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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)

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

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

Thanks!

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

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

Submission Search modified

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

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

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

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

Datlow Anthologies

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

Thomas Bailey

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

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

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

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

Hello! We do have a piece titled 'Another Story' here. I don't know if both are the same by content, but it might be so. Do you have additional information both are different? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 05:33, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Looks like there are some others, too: here and here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:00, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the responses. The 1994 "Tomorrow Speculative Fiction" publication is the initial appearance of the story in question. I still believe that it appeared there under the long title, based on sources like sfadb and the fact that its second appearance, in Le Guin's collection "A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" later that year, used the long title, but I guess I can't be sure. Do you have access to the magazine to confirm it? If not I could buy a copy. Danbloch (talk) 16:05, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

I do not. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:53, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

I'll get back to you in a week or so. Danbloch (talk) 17:44, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

ISFDB is right, the original magazine appearance was called "Another Story". The only change I can argue for now is that "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" would be better as the primary name. Regards, Danbloch (talk) 15:30, 28 October 2022 (EDT)

We generally use the title of a piece's first appearance as the parent. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 15:38, 28 October 2022 (EDT)

Suspected Duplicate Authors report

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

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

Expedition to Earth

Hello Mods. I picked up a copy of [1] this exact edition. Dated 1978 on copyright page, priced at £1.95, ISBN 0-283-98623-9 but has a Danny Flynn wraparound cover - this cover not listed under Flynn either. It's this artwork. Do I clone the existing 1978 edition with the Tim White cover or edit it to reflect the book I have in my hand ? --Mavmaramis (talk) 12:59, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

You can clone it, but uncheck the box for the cover art on the interim page before you get to the the page where you can edit the publication. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:01, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Except that the only difference is the cover art. Otherwise everything is identical hence my query as I very much suspect that publication record has had the Tim White cover art attached to it by mistake. --Mavmaramis (talk) 13:09, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Yes, that's why you can clone it: because everything but the cover is the same. If you uncheck that box I mentioned above, then it will clone everything except for the cover art. You can then add the correct cover art information. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:21, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

Or are you saying that the publication is already in the system here, and that the cover art information is incorrect on it? If so, then you'd need to remove the cover art from that publication using "Remove Titles From This Pub", and then edit the existing publication to add the correct cover art info. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:23, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

I'm saying that my edition matches exactly the 1987 publication already in the system except for the cover art. Publisher is Sifgwick & Jackson (as stated on title page) not New English Library (this only noted on cover). --Mavmaramis (talk) 13:32, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

The cover was added here based on notes in a nonfiction book published in 1981. This book is from 1987 - unless someone had a crystal ball in 1981, the credit is NOT for this edition. Who knows what cover was there before that (it is pre-history). But as it is impossible for a 1981 book to know what a 1987 book will use as a cover, it is safe to say that this credit is bogus and is probably done based on the image visible in the work back when the edit was done - which if it was a /P/ Amazon image, was based on ISBN... or maybe someone just looked at a wrong edition or something. It may have been the correct image for a previous printing? If you are sure you have the January 1987 printing/edition, fix the cover, eject this COVERART record from it and clean up the note. Annie (talk) 14:09, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

PS: The cover and credit belongs to 1983 reprint and earlier ones; apparently in 1987 changed the cover if everything else matches (they would not publish both a reprint with the old cover AND one with a new cover in the same year using the same ISBN I'd think but who knows). If you are still unsure clone and add notes in both records that they are possibly the same... Annie (talk) 14:14, 19 October 2022 (EDT)

I've gone the safe route and cloned the existing 1987 entry. --Mavmaramis (talk) 14:03, 20 October 2022 (EDT)

Flock of Flamingos

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

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

More Broken Images

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

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

First Parameter Not Specified

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

That looks like a bug. I'll take a look tomorrow morning. Thanks for reporting the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 00:03, 28 October 2022 (EDT)

The bug has been identified and will be fixed in the next patch. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:00, 28 October 2022 (EDT)

Fixed. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:33, 1 November 2022 (EDT)

2 Old Flames

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

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

Feature request: Filter the Moderator Queue per submitter

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

This would be extremely helpful. Even if it's a list of usernames at the top, or a drop-down list, being able to do this would be super helpful. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:35, 7 November 2022 (EST)

I can see how it would be helpful. One thing that comes to mind is that moderators already have access to a Submission Search menu option. Currently, it lets you search for "Approved" or "Rejected" submissions for a given user, but we could easily add the ability to retrieve a list of "New/Pending" submissions for the specified user.

Once we do that, we could add a link (something like [all]?) to the "Submitter" field of the New Submissions page. Clicking the link will take you to the list of the selected user's "New/Pending" submissions as described above.

We could also display a list of all submitters with outstanding "New/Pending" submissions at the bottom (or top) of the "New Submissions" page. Each name would be linked to the user's list of "New/Pending" submissions as described above. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:44, 7 November 2022 (EST)

I really like the "(all)" link idea. It could be a simple link to the search results for a feature we already have, too, so shouldn't be that difficult to implement. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:59, 7 November 2022 (EST)

Yep, that can work. I also like the idea of the list of the people who have active submissions somewhere on the page - that way we can find the new/infrequent users submissions faster when the queue get busy (as they usually won't be around in a few days to check on what happened)... Annie (talk) 19:04, 7 November 2022 (EST)

FR 1544, "Filter Moderator Queue by submitter", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:25, 10 November 2022 (EST)

Outcome

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

Any chance to slightly modify the lower table to show how many of these are already on hold? I find it useful to see both the on holds and the really open ones when I go to the filtered page but when everything for a user is on hold, it will be useful not to need to manually check the page to see if something may need attention. Annie (talk) 19:45, 14 November 2022 (EST)

Good point. I'll take a look tomorrow. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:25, 14 November 2022 (EST)

Done. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:53, 14 November 2022 (EST)

Thanks! Annie (talk) 11:25, 15 November 2022 (EST)

Acceptable moderator behavior?

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

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

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

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

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

I have asked Dirk to comment. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:58, 8 November 2022 (EST)

Very childish behaviour of a former moderator that won't play by the rules and constantly keeps making a chapbook from a collection -see the history by changing back the prologue from ESSAY (fitting for supporting fiction in a CHAPBOOK) to SHORT FICTION, fitting in case of a COLLECTION. When I honor his short fiction and do make it a collection he changes it back to CHAPBOOK, when I change it back to ESSAY (always explaining why) he changes it back again. He seems to think that 'in world' always means that it is fiction -see his many fiction type 'Glossar' (glossary) entries in the Perry Rhodan series, but so it the Tourist Guide to Lancre, or Nanny Ogg's Cookbook. The so-called questionable change takes place after a series of requests from JLochhas and Mellotronman, who want to make a novella of both 'A Bicycle Made for Brew' and 'The Makeshift Rocket' (a mere 114 pages in my copy), pointing out in their change requests that they are the same. The statement that Stonecreek attributes to me was the 'Note to Moderator' from Mellotronman Translation of 'A Bicycle Built for Brew', published in book form as 'The Makeshift Rocket'. I hereby request that the self-appoval rights for Stonecreek can be revoked, as he can't even distinguish short fiction from an essay.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 17:49, 8 November 2022 (EST)

Dirk, the one you are citing (Le piège de glace should be a chapbook based on the changes we made into the chapbook definition a few years ago, namely:

• "The following types of SHORTFICTION titles are ignored when deciding whether the publication is a CHAPBOOK: :
  • Supporting and incidental material such as excerpts, synopses, and fictionalized essays
  • Up to one bonus short story, poem or short serial installment, but only if the publication's title page lists only the main title and the main title's author(s)"

The full help page is here: chapbook description. That extra story at the start fits this description thus making the whole thing a chapbook - regardless if it is a story or an essay. Or are you seeing something that I am missing which disqualifies the book from being a chapbook under that provision? Annie (talk) 18:00, 8 November 2022 (EST)

What's wrong with entering a fictionalized essay as an ESSAY? Why entering a mere story outline as SHORT FICTION, and not as an ESSAY? If we have looser rules for CHAPBOOKs, why is the maintenance report not as loose? Or should we disregard maintenance reports altogether, because of the false flags they are raising?--Dirk P Broer (talk) 19:40, 8 November 2022 (EST)

I am not commenting on the type of this text (fictionalized essays had been recorded both ways), I am just mentioning the current rules for the chapbooks. We have an ignore option on this report specifically so we can ignore in these kind of situations. The report cannot be made looser because a human needs to see the two pieces of fiction and see if they qualify - not all books with two stories qualify as chapbooks. Fixing reports’ entries by making the data incorrect is never a good idea - a lot of the reports should really be treated as “take a look at this, it may be incorrect” and not as “fix it now so it disappears from the list”. If the report has the ability to have an entry ignored, it is almost always that “look at it, it may be wrong” case. Which does not mean to just ignore all entries you don’t want to deal with of course :)Annie (talk) 22:16, 8 November 2022 (EST)

What's wrong with entering a fictionalized essay as an ESSAY? If you read closely, Dirk, the answer is already given in your question (I'll point you towards it: fiction is part of both words, 'fictionalized' and 'short fiction', so they cling together like a real essay in our definition (article, report, listing etc.) and nonfiction.

