57, 1 August 2023 (EDT)

Approved them in the correct sequence. :) Annie (talk) 14:22, 1 August 2023 (EDT)

Thanks! ErsatzCulture (talk) 15:17, 1 August 2023 (EDT)

Horus

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5722514; Can someone change the publisher to Horus Publishing? After that's done will that lead to unrejecting my edit? Because I've done hundreds since then and it's kind of hard to remember what I did for a single edit days or weeks ago. --Username (talk) 10:03, 2 August 2023 (EDT)

All good now. John Scifibones 15:27, 4 August 2023 (EDT)

The Architecture of Desire

Entry for this cover art has combined three entirely different pieces of art by Chris Brown. Note that this is not the same as this - there are substanial diferences between the two pieces. --Mavmaramis (talk) 12:53, 4 August 2023 (EDT)

They are definitely different. I've separated them into the three pieces. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:44, 4 August 2023 (EDT)

Thank you. --Mavmaramis (talk) 06:23, 6 August 2023 (EDT)

Printing

http://www.cars101.com/firstid.html; I think this would be helpful; I have a pending edit adding a Random House book which starts with 2 in the number line but it's not a 2nd printing, that's how they started their lines for much of their history. Can this be added to Help or something? --Username (talk) 09:22, 6 August 2023 (EDT)

Reeves-Stevens - Phase II: The Lost Series

The coverart credit as it stands here is wrong, can we have help from a moderator to sort it out? Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:46, 9 August 2023 (EDT)

How is it wrong? Have you contacted Mavmaramis to see what it states on the copyright page? Is there separate art on the front and back covers? If it's a mashup up two pieces of art, each by one of the two credited artists, the listing is correct. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:58, 26 September 2023 (EDT)

Jem

There seems to be two entries for this publication. The note for this version also has a 1980 printing and a £1.50 price and points to (presumably) the true 1980 printing here. Can't determine what the difference between the two entries could possibly be. Thoughts ? --Mavmaramis (talk) 16:36, 11 August 2023 (EDT)

Accidental cover upload

Hello Mods I inadvertantly uploaded the hardback cover art for a paperback edition (that'll teah me to look first). Title in question is Return to Eden. If someone could revert it back to what it was previously that' be great. I have uploaded it to the correct hardback edition. --Mavmaramis (talk) 13:17, 12 August 2023 (EDT)

Reverted. I also approved your submission adding the image to the Grafton hc. John Scifibones 13:24, 12 August 2023 (EDT)

Muster of Ghosts

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/File:MSTRFGHSTS1924.jpg; My cover doesn't show up but neither does the cover someone else uploaded last year. Can someone get my cover to show up? Also, I made an edit adding editor as cover artist so can you approve that, too. You also may want to check to see if the other person uploaded a cover for the American edition (different title) because there's no cover there, either. --Username (talk) 23:14, 13 August 2023 (EDT)

TCASFW Discussion

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Mavmaramis#TCASFW; When one of you approves my edit you can discuss with this PV what you'd like to do. I think their final message is that one of their volumes has a dash and one doesn't. --Username (talk) 16:46, 14 August 2023 (EDT)

Adding image credit , please

Good day,

I need help.

I would like to have an INTERIOR ART CREDIT added for Author record # 269730 ; Carl Lavoie.

It’s in the recent

Vastarien: A Literary Journal. Vol. 6, Issue 1

and it’s the frontispiece illustration, ‘The Evil Eye'.

Here’s a link to a sample of the issue, the illustration is right after the cover page:

https://www.amazon.com/Vastarien-Literary-Journal-vol-issue/dp/B0CBT4B6D1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=28D1CYLFVH4XL&keywords=vastarien+literary&qid=1692175645&sprefix=%2Caps%2C152&sr=8-1&asin=B0CBT4B6D1&revisionId=&format=4&depth=1

And here’s a link to the publisher, listing the content of the recent issue:

https://grimscribepress.com/issues/

Thank you. And have a wonderful day. -Carl Lavoie

Thank you for getting interested in our little project. However, it seems as if the issue you refer to hasn't been added yet; the latest one I can find is this from 2021.

But before you or someone else becomes active and enters it: this seems to be a general literary journal which then wouldn't be eligible per se to ISFDB (which is devoted to speculative fiction); for such a journal only the speculative fiction items, the artwork illustrating them, and essays referring to speculative fiction would be allowed to be included in the entry (see these definitions. Please think about it, and then think if you'd like to get help to add the publication in question. Stonecreek (talk) 06:18, 16 August 2023 (EDT)

Edmund Frederick, Chambers

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5746601; I came across Quick Action by Robert W. Chambers and added links (and a Canadian reprint) and then decided to enter links and stuff for other Chambers books illustrated by Frederick. Ran into trouble immediately because Tracer of Lost Persons is as by "R. W. Chambers" so if someone can approve my edit so it can be made a variant and month added to title record. --Username (talk) 18:46, 19 August 2023 (EDT)

Done. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:54, 27 August 2023 (EDT)

MRC

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2970668; An Archive.org link was recently upped for his 2014 novel so I added a link then I saw that his recent novel didn't have cover art in both editions so I imported it, then I noticed that the cover artist, who is also the author, didn't have a period added after R so it's a separate record. Since R with a period has bio info that means if I add a period it will erase the info, I think, so if one of you can add it without erasing the info. --Username (talk) 07:56, 23 August 2023 (EDT)

I fixed it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:04, 23 August 2023 (EDT)

Dragon / Grafton / Collins (UK)

I'm editing Asimov's Extraterrestrials and on the title page is stated "Dragon [over] Grafton Books [over] A Division of the Collins Publishing Group". We have Dragon / Grafton / Collins (UK) but my understanding is that we don't record the owners (Collins) of the publishers (Grafton). If that's correct, the four publications (also 1986) listed in that category should be "Dragon / Grafton" (as imprint / publisher). If moderators agree, that's what I propose using in the Publisher field for my edit (and I could also amend the four other publications to the same). Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 23:40, 26 August 2023 (EDT)

Not hearing any objections, I'll wait another few days and then implement the above. Thanks, Kev.--BanjoKev (talk) 09:54, 9 September 2023 (EDT)

With/with

I happened to notice that a mod is correcting "With" to "with" in a lot of records. Is there some way to trawl all the records and automatically correct wrongly capitalized words (or vice versa) with a patch or something? Seems like that would be helpful and save a lot of time. --Username (talk) 11:22, 27 August 2023 (EDT)

Multiple Archive.org Links

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5756500; Can a mod approve my edits for Number 87 from the first one linked above and ending with 5756519? I want to know if adding the second Archive.org link which someone added to the title records instead of the Macmillan edition's record will erase the much more recent link, uploaded this year, which I added in my first edit. On a side note, author's collection Thoughts in Prose and Verse also has been linked, no contents, in case anyone cares to read it and enter genre stories. --Username (talk) 12:15, 30 August 2023 (EDT)

Does everything look as you intended? John Scifibones 12:32, 30 August 2023 (EDT)

Yeah, I don't know, I've completely confused myself. I see one title record still has old link that I removed and I missed another Macmillan link, so I've removed it again and added new link. I don't even think my note above was correct because the new link is for the UK edition so it wouldn't erase the US link. Forget it, I can't do this stuff anymore, 2 more links to approve when you get a chance, someone else will have to take a look and make sure links are where they're supposed to be along with everything else, I'm done. I've got to get out of here. --Username (talk) 13:03, 30 August 2023 (EDT)

image delete request

Could someone please delete the old (04:13 hrs) image here. (edit) See this discussion. Thanks. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 09:15, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Kev, You wish to delete the cover with 'jr' correct? John Scifibones 09:43, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Yes, that's the one. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 14:20, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Done, John Scifibones 14:47, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Thanks John. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 16:04, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

Nine-Thirty O'Clock in the Morning

Curious what happened to the usual 5-minute or so delay at 9:30 every morning. It didn't happen today. --Username (talk) 12:22, 31 August 2023 (EDT)

The daily backups run between 9:30am and 9:35am. The database is unavailable until they finish.

On 2023-08-30 the backup process was modified to exclude a large and fast growing database table which didn't need to be backed up in the first place. An error was introduced while making the change, which caused the backups to fail on 2023-08-31. The error was corrected the same day and the backups have been running smoothly ever since. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:29, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Deagol

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Deagol; I added my first-ever message to this PV and noticed all messages are in italics or a weird font or something. Probably not important but I thought I'd mention it. --Username (talk) 09:01, 1 September 2023 (EDT)

That's bizarre. I can't see anything on that page that would cause everything to be in italics. I can't find any other page that are like that, either. I'm guessing it's something that went funky on the backend. We'd have to have Al or Ahasuerus look at it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:26, 1 September 2023 (EDT)

Nevermind, I found it. While it shouldn't have affected the entire page (it should have only affected the part after it), I removed the italics from the page with this edit. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:29, 1 September 2023 (EDT)

Here's another page; https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_Talk:Clarkmci. --Username (talk) 13:25, 2 September 2023 (EDT)

Fixed. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:19, 5 September 2023 (EDT)

The Pastel City.

Hello mods. This interior art is the same artwork as this title record. I'd also like to rename the interior art record from "The Great Rebellion [1]" to "CA 440 Minifreighter" (as per art caption in Cowley's Great Space Battles). --Mavmaramis (talk) 16:38, 2 September 2023 (EDT)

If there is a caption (or a title somewhere) in the book, then yes, rename and use that - captions and titles from inside of the books are always used when known instead of the standard [] notation. If the title was coming from a secondary source, we would just add it into the notes but if it is in the book, go ahead and rename. And variant it to the cover :) Annie (talk) 12:30, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

You may want to participate at this Rules and standards discussions. As pointed out in that discussion, the current rules do not include using the caption / title (though that has become a common practice) and so far there has not been agreement to change the rules. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:00, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

Will do. Annie (talk) 19:45, 15 September 2023 (EDT)

Steve Duffy, The Faces at Your Shoulder

Having read this book at the Toronto Library, I would ask a moderator to add this collection to the (original) Steve Duffy page: (not Steve Duffy (1)) Steve Duffy, The Faces at Your Shoulder (Sarob Press, 2023) 181 pages 38 pounds Foreword, Duffy page 1 The Oram County Whoosit (Shades of Darkness, 2008) in isfdb page 37 The Soul is a Bird (original) page 71 In the Days Before the Monsters (original) page 101 The Pyschomanteum (Crooked Houses, 2020, Egaeus Press) this is NOT an original story, the original publication is not in isfdb page 123 The Lion's Den (Cern Zoo, 2009) in isfdb page 155 Futureboro (original) page 179 Notes on the Stories (uncredited in the book, the Sarob Press website attributes this to Duffy)

One other unrelated correction: The review Jean Rhys Revisited (2001) by Alexis Lykiard should be moved from the original Ray Russell page to the R. B. Russell page (aka Ray Russell (1)) this is actually a chapter in R. B. Russell's Fifty Forgotten Books —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

Protocol for working on recently added/changed publications

There has always been potential for moderators unknowingly working on the same set of submissions. Early on we added the ability to put submissions "on hold" in order to mitigate this problem. Later, we added the Recent Activity page and, even more recently, "Edit History", which helps avoid confusion and cross-approvals.

At the same time, the recent implementation of the "self-approver" system significantly increased the number of editors who can approve submissions. Earlier today we had a collision between a moderator working on new submissions and a self-approver who noticed the new publication and tried to improve it while the moderator was still researching it. The result was a mishmash of approvals.

What should be the standard for moderators and self-approvers working on recently approved records which the original approver may still be researching? Since we now have Edit History, should it be something like:

• Before correcting/adding data to a publication record, check its Edit History. If the record has been created or modified within the last 24 (12? 48? 72?) hours, check with the last approving moderator to see if the record is still being researched.

? Ahasuerus (talk) 12:48, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

I consider it always a good idea to talk to the editors and moderators that had worked on a record that still need work before changing the work of people -- sometimes they have an edit staying in a browser and never submitted, sometimes they just had not had a chance to get back to the record to fix it (or got distracted) and sometimes it is a misunderstanding of the rules on someone's part - the person trying to improve or the editor who started it or simply a disagreement on how things need to be entered where the rules allow editor's discretion. And especially if the submitter is a new(ish) user and there is no note from the handling moderator on their page yet but I think it is common courtesy in all cases. Asking for 24 hours grace period is a good first step I guess. Adding to that the requirement for communication before the edits are done will be even better - and will also help getting our editors closer to being self-sustaining. I did not think that we need to put that in writing but apparently it is not as self-evident as I always assumed it to be. Annie (talk) 13:18, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Could we add a flag to each record that gets set when a change is submitted, and then removed 25 hours after the submission is approved (and removed if a submission is declined)? Then the system could display a note on the edit page for any record that has that flag set. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:20, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Well, if the goal is to display a warning when an editor tries to edit a publication record that has been modified within the last 24 hours, then it can be done without adding new flags. We already have Edit History; it would be easy to modify the software to check it and display a warning. We'll just need to decide on what the warning should say. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:31, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Mountain being made out of a molehill. No need to add bureaucracy and development effort for a problem that rarely happens. This is a collaborative project which means people could occasionally work on the same items, but, in practice, it rarely happens in a short period of time. People should not feel possessive about their edits. An equally valid solution would be for moderators to put edits on hold and do their research prior to accepting the submission. That way they can make the corrections immediately after accepting the submission. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:34, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Let me just clarify that adding a note along the lines of "This Publication was last edited by X and approved by Y on 2023-09-12 at 12:34pm" to EditPub forms affecting recently edited publications would be quite simple. We already have all of the requisite data in a readily accessible location within the database. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:22, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Apparently the definition of possessive, as used in the above comment, is the approving moderator making the necessary changes and/or communicating with the submitting user immediately after approval. Isn't that exactly our responsibility? If not please enlighten me. I don't believe a software solution is necessary. It would surprise me if anyone else would decide to edit a publication immediately after its initial approval. John Scifibones 19:49, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Re: "edit[ing] a publication immediately after its initial approval", I have come close to accidentally colliding with other editors/moderators a few times. I am subscribed to Amazon's automatic notifications for certain authors. When they publish new books, Amazon sends me an email. Sometimes other editors/moderators buy the same books the day they are published and enter them into the database at around the same time. I don't think it has caused any issues yet, especially now that we have additional yellow warnings, but it's been close a few times. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:09, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

It doesn't take a moderator to know we cannot edit submissions, but must approve them and then make corrections. The comment about research before approval is also incorrect. I had identified the changes I wanted to make. However it took me eight minutes to enter the corrections and the notes to moderator , review and post. P.S. I would have promptly replied to a query as to status.John Scifibones 19:49, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

This proposal is for a 24-hour period. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:46, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

Then propose a shorter window. The last time an editor (sitting on the recent updates queue and jumping as soon as they thought they saw something they MUST update now), made a merge on a story in an anthology of 20 titles or more, most of which required updates in the titles and authors (capitalization and spaces an so on) and follow-up merges and my edit had to be redone from scratch because the merge deleted the title ID - thus making the edit unworkable. I did not raise the question back then - I just redid the edit, posted for the new editor (first edit by them -- and anthologies tend to be... not fun) and then walked away for the day. It was not the first time that had happened. If common courtesy won't regulate that and it does happen more often than once in a blue moon, then we will need to spell out some rules. It is not about being possessive or not doing research before approval - it is about giving a moderator the needed time to do their post-approval edits before losing their time and forcing them to either redo the edit from scratch or look through multiple edits to see if something conflicted somewhere and a second edit is required. Annie (talk) 11:22, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

The above proposal doesn't address your scenario. A title merge is not a publication edit so wouldn't get the proposed warning. Collisions can happen without people sitting on the recent updates queue & without editing the same pub. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:54, 14 September 2023 (EDT)

It does - when the merge is because someone opened the recently created publication and looked for duplicates and decided to "help", that is exactly the issue at hand. Collisions always happen - and we all learn to live with them. But these are easily avoidable with a bit of common courtesy (or with a rule that says not to do it - if nothing else works). Annie (talk) 19:40, 15 September 2023 (EDT)

Standards question has reached an impasse

Three verifiers cannot reach agreement regarding current standards. The question revolves around the publication pages field and content titles page field. Please help resolve the impasse here Thanks, John Scifibones 13:38, 15 September 2023 (EDT)

Lee Mandelo, Revisited

Although we view the Lee Mandelo name change as closed, this has not been the case in the general public. In particular, the ISFDB Wikipedia article has recently used Jason Sanford's article about the Lee Mandelo situation as factual evidence of an issue, and I would like to post actual counter evidence of what actually happened. As such, I've been working on two documents. The first is a post-mortem of the situation, which provides a detailed timeline of every submission and communication which is related to the name change. It then summarizes the system issues and potential recommendations. Once the post-mortem is finalized I will post an Open Letter to the SF Community, which will reference that post-mortem.

The intention of this two articles is to provide a reference-quality document that can be added as a reference to Wikipedia, if needed. So I'd like the documents to be clean, and not contain large sections of indented discussions. There definitely should be discussions, but not within those documents. The first document is available now at:

• User:Alvonruff/A_Post-Mortem_on_the_Lee_Mandelo_Name_Change

Discussion about the document can occur here. Feel free to directly correct any grammar/spelling errors. Detailed discussions about the potential implementation of the recommendations should take place in the usual locations. Alvonruff (talk) 10:42, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

Is this discussion only open to moderators? I appreciate Community Portal can be noisy, but assuming that this discussion is open to all ISFDB stakeholders, maybe have a link on that page here at least?

(Super trivial observation: maybe fix the "Revisted" typo in the item title, before there are any links pointing at the wrong title?) ErsatzCulture (talk) 14:00, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

Fine with me to move the discussion so that it is open to all. Alvonruff (talk) 15:08, 16 September 2023 (EDT)

Organizing all of the publicly available data -- submissions, Wiki discussions, etc -- as a timeline sounds like a reasonable idea.

One thing that we may want to consider is how the ISFDB project communicates with the outside world. Currently, the ISFDB FAQ says:

• What other Web sites and social media accounts does the ISFDB use?
• ISFDB administrators may post announcements on this Blogspot Web page in case of extended unscheduled downtime or connectivity problems. There are no other official or ISFDB-endorsed Web sites, Web pages or social media accounts. Non-ISFDB Web sites and social media accounts maintained by individual ISFDB contributors (editors, moderators and administrators) are independent of the ISFDB and are not endorsed by it.

This policy was originally formulated in part due to the existence of Web sites/Web pages like this Facebook page which uses the ISFDB name and images without clarifying that it is not affiliated with the ISFDB project.

The policy means that our project is currently a closed system with no Web/social media presence aside from the ISFDB Web site and no official communications with the outside world except by individual ISFDB contributors acting on their own.

If we are to change this approach, we will presumably want to formulate an official communications strategy first. Something like an official social media account, perhaps? (I don't use social media outside of Web/Usenet forums which discuss SF, so I may not be the best person to come up with ideas.)

Alternatively, Al could post an "open letter" as an individual. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:12, 17 September 2023 (EDT)

One thing we need to do is try to work with Sanford to correct his information in his post. At least based on the timeline Al posted, the first time a concern was posted in one of the public forums here is on Dec 14, 2022 by the author in question, and everything was handled within less than a week. So saying ISFDB "fought against changing Lee Mandelo’s name in the site’s author listing for over a year" is rather a stretch. As noted, we should find a way to make it more clear when we will change a canonical name, but we certainly weren't "fighting" against changing it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:25, 18 September 2023 (EDT)

A new section, "How does the ISFDB deal with author name changes?", was added to the ISFDB FAQ on 2022-12-26 based on this and previous discussions. Can anyone think of additional ways to increase its visibility? Ahasuerus (talk) 08:13, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Additionally, Sanford describes Username as a moderator, which is not and has never been the case. At the very least, his comment was certainly insensitive, but Sanford should do his homework before trying to smear the moderators. Simply checking the list at the top of the Moderator noticeboard would have clarified that point. The "bad publicity" really had nothing to do with us making the change. It was the author posting here and making a request. Once we were made aware there was an issue, we discussed it and quickly made the updates (as noted, within less than a week from being made aware of the issue). The majority of that less-than-a-week was sorting out exactly what needed to be done to make all the changes as it's not a simple thing to do, and things have to be done in a specific order in order to not make it even more difficult to update.

I think having an official Twitter/X and/or Facebook account would be good as those are the two largest social media platforms for publishing-related things. The Blogspot site is fine, but no one is going to think of looking there since it's rather obscure. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:25, 18 September 2023 (EDT)

Excuse me, how did I get roped into this nonsense? Some trans activists try to bully this site into changing someone's "dead" name and it's my fault now? What comment are you referring to? I do more edits and leave more messages here than everyone else combined --Username (talk) 23:12, 18 September 2023 (EDT)

To clarify: as of last morning, of the 234,773 submissions approved in 2023, 17,359 (7.4%) were created by Username. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:41, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

so mentioning a singular thing I said a long time ago is pointless because I wouldn't remember it, anyway. Quote me what I supposedly said. EDIT: Never mind, Mr. Sanford quoted me on his Substack page where I quite logically inquired as to what would happen if Mandelo decided their transition was a mistake and wanted to transition back; would Mandelo and all the assorted friends bully ISFDB into changing everything back to Brit? --Username (talk) 23:12, 18 September 2023 (EDT)

The current policy is:

• The name chosen to be the canonical name is the most recognized name for the author within the SF genre.

Lee Mandelo provided evidence that the "most recognized name within the SF genre" was "Lee Mandelo". Once we confirmed it, we changed the canonical name as per the policy, not because the author requested it. Whether the policy should be changed to account for author preferences is a different issue and fodder for the Rules and Standards page. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:05, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

There are countless people online who have said their transition was the result of peer pressure or mental/emotional confusion or bad parents/doctors who encouraged them to transition for their own personal/monetary reasons and, tragically, many of them have already had body parts removed that they'll never be able to replace. Pretending otherwise is choosing not to accept reality. If Mandelo feels like their transition will be permanent and they're happy with that, fine. ISFDB is a gigantic site and highly disorganized; expecting it to run smoothly for one person is unreasonable. The delay in changing the name was due to a complete breakdown in communication, not because of transphobia. I reject terms like "bigoted" and "insensitive" to describe my remark; an apology will suffice. --Username (talk) 23:12, 18 September 2023 (EDT)

To my shame, I didn't say anything publicly when this kicked off originally - instead choosing to walk away from any association with this site for several months - but quite frankly, I feel that this site would be better off without you. All the edits you do to fix bad data are great in themselves, but I don't think they are worth all the aggravation you cause. If I recall correctly, at least one moderator refuses to work on your edits, and numerous other moderators and editors have had run-ins with you over your edits and general attitude. You've promised on numerous occasions that you intend to leave this site, any chance you can fulfill those promises?

It's one thing when that stuff is kept internal to this wiki, but when it explodes into the public domain, like it did last December, then all of us get tarred with the same brush, which is why I walked away then. I have numerous issues with what "the other side" did last December - e.g. Sanford's apparent lack of any sort of reaching out to get the ISFDB side of the story; the fact that (as IIRC Scifibones also found) 5 minutes of investigation disproved the claim that the deadname wasn't being still being used for publications (although it looks like some/most of them have finally been updated) - but it's hard to defend the ISFDB position when you had utterly poisoned the discourse. If you don't believe the comments you posted were utterly inflammatory, can I suggest you step out of your FoxNews/Daily Wire/Newsmax/whatever bubble, and understand that you can't talk to people that way?

Maybe I'll get attacked or censured for this comment, but quite frankly, I'd rather that happen, than have been silent on this. ErsatzCulture (talk) 08:03, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Username has been warned about being abrasive and about personal attacks, e.g. here. However, the ideal outcome is not to drive abrasive editors away, it is to help them improve their ability to communicate with other editors to ensure that the project functions smoothly. If it doesn't work, then ISFDB:Policy#Conduct_Policy, which provides for escalating penalties for misconduct up to and including an indefinite block, comes into play. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:52, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

(unindent) Re-reading User:Alvonruff/A Post-Mortem on the Lee Mandelo Name Change, I have a few suggestions:

• "14 December 2022" where it says "Mandelo posts a request to the Moderator Noticeboard". I suggest linking the Moderator Noticeboard discussion.
• Same day where it says "A 4-day bibliographic discussion follows with numerous open questions, with responses from Mandelo." I suggest adding that the current standard -- "For authors who publish under multiple names, the canonical name is the most recognized name for that author within the genre" -- was explained to Lee Mandelo who then provided evidence supporting the notion that, as of 2022-12, the "most recognized name" was indeed "Lee Mandelo". That's what triggered the canonical name change.
• The "Recommendations" section of User:Alvonruff/A Post-Mortem on the Lee Mandelo Name Change suggests the following change to the canonical name policy:
  • The Canonical Name of a living author should only be changed at the request of the author in question.
• This would be a fairly major policy change which would affect a number of scenarios. For example, we have received canonical author change requests based on authors trying to promote new working names. To quote what I wrote during the 2022-12 discussion:
  • It's been occasionally proposed that we make exceptions to our canonical name policy for certain types of scenarios. For example, Debora Geary published A Modern Witch, a series of popular urban fantasies, in 2011-2013. Then, after a painful divorce, she removed all of them from Amazon and restarted her career as Audrey Faye. A few years ago she published a non-fiction account of her recovery after divorce (Sleeping Solo: One Woman's Journey Into Life After Marriage) in which she explained why she could no longer be associated with the name "Debora Geary". Another example would be a person converting to another religion and changing his or her name to reflect new beliefs. Changing one's gender would be another scenario which has been discussed a few times, including an extensive Rules and Standards discussion in September 2018.
  • So far these discussions of possible exceptions have failed to lead to a new consensus, in part because of the number of possible scenarios and sub-scenarios. For example, consider Poppy Z. Brite, who has been using the name "Billy Martin" socially since the early 2010s, but whose books continue to be published as by "Poppy Z. Brite".
• We will need to discuss the proposed change on the Rules and standards discussions page.

Ahasuerus (talk) 10:23, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

In my opinion, the best part about the current policy is that it is quantitative/qualitative and not subjective. We did not use "Brit Mandelo" because of someone's whim or someone's views on Mondelo's gender identity or even popular vote. Technically, the switch from Brit to Lee as canonical was made because the underlying measure of primary identification changed over time and "Lee Mandelo" supplanted "Brit Mandelo". I don't think we should have a blanket policy that authors or their agents can request changes. That's another form of whim, and the ISFDB's purpose is not advertising for authors or publishers. Perhaps one thing we could consider, though, is a policy allowing those entities to request that the ISFDB make a switch ahead of the results of an in-progress publishing world change. E.g., if "ABC" came to us and said "I changed my name to 'XYZ', and all of my books are being pulled from the shelves and are being reissued using that name. Could 'XYZ' be configured as my canonical name?" ISFDB could then project the future and perhaps act early. --MartyD (talk) 14:19, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Re: "allowing those entities to request that the ISFDB make a switch ahead of the results of an in-progress publishing world change", we ran into an issue in this area back in the late 2010s.

In 2015 the author who had published the "Vladimir Tod/Slayer Chronicles" series as Heather Brewer changed the name to "Zac Brewer". There were plans to republish Brewer's old books under the new name and at least one SF story was indeed published that way. Based on that, an ISFDB editor proposed that we change the canonical name to "Zac Brewer" with the expectation that it would soon become the "most recognized name ... within the genre". At the time we decided to wait and see what would happen in another year or two.

As it turned out, the name "Zac Brewer" was used on 2 non-genre novels in 2016-2017, but all new speculative fiction (2 novels and 1 story) appeared as by "Z Brewer". I guess it goes to show that making assumptions about future releases is chancy in the publishing business. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:05, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

I agree. Keeping the policy as objective as possible is a good thing. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:43, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Alvonruff, thanks for a very nice job on the timeline. I'm not sure anything posted on social media ever changed anyone's opinion, but it accurately documents the facts. Sections 3 and 4 are better served as the kickoff to the Rules and Standards discussion and should not be included in the public release. A subsequent post documenting our reasoning and any changes is a better course. Anyone interested can follow and/or participate in the R & S discussions (I anticipate multiple threads). Ahasuerus, If you are going to link this thread to the letter, I suggest starting the main thread and moving MartyD's & Nihonjoe's posts there. John Scifibones 19:54, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

I agree that discussions of the current canonical name policy and any proposed changes belong on the Rules and Standards page. I am just waiting for Al to chime in and clarify whether he meant to propose a change. If he did, then we can move the policy part of the discussion there. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:00, 20 September 2023 (EDT)

For Al's postmortem, I think it would be helpful to quote the first paragraph of the Canonical Name definition from Help:Screen:AuthorData and to summarize the "enter-name-as-it-appears-in-the-publication" policy and provide links to Template:TitleFields:Author and Template:PublicationFields:Author prior to getting into the timeline. That is the working context for the data present in the system and various events that occurred during the timeline. --MartyD (talk) 11:32, 20 September 2023 (EDT)

That's a good point. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:20, 20 September 2023 (EDT)

"Review of"

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?412925; While my editing which ended after Labor Day won't resume full-time until October I did, after a week without any edits, start doing a few handfuls of clean-up edits fixing this or that which lately have been almost entirely related to D. F. Lewis. I just came across an interesting situation which a mod should probably take care of because it's a 2-step process, changing ESSAY to REVIEW and then link review from the menu, which mods can approve instantly instead of me doing one step and then waiting for approval before doing the other step. Nemonymous 3 mentioned in the review in the zine linked above is on ISFDB, titled Gold Coin; the issue of New Genre is also here as is the issue of Gigamesh. The last non-linked review is of a Norwegian novel whose title translates as a ghost story so that book almost certainly is eligible and should be entered here and then the review linked to it. That one may require someone with a knowledge of the language. I tried to figure out how to search for all instances of "review of" in All Hallows issues but I couldn't do it. Maybe someone else knows how or, if not, an issue-by-issue check will be needed. --Username (talk) 19:07, 19 September 2023 (EDT)

Pohl - Gateway

Has anybody any suggestions how this situation might be resolved. No progress has been made as the PV is unresponsive. Thanks. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 12:54, 20 September 2023 (EDT)

Image Deletion

Could a moderator please delete this image. The licensing tag information is incorrect. After the deletion, I will re-upload with correct tag. Teallach (talk) 17:47, 21 September 2023 (EDT)

Done. You could have edited the tag BTW :) Annie (talk) 18:18, 21 September 2023 (EDT)

I didn't realise I could do it myself. Thanks for the image deletion and the heads up re editing the licence tag. I have now figured out how to do it for the future. Teallach (talk) 13:44, 22 September 2023 (EDT)

Shutdown

Library of Congress has an ominous red warning about what will happen if the U.S. government shuts down a few days from now. Will anything on this site be affected or will it make no difference? --Username (talk) 22:57, 28 September 2023 (EDT)

The only effect will be not being able to look up LCCNs. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:03, 29 September 2023 (EDT)

LOTR Book

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?3078415; Another editor added an archived link to the Canadian edition recently but nobody ever added a link to the USA edition which has been there since 2010 so I just added it. The title is in question because it's written in fancy font on title pages; PV Auric seemed to think Film Book should be 2 words but other editions are Filmbook. So which should it really be, and should Part I be removed from USA title since it's not actually part of the title in the book? PV doesn't respond very often so I thought I'd bring it up here. --Username (talk) 09:12, 29 September 2023 (EDT)

Date for Voyage of Mael Duin's Curragh

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?49434; I just had my edit adding an archived link and fixing cover artist/adding interior artist but after looking at it I realized dates are off because Locus, https://www.locusmag.com/index/b1.htm, has one of those 2-date things and someone entered book as October but title and cover art are September, with my new interior art credit matching the book's October date. What's the rule? Which date should they all be? --Username (talk) 10:03, 29 September 2023 (EDT)

What does it state on the copyright page? If it includes a month, that's what we should use. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:04, 29 September 2023 (EDT)

No, there's no month, if there was that would take precedence over Locus. --Username (talk) 11:16, 29 September 2023 (EDT)

Cover art credit removal

As we don't credit designers for coverart, would moderators agree to removing Michniewicz's titles from here and here? Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 18:50, 1 October 2023 (EDT)

Locus1 credits Michniewicz for the first one's cover. Since he is PV for both, you could try reaching out to Michael (use the ISFDB to send him mail) and see if he'll respond and offer an opinion. --MartyD (talk) 08:34, 2 October 2023 (EDT)

Unfortunately I can't use the email system (it won't work with my provider, even though Ahasuerus has tried to fix it for me) so the only possibility there is if some kind soul would email him for me.