It looks like you think you can freely mix subject and attribute. You can't, it is a logical error, if not a downright a factual lie -try exchanging those. A fictional essay is an essay about fiction. It can be a foreword, an introduction, a summary, an afterword, or an explanation why a certain story wasn't written, as in the piece of Stonecreek.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 17:40, 15 November 2022 (EST)

And you didn't answer why you changed it again after having been pointed toward our current rules (disregarding that a moderator should know about this rule).

Please also do leave a comment on entering insufficient content to "Les soldats stellaires" and not cecking back on the actual crediting. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 08:46, 9 November 2022 (EST)

When did I get pointed toward our current rules, and when did I change it back? I did not know about two pieces of short fiction possible in a chapbook until this issue here. Why does the maintenance report use more than one as a criteria, when it should be more than two?

I took my info for "Les soldats stellaires" from Noosfere and made that change because this anthology was until my change without any content whatsoever. Based upon Noosfere, I really don't know what else to enter, but is seems like the Perry Rhodan sub-section of isfdb follows additional rules that I am unaware off. I think I'll take a break till somewhere deep in 2024 to catch up on reading rules and standards -and I am behind on Goodreads challenge, too.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 19:47, 9 November 2022 (EST)

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

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

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

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

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

On "Les soldats stellaires": The right way to change a primary verified publication in this way (stating a credit for contents) is always to contact the primary verifier who can look up the actual credit.

He hadn't entered anything, so I gave him something to work with. I found it on the list of primary verified publications without content.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 19:15, 23 November 2022 (EST)

On the issue of synopsises and pseudo-essays: I don't see how a short(er) (re)telling of a (speculative) fictional happening should be able to change its character into something entirely different. If you take a piece out of an artichoke, by the other logic you would be able to sell it afterwards as meat, just because it's called a 'heart' (but it stays somehow vegetarian, I think). Christian

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

An (historical) essay about the Greek history is not the same as the Greek history. An (political) essay about January 6th is not the same a the assault on Capitol Hill. A fictional essay about e.g. space ships in the Perry Rhodan Universe is the same as an essay on space ships in e.g. the Star Wars or Star Trek universe. A glossary about the Perry Rhodan universe is the same as a glossary for any other series. There is nothing special about Perry Rhodan that warrants other rules to be followed.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 19:15, 23 November 2022 (EST)

And an essay about the Dutch slave trade is not the same as the hundreds of years of suffering endured by Africans enslaved by the Dutch, while they considered themselves superior to Americans because some of them could paint pretty pictures. --Username (talk) 20:19, 23 November 2022 (EST)

Telling about a piece of fiction makes it a fictional essay. 'essay' is the subject, 'fictional' the attribute. A fictional essay is an essay about fiction. It can be a foreword, an introduction, a summary, an afterword, or an explanation why a certain story wasn't written.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 17:40, 15 November 2022 (EST)

I hereby request too that the self-approval rights for Stonecreek must be revoked, it's time to stop Stonecreek! (translation by Google)--Wolfram.winkler (talk) 16:52, 11 November 2022 (EST)

I tried to warn you. Grudges long-held, even by people who quit long ago. Welcome to Hell. --Username (talk) 18:17, 11 November 2022 (EST)

The Haunted Gay

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

It happens occasionally when things error out at exactly the wrong moment - all it needs is an EditPub to add the missing title.

PS: errored is very much a word, pretty common in computing: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/errored even if the spell checker does not like it. Annie (talk) 19:28, 8 November 2022 (EST)

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

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

Let's start with the obvious for the one you linked: I am almost sure that a Brazilian artist, who mainly worked for French language publications, did not have an illustration called "The Martians fire their gas-guns" in a French book in 1906 unless that was a plaque from an English book and that needs explaining somewhere... It is possible of course but very unlikely. And that is part of my issue with this type of parents creation - their titles will need to match the title as shown in the book they originated in, in whatever language they were there and not whatever Wikipedia or other sources call these in English these days.

I generally do not like creating titles outside of publications unless we have to (parent titles for translations and canonical names for example) and even less for art titles (which may or may not be imported later). I think I rejected one yesterday (this one) and then decided to leave the rest alone and think a bit on how we should be handling these (and you beat me on posting about them). Part of the reason of wanting to go the other way around is that verifying that these are named correctly will require to look at the original work where it appeared - at least this one was in the correct language but I prefer the active PV we have to check the title of that illustration for us.

If we decide to approve these, then we will really need to pay attention to titles and languages... which is much much easier if they get added where they belong first. :) Annie (talk) 19:07, 15 November 2022 (EST)

PS: Apparently the English caption came from the English language PGA/RGL edition which includes the illustrations from the French edition (the one linked from Gutenberg Australia) and from the Pearson's Magazine edition. But that does not make this the original title of the illustration back in 1906 in that French book where it originated. If we are going to make up titles or use later titles for the illustrations, we are better off doing it in notes and not creating titles IMO. Annie (talk) 19:28, 15 November 2022 (EST)

I agree with Ron. Allowing the creation of the parent title seems consistent with how we treat non artwork titles. As far as requiring all the titles to be entered, I'm ambivalent. Choosing to require all the artwork to be included necessitates an additional incomplete template and the corresponding exception report, specifically for artwork.

This submission is incorrect for the reasons Annie points out. The language and title are both wrong. Here is the illustration in the original text. In the credits, ILLUSTRATIONS HORS TEXTE, it is clearly identified as 'La Fumée Noire'. John Scifibones 20:38, 15 November 2022 (EST)

As long as the approver tracks down each of the ones they are approving into its original book and verifies the title and language, I’d be fine with that - there is the argument that having the data is better than not having the data after all. But these will be very labor-intensive because I really don’t trust any of the titles used in these - they belong to a version of that illustration but not necessarily the first one and we want the one in the original book after all. Annie (talk) 21:07, 15 November 2022 (EST)

After thinking some more on this, here is what bothers me in the whole situation. I agree with Ron that we should not be mixing individual and comprehensive INTERIORART records in a single publication record. And here lies the difference between INTERIORART and any other type as INTERIORART is the only type that allows this type of different usage. With any other type, if we create a parent and we have the book the parent is supposed to go into, someone can import it into the book (if it gets created outside of it). With the parents we are discussing here, if the book they belong into uses a single comprehensive INTERIORART record, they will never be importable unless the book is reworked to use individual records. And as using comprehensive INTERIORART records is permitted, that will leave us with a title which belongs inside of a publication but cannot be imported into it and without a link from the publication or any of its titles to the title itself.

With that being said, if the consensus is to allow these, I will of course follow the consensus. But I really dislike the idea of having titles which are unimportable even when the books they belong into are in the DB. Annie (talk) 11:49, 16 November 2022 (EST)

I like the idea of not mixing, BUT.... If we have a situation where we do not have a source for identifying all of the individual art pieces present (say, the typical "Illustrations by XYZ" credit but no PV and no access to the book's interior) and we discover good evidence in another pub identifying one of the pieces, it seems to me we'd want that one piece's details recorded in the original pub, even if we do not know the rest. As for submission order, adding the title to the original publication first, then making the variant later sure would make the review and approval process a lot easier. It is difficult to recognize mistakes when a disconnected parent title is proposed, and requiring approver research is not a good way to direct the work load. --MartyD (talk) 13:00, 16 November 2022 (EST)

I suspect that, as Annie suggested earlier, the underlying issue that we are struggling with is that we use the INTERIORART title type to describe two different types of content: individual illustrations vs. publication-wide artist attributions. In most cases we only have information about one OR the other type of content. When it happens, the context is typically clear, so using the same INTERIORART title type to document two different scenarios is not too confusing. However, when we have information about the publication-wide artist attribution PLUS information about one or more (but not all) individual illustrations, using the same title type becomes problematic.