As far as I can ascertain from all the pub notes, Michniewicz is credited as designer for a lot of the series for the simple graphics. It is only for later issues where Gollancz have incorporated actual artwork that the artists get credit. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:29, 2 October 2023 (EDT)

Any other help please? Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 00:03, 7 October 2023 (EDT)

I would leave a note on User talk:Mhhutchins re: the proposed changes. If there is no response after a week, we can remove the COVERART titles and document the designers in Notes. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:12, 7 October 2023 (EDT)

I've left a message on his talk page. Thank you for the advice! Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 02:10, 8 October 2023 (EDT)

John Goss

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?239252; 2 different guys. --Username (talk) 12:39, 2 October 2023 (EDT)

Separated out. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:54, 4 October 2023 (EDT)

Goat

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pub_history.cgi?882813; Can a mod take a look at those last 2 edits? I see at least a few problems with ID and web links; maybe I'm wrong but I don't think they should be there. --Username (talk) 13:07, 4 October 2023 (EDT)

Shadow Edits

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:MOHearn#Return_of_the_Shadow; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5782555; I contacted MOHearn but we have some cross-editing going on so if I can ask one of you to approve my edits (assuming there's no problem with any of them) starting with the one linked above and going through 5782728 (there's 4 non-Shadow edits from 5782649 through 5782652; ignore those) so we can put these behind us. Thanks. --Username (talk) 11:29, 5 October 2023 (EDT)

El Topo

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5784269; HC copy uploaded recently, I'm going to add it (I added that paper edition a while ago) but wanted to get this edit approved first assuming mods agree it should be a chapbook since novelization is only 80-something pages with the rest being non-fiction. --Username (talk) 12:00, 6 October 2023 (EDT)

Cleaning up English translations of RUR

Hi all, I'm in the process of cleaning up the English translations of Karel Čapek's RUR. This has led to a bunch of related edit submissions (5776995, 5791148, 5791149, 5791151, 5791157, 5791159, 5791160, 5791188), several of which will involve follow-up edits.

That said, I'm not quite sure how to approach cleaning up one of the existing chapbook / shortfiction pairs. There are 3 associated publications: 328124, 362654, 529466.

• 328124 is an English translation by David Short that I expect is distinct from the other two publications.
• 362654 is an English translation by David Wyllie that is currently mapped to the wrong title(s) based on viewing the publication's title page via a reading sample from Amazon (see edit 5776995).
• 529466 is a seemingly unknown English translation from Amazon's on-demand (self-)publisher. I haven't been able to find much trace of this particular edition online. I'm guessing this is likely a reprint of the out-of-copyright translation by Paul Selver possibly further adapted by Nigel Playfair.

Do the following actions seem appropriate for this situation?

1. Unmerge 328124 and associate with new variant chapbook and shortfiction titles (distinct translation by David Short)
2. Unmerge 362654 and associate with different variant chapbook and shortfiction titles (distinct translation by David Wyllie)
3. Leave 529466 as is, but update associated chapbook and shortfiction titles to note that this is an unknown translation.

Thanks! --Riselka (talk) 14:03, 17 October 2023 (EDT)

Yep - when we know the translators of a specific book, unmerge the chapbook and the story, make them variants and add the translator to the notes of both titles. We had been slowly chipping at the early messes such as this one, created long before we started recording translators on the title level - so thanks for sorting it out. I also tend to add a "This title may contain multiple distinct translations" note or something to that effect to the one with unknown translators - when there is more than one book anyway. If two unknowns are known to be different, we also unmerge them and add as much as we know on their notes to identify what goes where... Annie (talk) 14:23, 17 October 2023 (EDT)

Jules Verne has lots of examples of multiple translations in various languages. ../Doug H (talk) 17:29, 17 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks, that makes sense. I mainly wanted to check how to handle this particular instance because I expected the translator could be identified if someone checked this particular edition. Jules Verne is a good (although more complex) example that I'll keep in mind when I clean up future translation records. --Riselka (talk) 17:45, 17 October 2023 (EDT)

We are playing catch-up on these -- for a long time, we did not separate or record per translator - so since we started, it had been a never ending game of finding all of them. And the ones translated into English are the most problematic due to the volume - in most other languages, we are mostly done with adding the Translator template which required the messes to be untangled. There are corners of the DB like that - where you will find surprises you would think cannot happen. Jules Verne looks as good as he does because Doug spent months fixing the records. :) Annie (talk) 19:37, 17 October 2023 (EDT)

Old cover image delete

Could someone please delete the old image, Date/Time: - 11:47, 23 February 2014 - to prevent reverting. The new image is identical but larger. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 16:26, 19 October 2023 (EDT)

Done. Annie (talk) 17:20, 19 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks Annie! Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:25, 19 October 2023 (EDT)

Invaders by Adelia Saunders

This concerns the cover art shown for Publication Record # 777558, Invaders by Vaughn Heppner The cover art shows the author to be Adelia Saunders. She did not write a book called Invaders. She did write one called Indelible. I went over to Brilliance Audio. This is just a generic cover they use. Its the same cover for Invader by C.J. Cherryh, Artemis Invaded by Jane Lindskoid and a number of others including The Spirit of Dorsai, By Gordon R. Dickson aardvark7 (talk) 19:51, 19 October 2023 (EDT)

Updated, thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:20, 20 October 2023 (EDT)

Derived prices in early Bantam Books

Bantam Books was founded in 1945 and concentrated on publishing mass market paperbacks. As far as I can tell, early on they didn't display prices on the cover or on the spine. However, some (all?) of them, e.g. The Unexpected and my verified ''The Day He Died, had ad pages in the back with one or more lists of books which you could buy by sending $0.25 plus $0.05 for postage to the publisher's address. I suppose it's likely that the list price was also $0.25, although it's not a guarantee.

Some online sources explicitly state that the list price was "$0.25", but I don't know where their data comes from. Some of our records also display "$0.25" in the price field, e.g. The Unexpected, which has the following note:

• No price stated, but ad pages for current releases list $0.25 price.

Clearly, this situation requires an explanation in the Note field, but what would you enter in the price field? $0.25? Leave it blank? Ahasuerus (talk) 10:11, 20 October 2023 (EDT)

Seems ok to me to use $0.25 and treat the ad as a secondary source. If we had a book with no printed price on it, found a review (or announcement) contemporaneous with its issuance, and that review stated a price, I think we would normally be happy to use that and cite the review as the source. The ad situation strikes me as equivalent. --MartyD (talk) 14:03, 20 October 2023 (EDT)

I agree. As long as there is a note explaining the sourcing of the price, this is not different from finding a price on a publisher site, a contemporary review or any other secondary source. If we ever find a better information that contradicts the price as derived via such a method for that specific book, the note can be adjusted and the price changed if needed. Annie (talk) 14:44, 20 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks to Ahasuerus for following up my discussion with him and getting this cleared up. Here's a list, [2], of all Bantam books PV by Scott Latham; he entered prices for all of them and there's a note in the third book that he got the price from Tuck. EDIT: In the 4th book there's a note, "Price from ads in the back, listing other Bantam titles all for 25¢", so it seemed random whether there's no price note or where he got it from if he did leave a note. --Username (talk) 14:56, 20 October 2023 (EDT)

I think this is fine. A note should be included stating where the price was from, but I have no problem sourcing prices that way. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:27, 20 October 2023 (EDT)

(unindent) Thanks, folks. I have updated the publication record, deleted a duplicate pub and notified the affected verifier. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:11, 21 October 2023 (EDT)

Can we have some clarification please because I am confused by this discussion.

Ahasuerus' initial post implied to me that we are looking at a situation where an unpriced book contains a house ad listing other books for sale from the publisher. All these books are listed with an identical price but the list does NOT contain the title of the book in which it is printed. Call this scenario A.

However, MartyD and Annie's replies imply to me that they seem to think the list DOES contain the title of the book in which it is printed. Call this scenario B.

We need to consider these two scenarios separately.

Scenario A: I do not consider it appropriate to infer the price of a book from other contemporary books. The Ace 1st pb ed of Dune, published in 1967, is priced 95c. It's a fat book for its era. However, Ace pb's in that year were typically priced around 50c. So if, hypothetically, Ace books published in 1967 did not have a cover price then it would be erroneous to infer that Dune was 50c based on a house ad listing other contemporary books at 50c.

Scenario B: This is not contentious. Record the price in the Price field and add a mandatory pub note stating the source, ie the house ad. Teallach (talk) 18:52, 21 October 2023 (EDT)

Sorry, I may not have been clear. The ads in the back of my verified The Day He Died do include The Day He Died (with the correct catalog ID) in the list of books that you can get for $0.25, so it's "Scenario B" above.

Now that I am thinking about, there may be an additional twist. According to Jon Warren's "Official Price Guide: Paperbacks", some early Bantam paperbacks had 2 versions which shared the same catalog ID: a regular version and a version in a dust jacket. I don't recall seeing dust-jacketed versions, which are apparently highly prized among collectors. I don't know how they were priced and whether you could get them from the publisher for $0.25. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:36, 21 October 2023 (EDT)

Ah, all is good then. Thank you for the clarification. Teallach (talk) 18:53, 22 October 2023 (EDT)

Canonical name out of date?

G. Arthur Rahman has about 15 titles under that canonical name, from the 70s and 80s, but he has over 30 under the name Glenn Rahman (and a few under other forms of the name). Here is my entry of some new 2023 stories in addition to those on that author page. I'm holding off on making them variants to ask: Could his canonical name be changed from G. Arthur Rahman to Glenn Rahman to reflect the majority of bylines? -- MOHearn (talk) 10:29, 26 October 2023 (EDT)

Working on this. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:31, 26 October 2023 (EDT)

Yes, I'd think so - provided someone sets out to do the transformation. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:32, 26 October 2023 (EDT)

Done! You can see it here. Let me know if I missed anything as this one was more complicated due to the number of pseudonyms. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:15, 26 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks, Nihonjoe! I'll put the new stories into their series and look over the older ones. -- MOHearn (talk) 13:38, 26 October 2023 (EDT)

Juliana Pinha --> Juliana Pinho

Hello, would it be possible to correct 'Pinha' to 'Pinho' in this entry for INTERZONE #295? Thank you.

190 •  Notes From the Meeting of the First State Feder World Court: Walker Dairy, Freeville, NY, 198 Year One: Jessica Jane Pearson Vs. The Stranger Mr. Jacob Hampton • interior artwork by Juliana Pinha

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?977484

--Interzone (talk) 14:29, 3 November 2023 (EDT)

This depends on the way the artist is credited in the issue: we do document the spelling of a name, even if it is mistyped in a given magazine issue (and then do variant it to the canonical name, like in this example).

Anyway, since "Interzone" #295 is primary verified, it is etiquette to ask / inform the primary verifier. You can reach him here. Stonecreek (talk) 16:05, 3 November 2023 (EDT)

Thanks for the info. It is 'Pinho' in the magazine (on the story cover page, and in the contents page). I'll move this to the primary verifier page, thanks.

--Interzone (talk) 16:55, 3 November 2023 (EDT)

Star Bridge by James E. Gunn, Jack Williamson

Publication Record # 31949 states the artist is Ed Valigursky and that there was not any credit in the book. That the credit came from Jack Williamson's Seventy-Five: The Diamond Anniversary of a Science Fiction Pioneer. Heritage Auctions (fineart.ha.com/itm/paintings/gordon-pawelka-american-20th-century-star-bridge-paperback-cover-1963-oil-on-board-20-1-2-x-1/a/8000-71029.s?ic4=GalleryView-Thumbnail-071515) has the artist as Gordon Pawelka. Was this a name used by Valigursky or do we have a conflict?? Hey Heritage could be wrong. It sold in 2020 for $3000 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aardvark7 (talk • contribs) .

RUSSWOTHE

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User:RUSSWOTHE; I made a minor edit for a book PV by this person and noticed there's a stray message in the wrong place. Is it possible to move it to their discussion page? --Username (talk) 18:40, 7 November 2023 (EST)

Done, thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:21, 8 November 2023 (EST)

Followup: Crowley and Aziraphale's New Year's resolutions

Hello. I did not receive a response to my September 2023 question about how to catalog a weirdly-published Good Omens short story. So I am repeating the question here, please. Morebooks (talk) 14:25, 8 November 2023 (EST)

Not eligible unless it was downloadable as an ebook - we allow only a limited set of online fiction and "a publisher site" is not amongst them. If it was downloadable as an ebook, it will be added as a chapbook. Annie (talk) 15:08, 8 November 2023 (EST)

Wrong tag for L. Sprague de Camp's The Hardwood Pile

Hello to all. The tag "science fiction" has been wrongly attributed to this story, which is only a fantastic and humorous ghost story. Could a bureaucrat please remove it ? TIA, Linguist (talk) 04:31, 12 November 2023 (EST).

Remove non-SF/fantasy/speculative fiction incorrectly attributed to an SF author

Hi.

I recently read and loved the story "In the Days After..." in Asimov's Science Fiction, November-December 2023 (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?3238197). I was curious about this author who was new to me, with a story I really liked, so I checked ISFDB.

Most of his work is noted as 1981 and beyond, with a long gap (~28 years) from 1995 to 2023. The Asimov's blurb does note that Frank Ward (William Francis Ward) did take a long time off from writing for "life". https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?11458

There is a 1958 story listed under Frank Ward, "The Dark Corner". I was suspicious of this, as Frank Ward is listed with a 1950 birthdate.

I checked around. Galactic Central does show a substantial mystery body of work by a different Frank Ward, from the 1930s to the 1960s. http://www.philsp.com/homeville/cfi/n00786.htm#A5

I confirmed with the current Frank Ward via email that he did not write the mystery story "The Dark Corner", which does show up under the other Frank Ward at Galactic Central.

Given that "The Dark Corner" here is not by this Frank Ward (William Francis Ward), and that the other Frank Ward who wrote "The Dark Corner" appears to have written mysteries but not SF, fantasy or speculative fiction, I am assuming that I need to delete "The Dark Corner" story from ISFDB. I further assume this is done by the "Delete this title" button.

Please confirm, or let me know what is needed.

Thanks. Dave888 (talk) 13:09, 12 November 2023 (EST)

There's an issue with one of Ward's titles, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?914168, the Fantasy Book Index, https://archive.org/search?query=%22the+pegasus+suit%22&sin=TXT&and%5B%5D=year%3A%221983%22, says "Pegasus", there's a contents page scan on AbeBooks, https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Fantasy-Book-February-1982-Third-Issue/30051987897/bd, which probably says the same although it's blurry, only way to be sure is looking at the story's title page which would require a copy of the zine, you may want to ask him if he owns it so he can check. --Username (talk) 13:38, 12 November 2023 (EST)

I'm not quite clear what the issue is. When I looked at any of the 3 copies of the "An Index to Fantasy Book, Volume 1", at Internet Archive, they all note "The Pegasus Suit". Thanks for the clarification.

Dave888 (talk) 13:57, 12 November 2023 (EST)

Thanks for checking with the author! I have disambiguated the author name -- see the result here -- and updated the title record.

As to whether we want to remove "The Dark Corner" from the database, it depends on a couple of different factors. The story appeared in the anthology Bodies and Souls. Its dust jacket says "Fourteen Tales of Worldly and Other-Worldly Murder, Mayhem and Mystery", which suggests that it collects both SF and non-SF stories. We currently list one of the stories, "Too Many Coincidences", as "non-genre" while the rest are listed as SF. It's entirely possible that some of them are non-genre; we just don't know one way or the other. Once we know more about these stories, we can decide what to do with the anthology. Since it apparently contains at least some SF stories, we will want to keep the publication record, but if the overwhelming majority of the stories are non-genre, we may end up removing them and documenting them in Notes. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:27, 12 November 2023 (EST)

My thanks for handling this. I appreciate and concur with the thinking, and I'll try to retain that for the future. Mr. Ward is pleased this has been revised.Dave888 (talk) 12:10, 15 November 2023 (EST)

ISFDB says "Pegusus" which is obviously a misspelling of "Pegasus" but a look at the header on the story's title page is what's needed because it's entirely possible, as so often in zines, that titles differ from what's on the contents page. Searching for "Pegusus Suit" online finds only ISFDB and a couple of booksellers that obviously copied their info directly from ISFDB so it's likely just a simple mistake by whoever entered the contents here. You said you spoke to him via email so maybe you can ask him if he owns that issue of Fantasy Book to check and if it's wrong it will be fixed to "Pegasus". --Username (talk) 18:05, 12 November 2023 (EST)

I have reached out to Frank Ward on this question. I'll circle back when I know, and then correct the title if needed. Thanks.Dave888 (talk) 12:10, 15 November 2023 (EST)

I have confirmed with Frank Ward by check of his copy of the 1982 Fantasy Book that "Pegasus" is the correct spelling. He thanks us for making the correction. I will submit that now. Dave888 (talk) 19:09, 17 November 2023 (EST)

Bodies and Souls is linked at Archive.org in the notes section of its record here so the story can be read to determine if it's genre or not as can the other contents; also, it's much longer than the others in the book and should probably be given novelette length. --Username (talk) 18:09, 12 November 2023 (EST)

I checked at Galactic Central. They believe this story ("The Dark Corner") is a novella. I will make that change.Dave888 (talk) 12:10, 15 November 2023 (EST)

Approved, thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:13, 16 November 2023 (EST)

Muster of Ghosts II

[3]; I was going to upload SFE image but it seemed familiar and it turned out I'd done it already but the image didn't go to the right place; also this old edit, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5740959, has been sitting there for months because without an image the signature couldn't be seen. So can someone get the image fixed and approve the cover artist edit? EDIT: After I entered this message it didn't go to the right place because I'd already written about it, with the same message title, long ago but nobody ever answered; it's up above. --Username (talk) 10:56, 15 November 2023 (EST)

The image has been added to the pub & your edit approved. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:06, 22 November 2023 (EST)

MP3 CD price on Amazon note

Just a heads-up that Amazon is now typically showing the as new price for MP3 CDs whose publisher is "Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio" as $10.02. The list price for these CDs as reported on brilliancepublishing.com is almost always $9.99. Phil (talk) 07:23, 17 November 2023 (EST)

Amazon

I've noticed that Amazon.com is used frequently to verify a publication date. I just wanted to point out that it's an unreliable source, because any time they don't know the exact date, they use the first of the month. For example, the publication date of this book: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?535016 is listed as 2008-11-01, but the data is from Amazon, so I don't know if that's the accurate date, or they just used the first of the month because they didn't know any better. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Clauditorium (talk • contribs) .