In retrospect, it may have been better to create separate title types for the two scenarios or to come up with a disambiguating naming convention, e.g. a parenthetical addition like "La Guerre Des Mondes (publication-wide)". It's probably too late for a separate publication type, but perhaps we could come up with an INTERIORART disambiguator to use in pubs which have a mix of publication-wide and illustration-specific INTERIORART records? Ahasuerus (talk) 15:46, 16 November 2022 (EST)

I think that at this point we have two separate but related discussions going on here - how do we want to treat art pieces when we know only some of the titles of the record (which we maybe should move to R&S) - and that is the one that will determine if we make these parents or not and if we do, how we import them - and the pure moderator discussion about what we do with all of these submissions (which lack the details for the proper sources to determine the title easily and will take a lot of time to research in order to approve properly). Approving them as they are without verifying the credit is out of the question IMO. Which possibly opens a somewhat more generic discussion - just how much do we want to do the work for editors who throw a huge number of incomplete or incorrect submissions on the board and when we stop and reject and ask them to redo the work properly (as much as I hate losing data, spending all the available moderator time on essentially doing someone else’s homework and full research is going to burn everyone out from working the queue). I don’t mind helping a new or very infrequent editor when they don’t know what they are doing yet and show them how to improve (and do the leg work for them a few times to show them how it is done) but if an experienced editor sends something like what started this thread? I may approve and fix a few but after the first few, I will send it back for them to be redone. As Marty said - if we need to do that much research to approve, the work load will become a huge problem. Maybe we need to have a restriction in place for number of open submissions by new editors so we don’t get flooded with another 10k, in groups of hundreds of similarly incorrect or incomplete submissions again - high enough not to discourage people (100 for example) but low enough to only come into play when we have another case like the current one. Tie it to a flag on the account or to number of approvals or something like that (although number of approvals would have been high quickly here). Just thinking aloud. Annie (talk) 17:25, 16 November 2022 (EST)

It would be easy to prevent editors from creating new submissions if the number of their pending submissions exceeds a certain threshold value. We could start with 1,000 and see how it goes. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:46, 17 November 2022 (EST)

Since I currently have almost 1,300 edits pending in the queue, I'd vote no on that. I've been considering taking a break after Thanksgiving next week, so if you could wait until then to make your changes that would be great. Or maybe only block ElectricStarboard from making any more until all others are done, since he/she has about 80% of all pending edits, many of them being rejected/resubmitted because they're not done right, and is one of the (many) reasons why things are the way they are right now. --Username (talk) 10:19, 17 November 2022 (EST)

We could set a low number for automatic implementation as Annie suggests. If 100 is too low, maybe 200. Then make the flag editable on the bureaucrat menu same as the self-approver and moderator flags. John Scifibones 11:06, 17 November 2022 (EST)

OK, we can limit the proposed functionality to "new" (green background) editors, which are currently defined as editors with a low count of Wiki edits. I haven't been feeling well the last week+, but I'll see what I can do. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:29, 17 November 2022 (EST)

Shadow World series info

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

• in https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5478722 it says 'novel by unknown [as by Ian Hammell]'
• idem for https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5478722
• idem for https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5478727

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

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

Thanks

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

This would be welcome (supplying the credits, I mean): Wikipedia lists only the fourth title in the series as to have been written by Rachael Cain, and to date we think it's possible that Ian Hammell may have been used by other authors as well. Stonecreek (talk) 08:38, 17 November 2022 (EST)

Well, I just found that another Wikpedia page tells about other authors being responsible for the other novels. Do you have different informations? Stonecreek (talk) 09:21, 17 November 2022 (EST)

Ah, now I understand the issue here. I was assuming that Ian Hammell was always used by the same person. Now it makes sense (as the style is different...) ok. Focus :). I have a different source:

* Shadow World (Book 1): The Burning Goddess  Author: Ian Hammel (Clayton Emery) source
* Shadow World (Book 2): Clock Strikes Sword  Author: Ian Hammel (Stephen Billias) source
* Shadow World (Book 3): City of Assassins   Author: Ian Hammel (Clayton Emery) source
* StormRiders (1st edition, 1990) Author: Roxanne Longstreet source
* Shadow World (Book 4):Stormriders (2nd edition, 1996)  Author: Roxanne Longstreet, Ian Hammel (Roxanne Longstreet) source

How does this look? (In the physical books there is only the pen name, here are the credit pages --cibersheep.com (talk) 12:56, 17 November 2022 (EST)

Thanks, that does fit to the information stated at Wikipedia. I'll add the actual author's names. (It's not as seldom as one would think that a pseudonym is used by several people, it happens more often if there's a franchise behind it, like in this case).

Thank you also for bringing this up. Stonecreek (talk) 10:42, 18 November 2022 (EST)

Awesome. Thank you. Now I also know the correct way of reporting :)

Do I need to delete this section? --Lo CiberSheep (talk) 15:18, 18 November 2022 (EST)

No, we keep it (and archive it eventually). Stonecreek (talk) 04:19, 22 November 2022 (EST)

Illustrator's name misspelled

Good day,

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

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

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

There's already a page for him:

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

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

Thank you, and have a wonderful day!

Sincerely,

-Carl Lavoie

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

Done so.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 11:05, 17 November 2022 (EST)

If it's misspelled -in the publication- then it should be entered as Carl Lavoir, and varianted to Carl Lavoie. Please confirm that it is indeed in the publication itself. MagicUnk (talk) 06:57, 18 November 2022 (EST)

https://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/8104/ghosts-scholars-43.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 06:55, 1 December 2022 (EST)

NILF

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

Apparently the URL structure has changed. https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/info/ still links to https://www.fantascienza.com/nilf/ , but the latter URL is no longer available. http://nilf.it redirects to https://www.fantascienza.com ; NILF URLs no longer work.

The good news is that NILF IDs can still be used to link to the same Fantascienza Web pages. For example, the ISFDB record for Torre di cristallo given above uses 107219 as its NILF ID. You can use the same ID to link to Fantascienza by plugging the ID in a URL. In this case the correct URL is https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi/NILF107219/. (The URL is then automatically expanded to append "torre-di-cristallo", but that's not an issue for us.)

It should be easy to change our software's definition of "NILF External IDs" to use "https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi" instead of "http://nilf.it". My only concern is that Fantascienza's Web pages say "Beta" and still advertise nilf.it URLs as valid shortcuts, so it's possible that things will change again in the near future. Still, it's a pretty simple change, so we might as well implement it as a short term solution. If and when their URLs change again, we will revisit the issue. Thanks for reporting the problem! Ahasuerus (talk) 16:56, 19 November 2022 (EST)

And fixed. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:26, 19 November 2022 (EST)

Thank You --Zapp (talk) 05:03, 22 November 2022 (EST)

FantLab Issue, Part ...

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

Nope, that’s just a different domain. We are allowed to link to fantlab.ru. They seem to have a mirror at fantlab.org (or at least some of their images and/or links also work there - it is unclear if it is a complete mirror) which we had not asked for permission to link to. Just use the .ru URLs. Annie (talk) 03:11, 22 November 2022 (EST)

That's a problem, then, because I typed "FantLab" on Google to get to the site like I always do; if that suddenly takes me and others to their mirror site something's messed up, which I suspected when their site timed out for a while yesterday. Maybe someone should ask them nicely for permission to link to the mirror now. --Username (talk) 10:26, 22 November 2022 (EST)

Google tries to be clever with its search results. For example, the top link returned by Google when I type "FantLab" is "fantlab.ru/en", i.e the English language version of their site. On the other hand, users with Russian IP addresses and/or their language preferences set to "Russian" are presumably sent to the Russian language version of FantLab's site. Since Google uses highly complex algorithms to determine what users see when they search Google's catalog of the Web, there is no telling what different users may be shown in response to the same query.

For now, fantlab.ru seems to be stable. Their certificate will expire in a week, but hopefully they will have it renewed before it causes issues. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:28, 25 November 2022 (EST)

F&SF

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

Series name could be renamed to "The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction", but not absolutely necessary if you ask me, as series naming is not that strictly regularized. Up to you. MagicUnk (talk) 07:56, 7 December 2022 (EST)

Covers from archive.org

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

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

New editors limited to 101 pending submissions

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

External Id Edits with a long queue

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

We have FR 1453, "New yellow warning for conflicting submissions", which would address some -- but not all -- of these issues. The FR says:

• Create a new yellow warning for conflicting submissions. It should appear if the displayed submission contains a record which is also contained in another pending submission. The yellow warning should include links to the other submissions.

The issue with this FR is that the submission table as it currently exists doesn't store record IDs for pending records in a readily available format. In order to generate the requested yellow warning the display software would have to parse the bodies of all related pending submissions, in this case "EditPub"s. Given the current size of the queue, it can mean parsing thousands of submissions, which may take a few seconds every time a submission is displayed. I would need to rework the way record IDs are stored in the submission table to make it viable.

Re:

• a warning on the approval screen if there have been approved edits to the same record after the submission timestamp of the record being reviewed"

it may be doable because each approved submission record already has an "affected_record_id" value. I'll look into it tomorrow.