The quality of Amazon's records varies a great deal. It's not always clear why the bad data is the way it is, but we can make educated guesses, at least in certain cases. For example, Amazon occasionally -- I would say around 5-10% of the time -- lists unrealistically low (14-32) page counts for English e-book editions of Japanese "light novels". It seems to be related to the fact that some light novels have short (4-20 pages) manga sections at the beginning of the book. We don't know why it affects Amazon's page counts, but it's something that editors have to keep in mind when entering light novel records using Amazon's data.

Re: dates, it depends on how old the record is, where the book was originally published and the publisher. For older books, some records have no day/month information, some add arbitrary "-01" or "-01-01" to the end of the month or year, and some have surprisingly accurate dates even for books published in the 1960s/1970s. Our best guess is that "surprisingly accurate dates" come from publishers' catalogs that Amazon has/had access to.

Amazon.com's records for books published in other countries frequently list the "US availability" date as the publication date. There can be a big gap between these two types of dates for books originally published in the UK and especially in Australia/New Zealand, which is why Amazon's dates for these types of books are often wrong.

Also, a note on the terminology. We use Amazon stores -- Amazon.com, Amazon UK, Amazon DE, etc -- as sources of our data, but we don's use it for verification. We have a number of recognized "secondary verification" sources which you can see if you display a publication record and click on "Verify This Pub" link under "Editing Tools", then scroll down to "Secondary Verifications". Like everything else in this world, these verification sources are not perfect, but their data is, on average, better than Amazon's.

Ultimately, the ISFDB data is only as good as our sources. Even primary verified data can be imperfect due to data entry errors and misunderstandings. That's why it's so important to document exactly where our data comes from. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:23, 20 November 2023 (EST)

US Copyright Office website

Do you guys ever use the US Copyright Office website? I would think that would be the most reliable source. It often has publication dates down to the day, whereas other sources only have them down to the month. https://cocatalog.loc.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Clauditorium (talk • contribs) .

We use a variety of secondary sources to determine publication dates as discussed in this Help section. The Copyright Catalog can be (and have been) used as a secondary source of information as long as we keep in mind that their "Date of Publication" values and "Registration date" values are often different, so we need to make sure to use their "Date of Publication" values.

Another thing to keep in mind is what Help:Screen:NewPub calls "Discrepancies Between Stated Date and Reality":

• Publication date does not always perfectly match the calendar date. For example, a January issue of a magazine is usually available in December of the previous year, and often earlier than that. Books with a January publication date may often be bought in the closing weeks of the prior year; they will show the later year's copyright date, even though that year has not yet started. In these cases, the convention is to use the official publication date rather than to try to identify when a book actually first became available. If there is a large discrepancy -- for example if a book was printed but unexpectedly delayed before release -- then this can be noted in the notes field.

This Copyright Catalog record for the first edition of Disclosure, a non-genre novel by Michael Crichton, is a good example. The "Date of Publication" value is "1993-12-20", but the publication date stated in the physical book is "January 1994". Ahasuerus (talk) 17:02, 20 November 2023 (EST)

When it comes to magazines, I'm aware of the disconnect between publication date listed on the copyright site and the date printed on the magazine cover. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Clauditorium (talk • contribs) .

Back when mass market paperbacks took off in the United States, their publishers piggybacked on pre-existing distribution channels and inherited some of the peculiarities of the magazine distribution system. They also had to deal with numerous technical limitations of the printing business as it existed ca. 1950. For example, you could order a paperback with 96 pages or a paperback with 128 pages, but anything in between wasn't viable because of the way mass market paperbacks paperbacks were produced. Sometimes authors and/or editors were able to cut or pad stories to make everything work seamlessly. Other times typesetters had to add empty pages or use other tricks to pad the page count.

We see similar issues surface even in 2023. Amazon's page count values are often off because publishers create pre-publication records based on estimates. When books are produced, the actual page count is usually different. Not all Amazon records are updated post-publication, so we always take what's there with a grain of salt. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:10, 21 November 2023 (EST)

As for novels, I've noticed that in several cases, the date listed by isfdb.org is missing the day, but the copyright site will have this info. For example, Misery by Stephen King is listed here as being published on 1987-06-00; on the copyright site, the publication date is indicated as 1987-06-08 (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1513). If I come across such occurrences, should I make a correction, crediting the copyright site? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Clauditorium (talk • contribs) .

Sorry, I didn't quote the most applicable part of Help:Screen:NewPub#Date earlier. Here is the relevant section:

• The base date optionally may be made more precise (e.g., supplying the month or day of publication) using information from a secondary source, if that source's date is otherwise consistent with publication's stated date. The source, and which details of the date were obtained from that source, must be recorded in the publication notes. See Secondary Sources of Dates.

So the answer is yes, editors can make the date more precise as long as it is "otherwise consistent with publication's stated date" and the source is documented in Notes. If there is a discrepancy -- as in the case of Michael Crichton's Disclosure (see above) which was offered for sale in late December 1993 but the printed publication date says "January 1994" -- then we use the printed date and optionally document what secondary sources like the Copyright Office or Amazon say. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:24, 21 November 2023 (EST)

Captured By the Engines

Can someone approve my submission 5819033? Because I need to add month to merged art. --Username (talk) 22:55, 24 November 2023 (EST)

Approved. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:18, 25 November 2023 (EST)

"Pending submissions which will change my primary verified publications" on the New Submissions page

A new table, "Pending submissions which will change my primary verified publications", has been added to the New Submissions page. It will appear at the top of the page if any pending submissions affect the logged-in moderator's primary verifications. If you run into any issues, please report them here. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:27, 25 November 2023 (EST)

Can Ellen Be Saved

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?291669; I just uploaded new cover but it didn't go to the same Wiki page and replace old cover, it just created a new page. --Username (talk) 21:48, 25 November 2023 (EST)

I added the new one to the pub and deleted the old one after verifying it was not used in any other pubs. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:02, 26 November 2023 (EST)

One New Message

"The following Contents titles have dates after the proposed publication date"; I got this message after submitting an edit for Tor ed. of G. Masterton's Mirror because month was April, not May, and cover art needed fixing in another edit. Is this new? I don't remember seeing that before. --Username (talk) 18:35, 26 November 2023 (EST)

This warning was implemented on July 31 as per FR 1569, "Add a warning when a changed pub date is before one of the title dates". Ahasuerus (talk) 20:08, 26 November 2023 (EST)

Server issue?

Is there a server problem? I'm getting a 500 Internal Server Error message when trying to submit a Clone Publication. Phil (talk) 09:26, 28 November 2023 (EST)

Nevermind. I opened a new Clone the Pub tab and was able to submit the request successfully. Phil (talk) 10:10, 28 November 2023 (EST)

Log In

Why am I not logged in? Is there some new problem now? I see Username when I'm on the Wiki pages but the front page says "You are not logged in". EDIT: I got tired of waiting so I entered "Username" and "password" and that worked but a message popped up saying password was used in a data breach on Google or something like that. I don't know what's going on. Maybe someone can tell me if anyone else got that message or got logged out for no reason. I sincerely hope all of my info and edits and everything else that was there before I re-logged in is still exactly the same and nothing was changed/lost. --Username (talk) 09:45, 29 November 2023 (EST)

Old Edits

I'm trying to get my edits that have been sitting for months approved. I'll start with this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5747517, which is just a simple change from a dead Google Drive link to one that works. Can someone approve this? --Username (talk) 11:46, 29 November 2023 (EST)

Approved by Nihonjoe. Thanks. --Username (talk) 17:48, 29 November 2023 (EST)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5747546; Just a simple cover image, Rudam said long ago in the thread "Rejected?" on his board that there's no need to ask about covers except for a couple of specific publishers. Can someone approve this? --Username (talk) 11:50, 29 November 2023 (EST)

Approved by Nihonjoe. Thanks. --Username (talk) 17:48, 29 November 2023 (EST)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5749772; Just an archived link and an obvious format fix. Can someone approve this? --Username (talk) 11:54, 29 November 2023 (EST)

Changing the format is a major change and should not be approved unless the active verifiers have agreed. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:43, 29 November 2023 (EST)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5750346; Just an archived link and an obvious fix of LCCN in the note. Can someone approve this? --Username (talk) 12:08, 29 November 2023 (EST)

The active verifier has asked that he be contacted through the email system about changes. No indication in the edit that this was done, or what the response was. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:43, 29 November 2023 (EST)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5750954; Just a simple LCCN ID and cleanup of several misspellings in the note. Can someone approve this? --Username (talk) 12:12, 29 November 2023 (EST)

Moderator note only states "cleaned up sloppy note" without specifying what was changed. Best to notify the verifier. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:43, 29 November 2023 (EST)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5757566; Just a simple note about the cover; it's on this page, https://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/3786/fred-pickersgill-graves-give. Can someone approve this? --Username (talk) 12:27, 29 November 2023 (EST)

This one is more of a judgement call. Personally I think it's too much information that is not germane to the publication. What does the soundtrack artist have to do with the book? I could have lived with something along the lines of "Cover is from the filmed version of 'The Female of the Species'". However, other moderators may differ. At a minimum, if we're going to go into this much detail, it should probably go below a {{BREAK}} tag. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:43, 29 November 2023 (EST)

Approved by JLaTondre. Thanks. --Username (talk) 11:33, 13 December 2023 (EST)

Popular Science

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5824080; I did add the archived link and the cover image but I didn't touch those reg. title art and story things so does anyone know why it says I did? --Username (talk) 17:30, 1 December 2023 (EST)

It is a kinda known issue with the software when titles contains special characters, especially older titles added before some of the latest changes in handling these from the last years (in this case it is the < that is throwing the fit. Because of that, the comparison for changes detects a change - even if there is none). Annie (talk) 11:56, 6 December 2023 (EST)

Title change with no PVs

I was getting ready to add the audiobook and CD editions to Steven Erikson's novel Rejoice but noticed that the correct title name should be Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart instead of just Rejoice. I looked at WorldCat, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, SFE, and Wikipedia, and in all cases except SFE, that is shown as the correct title. Would there be any objection to me changing the title to Rejoice, a Knife to the Heart? None of the publications have a PV. Phil (talk) 09:17, 5 December 2023 (EST)

The publisher also refers to it as 'Rejoice, A Knife to the Heart', here. John Scifibones 10:49, 5 December 2023 (EST)

SF Adventures Yearbook

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5827099; I can never remember which changes to names affect what, so if someone can approve this assuming artist change won't mess anything up with info on his page or whatever. Also, both PV are long-gone so someone may want to check and see if there are any little details that I missed which need correcting. --Username (talk) 10:27, 5 December 2023 (EST)

Looks good, submission approved. John Scifibones 11:01, 5 December 2023 (EST)

Liam Hogan versus Laim Hogan

Hi.

In working to add the story "Ana" by Liam Hogan in "The Best of British Science Fiction 2016", I need to add it's first publication in Scientific American, as noted in the "Best of British Science Fiction" copyright page and else on the internet at Scientific American.

I checked the author's name. There is no "Liam Hogan" currently in ISFDB, but there is a "Laim Hogan", the author of the 2019 short fiction "XX". "XX" is listed as published in "Best Indie Speculative Fiction: Volume Two, November 2019". Upon looking at that "Best Indie..." on Amazon, the preview shows "Liam Hogan" on both the cover and table of contents.

Upon checking further, the website https://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.com/p/2014.html for Liam Hogan notes both "XX" and "Ana" as his stories.

Therefore, I would appreciate it if a moderator could correct this author's name in ISFDB to "Liam" Hogan. Once that is done, I'll add "Ana" in the Scientific American webzine.

Thanks. Dave888 (talk) 19:46, 5 December 2023 (EST)

We do have Liam Hogan so I cannot rename Laim Hogan. Same guy I think? If so, the fastest solution is to just fix the author on the stray story. If not, I will be happy to differentiate them. Annie (talk) 11:52, 6 December 2023 (EST)

Fixed. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:47, 6 December 2023 (EST)

Thanks for fixing the author entry. Looks correct now. I'll go ahead and add the first publication for "Ana" now. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dave888 (talk • contribs) . 14:03, 6 December 2023‎ (EST)

A SHORTFICTION title incorporated into the body of a NONFICTION title

I am holding this submission, which would import Howard Koch's SHORTFICTION title The Invasion from Mars: A Radio Adaptation into the 2009 NONFICTION book Waging The War of the Worlds: A History of the 1938 Radio Broadcast and Resulting Panic, Including the Original Script. As the title of the NONFICTION book states, the text includes Koch's script, so normally it would make sense to approve the submission. However, the Notes field explains that:

• Howard Koch's radio script is incorporated into the body of the book's main text, rather than being a separate essay.

Would you say that it makes sense to list the SHORTFICTION title as a Contents items in this pub? Or is it better presented as a part of the NONFICTION title? Ahasuerus (talk) 15:44, 7 December 2023 (EST)

My five cents: I'd say it makes sense if the piece is incorporated as a whole and without interruptions (of explaining notes). In the latter case the piece may only serve as a means to comment on Koch's unique handling (or something similar). Stonecreek (talk) 06:25, 8 December 2023 (EST)

If it's contained in its entirety and its content appears in proper order (whether or not contiguously), I am inclined to allow it. Technically, the work is published in the book. If it's not contiguous, the situation strikes me as similar to publications of "braided" stories. --MartyD (talk) 15:49, 8 December 2023 (EST)

Thanks, folks. I have approved the submission, notified the inactive primary verifier and updated Notes to clarify the situation. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:32, 9 December 2023 (EST)

Entries disappeared

At least four of my entries from the last few weeks have disappeared from the database. I looked for the new publication series page, Gruselkabinett, as I was going to add more, and it and the four books I entered in it are gone. They're audio books: Der Bluthund by H.P. Lovecraft, Die Weiden and Das unbewohnte Haus by Algernon Blackwood, and Die Toten sind unersättlich by Leopold Sacher-Masoch. Even a new author entry they generated has vanished, the artist on two of the titles, Johannes Belach. I have no idea if more of my entries have disappeared. -- MOHearn (talk) 12:24, 13 December 2023 (EST)

Checking submission history (a moderator-only menu option), I see the following:

• Publication ID 981382, Der Bluthund, created on 2023-12-02 16:30:43. Deleted by Stonecreek on 2023-12-06 12:08:08. Reason for deletion: audio play
• Publication ID 981093, Die Weiden, created on 2023-11-30 18:58:05. Deleted by Stonecreek on 2023-12-06 12:07:37. Reason for deletion: audio play
• Publication ID 981433, Das unbewohnte Haus, created on 2023-12-02 20:36:31. Deleted by Stonecreek on 2023-12-06 12:07:13. Reason for deletion: audio play
• I can't find an audio book version of Die Toten sind unersättlich using moderator tools. I could presumably do it using programmer tools, but it would take time.

I assume that Stonecreek deleted the 3 pubs listed above as per ISFDB:Policy, which says:

• Included: audio books, i.e. readings, but not dramatizations

I'll ask Stonecreek to join this discussion. We'll need to make sure that we are all on the same page or else we'll be stuck in an endless cycle of some editors adding certain books and other editors deleting them. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:01, 13 December 2023 (EST)

Yes, I deleted them on the basis of the rule that dramatizations are not to be included. I stumbled over the entry for "Die Weiden" upon reading a review at 'phantastiknews.de' of the play, and found that the other entries for publications fell into the same category. (A good rule of thumbs for a first check is if there are more than one speakers for a piece, it is most likely that it is a dramatization). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:53, 13 December 2023 (EST)

Thanks for the explanation. In the future, when you come across publication records for ineligible works (like dramatizations), please use Edit History to identify the original submitter(s) and discuss the issue with them first. That way they will be made aware of what is and is not eligible for inclusion and won't make the same type of mistake in the future. Without an explanation, they'll be either confused and frustrated when the data that they previously submitted disappears or they will continue adding ineligible records. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:39, 13 December 2023 (EST)

I should leave it at that, since Ahasuerus was a lot more measured than I could be right now over the situation. -- Martin MOHearn (talk) 15:53, 13 December 2023 (EST)

In the past, we didn't have Edit History, so it was hard to tell who did what when. Now that it's been available for almost three years, it should be the default tool used to figure out why something appears to be off and whether a discussion is warranted.

That said, old habits die hard. I still occasionally catch myself making a change, then realizing that I should have checked Edit History first. Hopefully, things will improve going forward. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:03, 13 December 2023 (EST)

My name was right there in the WorldCat verification on all four of those entries. MOHearn (talk) 21:34, 13 December 2023 (EST)

My apologies: I stiil have to adapt to making a direct notification: as with this case I came upon this while doing research for another author at the news site, and carried on with this other task after that to get it done in that specific setting.

And I didn't recall that the note left in the moderator's field wouldn't be easy to find. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:42, 14 December 2023 (EST)

(I'd love to add some really good audio plays to the database, but they are excluded, just like the ones you had added). Stonecreek (talk) 01:54, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Series Parent Position and Series Num fields

"Series Num" can have numbering that are not integers (e.g., 2.1, 2.2, etc.), but apparently the "Series Parent Position" field when editing series can only be integers. Can we change the field to allow non-integer numbering? This would allow subseries to be placed in the correct location with a larger series. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:40, 13 December 2023 (EST)

This functionality was requested in FR 1403, "Allow decimal numbers as Series Parent Position values". Unfortunately, it is much harder to implement than it looks. The way the "Series Number" field works for title records is rather involved; back when I implemented it, it took me weeks to get everything updated and debugged. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:41, 13 December 2023 (EST)

Sounds good. I'm glad it's on the list. Thanks for all your work on the backend of things. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:26, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Bibliographic information for Strange Tales

For the UK magazine Strange Tales edited by Walter Gillings I believe that the noted second printing of the first issue is just a variant cover. https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?618191

In George Locke's Spectrum of Fantasy, volume 1, page 3 he states as such. His examination of the two copies he had was that they were identical with the exception of two different covers. I would find it hard to believe that an attempt of a new publication which was dodging the fact it was a magazine would go into two printings, as there were still paper shortages after the War. The price on both covers is the same, one shilling net on one cover 1/- on the other. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jwkbooks (talk • contribs) . 17:12, 21 December 2023‎ (EST)

Long time for approval?

Is it unusual if my relatively minor edits take two weeks or more to be approved? Thanks. Sfmvnterry (talk) 22:38, 25 December 2023 (EST)

Typically, it wouldn't take that long, but unfortunately, the "New Submissions" queue has been very long recently. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:51, 26 December 2023 (EST)

Thanks. Sfmvnterry (talk) 00:17, 28 December 2023 (EST)

Missing Clone

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5832571; What happened to the clone? It's not there. --Username (talk) 09:42, 29 December 2023 (EST)

The submission failed because one of the titles in the cloned publication, 2439970 (Intelligence and Luck), is no longer present. It appears that the title was merged in this edit which was submitted on November 21st and approved on December 12. I'm guessing that your clone submission was submitted within that time frame. When the merge was done, the other title record was the one that was kept, and 2439970 was deleted. You should be able to re-clone the container title and pick up the current contents including the merged title of that story. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 10:11, 29 December 2023 (EST)

Cover art weirdness

So browsing (as you do). I came across this cover art entry which seems, to my eye at least, an identical piece to this one. Any comments ?--Mavmaramis (talk) 06:40, 30 December 2023 (EST)

To my eye, these look identical. We would have to research the Maria Carella credit for the French ones. Likely Herve put on one and then carried that over into the other by cloning. The Tim Jacobus credit on the Doomsday Book covers seems clear (from copyright statement on hardcover's jacket flap). My first guess would be a misinterpretation of some sort of general artist credit on Le grand livre as referring to the cover instead of to interior artwork. --MartyD (talk) 09:42, 30 December 2023 (EST)

(after edit conflict) These are definitely based on the same cover art. The question then is whether the cover artist was really credited as "Maria Carella" in this J'ai Lu edition or whether it's a data entry error in our database. Checking Google, I see that J'ai Lu has used at least two other covers -- https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQjbJRjGrF4EtBXromnm4E-mn-bwNjmriUiD9y_zEqCWxOsPAdQkITLtQ-6VzOAKbgq3b4&usqp=CAU and m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61mHPaZVmdL._AC_UF894,1000_QL80_.jpg -- and it's possible that one of them was done by Maria Carella. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:49, 30 December 2023 (EST)

I did more research and found some pictures. In the original Bantam edition, the copyright page has "Book design by Maria Carella" (see here) and the rear flap says "Cover illustration © 1992 by Tim Jacobus" (see here). So I think the book design credit got conflated with cover artistry, either by J'ai Lu or someone else (if Herve did not have the books, his source might have been NooSFere, which credits the cover to Carella). Unless anyone disagrees, I will change the credit on the French ones and document the discrepancy with French secondary sources and probable source of the confusion. --MartyD (talk) 10:05, 30 December 2023 (EST)

Nice! I also wonder if Maria Carella was the cover artist or the cover designer for the first (1988) edition of Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Our source is the Locus Index, which simply says "cover by Maria Carella". For what it's worth, the Internet Archive has the 1996 edition, which has a different cover, on file and its copyright page says "Design by Lynn Newark" -- never mind, it turns out that "Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology" (1988) and "Visions of Wonder: the Science Fiction Research Association Anthology" (1996) are completely different. Even if we keep Maria Carella as the cover artist, we will want to change her working language from French to English. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:41, 30 December 2023 (EST)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/note_search_results.cgi?OPERATOR=contains&NOTE_VALUE=maria+carella; She's mentioned in 16 notes. --Username (talk) 11:19, 30 December 2023 (EST)

I made these adjustments: Maria Carella language to English. Le grand livre cover credit to Jacobus (+ variant to Doomsday Book cover). Added note to French cover and to the first of the French pubs about secondary sources crediting Carella but her being credited as book designer (and Jacobus as cover illustrator) in original Bantam edition. Added note to Bantam hc about the book design credit. I found some pictures of portions of the interior of that anthology, but they did not include the copyright or credits pages, so I couldn't conclude anything about that. --MartyD (talk) 11:28, 30 December 2023 (EST)

Data entered exactly as on books 1994 on top, 1995 below, "illustration" having the same meaning in both langages, "de" meaning "by".Hauck (talk) 05:26, 31 December 2023 (EST)

Well, that is quite clear, too, then. Then I guess we should have a "Maria Carella (in error)" as an alternate name then, with the above explanation, and the cover art with that credit as the variant. And no direct credit to Jacobus in the J'ai Lu editions. Does that sound correct to everyone? --MartyD (talk) 07:28, 31 December 2023 (EST)

Sounds good to me. I have the Bantam 1st ed hc and have checked it against the above discussion and concur. The book also states "Jacket design by Jamie S. Warren Youll" on rear flap which reinforces the statement that Maria Carella was only involved in the book design, not the cover. I have PVd the pub record and submitted this edit to add extra info and change the source of all the data to the actual book. Teallach (talk) 13:34, 2 January 2024 (EST)

Happy New Year, everyone. I have made the further adjustments I proposed above, and I accepted the changes to the Bantam edition. Please correct -- or let me know about -- anything that still is not as it should be. --MartyD (talk) 07:08, 3 January 2024 (EST)

New translations of Ursula K. Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness

A few days ago I posted 2 records for a 1981 and a 2002 edition of Pimeduse ahem käsi. the Estonian translation of The Left Hand of Darkness, and 2 images for their respective book covers. I realize it's the holiday season and that there's a backlog... I have a Bulgarian translation as well and I'd like to upload that, though I worry that I'm not doing it right. Also if there are any editors or moderators here with a particular interest in Le Guin I'd like to make your acquaintance. Cheers, Evertype (talk) 14:45, 1 January 2024 (EST)

Hello and a happy new year, Evertype! I do think that I do fall into the category, as Le Guin is in the top three of my favourite authors. I have to admit that most of the copies I own contain German translations (and Jens' German collection seems to be even more complete, but nowadays he isn't so often around). I know there are lots of translations of her work missing (with Dutch, French & German seemingly well-covered). If you have any questions that you think I might be able to help in, just ping me on my talk page. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 08:16, 2 January 2024 (EST)

External ID: PPN

It seems that the Dutch National Library has changed its www address. Here it is "picarta.pica.nl/DB=3.9/" but doesn't work any more. The new one seems to be "picarta.oclc.org/psi/xslt/DB=3.9". Please have a look on that. Thank You. --Zapp (talk) 13:35, 22 January 2024 (EST)

Thanks, I'll take a look. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:58, 27 January 2024 (EST)

It should be fixed now. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:42, 27 January 2024 (EST)

The "PPN" template has been updated as well. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:48, 28 January 2024 (EST)

Charles Williams

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5873365; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5873368; Can I get these 2 edits approved? I was going to add the other book by the author mentioned in the F&SF essay but online photo says Charles Williams on title page; checking further revealed that it's the same for Rolling Pin. There's already a famous novelist of that name and an artist on ISFDB so what do you think this guy should be known as, maybe (I)? --Username (talk) 10:37, 27 January 2024 (EST)

Pages of deceased users

Would it be helpful or useful to block the user pages and talk pages of deceased users, so no edits or submissions can be made any more? Ahasuerus told me these pages viewed as something like memorials, so they should be left untouched. --Zapp (talk) 14:40, 27 January 2024 (EST)

Generally, we put the Deceased user template at the top of their pages so people know not to post comments or questions there. So far, I haven't seen a huge problem with simply leaving them as they are. If problems do occur, we can always lock the pages so only admins can edit them. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:49, 27 January 2024 (EST)

Locking the Talk pages will cause confusion to newer editors who are directed to post on the PV's pages and if the first few they hit are ones of the ones we had lost - asking them to post there while they cannot will either make them never post anywhere or just get frustrated. Plus the pages that we want to preserve are the User pages, not the Talk pages. I'd argue that User pages should be locked for Admin and the user they belong to at all times but that will make life harder and we do not have too many issues so I never raised that up as a proposal. Annie (talk) 12:41, 6 February 2024 (EST)

I was only suggesting locking the pages if we ran into problems where someone was editing them maliciously and we needed a way to stop it. Pages can be locked from editing for a brief period of time, too, which is generally the only kind of locking that's needed. Only in extreme cases would a page need to be locked for more than a week or so. I do like the idea of locking the user page of deceased editors, though. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:13, 6 February 2024 (EST)

We are in agreement -- I was just mentioning that locking the Talk pages is going to cause other possible issues downstream (unlike User pages which can be safely locked without side effects). Annie (talk) 13:18, 6 February 2024 (EST)

Sounds good. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:07, 6 February 2024 (EST)

Add link at the bottom of "Author Merge Update"

After two or more authors are merged, can we please add a link to the resulting record on the confirmation page (post approval). Now you need to either keep a record open or look for it again once the merge completes. (the script in question is cgi-bin/mod/aa_merge.cgi). Thanks! Annie (talk) 12:29, 6 February 2024 (EST)

FR 1591 has been created and implemented. Thanks for reporting the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:22, 6 February 2024 (EST)

Now, that's quick fix - less than an hour between reporting and getting it live on the server ;) Thanks! Annie (talk) 13:24, 6 February 2024 (EST)

Lost Safari

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?648417; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5884004; PV used wrong cover so I uploaded right one from recent archived copy but they also added wrong uploaded wraparound image in the notes. Can someone approve my edit and then move the note over to the other edition? The record number doesn't make a difference to where the image points, I assume. --Username (talk) 09:41, 7 February 2024 (EST)

The note has been moved to the correct publication. Is the interior art the same for both publications? If so, merge the two tile records. If not, we need a note on each and a do not merge warning. John Scifibones 11:33, 16 February 2024 (EST)

Shattered Lens

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5892580; After checking further it turns out the correct title I fixed "Tears" to was used for the story's reprint in a magazine a few years later. After approval will the titles merge on their own or will it need to be done manually? If manual, can someone approve this so I can merge before I forget? --Username (talk) 11:04, 16 February 2024 (EST)

Approved. You need to merge them. Submit and I'll approve. John Scifibones 11:13, 16 February 2024 (EST)

Merged. --Username (talk) 11:16, 16 February 2024 (EST)

All done. John Scifibones 11:19, 16 February 2024 (EST)

Roman Numerals

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Username#The_Year.27s_Best_Horror_Stories:_XIX; It won't make much difference to my PV because I only have about 50 but I can foresee trouble with others if he starts adding Roman where they don't belong. This is a common problem with other editors, too, where they add Roman even though the numbering goes straight from Roman to non-Roman. A LOT of DAW Books, for example, have unnecessary numbers entered. --Username (talk) 09:38, 22 February 2024 (EST)

From the help, bullet point 2 under Pages:

• "When a book has a section with Roman numeral page numbers for introductory material, followed by Arabic numerals for the main text of the book, enter both sets of numbers. For example, a book with a page count field of "viii+320" has "viii" as the highest numbered page with a Roman numeral. (Note that there are no spaces in the page count.) Pages without numbers that fall between the two types of page numbering can be ignored. Note that you should include the enumeration of the pages in Roman numerals even if there is no material that requires a separate content record (such as an introduction or preface) in those pages. This is in contrast with the situation with unnumbered pages prior to page 1; see the following bullet point for what to do in that case."

This ebay.com listing shows Roman numerals as this submission suggests. John Scifibones 10:06, 22 February 2024 (EST)

If I understand that correctly then I disagree and you can find many instances on the boards here where mods tell editors to enter Roman only if the book doesn't continue the numbering straight into the Arabic. That's the way I enter Roman (except possibly for my early edits where I wasn't sure what I was doing) and so do many others. This has led to a lot of confusion. For example, this record's notes, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?629077, mention this situation and only Arabic were entered while the notes here, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?979406, are similar but both Roman and Arabic were entered. I'm sure there are countless other examples. So nobody seems sure what the right way to do it is but if one has really been decided on then that would entail fixing thousands and thousands of records where they were entered the other way. That would be a huge task. --Username (talk) 10:23, 22 February 2024 (EST)

For my own understanding's sake: The situation being discussed here is a contiguous set of pages, ending on Arabic-numeral'ed 366, but where the first fourteen pages are Roman-numeral'ed i - xiv and the remaining three hundred fifty-two are Arabic-numeral'ed 15 - 366? If that is the case, I don't think the help covers this scenario. While the second bullet does seem to call for entering the highest Roman numeral plus the highest Arabic numeral, the third bullet also talks about counting backwards from the first "numbered page to see which is page 1". That would technically mean page i is also page 1, and there is no introductory material before page 1. The second bullet seems to assume the numbering of the pages for introductory material does not overlap the numbering of the pages for the main text, which is not the case here. Recording xiv+366 would record the numbering accurately but would completely distort the page count, which is that the Pages field is all about. I would record this as Pages = 366 with a note that the main text starts on p. 15 and the pages prior to that are numbered i - xiv, just as I would record it with Pages = 366 and a note that the text starts on numbered p. 15 if there were no numbered pages before it with any relevant content. --MartyD (talk) 14:32, 22 February 2024 (EST)

Ah. Pages. My favourite subject. :-)

I agree that the Help Notes do not cover this scenario adequately. I doubt the scenario was considered when the Notes were written. Consequently, past editors have just done what they think best at the time. As Username correctly states, no matter what we decide here, there is a legacy problem of all the existing inconsistent records which will be almost impossible to reconcile. I also agree that an explanatory pub note in this situation should be mandatory.

However, that is where my "agreements" end. In this example, Pages should be recorded as xiv+366. Under the Help for Pages, the bullet point starting "When a book has a section with Roman numeral page numbers" unambiguously states that both Roman and Arabic Numerals should be entered. The following bullet point, starting "Sometimes a publication will have unnumbered pages before page 1" is not applicable to this scenario because there are no unnumbered pages before page 1.