Another thing to consider is that the problem that Ron ran into mostly affects "multi-fields" like External IDs and Web Pages. An edit affecting a regular field makes it clear that the current value is about to be replaced with another value. An edit affecting a multi-field just tells you that the submitting editor wants to replace a set of N values with a set of M values. It doesn't tell you whether N is greater than, equal to or smaller than M. It may be helpful to add a yellow warning informing the reviewer about the nature of the change, e.g. "2 unaffected values, 1 value will be deleted, 1 value will be added". Ahasuerus (talk) 19:05, 26 November 2022 (EST)

I've been confused on how external IDs are processed. I assumed it captured the additions, removals, & changes only - not the entire contents - so two edits could add different ids without issue. Since external IDs are stored as separate entries in the database, there is no need to do a wholesale replacement. Improving the moderator screen to show diffs based on the current state of the publication (and not the publication at the time of submission) would help with this (as well as other issues). -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:02, 27 November 2022 (EST)

Rereading my responses in the linked discussion, I see that I may not have been clear. Sorry about that! Let me step back and clarify how things work:

• When a submission is created, the software checks each field's data. If no changes have been made for a given field -- be it a single value field or a "mutli-field" -- then that field's data is not includes in the body of the submission. If a change has been made, then the following data is included in the submission:
  • For regular or "single value" fields, the changed value is stored. For example, if the current value of the "Publisher" field is "Ace" and the new value is "Ace Books", then "<Publisher>Ace Books</Publisher>" is stored in the submission.
  • For "multi-fields", ALL new values (unchanged, changed and newly added) are stored in the body of the submission. For example, if the current values of the "External ID" multi-field are "ASIN: B0001111" and "OCLC/WorldCat: 666" and the new values are "ASIN: B0001111" [unchanged], "OCLC/WorldCat: 123" [changed] and "DNB: 234999" [new], then all 3 External IDs are stored in the submission. https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/dumpxml.cgi?5495781 demonstrates how it works -- the XML contains 2 "External_ID" groups even though the OCLC/WorldCat ID was unchanged.
• "Differences" and yellow warnings are always generated at the time submission review pages are generated and displayed.

Hopefully this clarifies things. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:42, 27 November 2022 (EST)

I see that I forgot to explain why submissions include all entered values for multi-fields as opposed to just the changed/added values. Suppose a publication record has 3 OCLC IDs, specifically "1", "2" and "3", and a submission aims to replace them with IDs "3", "4" and "5". If the software is to store just the "diffs", it needs to include 4 and 5 as new values and skip "3" as an unchanged values. However, it also needs to specify that "1" and "2" have to be removed, which would require special coding. Instead the software stores all of the entered values in the body of the submission. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:01, 27 November 2022 (EST)

Instead of a "2 unaffected values, 1 value will be deleted, 1 value will be added" warning, how about showing the specific changes (similar to how the pub notes field does)? So for the edit I approved, showing "-Reginald-3: 26241 [over] +OCLC/WorldCat: 59151543" which would have stood out. The +/- comparison would also be helpful for the web page entries, especially when people edit a record (typically authors) that have a quite a few. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:02, 27 November 2022 (EST)

That's a good point. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:01, 27 November 2022 (EST)

New Yellow Warning Implemented

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

Thank you. I'm really pleased to see this. I'm not a moderator but, as an editor, I have been affected by this scenario as I reported here. Teallach (talk) 17:47, 27 November 2022 (EST)

Yes, thank you. That was quite speedy and I think will be quite helpful. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:26, 27 November 2022 (EST)

Glad to hear it looks useful. I'll look into the proposed External ID/Web pages "diff" functionality next. Ahasuerus (talk) 08:42, 28 November 2022 (EST)

Just saw it for the first time: "WARNING: This publication has been modified by the following submissions since this submission was created:". Cool. --Username (talk) 20:41, 29 November 2022 (EST)

Diffs for multi-fields implemented

As per User:JLaTondre's suggestion above, submission review pages have been updated to display "diffs" for all multi-fields. The latter include Web pages, transliterated names/titles, legal names and email addresses. This does not affect authors, reviewers and interviewers, which already have a number of yellow warnings for new, pseudonymous and disambiguated names.

External IDs have not been upgraded because they are a separate and rather big can of worms. I still need to rewrite the remaining (7) most complex submission review pages, including Edit Publication, and it wouldn't make sense to add more complexity to the way External IDs are displayed only to rewrite the code a few weeks later. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:16, 5 December 2022 (EST)

Calendars

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

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

I'd guess the artwork was specifically for the calendar in question so assume ineligable. --Mavmaramis (talk) 03:39, 10 December 2022 (EST)

Records Correction - Name & Profile Display

Hi there,

I'm reaching out as the efforts of other folks to correct my ISFDB page have been rejected several times, though the end result is both (1) inaccurate records and (2) a serious lack of consideration for trans genre writers.

To clarify, my ISFDB page is still listed under “Brit” instead of “Lee.” This is a bit of a different situation than folks who shift pen-names, or publish under multiple names during their career. "Brit" has not been my legal or publishing name for years due to a gender transition, and furthermore, bylines for previous stories and articles with their various publishers have all been changed to "Lee" in the interim as well. Therefore, it’s a both uncomfortable to be incorrectly listed by my deadname on one of the main genre databases... and also doesn't reflect the actual publication record, either. I don't even mind leaving the old name as an "alternate" flag for completionism's sake, but it should not be the "main" name or page anchor.

The necessary updates are simple—

Author: Lee Mandelo Webpages: leemandelo.com Used These alternate names: Brit Mandelo

And then there are two pieces noted as “only as Lee Mandelo,” which should be removed (as noted above, my bylines on older stories have been updated by individual publications already as well to no longer be by “Brit” anyway, so that’s the most accurate notation possible).

I know it's not very common to undergo transition with a few pieces published previously, but hopefully this will set a precedent for how to handle it for any other folks in the future to be able to correct their records, etc. In the absence of this correction, I would politely request to have my records removed entirely from the database rather than continuing to be displayed incorrectly. I appreciate any assistance possible, and apologize for the tone of this note (plus having no clue how this sort of thing works in absence of being able to email a mod!), but several efforts have been made prior to this without results.

Thanks for your time, --Lee Mandelo

Welcome to the project! Let me first clarify a few things about the way the ISFDB database works. First, all author names are entered into the system the way they appeared in publications. If a later version of a publication credits the author(s) differently, then we create a separate publication record for it. For example, we have the 1996 edition of Stephen King's "The Regulators" listed as by "Richard Bachman" while later editions are listed as by "Stephen King".

Once we confirm that two different author names refer to the same person and that the connection is publicly known, we link the two names in the software. That's how the software knows to display "only as" and "also as" on authors' bibliographic pages. The emphasis on "publicly" is relevant because we do not list undisclosed pseudonyms even if some ISFDB editors may be aware of them as individuals. "Robin Hobb" and "Julie Light" are two examples of originally undisclosed pseudonyms which we didn't have linked to the authors' primary names until they were publicly disclosed. There can also be complications related to multiple people using the same name, e.g. "house names" and collective pseudonyms which change over time, but that's a separate can of worms which we don't have to worry about here.

Once the connection between two or more author names has been established, we need to decide which name will be listed as the primary or "canonical" name. The current standard, as per Template:AuthorFields:CanonicalName, is:

• For authors who publish under multiple names, the canonical name is the most recognized name for that author within the genre. The canonical name may be a pseudonym, for instance Cordwainer Smith.

Since "the most recognized name ... within the genre" can change over time, our canonical names have been known to change. At one point Margaret Ogden's canonical name was "Megan Lindholm", but we changed it to "Robin Hobb" once it became her primary working name.

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".

So that's where our canonical name policy stands at this time. Examining this particular case with this standard in mind, I see one novel (published by Tor.com, a major publisher) and one 2020 story published as by "Lee Mandelo". On the other hand, I see one anthology, 4 Strange Horizon issues, a dozen stories/poems and half a dozen essays published as by "Brit Mandelo".

Since you indicate that some/most of the older stories have been republished as by Lee Mandelo, we should be able to enter their new records into the database. Once we do that, it should be clear that your "most recognized name within the genre" is "Lee Mandelo", at which point we should be able to change the canonical name. Hope this makes sense! Ahasuerus (talk) 20:10, 14 December 2022 (EST)

Yes, thank you, and, to clarify: I believe the only piece of short fiction listed on ISFDB that has not been updated to Lee Mandelo by the publisher would be the Apex short story from 2012. The anthology and nonfiction chapbook from Aqueduct are under Lee Mandelo as well now on all major sales outlets. Additionally, I think I’ve topped over 40 essays on Tor.com (outside of columns and reviews which aren’t listed for most folks I assume) in the last decade that are unlisted in the profile — as well as other interviews and feature profiles, etc., which would tip the balance closer to 90% “Lee Mandelo.” The Strange Horizons essay on MR James as well as the magazine issue are also under “Lee.”