Although xiv+366 does distort the page count, this argument does not hold water because it is existing ISFDb policy that we do distort the page count. See this How To under the bullet point starting "Approximation:"

Another feature I like about using xiv+366 occurs in the situation where there is recordable content in the Roman Numeral pages. Suppose there is a map on page vi. Then vi would be entered as the start page of the map in the Contents section. It would look really illogical and inconsistent if the Pages field for the publication merely contained 366. Teallach (talk) 18:08, 22 February 2024 (EST)

This discussion has stalled. There have been no comments for more than three weeks and there is no consensus. The current tally is 2 (Scifibones, Teallach) in favour of specifying Pages as Roman+Arabic (xiv+366 in this example) versus 2 (MartyD, Username) in favour of specifying Pages as just Arabic (366 in this example). This issue was initiated by Faustus here but he appears to be abstaining.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this subject so that we can establish a consensus and form a rule?

There is an alternative option which is to deliberately not have a rule at all and just leave the specification of Pages in this situation at the discretion of the first PVer of the publication. This is not my preferred solution but I have some sympathy with this approach. If we establish a rule then, whichever way it goes, there will be a legacy issue. It will result in potentially thousands of historic records that were created "wrongly" and which cannot be systematically detected or corrected. However, if we just live with the inconsistency then there is no legacy issue. Teallach (talk) 19:44, 15 March 2024 (EDT)

I agree with Scifibones and Teallach that the page count should be xiv+366 along with a note indicating that there is a switch from Roman to Arabic numbers with the last Roman number as "--" and the first Arabic number as "nn". I doubt that there are really a huge number of historic records that fit this exact edge case - but of course I could be guessing wrong. Phil (talk) 22:29, 15 March 2024 (EDT)

Sorry, I haven't changed my opinion, but one other note: There is a sort of precedent in the Magazine page numbering bullet, where if the page numbering is continuous across issues, the printed page numbers are relegated to the notes and the actual page count is used in Pages. Granted, it is not the identical situation, but the spirit of the example is not to have Pages = 384 where the pub has only 192 pages. 380 vs. 366 is not so extreme, but to me 380 is still misleading. --MartyD (talk) 08:37, 16 March 2024 (EDT)

MartyD, I do not see the relevance of your point. It only applies to magazines. The ISFDb treats the Pages field differently for books and magazines. This is well established in this howto which starts:

"Important notes"

"1. Please note that this howto is for books only (hardcovers, paperbacks, trade paperbacks), not for other types like magazines."

and goes on to specify much information and examples that only apply to the Pages field for books. This includes the bullet point starting "Approximation:" which is very relevant to this discussion as it confirms that the value that goes in the Pages field for books is not necessarily the same as the number of pages you would get by manual counting. Teallach (talk) 19:41, 16 March 2024 (EDT)

Yes, I am aware of all of that. I am only pointing out that one of the rules already accounts for a situation where using the printed page numbers as a basis would grossly misrepresent the number of pages in the publication. Regardless of our personal opinions, probably the best thing to do for this non-magazine situation is to figure out what other bibliographic sources do and, if there is a consensus, have that be the ISFDB standard. But THAT is a discussion for the R&S page. The conclusion I draw from the discussion here is that two different methods are used, with many instances of each, and the help is unclear. To me that means if a current pub was entered using either scheme, that scheme should not be changed to the other scheme until a single scheme is settled on and the help is clarified. --MartyD (talk) 08:19, 17 March 2024 (EDT)

I am surprised by your suggestion. Firstly, the numbering method we are discussing is unusual. So other bibliographic sources that denote page numbering are unlikely to specifically address this situation. Secondly, all aspects of a system need to integrate and be internally consistent. So it will probably not be possible to extract one aspect of a foreign system and adopt in into the different ISFDb system.

Nevertheless, there is of course no harm in looking at what other bibliographic sources do. So if you think this is the right way to go, please investigate and report back with your findings.

I agree that where this situation occurs in existing ISFDb pub records, the scheme should not be changed until we have decided on the rule we are going to use. Teallach (talk) 19:45, 19 March 2024 (EDT)

[unindent] Stalled again, but here's my two cents; reading the relevant rules text, there's mention of page 'count' - so, clearly the intent is to record the number of pages. In the example used above, this would lead to a count of 15 + 366, instead of the correct count of 366 (disregarding possibility to clarify in the notes for the moment). Now, we have two conflicting requirements, and those are 1) use the field to record the page 'count, and 2) use the field to record whether pages are roman, latin, or unnumbered. It is clear from preceding discussion that in certain circumstances both usages are in conflict with each other. Since the rules' intent is to record count, in this case the 'correct' entry would be 366, while relegating the extra info that numbering starts with roman numerals and continues with arabic numerals to the notes field. For me this would be the preferred way as it adheres closest to the intent of the rules. Not sure on how to rewrite the rules to make this clear (if we ever reach a consensus, that is...) MagicUnk (talk) 10:59, 25 March 2024 (EDT)

my twopennorth (2d not -/2). I dont think it matters which way you decide to do it so long as everybodys singing from the same hymn sheet, the help page instructions are nice and clear with a instruction saying that you have to put a explanation in the notes. - Gaz Faustus (talk) 14:50, 30 March 2024 (EDT)

Following my own suggestion, I decided to see what other bibliographic sources use for page count. In this example:

• LoC: 366 p
• Locus1: 366pp
• WorldCat: 366 pages

And some other sites:

• Amazon: 368 pages (marching to its own drummer... -MD)
• Fantlab: Страниц: 366
• Google Books: Page count: 366

I randomly picked an example where we have Roman + Arabic numerals and can see the Arabic section starts at "1". In this example, the prefatory material ends on page numbered xvii, and the main text is on pages numbered 1 - 651. For that:

• LoC: xvii, 651 p
• Locus1: 651pp
• WorldCat: xvii, 651 pages

And some other sites:

• Amazon: 651 pages (note: probably seller-entered, not from publisher. -MD)
• Fantlab: Страниц: 668
• Google Books: Page count: 651

I grant that two data points do not prove anything, but this does suggest that common practice is to ignore Roman-vs.-Arabic for page count purposes unless that page count does not already incorporate the Roman-numbered pages. That seems like common sense to me. --MartyD (talk) 09:04, 31 March 2024 (EDT)

MartyD: When you stated in your post 2024-03-17 that in your opinion "the best thing to do for this non-magazine situation is to figure out what other bibliographic sources do" I was expecting you to examine other bibliographic sources for their policy statements regarding how they handle this numbering method. In my reply 2024-03-19 I stated "... the numbering method we are discussing is unusual. So other bibliographic sources that denote page numbering are unlikely to specifically address this situation". Without a specific policy statement, records in other bibliographic sources have probably been entered inconsistently, exactly as has happened in the ISFDb. Consequently, plucking examples of records from other bibliographic sources has no value. Teallach (talk) 18:40, 8 April 2024 (EDT)

Pandemic

Since the CDC officially ended its Covid-19 declaration in May of 2023 the note on our front page about forthcoming books possibly being delayed by the pandemic should be removed. Any delays now are due to other reasons. --Username (talk) 08:03, 29 February 2024 (EST)

There are still some businesses that are operating with pandemic restrictions in place, though through their own choice rather than a government mandate. I agree that there are only a few of those, however. It would probably be good to drop the notification. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:41, 1 April 2024 (EDT)

Good points. Annie, who does a great deal of work on Forthcoming Books, reports that things are still not as stable as they used to be, so perhaps we should change the note to something like "Information based on pre-publication data and subject to change". Ahasuerus (talk) 14:49, 1 April 2024 (EDT)

I like the new wording. Even though Forthcoming Books should be self-explanatory, having it spelled out does not hurt. Annie (talk) 12:28, 2 April 2024 (EDT)

That wording is definitely better, and will be less likely to need changing in the future. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:58, 2 April 2024 (EDT)

Done. The Top Forthcoming note will be updated on Sunday morning when the weekly reports run. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:49, 3 April 2024 (EDT)

Hound Dog

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5909601; Can someone approve this if they agree all my additions/changes are correct? Whoever entered author info spelled legal first name wrong so it needs fixing and I'm not sure if the info will be there with the name change per book's title page or if a mod has to do it from the author's record or something or other. --Username (talk) 00:03, 7 March 2024 (EST)

Done. I moved the info from the old author record to the new record, correcting that spelling error. I also fixed the review to refer to the M.-less name, so the old record went away due to no further references. --MartyD (talk) 12:48, 7 March 2024 (EST)

George W. Barlow

Bonjour, je vous contacte pour l'article concernant mon père George W. Barlow Il y a quelques corrections et compléments qu'il voudrait apporter : Concernant sa biographie : il est né à Le Havre en Seine Maritime et non à Grenoble (où il vit) il a fréquenté l'Ecole Normale Supérieure de la rue d'Ulm et en est sorti Agrégé d'Anglais Vous trouverez ces données biographique en quatrième de couverture dans l'ouvrage que vous citez : La Science-Fiction (1987) (avec ANDREVON Jean-Pierre et GUIOT Denis) M.A. Editions, Le monde de... n° 39, 1987. Concernant sa bibliographie : -vous pouvez rajouter le roman « Antéros » publié en 2012 chez EONS collection Fantasy n°140 et republié ensuite à compte d'auteur chez The BookEdition sous le titre « Antéros et chimères »

Je me tiens à votre disposition pour tout complément d'informations et vous saurais gré de me tenir informée de la suite que vous donnez à mon courrier.

Très cordialement.

Catherine Matheron/Barlow —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Catalpa (talk • contribs) .

Series ordering help

Hi all. I could use some help with this discussion about ordering within one specific title series. The publisher, and other sources, refer to each title's place relative to the others using the publication order. Our current series ordering reflects that. The editor feels rather strongly that the series ordering should instead reflect the internal chronology of the stories. I am afraid I may be biased, so I could use some other opinions (or even more definitive guidance, if I have misinterpreted something). Thanks. --MartyD (talk) 16:33, 12 March 2024 (EDT)

I prefer publication order (except for some prequels that can go at 0 or novellas and stories that fall in between novels to get in their places)... We have it like that in Foundation for example - with the two prequels at the end of the list even if they are chronologically first. If an editor insists on doing something else and they are willing to document and show sources where that other order is used and it is the common way the series is numbered online/in sources, I would consider it. But if the publisher and most other sources refer to the order in a different way, it just confuses things. As we cannot show two different sorting ways, editors are welcome to add Notes on the series page with the chronological order if they want...

In this case, I am with you - leave it at publication order, add a note for the chronological order - mainly because this is the order that people usually use outside of our DB. Annie (talk) 17:18, 12 March 2024 (EDT)

I agree with Annie, for the same reasons given by Annie. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:33, 12 March 2024 (EDT)

If current policy is not changed, there is no basis for rejecting Piedro01's two submissions. However, I also favor changing policy along the lines Annie spelled out. That's what I have always used, not realizing I could be outside policy. John Scifibones 13:29, 13 March 2024 (EDT)

Out of curiosity - which policy do you think that the current order of that series (and Foundation) contradict and needs changing for them to be "in policy"? If you are saying that we technically do not have a policy and either way can be considered correct (so the submissions are approvable because of that), then the overall policy of ISFDB (we document what we see/find, we do not invent) is in favor of leaving them as they are based on almost all other sources using the current order. Plus I also favor "first editor decision stands within reason" in ambiguous situation because nothing prevents another editor from changing them back next week and that will also have to be approved if this one is approved if it does not contradict policy (with both being correct, that process can happen a lot of time). If I am misreading what you are saying, can you clarify? Annie (talk) 13:41, 13 March 2024 (EDT)

I do notice upon further review that the section of help cited goes on to say this: Please don't change pre-existing numbering schemes unless you are sure that they are in error. Any series with this sort of ambiguity in internal ordering should have the sequence worked out on the Community Portal. This includes prequels, which can be listed first in the series, before the main entries; or listed after the main entries; ... So I suppose what ordering to use for this series should be brought up for debate on the Community Portal. --MartyD (talk) 13:51, 13 March 2024 (EDT)

The first line of the applicable help clearly states a precedence for reading order. Look at the Assiti Shards (1632) series. Compare the current publication based order to the suggested reading order (1632.org link in series record). Remove the implied precedence from the help and I'm fine. John Scifibones 14:13, 13 March 2024 (EDT)

Reading order is not the same as chronological order though - I'd argue that for most series, including this one, publishing order is the reading order (mainly because of spoilers and what's not that tend to creep into later novels publishing-wise which are set earlier on a chronology). Annie (talk) 14:39, 13 March 2024 (EDT)

(unindent) First, let me copy the relevant part of Template:TitleFields:SeriesNum here so that we would all be on the same page:

• Series Number - If you know the order in which the titles in the series are supposed to be read, you can number them starting with 1. You can use decimal numbers like 4.5 to place a title between the titles numbered 4 and 5. No Roman numerals (like I or IV) or letters (like "1a" or "A") are allowed. Please note that some series are very linear (e.g. Harry Potter) and it's easy to tell how to assign series number to individual entries. Other series can have multiple possible numbering schemes reflecting the series' publication order, internal chronological order, intended publication order, "author recommended" order, etc. Please don't change pre-existing numbering schemes unless you are sure that they are in error. Any series with this sort of ambiguity in internal ordering should have the sequence worked out on the Community Portal. This includes prequels, which can be listed first in the series, before the main entries; or listed after the main entries; or even split into a separate series which then becomes a subseries in a superseries comprising both the original series and the prequels.

When Scifibones wrote that "the first line of the applicable help clearly states a precedence for reading order" he presumably meant:

• If you know the order in which the titles in the series are supposed to be read, you can number them starting with 1.

That being said, as others have said, "reading order" can be ambiguous. One of the better known examples is Neal Asher's Polity universe. The author's Web page says:

• The consensus of opinion I have gleaned from social media, is that you should start either right at the beginning with Prador Moon and then follow through chronologically, or you should read the first two series I wrote.

In this case even the author wasn't sure what the best reading order would be and had to consult his fans to come up with possible paths. This ambiguity is already addressed in the Help language above where it says that:

• series can have multiple possible numbering schemes reflecting the series' publication order, internal chronological order, intended publication order, "author recommended" order, etc. Please don't change pre-existing numbering schemes unless you are sure that they are in error.

So the first sentence of Template:TitleFields:SeriesNum privileges "reading order" compared to other possible numbering schemes, but the section quoted immediately above effectively takes it back. We should probably clarify Help, which will require a Rules and Standards discussion.

Also, this Help template doesn't inform editors that prequels can be entered either using "0.1", "0.5", etc or as separate sub-series.

For now, I would suggest a Community Portal discussion as per the Help section that Marty quoted. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:00, 13 March 2024 (EDT)

Thanks for all of the feedback. I have made that suggestion to the editor and have also offered to make the post if he is not comfortable doing so. --MartyD (talk) 08:22, 17 March 2024 (EDT)

Worlds of If confusion

There seems to be a bit of confusion regarding magazines in this series, such as the title, who should be listed as an editor, and so on. Please see these submissions:

• [4]
• [5]
• [6]
• [7]
• [8]

There's also these entries where people are complaining about the order of author names in our listings. Perhaps we should add a FAQ entry for this so we can point to it in the future? I know we often change the order (I think it's alphabetical?), but I can't find any documentation about it.

• [9]
• [10]

Thoughts? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:07, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

Re: author ordering, Help:Screen:NewPub says:

• Collaborations. If a work has multiple authors, it doesn't matter in which order you enter them. The ISFDB does not record author order regardless of how the authors are entered.

Changing the database layout to support author ordering would be a massive undertaking. We would also need to do a fair amount of preliminary design work to figure out how different types of collaborations are to be ordered.

If this is a commonly asked question, we could add it to ISFDB:FAQ. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:35, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

I knew it was somewhere. Thanks! I think that might be a good idea, especially since we have a few different editors here asking about the name order. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:33, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

Done! Ahasuerus (talk) 16:45, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

In my opinion, These are the necessary changes.