Secondary addition: these pieces weren’t republished, in the sense of the Bachman/King, but the original record of publication at the magazines themselves was corrected to reflect the name change (which is a situation I suspect is more unique to transition, or as noted divorce etc, rather than pen-names). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Lee Mandelo (talk • contribs) .

Let me make sure that we are on the same page re: what "updated to Lee Mandelo by the publisher" means. As per Template:PublicationFields:Author:

• The name of the author of the publication. The name should be entered exactly as it is actually given on the publication's title page. This includes pseudonyms, abbreviated names ("I. Asimov" instead of "Isaac Asimov", "Robert Heinlein" instead of "Robert A. Heinlein"), etc.

We create a new publication record if the publisher puts out a new version where the author is credited differently. These days, with electronic publication commonly available, it happens surprisingly often. JC Andrijeski, who withdrew all books published as by Julie Light in 2020 and republished them as by "JC Andrijeski", would be one example. J. A. Sutherland, who withdrew "Of Dubious Intent" shortly after it was published and republished it as by "Richard Grantham", would be another. In most cases this can be easily checked using Amazon's "Look Inside" functionality.

However, we don't create new publication records if and when publishers, authors and/or online bookstores change the way their books are listed online. If I am reading your response correctly, "updated to Lee Mandelo by the publisher" and "under Lee Mandelo as well now on all major sales outlets" refers to the latter scenario as opposed to new versions of ebooks and/or print books getting published. Is my understanding correct? Ahasuerus (talk) 22:44, 14 December 2022 (EST)

--

There seem to be two issues worth addressing, which I'll approach separately. First, correcting some of the incorrectly indexed publications currently contributing to the misapprehension on ISFDB that "Lee" would not by my "most recognized" or canonical name. Second, addressing the issue of why, even aside from those records, there are significant gaps in my publication record that simply aren't indexed at all to contribute to "canonicity" as well as a case to be made for "most recognized name" even outside of the confines of, perhaps, what publications ISFDB does and does not index for authors.

The first, here are a selection of the simplest corrections (rather than those involving, for example, the question of republication like the print anthology or nonfiction monograph) where the piece has been indexed under "Brit" but actually appears under "Lee" in the publication itself.

Editorial:

• Strange Horizons – Our Queer Planet Editorial & issue are credited "by Lee Mandelo"

Short fiction:

• Though Smoke Shall Hide the Sun (2011) – credited as Lee Mandelo
• Winter Scheming (2012) – credited as Brit Mandelo
• The Finite Canvas (2012) – credited as Lee Mandelo
• And Yet, Her Eyes (2013) – credited in Uncanny as Lee Mandelo
• The Writ of Years (2013) – credited as Lee Mandelo
• The Sincerity Game (2016) – credited in Uncanny as Lee Mandelo
• The Pigeon Summer (2016) – credited as Lee Mandelo

However, even if those more straightforward corrections weren't permitted, there is the second and perhaps more central issue of "canonicity" of name… which is where things like, "the majority of my nonfiction work on and in the genre has not been indexed to ISFDB" comes in. A brief selection of nonfiction essays that aren't indexed follows, just from the last two years alone, though inclusion of these is of course dependent on what ISFDB is currently indexing versus not (which does, for example with Tor.com, seem dependent on the writer; I've omitted reviews and columns entirely, as those number an upwards of 300+ credits at this point and aren't worth anyone's time entering as data):

Print publications:

• “More of Us Beyond This Room’: Solidarity and Feminist History(s) in The Future of Another Timeline,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol. 48, no. 1, 2022
• “Necessary Fictions: Haunt(ed) Archives in Caitlín R. Kiernan's The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl,” Capacious: Journal of Emerging Affect Theory, vol. 2, no. 4, 2022

Online publications:

• Queer Reading Pleasure: Three Novels by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, Tor.com, January 2022
• Just Bleed for Me: Watching A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 and the Documentary Scream, Queen!, Tor.com, Oct 2020
• Queering SFF: 12 Authors, Critics, and Activists on What’s Changed in the Last Ten Years, March 2020
• Looking Back on 10 years of Queering SFF, 2010 to 2020, Tor.com, March 2020

Interviews:

• Arte Realizzata Magazine, 2022
• Tor.com, Profile Essay, " A Catalogue of Touches: Friendship, Loss, and What’s Left Behind in Lee Mandelo’s Summer Sons" by Trisha Low

--

Furthermore, even if those are left aside, there is the question of "most recognized name in the field," which is where I do feel a bit rude addressing this a public forum… but here we are. Before and after the release of Summer Sons, which was a Goodreads Award Finalist, my work has been featured under the name Lee Mandelo only in such places as the Library of Congress entry for me as an author, as well as a large number of major publications, including for example the below:

• Them.us / GQ India, "7 queer horror novels that should be on your bookshelf"
• NPR, "Books We Love 2021" & Weekend Edition Podcast
• Harper's Bazaar, "Best Scary Halloween Reads of 2021"
• Entertainment Tonight, "Pride Preview: The Most Anticipated LGBTQ Shows, Films,

Albums of 2021"

• Chicago Review of Books, "Cold Ghosts, Fast Cars, Hot Mess: Summer Sons”
• Bookpage, Starred Review, "Sweltering Summers, Sliced Through with Cold Terror"
• Ancillary Review, "Queerness and the Southern Gothic: Lee Mandelo’s Summer Sons"
• Buzzfeed, "15 Best Books by Trans, Genderqueer Authors of 2021"

And I've omitted far more than I included -- without even getting into podcasts, documentary interviews, and so forth.

There is, more or less, no alternate universe where "Lee Mandelo" would not be (and has not been since approx. 2019) the most recognized name under which I work, receive awards, and am discussed both within the sf genre space and the broader literary/academic worlds. The resistance to addressing that does not reflect contemporary best practices in archiving or digital humanities. Even if prior credits aren't corrected to reflect how they appear in publications, the addition of updated material should shift the balance; even if none of those publications are added, the fact of my "most recognized" name being the one under which I have worked for years and am publicly visible would, one hopes, be sufficient. Taken all together, it would seem clear on a purely factual basis that my ISFDB profile should be housed under Lee Mandelo, with a note allowing that some earlier works were published under the name "Brit Mandelo"… leaving entirely aside what I might call the issue of respect for trans artists. [15:37, 15 December 2022]

So what happens if you decide to de-transition, as so many people in the news have said they're doing lately because they realized they shouldn't have transitioned in the first place? Should everything here go back to your real name? --Username (talk) 16:06, 15 December 2022 (EST)

As I wrote in the 2018 comment linked above, there are at least 3 different types of names that come up during these discussions: legal names, professionally used (or "working") names and "socially used" names. None of them are more "real" than others, they are just different animals. Moreover, a single person can use multiple legal, professional and social names, either consecutively or concurrently. For example, Salvatore Albert Lombino changed his legal name to Evan Hunter in 1952, but he is probably best known as "Ed McBain", one of his pseudonyms. However, we use "Evan Hunter" as the canonical name because it's the name that he is best known under within this genre.

We are not in the business of judging which names are more "real" than others. We are a bibliographic database, which tries to record names, titles, publishers, publication dates, awards, etc as they appear and then link them. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:29, 15 December 2022 (EST)

Anyway, just letting you know, I've made an edit (not approved yet) adding an Archive.org link to Summer Sons hardcover, fixing the page count which was way off, and adding the cover artist, Sasha Vinogradova, who's not credited in any edition even though all covers are the same. If you have the trade paperback handy you can let us know what the page count is because it has the same 384 pages on ISFDB as the hardcover; I'm guessing it will be the same number, 372. --Username (talk) 16:06, 15 December 2022 (EST)

(unindent) Thanks for providing additional information about your body of work. As you said, we don't have complete coverage of the field -- unfortunately, nobody does these day -- so we are missing various publications, in part because they are outside of the current scope of the project and in part because we haven't entered the data yet.

Based on the listings that you provided, I think it's fair to say that "your most recognized name within the genre" is currently Lee Mandelo. We'll need to examine the history of the linked Strange Horizon issues and other online publications to see if we need to create separate publication records for the two versions of the credit, but I believe that just your recent works about the genre, which have all been published as by Lee Mandelo, are enough to tip the balance for the purposes of this discussion. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:46, 15 December 2022 (EST)

I looked up the Strange Horizons editorial and the short fictions titles you listed in the internet archive. They were originally credited to Brit Mandelo not Lee Mandelo as you suggest. John Scifibones 17:04, 15 December 2022 (EST)

My reading of what Lee Mandelo wrote above is that the credit has been changed since the time the original webzine issues were published. That's what I was referring to when I wrote that we may "need to create separate publication records for the two versions of the credit" -- one publication record for the original version and another one for the updated version. It's similar to how we handle self-published authors who replace their ebooks on Amazon when they change their working name or use a new pseudonym/alternate name. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:15, 15 December 2022 (EST)

With our current database, I think the cleanest way to "fix" this would be to create variants for all of the online publications that have been changed to reflect the new name, with notes on each explaining why the variant exists. Since we record information as it was when it was published, we need to maintain the integrity of that information while also making accommodation for situations such as this. Perhaps Lee can provide the approximate dates for when each of these online publications was updated with the new name so we can accurately enter the variants?

As for changed print publication credits, we already handle those using variants, so they shouldn't be a problem. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:27, 15 December 2022 (EST)

I favor changing the canonical name as the author wishes. We have done that before, Willis Couvillier for example. John Scifibones 19:30, 15 December 2022 (EST)

This record was discussed in March 2017 after it was discovered that it had been configured against Policy. At the time there was no easy way of telling who set it up that way. Now that we have Author History, it would appear that it may have done by User:Rkihara. He has, as he said recently, "pretty much backed off from editing" over the last couple of years, but he still checks the Wiki, so I am going to ask him what his rationale was. The linked March 2017 discussion provides more context, but it's a bit incoherent. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:10, 16 December 2022 (EST)

P.S. I have also found this submission, which would have changed the alternate name relationship and which was rejected by Stonecreek because "it's the author's will to have it this way, and we try to fulfil author's wishes". The author has continued to publish the vast majority of his stories as by "W. C. Roberts". Ahasuerus (talk) 14:51, 16 December 2022 (EST)

I recently worked on another author in the exact same situation. While she hasn't asked us to make the change, I would like to make it.

I'm not so sure about treating a change in an online periodical's history page as a reprint. What about all the publications where an author's name was misspelled and subsequently corrected? Are these also reprints? John Scifibones 19:30, 15 December 2022 (EST)

But we cannot change the original credit either - if a name had not been used before say 2018 and a story was published in 2005, using the new name there is going to convey a false information. The only mechanism we have in the DB to convey a change in credit is to treat is as a reprint/new edition (and realistically, how is that different from a new ebook reissued with a changed cover or changed author name (and no other changes inside). Another issue for magazines is that their reprints are entered as anthologies in the DB, not a magazines... which adds one more layer of complexity to how we handle these changes. Annie (talk) 10:54, 16 December 2022 (EST)

One additional complication is that it may be hard to determine when the credit was changed in an online publication. If the history of the relevant issue has been captured by the Wayback Machine, it's likely doable with some legwork. Otherwise, we may have to use 0000-00-00 and add a note about a possible date range.

That said, there is significant bibliographic value to having two separate title records when credits are changed. One of the better known examples is The Skylark of Space, which originally had two co-authors: Doc Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby. When Smith rewrote the text in 1958, Garby's name was dropped. We certainly want to have these changes documented, it's just that it's harder to do with webzines because of the nature of the medium. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:48, 16 December 2022 (EST)

Making the changes

So, in order to make the change, the following needs to happen:

• Remove Lee Mandelo as an alternate name of Brit Mandelo
• Move the bio info from Brit Mandelo to Lee Mandelo
• Add Brit Mandelo as an alternate name of Lee Mandelo
• Swap the variants from Lee → Brit to Brit → Lee on the following:
  • Summer Sons
  • The Span of His Wrist
• Add a variants of Brit → Lee on the following:
  • Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction
  • Though Smoke Shall Hide the Sun
  • The Finite Canvas
  • The Writ of Years
  • The Pigeon Summer
  • We Wuz Pushed: On Joanna Russ and Radical Truth-telling
  • Though Smoke Shall Hide the Sun
  • Winter Scheming
  • The Finite Canvas
  • And Yet, Her Eyes
  • The Writ of Years
  • The Sincerity Game
  • The Pigeon Summer
  • Liner Notes for the Crash
  • On Moving Into Your New Home
  • What I Have Not Done
  • To Ransom His Shade
  • Linguistics for the World-Builder
  • The Poetry of Joanna Russ, Part I: An Introduction
  • The Poetry of Joanna Russ, Part II: Poems, 1954-1957
  • Introduction to M. R. James's "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad"
  • Gonzo: The Real, the Surreal, and Hunter S. Thompson
  • Editorial: Our Queer Planet
• These interviews need to be updated to point to Lee instead of Brit:
  • Author Spotlight: Brit Mandelo
  • Queers Destroy Horror! Roundtable Interview
  • Interview: Lee Mandelo (Uncanny Magazine, November-December 2020)
• Add any missing titles/pubs that Lee mentioned above.

Did I miss anything? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:18, 16 December 2022 (EST)

That's it I think (except probably for adding notes into the Interview titles while swapping the name so the usage of a name early on does not look weird). No art credit so we do not need to check if any are secondary sources attribution which will require a direct change of their author credit to the new canonical name. And any reviews/awards that may be there will stay attached to the original titles so we are good there as well. Annie (talk) 13:28, 16 December 2022 (EST)

I can start moving everything if everyone is okay with it. Just need a green light. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:37, 16 December 2022 (EST)

I think you missed Strange Horizons - Our Queer Planet (July 2016) which would require making a variant of of Brit → Lee. We may need to add the reprint magazine with the changed editor credit as well as the changed credit on the contained editorial. This goes to Annie's excellent point above about magazine reprints as anthologies. I believe that we would also need to make a rule change here to allow an anthology with a webzine format. I would support adding such an exception for this situation. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 14:05, 16 December 2022 (EST)

We already allow Web-only anthologies ("One time speculative fiction anthologies published on the Web") so we are covered on that I think. There was one around the time we were first opening for these that triggered the conversation to start with so it made it into the rules on the first round. They can be considered "One-time" or we can drop the "One Time" from the rules (with an R&S discussion) if we prefer to but I think the rule as it stands now allows for the reprint to be added as an anthology already. Annie (talk) 14:34, 16 December 2022 (EST)

We're referencing two different pages that are slightly contradictory. I see the one time web anthology statement on the policy page. I was referring to this template under webzine. It seems the most logical format for web anthologies, but the template wording just needs a little tweaking to make that clear. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 16:37, 16 December 2022 (EST)

We have a few in the DB and I suspect we missed to update the help page. Which should be easy enough to do considered both the ROA and the established practice. Annie (talk) 17:51, 16 December 2022 (EST)

Titles Requiring New Publication Records

I've done a bit of analysis on where we which publications have been reissued with a name change and where they have not.

• eBooks
  • I've examined the Amazon look inside feature for these and none appear to have been republished with a name change. For the chapbooks, Amazon does list the author in the sale listing as "Lee Mandelo", but the title pages from Look Inside and the covers all still have "Brit Mandelo". For anthologies and magazines, I have generally only been able to check the table of contents, which also maintains the Brit Mandelo credit.

• Webzines
  • Though Smoke Shall Hide the Sun, Tor.com, February 14, 2014, credit changed to Lee sometime between 4/24/2017 and 7/18/2019
  • Winter Scheming, Apex Magazine, June 2012, We only have the eBook publication which is unchanged. There is an archive on the web which we haven't indexed, but the credit is "Brit Mandelo" there as well.
  • The Finite Canvas, Tor.com, December 5, 2012, credit changed to Lee sometime between 6/2/2017 and 7/18/2019. Tor.com also republished this story on 2/14/13 and we should probably add that as a separate "issue". The 2/14/2013 issue was originally credited to Brit and subsequently changed to Lee sometime between 7/17/2017 and 8/5/2020 (was an ad for the eBook).
  • And Yet, Her Eyes, Nightmare and Lightspeed, July 2013, we only index the eBook editions of these two magazines. They do have a web archive where and the credit was originally Brit and subsequently changed to Lee. If we decide to index as a webzine, we would have to do "reprints" of these issues.
  • The Writ of Years, Tor.com, December 18, 2013, credit changed to Lee sometime between 6/19/2017 and 12/25/2019. Note that the URL which embeds the author's name was also changed between 8/8/2020 and 10/22/2020. I don't believe the URL change necessitates a third publication record. However, we've never discussed this.
  • The Sincerity Game, Uncanny Magazine, January-February 2016, we only index the eBook which has not changed the credit. There is a web archive where the credit was changed sometime between 9/29/2020 and 10/29/2020.
  • The Pigeon Summer, Tor.com, May 11, 2016, credit changed to Lee sometime between 2/28/2019 and 12/9/2019
  • On Moving Into Your New Home, Ideomancer, December 2011, no changes to the credits in archived captures. The webzine appears to have been taken down sometime before 5/12/2019
  • What I Have Not Done, Expanded Horizons, May 2012, no change in credit as of last capture on 11/9/2019, webzine was taken down at some point.
  • Linguistics for the World-Builder, Clarkesworld Magazine, April 2011, we only index the eBook, there is a web archive, but the credit is still listed as "Brit Mandelo".
  • The Poetry of Joanna Russ, Part I: An Introduction, Stone Telling, December 2011, credit is still listed as "Brit Mandelo".
  • The Poetry of Joanna Russ, Part II: Poems, 1954-1957, Stone Telling, March 2012, credit is still listed as "Brit Mandelo".
  • Introduction to M. R. James's "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad", Strange Horizons, 29 October 2012, credit changed to Lee sometime between 2/20/2017 and 1/8/2022
  • Gonzo: The Real, the Surreal, and Hunter S. Thompson, Interfictions Online, May 2013, credit is still listed as "Brit Mandelo".
  • Editorial: Our Queer Planet, Strange Horizons, 4 July 2016, credit changed to Lee sometime between 2/23/2017 and 9/22/2020. I'll also note that this editorial appear to be the only source for Mandelo's Editor (guest editor) credit.