• Publication title - "Worlds of If, February 2024" is correct.
• Editor: I would only credit 'Justin T. O'Conor Sloane' who is the editor-in-chief. This is how I credit all the other periodicals they publish. Judging by the some of the notes to mod, they don't understand why we have changed.
• The date is wrong - should be 2024-02. See how to date periodicals.
• Format - (5.5 x 0.2 x 8.5 inches) is tp if perfect-bound or octavo if saddle-stapled.
• Notes - The ISSN does not belong in the publication record, it is for the magazine. I put it in the series record. I would remove the note re: the exact date. FWIW, it was available 2024-02-21 from Amazon. Not sure what date Jean-Paul L. Garnier is citing. Regardless, the exact date is irrelevant to how we date periodicals.
• Missing ASIN - B0CW3LM95L
• Both "From the Editors" titles are lacking the proper disambiguation. I don't let the fact that there are two of these influence how we credit the Editor. We have periodicals with more than one editorial, but the issue is credited to the editor-in-chief only.
• Incorrect author attribution - 'A J Dalton' s/b A. J. Dalton.
• Remove weblink from title record.
• Title record date s/b 2024. This is the 'rollup record for all 2024 issues.

I'll be glad to take care of this if you like. John Scifibones 15:25, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

If you'd like to, that's fine. It almost seems like several people who know each other are all submitting "corrections" for the same thing. And it may be good to clarify which editors get listed. At least one person is stating they list deputy or assistant editors, which I've never done myself (and you've never done, given your comments), so there is apparently some confusion over that, too. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:33, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

We could also document assistant editors, associate editors, department editors, and any other people related to the magazine on the magazine's Series page or on a linked Wiki page. Consider Series:Air Wonder Stories, which lists a variety of people: publisher, president, secretary, treasurer, members of an academic "advisory panel", etc. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:39, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

I thought we didn't want to create wiki pages, but instead try to incorporate all relevant information in the DB itself? John did a good job if you ask me, obsoleting need for additional wiki page? MagicUnk (talk) 17:00, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

You can still use ISFDB Wiki pages, but you need to explicitly link to them from the database side using the "Web Page(s)" field. They are typically used when the editor wants to use images, e.g. photos of the copyright page, and/or an elaborate page layout. In the case of Series:Air Wonder Stories there is so much information that a separate Wiki page may be a better option than cluttering the database-side Series page. The main downside is that Wiki pages are not a part of the public backups. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:47, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

Here are the updated Series record , Publication record and Title record. I was going to reject the pending submissions referring to this conversation, but you are holding them. I incorporated a couple changes referred to in these edits. John Scifibones 16:51, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

I've rejected them with a note referring to this discussion. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:59, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

I did the initial review & accepted the submission & corrected some of the most obvious mistakes & errors at about the same time John did some updates. Some thoughts (top of my head, so may be mistaken - haven't been very much involved last two years...):

• Can agree with most of above, except for whom to credit as editor(s). Not unambiguously stated that deputy editor can't be listed as co-editor? Would clarify in rules if majority deems that useful
• Currently, I classified the pub as Worlds of If (relaunch), subseries of the original. We may want/need to revisit?
• Agree, to clarify order of authors is irrelevant
• We may want to revisit how we name art - I recall there was a discussion a while back on the rules forum to clarify about same. I have recently accepted a number of publications where art was entered with title as it appeared in the pub, not sure at all that is correct in all cases...

MagicUnk (talk) 16:58, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

Review of Contemporary Fiction vs The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The magazine title Review of Contemporary Fiction is the same magazine as The Review of Contemporary Fiction. I don't know which version should be considered the "canonical" title; the cover art for various issues appears to usually have the title "The Review" (Fall 1996, Summer 2002, etc), but the archived magazine publisher website at Dalkey Archive and Wikipedia title the magazine "Review." The ISSN Portal includes both Review and The Review. Either way, I'm hoping there's a way to merge the magazine titles and their related records rather than needing to change each publication record individually. —Morebooks (talk) 23:03, 19 March 2024 (EDT)

We should go with whatever is used on the masthead. If that's not available, then whatever is used on the cover. It's okay to have slightly different titles within the same series, too. You can see that here, where the magazine changed their title a few times over the years. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:18, 20 March 2024 (EDT)

I don't have the magazine issue(s) at hand to check their masthead. Since the 2 issues we have catalogued so far both have "The Review" on their cover, and since there doesn't appear to be a way to merge series, I'm going to change the series title to The Review on the non-matching publication. Since it's a non-genre publication, I'm also changing the editor name from Editors of Review of Contemporary Fiction to Editors of The Review of Contemporary Fiction--but I'm putting that in a separate submission, so it can be rejected if it's the wrong move. Morebooks (talk) 23:35, 28 March 2024 (EDT)

Stonecreek's Self-Approver Status

User:Stonecreek was made a moderator on 2011-09-28. After a number of issues with his moderation of other editors' submissions, e.g. this incident in November 2019, Stonecreek was asked to limit his activities to self-moderation in April 2020 (we didn't have the current self-approver system in place at the time.) He agreed to it, although he didn't always abide by the terms of the agreement, which he was warned about:

Please do not change the data in recently added/edited records without discussing it with the moderator who approved the submission. Doing so effectively circumvents the agreement and leaves both the approving moderator and the submitting user out of the loop.

These issues have been occurring for a long time now. Please make sure that they do not re-occur or else I will have to take administrative action.

Stoncreek's moderation privileges were revoked on 2021-03-07 after this discussion, which revealed a pattern of adding unsubstantiated first edition statements to publication records.

When the current self-approver system was implemented in April 2021, Stonecreek wrote:

I know that my impatience did get the better part of me, but this April has taught ma to be patient by having to wait for the approvals. I'd either only concentrate on correcting my faults & 'my' publications or if there'd be more allowed I'll definitely not reject any submissions or 'better' others without communication.

I have gone wrong in not recognizing or even hurting some peoples feelings.

Based on these promises, Stonecreek was made a self-approver on 2021-04-13.

Stonecreek's self-approver privileges were revoked in June 2022 after he had changed data against a previously reached agreement, which caused a major disturbance. In September 2022 he asked to have his self-approver privileges restored and promised:

I have also learned my lesson and will not repeat my fads & fallacies of earlier. There also will be more communication upon planned actions from my side.

and:

I've been somewhat short-tempered (and even unfair & wrong to you) before. Apparently I've been a hothead regarding some things that didn't work out the way I thought they should.

The consensus was to give Stonecreek another chance and his self-approver privileges were restored.

In May 2023 I warned Stonecreek about changing primary verified pubs without notifying the primary verifier. In December 2023 he deleted multiple pubs entered by another editor without contacting that editor. He was right to delete the pubs because they were out of scope for the project (audio dramatizations), but I once again had to explain that he needed to communicate with other editors

Without an explanation, they'll be either confused and frustrated when the data that they previously submitted disappears or they will continue adding ineligible records.

I explained about that: stumbling over a review of those title being audio plays I remembered to have seen the publications in question, researched even more to find this was right and deleted them, but missed out to check who added them (and who aproved it). Stonecreek (talk) 03:35, 22 March 2024 (EDT)

Between 2024-03-18 and 2024-03-20 the following issues were documented on Stonecreek's Talk page:

2024-03-18: Changing a primary-verified publication without consulting its active primary verifier.

According to the editor in question that was cheerfully resolved (as I took that an audio book wouldn't have a separate title page: none of the ones I own does have one). Stonecreek (talk) 03:35, 22 March 2024 (EDT)

2024-03-19: Adding an invalid "Assumed first printing" statement without checking even basic resources like Amazon UK.

I will not do that again. Stonecreek (talk) 03:35, 22 March 2024 (EDT)

2024-03-20: Removing valid data recently entered by an active editor without consulting the editor.

Which was caused by missing notes from where the price information does stem: Another reason I am all in favor of giving the sources. Stonecreek (talk) 03:35, 22 March 2024 (EDT)

n 2024-03-20: Changing the date of a NOVEL title recently entered by another editor in contravention of how SERIAL/NOVEL dating is supposed to work as per Help and without discussing it with the editor who entered the data. His defense was that "it was in line with the bulk of other titles of the series".

These titles are more likely NOVELLAs than NOVELs (nobody has done a word count or an estimate for them upon adding them; I'll do that for a sample as soon as I have the copies) and the original dates are stated in the publication in question (and the dating of other titles in the series were of no concern when moderators previously edited publications with titles of the series). Stonecreek (talk) 03:35, 22 March 2024 (EDT)

These are the same types of issues that I warned Stonecreek about in March 2021 as quoted above:

Please do not change the data in recently added/edited records without discussing it with the moderator who approved the submission. [It] leaves both the approving moderator and the submitting user out of the loop. ... These issues have been occurring for a long time now.

Based on this recurring pattern, I have revoked Stonecreek's self-approver privileges. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:11, 21 March 2024 (EDT)

All in all, I do think that the quality of our database still has to improve, especially in the areas of determining the actual length (NOVELLA vs. NOVEL) of texts that may be either one with a certain likelihood: our standard is quite clear, but many publishers do advertise novels when the published are of considerable shorter length. For instance, I was working massively on the works of R. L. Stine whose majority of texts are NOVELLAs but got indexed as NOVELs. I have begun with his 'Goosebumps' series and would like to work further on the whole author page (but I do think that's rather not handable without self-approver privileges).

I see that I do have to improve my carefulness: being myself not too touched by erroneous alterings of my edited or PVed publications, I do tend towards thinking that others are thinking the same way. After all, new knowledge leads to the need of adapting the existing records: that's how ISFDB works (and is intended I think). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 03:35, 22 March 2024 (EDT)

User pages: how do we define "advertising"?

Earlier today User:Username added a large political campaign button to his User page. Help:Wiki Conventions has the following to say about User pages:

• Users are generally free to place almost anything on a user page or user page subpage, subject to What the ISFDB Wiki is not, and the general rule that "The Wiki is a support tool for the ISFDB, and should not be used for anything that is not appropriate for that purpose."
• While a user page may, indeed often will, describe a user's off site activities, including the user's professional activities, it should not be used for anything that seems like advertising.

What the ISFDB Wiki is not says:

• The ISFDB Wiki ... should not be used to publish advertisements or announcements of events, even if SF-related, such as conventions.

I am thinking that political campaign buttons fall under the "anything that seems like advertising" clause and thus should not appear on User pages. Thoughts? Ahasuerus (talk) 21:26, 27 March 2024 (EDT)

I'd agree with that. I'd even suggest adding something along the lines of "no political campaigning or promotion". I'm sure better wording than that could be created, though. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 01:17, 28 March 2024 (EDT)

I added that because the previous image I added long ago went down and was replaced by some fake spyware site so I looked for a replacement; first one was much too big, stretching across several screens, so I replaced it with the nicely-sized button. If it offends your left-wing sensibilities so greatly I'll find another one that won't trigger you. --Username (talk) 08:53, 28 March 2024 (EDT)

Done. --Username (talk) 08:57, 28 March 2024 (EDT)

You know nothing about my sensibilities. I'd think the same thing if it was a button for Biden, that guy in Argentina (I can never remember how to spell his name), Macron, Trudeau, Putin, or anyone else. My opinion has nothing to do with any specific political party or belief in any specific country. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 09:48, 28 March 2024 (EDT)

The issue at hand is whether images of political campaign buttons -- or campaign T-shirts, mugs, etc -- count as "advertising" for the purposes of the ISFDB Wiki. As mentioned above, What the ISFDB Wiki is not says:

• The ISFDB Wiki ... should not be used to publish advertisements or announcements of events, even if SF-related, such as conventions.

My take on it is that if a politician or a public official had an ISFDB User page, an informational statement like "Governor of Freedonia. Running for re-election in 2024." would be OK, but a campaign button or announcements of fundraisers would be too close to "advertising" to be acceptable. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:28, 28 March 2024 (EDT)

I agree. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 09:48, 28 March 2024 (EDT)

I also agree. I also think that endorsing anyone is effectively advertisement as well so any "vote for XXX" or anything in that vein (as an image or as text) is against the policy. Annie (talk) 19:16, 29 March 2024 (EDT)

Look, people, I wasn't trying to endorse anyone, my old image which had been there for a while was broken for some reason so I replaced it with one that was much too big leading to me adding the button because the size was just right. I have now replaced that with a simple T-shirt. Let it go. There are currently 207 pending non-held edits of which nearly 150 are mine. Approving them is what's important. I don't remember ever seeing a photo on anyone else's page so I doubt most people care enough to add one, endorsement or not. --Username (talk) 19:29, 29 March 2024 (EDT)

Buttons, t-shirts, mugs, bumper stickers, yard signs -- they are all standard advertising tools commonly used by political campaigns. Our current policy doesn't allow "advertisements or announcements of events, even if SF-related, such as conventions", which political advertising counts as.

If we allow advertising associated with one political campaign appear on User pages, there will be nothing stopping other users from displaying political images associated with other election or issues-oriented campaigns. We could end up with User pages supporting or opposing different sides in international wars, religious/social/ethnic movements and so on. It would cause nothing but damage to the project. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:34, 29 March 2024 (EDT)

I think there should be a distinction between a User page and the rest of the Wiki. It's not codified, but to me a User page is the place where a member of the ISFDB community presents oneself to the rest of the community. It's reasonable for that content to include references to non-bibliographic/non-spec-fic interests, where "references" might be not just text but images, links to other sites, etc. Granted, there's a line there somewhere, where providing additional material about oneself and one's interests would cross over into "advertising" in the sense of promoting those things, but I think the ISFDB policy ought to be lenient on where that line lies. --MartyD (talk) 14:27, 1 April 2024 (EDT)

Would you say that the current Help:Wiki Conventions language quoted above:

• While a user page may, indeed often will, describe a user's off site activities, including the user's professional activities, it should not be used for anything that seems like advertising.

covers what you are describing or do you think it should be expanded/amended? Ahasuerus (talk) 14:45, 1 April 2024 (EDT)

I think there needs to be a tie-in to the individual. It's one thing to say you're Vegan, a bit more to have a link to a Vegan site you participate in or a Vegan recipe site you have enjoyed and quite another to link to a site showing abattoirs (unless it's one you worked in?). That said, would a Nike logo be over the line if you wore them? ../Doug H (talk) 15:11, 1 April 2024 (EDT)

A slippery slope is that "seems like advertising" is subjective. "Seems like advertising" to whom, and what is "advertising"? FWIW, I looked at all of the revisions of the page cited at the top, and "advertising" didn't even cross my mind; I just saw them as a graphic illustrating/emphasizing some of the self-description provided. In fact, the T-shirt one made me chuckle and seemed somewhat apropos for a bibliographic site, although I do have a warped sense of humor.... On my own User page, I have had for 14 years now a link to another site that interests me and I'm happy to try to socialize. Taking a harsh view, my posting of that link seems to be much closer advertising/promotion than the inclusion of any of those images, yet no one has ever complained about it despite ample time to do so. So what's the difference? --MartyD (talk) 11:56, 2 April 2024 (EDT)

In the greater scheme of things, I don't particularly care what people post on their main User page (legal and common decency considerations aside). I am in no way obligated to visit a User page during the course of any ISFDB-related activities. If I happen to visit one with material that bothers me, then I would not return to it. --MartyD (talk) 11:56, 2 April 2024 (EDT)

I have been thinking about these points for the last few days. They seem to raise a couple of separate issues.

The first one is "What is advertising?" The current Help language disallows "announcements of events, even if SF-related, such as conventions". It may be taken as disallowing links to SF convention sites, which does seem excessive. Thinking back to the mid-late 2000s, I think (emphasis on "think") that the main goal of the Help language above was to prevent ISFDB users from turning their User pages into collections of links to commercial sites, which is, apparently, a common spamming trick. Spammers first incorporate links to third party sites into obscure Web pages on legitimate sites (like ours) and then use them as part of whatever spam activities they perform. ISFDB:Policy already bans this type of behavior:

• Spamming commercial information (gambling, porn, links, etc) will result in an immediate indefinite blocking of the user

so perhaps the "no advertising on User pages" rule is not needed.

The second issue is "legal and common decency considerations". ISFDB:Policy already disallows "obscenities", but "decency" is a trickier issue. To pick a random obscure example, Suriname and Guyana have been at loggerheads over the Tigri Area for generations. Should we prevent users from using their User pages to promote their chosen side's cause? If not, then at what point does issue advocacy violate "common decency considerations"? Something like "Death to X" is presumably a step too far, but where do we draw the line?

I think the larger issue, as mentioned earlier, is that the world has always been full of territorial, ethnic, political, religious and ideological conflicts, which can easily invade ISFDB User pages and cause tensions between editors. I would like to see some way to prevent it from happening, but perhaps the currently existing "advertising" language is not the best way to do it.

In any event, perhaps this is something that we may need to discuss on the Rules and Standards page as opposed to the Moderator Noticeboard. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:40, 5 April 2024 (EDT)

Complicated magazine addition: Shall I cancel and redo in smaller pieces?

Hi, folks—I have a pending submission of a new magazine entry for an issue of The Little Magazine, but my submission had a whole bunch of uncertainties in it, which I suspect is why it hasn’t been approved. I was looking at that submission again, and it occurred to me that I could cancel that submission and instead enter that magazine issue as a few separate submissions that would be less of a mess and easier to review—for example, I could start by talking with the verifiers about changing the existing listing for the Russ story (“Old Pictures”) from ESSAY to SHORTFICTION, and then after that’s resolved, I could enter the magazine issue with just the Russ and Delany pieces, and then after that I could add ask y’all for advice on how to handle the reviews, and so on. Would that be a better approach? Or would it be best to leave the submission as-is? (I considered just going ahead and canceling it and redoing it in smaller steps, but I don’t know whether someone is in the midst of reviewing the submission, and if they are, I don’t want to waste anyone’s work.) …Either way, sorry for the complicated submission, and next time I’ll know that I should talk with verifiers ahead of time about changes, and should ask moderators ahead of time about how to handle various things (like the reviews in that issue) rather than just guessing and adding a moderator note. —Elysdir (talk) 20:34, 5 April 2024 (EDT)

I can't say if anyone is in the middle of reviewing it. There is a pretty big backlog, so delays abound, but I can tell you that we generally try to avoid "bad" data getting into the database. That affects moderating submissions in two primary ways: (1) A moderator has to figure out whether the submission is ok and has followed proper verifier notification procedures. (2) There is no way for a moderator to alter a submission before accepting it, so if something is wrong in the submission, the moderator's choices are mainly to reject the submission and request that it be redone or to accept the submission and then do some further edit(s) to address the issues, then notify the submitter of the fix-ups. Rejection is usually a last resort -- especially of big/complicated submissions -- because no one likes to throw away work. Any submission where it's apparent #1 and/or #2 are going to require significant time or effort often get passed over due to lack of dedicated time or due to reluctance to do work the submitter could (or should) have done. Magazines are also a little extra-complicated, and some moderators are not comfortable handling submissions for new magazines. With all of that as background, I think you would get faster turnaround with smaller submissions and with having worked out issues you're aware of in advance. Something as simple as a note-to-the-modifier that says "I worked this out with the active PVs" or "Per the discussion on the Community Portal" or even "I plan to address XYZ after this is approved" can work wonders. I am firmly in the don't-throw-away-work camp, so I am not advising you to cancel and redo, nor can I promise you'd see any quicker action if decide to cancel and redo in steps. Maybe some others will chime in and give you a little more input to weigh. --MartyD (talk) 13:43, 7 April 2024 (EDT)

External ID The British Library has changed

I noticed several weeks ago the external ID of BL doesn't work any more. Now I discovered the changed www address. The Dinosaur Planet Omnibus in ISBDB calls the ID "https://www.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?fn=search&vl(freeText0)=9781841490304" that failes. this link here shows the title in a right way. So I don't know how to adapt this to the ISFDB database. Maybe some moderator knows? --Zapp (talk) 15:28, 7 April 2024 (EDT)

When I went to the site that is called by the ISFDB lookup, the following notice appeared: "We're continuing to experience a major technology outage as a result of a cyber-attack. Our buildings are open as usual, however, the outage is still affecting our website, online systems and services, as well as some onsite services. This is a temporary website, with limited content, which outlines the services that are currently available, as well as what's on at the Library.". So this may be a temporary situation while the BL is recovering from the cyber attack. Depending on how extensive the effects of the attack were, that kind of recovery can take a long time. Phil (talk) 17:04, 7 April 2024 (EDT)

Thanks for digging! Their online summary links to a PDF file which describes what happened in October 2023 and how they plan to recover over the course of 2024 and early 2025. Some of their systems were very old and not up to modern security requirements. They won't be restored and will need to be replaced, which will take a long time. In the meantime, I will look into the temporary Web search service that they have set up and see if we can leverage it for the time being. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:14, 7 April 2024 (EDT)

I have updated the way ISFDB Publication pages link to the British Library catalog. We will be using BL's temporary Web site until their main Web site is restored. This publication is an example of how it works now. Thanks for reporting the problem! Ahasuerus (talk) 10:48, 8 April 2024 (EDT)

Request: Yang Feng canonical name

杨枫(I) no longer needs the parenthesized "(I)" for disambiguation, could someone with appropriate privileges please remove that?

Background: there are two completely different people in the Chinese SF scene using the name "杨枫" (Yang Feng). The person who had been added to the database first (a) also uses a couple of other names, both of which are more widely used than Yang Feng, and (b) is probably lower profile than the person who had the disambiguated "杨枫(I)", certainly using that particular name.

I have just added a few new titles that means that 天爵 (Tianjue) is now the appropriate canonical name for the original "杨枫" (Yang Feng), so I've switched over the titles that were using the latter to use the former. This seems to have automagically removed the original 杨枫 author record, which is the right thing to do now that there are no titles using it, although I was expecting to have to do that manually.

Once 杨枫(I) is switched to be just "杨枫", I think there'll be a couple of award records that will need appropriate updates, but I'll take care of that.

I'm not sure if I've explained this particularly clearly, if anyone wants/needs further details, let me know. Thanks! ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:17, 9 April 2024 (EDT)

Done. If the other author never used that name, it does not get an author record here. If they later do, then they can get the (I). Annie (talk) 17:16, 9 April 2024 (EDT)

Thanks; I've updated the award records, so everything should be clean now.

The other author does/did use the Yang Feng name, but none of the publications containing titles using that name were ever entered. If they ever do get entered, I'll use a (I) name as you suggest. ErsatzCulture (talk) 19:02, 9 April 2024 (EDT)

Worlds of If, February 2024 Part Deux

The Worlds of If, February 2024 editor issue is back. The conclusion of the above discussion seems to be only the editor-in-chief should be credited. However, the publication was verified a few weeks after that and edited to restore the deputy-editor-in-chief credit. The rationale given in the pub notes is "The editorials beginning respectively on pp. 2 & 6 emphasize that Sloane and Garnier did edit this issue in partnership (though with somewhat different preferences)." Now, we are getting a number of other new accounts trying to change it back.

This all raises some questions in my mind:

• Is the verification sufficient to override the prior consensus on crediting established above?
• At what point does this type of editing start becoming considered disruptive?

I will point the verifier and approving moderator to this discussion. I will also leave responses on the pages of the new editors letting them know our policies on verification and discussing edits with verifiers. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:51, 10 April 2024 (EDT)

My opinion is still the same: only the editor-in-chief gets credit (at least until we get around to adding the option of adding all sorts of different types of contributors). The rest go in the notes. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:58, 10 April 2024 (EDT)

Also, it's already disruptive. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 20:03, 10 April 2024 (EDT)

Re: "Is the verification sufficient to override the prior consensus on crediting". Primary verifiers confirm that the data entered into the database reflects what's in the publication according to existing ISFDB data entry rules, which are described in Help and Policy. If a primary verifier would like to suggest a change to the rules, he or she can start a discussion on the Rules and Standards page. Until the rules are changed, the current rules are in effect. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:08, 10 April 2024 (EDT)

Hello! Sorry, I hadn't be aware of the discussion mentioned above. I had only found the passus For MAGAZINEs and FANZINEs, credit the issue editor as the "author" of the publication. from which I took to credit the actual editor(s) of a given issue of a magazine (provided there is a credit within the issue). Usually, I also would have credited only the editor-in-chief, but it follows from the editorials that the items were chosen (and edited) by both, Sloane and Garnier, in concordance. It thus seems to be right to credit them both. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 02:52, 11 April 2024 (EDT)

I wouldn't call the crediting of Garnier disruptive in the least, as the credit for only the editor-in-chief doesn't seem to be the (sole) standard we have in the database. John (Lochhas) for example has added hundreds (if not thousands) of magazine issues that credit the deputy editor, see Schattenreich magazine (Thannisch being the editor-in-chief, Kappel the deputy one), John Sinclair (Steffan only being the deputy editor) or Professor Zamorra (Schönenbröcher only being the deputy editor). There are numerous other magazines like Foundation, where the same set of mind seems to have been used. Likely the reasoning behind that is that the deputy editors do the main body of work editing those issues. Anyway, I will ping John to state his view on the topic. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 05:55, 11 April 2024 (EDT)

To clarify, what I was asking about being disruptive was the use of multiple accounts to try to push through an edit. So far, ISFDB has not really had to deal with this issue (at least to my knowledge). But the use of multiple accounts (either by one person or multiple people working in concert) has caused problems on other collaborative projects and has been banned. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:21, 11 April 2024 (EDT)

Yes. This. It may be time to clarify point four at our Conduct Policy, which currently states "Behavior that is otherwise non-constructive or disruptive will be dealt with on a case by case basis." The use of multiple accounts here working in concert to push a specific point of view is, in my opinion, "non-constructive or disruptive". ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:26, 11 April 2024 (EDT)

Do we have evidence that multiple accounts have been created/work in concert? Or is it just coincidence? Just curious... MagicUnk (talk) 14:38, 11 April 2024 (EDT)

As JLaTondre wrote above, other online projects have run into problems with what is usually called "sockpuppetry/socking" and "meatpuppetry". Here is what Wikipedia has to say about this issue:

• On Wikipedia, sockpuppetry, or socking, refers to the misuse of multiple Wikipedia accounts. To maintain accountability and increase community trust, editors are generally expected to use only one account. While there are some valid reasons for maintaining multiple accounts, it is improper to use multiple accounts to deceive or mislead other editors, disrupt discussions, distort consensus, avoid sanctions, evade blocks, or otherwise violate community standards and policies.
• Sockpuppetry takes various forms:
  • Logging out to make problematic edits as an IP address
  • Creating new accounts to avoid detection or sanctions
  • Using another person's account (piggybacking)
  • Reviving old unused accounts (sometimes referred to as sleepers) and presenting them as different users
  • Persuading friends or colleagues to create accounts for the purpose of supporting one side of a dispute (usually called meatpuppetry)

Some of it doesn't apply in our context, e.g. we don't allow edits unless you are logged in, but creating and using multiple accounts is certainly a possibility.

Wikipedia has a special set of instructions for reporting suspected sockpuppetry and technical tools like CheckUser that facilitate investigations. At this time we don't have either, but we could look into what it would take to implement a level of protection against sockpuppets. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:18, 11 April 2024 (EDT)

(unindent) Going back to the issue that started this discussion, I think it highlights a problem with our Help: we don't have an explicit definition or even guidance re: what types of magazine editors should be entered in the Author/Editor field and what types should be entered in Notes (e.g., assistant editors, associate editors, department editors, etc). Template:PublicationFields:Author currently says:

• Editors, authors, translators, etc. ... For MAGAZINEs and FANZINEs, credit the issue editor [bolding added] as the "author" of the publication. (Note that for non-genre MAGAZINEs/FANZINEs, "Editors of PERIODICAL NAME" may be used instead of some or all editor names if they are unknown or unclear or not of genre interest -- see Help:Entering non-genre periodicals for details.)

Note the bolded part of the text, i.e. "issue editor", which is somewhat helpful, but is not very specific. Template:TitleFields:Author doesn't seem to say anything relevant either. I am thinking that we should start a Rules and Standards discussion and make our current de-facto rules explicit in the affected Help templates. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:58, 11 April 2024 (EDT)

Just let me note one other problem with crediting only the editor-in-chief that came to my mind during the last night: from time to time several magazines have allowed guest editors to edit one single issue: their respective stamp on the issue would be lost if we go strict by 'the only credit the editor-in-chief' policy. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 02:15, 12 April 2024 (EDT)

Also, for non-genre magazines it says ..."Editors...". Just sayin' ;). There exist co-editors (that are not department editors), so I would allow for them. But then the question is, can we come up with an unambiguous (set of) rules... MagicUnk (talk) 09:54, 12 April 2024 (EDT)

Ian Daniels vs. Ian D. Daniels.

There's a listing for Ian Daniels as cover artist to some Severn House publicatons and also Ian D. Daniels as cover artist to other Severn House publications. I believe they are one and the same person. --Mavmaramis (talk) 12:02, 12 April 2024 (EDT)

I agree. The art style is exactly the same between them. I've merged them to Ian Daniels. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:19, 12 April 2024 (EDT)

Thank you. --Mavmaramis (talk) 15:36, 12 April 2024 (EDT)

Chris Moore credit for a Bob Eggleton image.

So I noticed that this book has cover artist credited as Chris Moore but it is exactly the same image as this which is a variant of this credited to Bob Eggleton. Something is not right. --Mavmaramis (talk) 16:35, 12 April 2024 (EDT)

Curious. This Reddit post created 3 years ago has the original art done by Bob Eggleton for Eternity. It uses http://www.bobeggleton.com/ as its source. Unfortunately, that site is gone and the Wayback Machine only has a few cover scans preserved.

The primary verifiers on the Millennium / Victor Gollancz edition of Forever Free have been inactive since the mid-2010s, so we can't ask them. The OCLC record and Library Hub Discover do not mention the cover artist. Amazon UK uses the Ace cover, which is completely different.

I wonder if the following Notes line:

• Back cover states "Cover design © blacksheep" and "Illustration: Chris Moore @ Artist Partners"

may mean that Chris Moore did the art for the back cover only? Ahasuerus (talk) 13:09, 15 April 2024 (EDT)

Changing a piece from ESSAY to SHORTFICTION?

Hi, all—I’d like to change a specific work from ESSAY to SHORTFICTION, but the relevant primary verifiers are unavailable, so I thought I would ask here.

I’m looking at Joanna Russ’s story “Old Pictures,” which appeared in her collection The Hidden Side of the Moon.

That piece is listed in ISFDB as being of type ESSAY, but I would like to change its type to SHORTFICTION.

The book doesn’t indicate that that piece is nonfiction. It *could* be nonfiction (in that it’s written in first person and nothing clearly impossible happens in it), but it’s not labeled as such, and everything else in the book is fiction, and the title page of the book says “Stories by Joanna Russ.”

There are three publications of the book listed in ISFDB (hc, tp, and pb), with three different primary verifiers. One has, sadly, passed away; one hasn’t been active since 2018; and I emailed the third (as requested on their talk page) but haven’t received a response.

(I’m not sure who originally labeled the story as ESSAY; it looks like that was done when the hc publication record was created.)

So is it OK for me to submit an edit that changes the type of “Old Pictures” to SHORTFICTION? —Elysdir (talk) 15:55, 14 April 2024 (EDT)

After reading the piece in question, I agree that it's a literary, non-SF, short story as opposed to an essay. It was first published in the literary magazine The Little Magazine in February 1973, which specialized in "new poetry and short fiction", so it makes sense. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the magazine was then published by David G. Hartwell, who later became a prominent SF editor. I am going to update the record -- thanks for identifying the issue! Ahasuerus (talk) 13:52, 15 April 2024 (EDT)

Audible ASIN cleanup report.

I'm posting this first to the moderator board as it involves a cleanup report. We can move to the Community Portal or Rules and Standards if folks feel that's needed.

We have a cleanup report for "Pubs without an ISBN and with an Audible ASIN which is an ISBN-10". However, there are instances where I'm not sure whether we can assume a linkage between the Audible ASIN and an ISBN. There are cases with audio books where the publisher changes the cover over time. Recorded Books, Brilliance and the various Audible publishers are especially prone to this. While this is usually just an update to the trade dress, sometimes the cover changes to a completely new piece of artwork. In these cases Audible and Amazon do not update their ASIN numbers, nor do they update the published release date. If the Audible-ASIN in these cases is an ISBN-10, I will use it for the ISBN on the initial publication. However, I'm not certain that the same ISBN is applicable for subsequent publications where the cover has changed. Certainly the release date which does not change is not appropriate for reissues. When entering these reissues, I will generally narrow the date as much as I can though a combination of my own copy and consulting the Audible pages on the Wayback Machine at archive.org. Being unsure whether the publisher issued a new ISBN for the new issue with the new cover, I will generally blank the ISBN, which, of course, causes it to appear on the cleanup report. Am I looking at this incorrectly and should we assume that the ISBN of audio books are immutable through changes in cover? Or, if the way I've been entering these is correct, should we have an ignore button for this report? As an example this publication was reissued sometime between 2019-04-26 and 2024-03-20 with an altered cover whereas neither the Audible-ASIN nor the release date have changed between an archive of the publication's page in 2019 or it's current page. Thoughts? --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 17:54, 14 April 2024 (EDT)

I believe Annie has a significant amount of experience with Audible, but she will be mostly unavailable until later in the week. I will leave a note on her Talk page and ask to take a look when she returns. Ahasuerus (talk) 07:09, 15 April 2024 (EDT)