• Others
  • Assuming that all paper publications have not been reprinted.

One more wrinkle regarding the "reprints" of the tor.com issues which contain a single story. We were discussing that periodical reprints are entered as anthologies. I think this should apply here as well so we can maintain the editor. i.e. Let's not use CHAPBOOK despite having a single piece of fiction.

I would also recommend new series (tor.com reprints, Strange Horizons reprints) which I believe is consistent with how paper reprints are done. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 08:47, 17 December 2022 (EST)

Thanks for doing the legwork! Ahasuerus (talk) 11:08, 17 December 2022 (EST)

Swapping the canonical name

It's been three days and it looks like we are in agreement re: swapping the canonical name. Since Nihonjoe volunteered to do the work, I think we should let him do the honors. Once it'd done, we can start adding the missing reprints and other pubs. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:57, 18 December 2022 (EST)

I think it's all done now (just the items I listed above, not any of the new items). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:25, 19 December 2022 (EST)

See here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:28, 19 December 2022 (EST)

Thanks! Ahasuerus (talk) 16:42, 19 December 2022 (EST)

I'll work on the new titles due to publications with a new name. I still have my notes from above. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:28, 19 December 2022 (EST)

Done with these. I did not add new webzines for the archives of magazines where we index the eBook versions (Lightspeed, Nightmare, Uncanny, Clarkesworld). I'm not certain whether we want to add webzines as a separate series (like we do with Lightspeed eBook and print), if we do, it's a larger project than I want to take on at the moment. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 21:58, 19 December 2022 (EST)

Thanks again! Ahasuerus (talk) 12:59, 20 December 2022 (EST)

Markwood, Part II

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Markwood#F.26SF_23.2C_22; Can one of you speak to this man/woman and let them know how books with subtitles are standardized here on this site? Thank you. --Username (talk) 17:39, 16 December 2022 (EST)

Future Is Now

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/File:THFTRSNWEE1970.jpg; This didn't go where it was supposed to, replacing the GIF image someone else uploaded. --Username (talk) 10:38, 17 December 2022 (EST)

File names include the file type. If you load a different file type, it creates a different name. I cleaned things up. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:16, 18 December 2022 (EST)

Death on a Warm Wind

I have updated the publishing date of Death on a Warm Wind, Record # 295745. User Talk for the verifier says he is no longer active. aardvark7 (talk) 12:06, 18 December 2022 (EST)

Dfrank

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Dfrank; I just made an edit on which this person was PV and they haven't left a message since 2014; possibly should have a "no longer active" flag. --Username (talk) 10:58, 22 December 2022 (EST)

FAQ updated

After cleaning up the ISFDB:FAQ to reflect recent-ish changes to transliteration support and other technical issues, I added a new section for author name changes. It reflects what was discussed earlier. Hopefully, having a summary in the FAQ will make it easier to address similar questions in the future. Please let me know if anything in the new section doesn't make sense. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:05, 26 December 2022 (EST)

It's been 4 days since I changed the FAQ and there are no comments, so hopefully the language looks OK.

We have already updated Lee Mandelo's records, so all that remains is to correct the W. C. Roberts/Willis Couvillier situation, which was mentioned earlier. The last linked page currently says:

• Please note that even though W. C. Roberts is the most commonly used name for the author, this account is used as a canonical name due to the wishes of the author.

As mentioned above, I was going to check with Ron Kihara, one of the approving moderators, to see if he recalled any additional details about the change. He doesn't, so we don't have any other information. In the meantime, our records indicate that this author has continued to publish well over 90% of his stories as "W. C. Roberts". I plan to leave a note on User talk:Wcouvillier about the upcoming change. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:51, 30 December 2022 (EST)

I have left a note on User talk:Wcouvillier. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:19, 2 January 2023 (EST)

One small comment. The statement "If the most recognized in-genre name changes, the software connection is changed to use the new name as the canonical name." doesn't seem to me to be accurate. Not sure what is meant with "software connection"? Shouldn't that be "... the publication records are updated to use the new name as the canonical name."? MagicUnk (talk) 08:59, 4 January 2023 (EST)

We don’t change the publication records to use the canonical name (except for interviewees and artists entered based on secondary sources). Using your proposed language implies that we will replace the old name everywhere in all publications - which is not anywhere near to how we handle the issue. We can talk about the title records but even there we don’t change them, we change the connections and their order only. Annie (talk) 09:15, 4 January 2023 (EST)

I suspect that what MagicUnk meant was that we "change the database [i.e. the canonical/alternate name relationships and VT directions] to use the new name as the canonical name" as opposed to "the publication records are updated". Ahasuerus (talk) 12:40, 4 January 2023 (EST)

I suspect so but "publication records are updated to use the new name" is as misleading as we can be - it is the opposite to what we actually do. So I reacted. :) Annie (talk) 15:08, 4 January 2023 (EST)

The reason that I used "the software connection is changed" in the FAQ is that I couldn't think of a better way to summarize the process of linking title and author records without going into technical details which would be out of place in a FAQ. Perhaps "the database connection is changed" would be a better way to put it. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:40, 4 January 2023 (EST)

Why not keep it simple: "If the most recognized in-genre name changes, that name becomes the canonical name of the author and the old canonical name becomes an alternate name."? We defined both terms above so why not just use them. Annie (talk) 15:08, 4 January 2023 (EST)

It seems workable. Perhaps tweak the first part to say something like "that name will be promoted to be the canonical name of the author" to indicate that it will require editing as opposed to happening automatically (via the nightly job or some such)? Ahasuerus (talk) 15:52, 4 January 2023 (EST)

That sounds as automated as "becomes" to me... Maybe just add a "Please note that this process is not automatic. It can be initiated by any editor and the steps are here:" and then link to a new help page which explains all the steps for different cases and title types including sorting out dates (for translations and regular variants), how to deal with the canonical names of artists (aka to change and when to variant) and so on. Annie (talk) 16:29, 4 January 2023 (EST)

A new Help page explaining how to swap an author's canonical name with one of its alternate names is definitely a good idea. We could use the steps that Nihonjoe and Annie listed on 2022-12-16 as the basis. Once we finalize the new Help page, we should be able to update the FAQ. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:58, 4 January 2023 (EST)

(unindent) There has been no response since I posted on the author's Talk page 23 days ago. Hopefully he is OK. The canonical change has been changed from Willis Couvillier to W. C. Roberts. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:40, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Moderator queue tweaked

The recently added table which shows a breakdown of pending submissions by submitter has been updated to displayed a Totals row at the bottom. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:51, 29 December 2022 (EST)

Would it be easy to move that summary table to the top of the queue list? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:31, 29 December 2022 (EST)

I thought it would be more useful at the bottom, but if moderators prefer it up top, I can easily relocate it. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:44, 29 December 2022 (EST)

I think I prefer it at the bottom of the list, but that's not a strong preference and I can go with whatever consensus there is. I very much like having the totals regardless of where they appear. Thanks for adding them. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:34, 29 December 2022 (EST)

I prefer them at the top but either way works and I can live with them at the bottom. Annie (talk) 22:39, 29 December 2022 (EST)

Given the 2-to-1 vote, the summary table has been moved to the top of the page. Let's see how well it works. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:55, 2 January 2023 (EST)

I like it! It's a good summary before plowing into the list. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:17, 3 January 2023 (EST)

A.C. Clarke - The Last Theorem

Hi, I'm in the process of editing this 2009 printing. It contains 3 preambles and 4 postambles. Whilst looking for the pub dates for the 'ambles', I notice on the 1st printings of the hardcovers (2008-08-00) the dates of the preambles are given as 2008-07-00. Is this correct? I can't figure out where the earlier date comes from.

If those dates should be 2008-08-00, is that the date I should use in the 2009 edition, or should I use the first pub date of the 2009 edition. Seems to me I should use the 1st pub date, but I'm asking anyway.

Also, the Amazon listing herefor my 2009 print gives the pub date as 2009-03-05. The full Amazon date is commonly used on ISFDB but what's the current consensus? Thanks, Kev --BanjoKev (talk) 15:06, 4 January 2023 (EST)

The current consensus is to read the help page on dates: over here. :) If the exact date does not contradict the printed date, we use the exact date (so if the book says 2009 or March 2009, we use 2009-03-05 and source it to Amazon; if the book stays February 2009, we use 2009-02-00, even if Amazon says 2009-03-05, and we source it to the book (a note on the Amazon date is a good idea as well).

The 2008-07-00 comes probably from an older date on the original publication that was updated but whoever did it, never bothered to fix the title dates as well - if we do not have a book with a 2008-07-00 date and none is known to exist, they need adjusting... If you use the same titles, they will use the original dates. If you need to use new title records (for change of title, author or language/translator), you use the date of the first publication under that specific title/author/language (and translator). Annie (talk) 15:15, 4 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks Annie, that's the clearest explanation I've seen yet on the use of Amazon dates - much clearer than the Help page. The rest of your comment covers everything neatly! Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 15:30, 4 January 2023 (EST)

Careful with old books though - this is valid for new books only (anything pre-2005 or thereabouts is suspect as these are usually second hand records). 2009 is close to that but Amazon was up and running well by then so as long as you use the date from the proper Amazon, it is usable (UK books in Amazon.co.uk, US ones on Amazon.com and so on). Make sure the notes say both what Amazon and the book say (contradicting or not so someone who finds the record knows that for example March 2009 comes from the book and just the date is from Amazon or that just the year is from the book). And that applies for Amazon, publisher sites, contemporary reviews, blogs - any exact dates we can find that are reliable to some extent. :) Annie (talk) 15:40, 4 January 2023 (EST)

Publisher Merge updated

Post-submission pages for moderator-only Publisher Merge submissions have been updated. They now correctly display embedded HTML and properly link to third-party Web sites.

6 more post-submission pages to go, including the three heavy hitters: NewPub, EditPub and ClonePub/AddPub. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:23, 4 January 2023 (EST)

Author Merge post-submission pages improved

Post-submission pages for moderator-only Author Merge submissions have been updated. They now correctly display embedded HTML and properly link to third-party Web sites. 5 more post-submission pages to go. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:11, 5 January 2023 (EST)

corrections/additions

I have the following corrections/additions for a moderator to add (sorry, not good at this myself)

• Paul Finch, Terror Tales of the Home Counties, both the tp and Ebook dates should be 2020, NOT 2021
  • per the Telos webpage and Amazon
• Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Music Hath Charms (2020), should be in Chapel Hollow series
  • see author's intro to story, plus read this myself
• Chris Mason, The Stars Fell (2021) (novel)
  • this is a different Chris Mason than for all of the other entries, the anthology and stories are all by the Australian Chris Mason
  • the novel is by the USA Chris Mason if you google "Chris Mason The Stars Fell Mississippi" the first entry notes him as a native of Jackson, Mississippi to confirm this
• R. B. Russell, Strawberries and Cream (Gleam, 2019) this story is NOT his, this is a different Elizabeth Brown
  • I emailed Ray (RB) Russell, he states that he retired his Elizabeth Brown pseudonym many years ago, all of the other Elizabeth Brown entries on the RB Russell page are correct
  • this is almost certainly written by Elizabeth Brown (IV), when I look in Galaxy #3 where E Brown #!V only current isfdb listed story "Honey" was published, the intro states she has had stories published "in other Clarendon House anthologies" Gleam is a Clarendon House anthology, there is no free access to her story Gleam
• Lavid Tidhar, The Drowned God’s Heresy (2020) is a Gorel story (see 2nd paragraph of story)
• Liz Williams, Sungrazer (The Book of Magic, 2018) is a prequel to the Comet Weather novels
  • https://milfordsfwriters.wordpress.com/2020/05/05/liz-williams-comet-weather-interview/
• also her novel Embertide (NewCon Press, Jun 21, 2022) is the third novel in the Comet Weather series

Thanks for this Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

I have applied list formatting to the above to make the different items easier to follow. Thank you for identifying these. I will make the necessary changes. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:39, 8 January 2023 (EST)

All changes made. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:03, 8 January 2023 (EST)

Steve Duffy, Finding Yourself in the Dark toc

Here is the TOC for the 2021 Steve Duffy collection Finding Yourself in the Dark this can be confirmed on the Sarob Press blog: 14, March 2021 originals starred Chambers of the Heart (Supernatural Tales 40)

• The Other Four O'Clock
• The Last House on Mullible Street
• The Villa Morozov

The Clay Party (The Werewolf Pack, 2008) No Passage Landward (Supernatural Tales 41) Even Clean Hands Can Do Damage (Supernatural Tales 30)

• A Day at the Hotel Radium

Bears: A Fairy-Tale of 1958 (Little Visible Delight, 2013) The Ice Beneath Us (Uncertainties, Volume II) The Purple-Tinted Window (Supernatural Tales 21) The God of Storage Options (Supernatural Tales 42)

thank you —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

Contents added. Thank you. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:09, 8 January 2023 (EST)

Steve Duffy, Finding Yourself in the Dark story dates

My apologies, should have included the year published for the 4 stories in the Steve Duffy Finding Yourself collection listed as year unknown. Please add the year published:

• Chambers of the Heart, Supernatural Tales 40, Summer 2019
• No Passage Landward, Supernatural Tales 41, Autumn 2019
• The Purple-Tinted Window, Supernatural Tales 21, Summer 2012
• The God of Storage Options, Supernatural Tales 42, Winter 2019-2020 published in 2019

Thanks again! Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

Updated. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:35, 10 January 2023 (EST)

A Circus of Hells

I have come across a version of A Circus of Hells by Poul Anderson not in the data base. You can find it on eBay both US and UK. There are plenty of pictures. It has an ISBN of 0-451-15113-5 Also a tag of AE5113 and a price of $2.95 US and $3.95 Canada. The vendor says the book says Copyright 1970. It has, what I am told, a very rare Tim Hildebrandt cover. Not sure what to do with it since the ISBN already exists and the version in the data base says 1988 4th printing (Record 343). Goodreads shows ISBN 0-451-15113-5 being published May 1, 1970 but by ROC, it does not show a cover. ISBN Search does the same. It can be found at www.ebay.com/itm/125594585270?hash=item1d3e0548b6:g:nzUAAOSwAxZjY-Ww&amdata=enc%3AAQAHAAAAoKrbz98NB7JNkUUO05wUjzjnSkKfh8sdjNSorItVZEhok4RAdnItA8Xofzv68%2FboeRgEG3sb4QDbv64KwrHQK%2F45MQTS6wmFCZuFfAQuw8hYtJGe%2FRUqs7qsc2anHPd7H%2BPENFreXATFyewh5vdAZJMUZYBQyplW4NQdHqj%2Bx18%2BS5V%2FxuCYUMk7rGTf1cnL3GtRxtwBaEA5MmGaSpgT4B8%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR8SohoOzYQ.

I also found it on Etsy where they show the interior showing Copyright 1970 by Pol Anderson, First Printing May 1970. With the same Hildebrandt cover.

www.etsy.com/listing/1318714938/a-circus-of-hells-poul-anderson-vintage?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_-books_movies_and_music-domestic_med&utm_custom1=_k_48265362d7dd14f2c35d30dea9430cc4_k_&utm_content=bing_412372832_1304021088340600_81501381743197_pla-4585100933176896:pla-4585100933176896_c__1318714938&utm_custom2=412372832&msclkid=48265362d7dd14f2c35d30dea9430cc4 Help I need guidance!!! aardvark7 (talk) 15:45, 9 January 2023 (EST)

I hate to disappoint you, but the version you found is already in the database here, only with the wrong cover illustration. The 'Copyright 1970' is for the first Signet printing, the fourth printing was published in 1988 (verified on Locus1. Also $2.95 would have been an outrageous price for 1970). The price they dare to ask ($400.00) is outrageous though, and I doubt it is so rare. There's another copy for sale on eBay here for $7.95

So the only thing to do is replace the cover illustration and add the Tim Hildebrandt credit (there's a signature at the bottom). Hope that helps. --Willem (talk) 10:24, 10 January 2023 (EST)

Yep, thats the copy I was seeing in the data base. I have a garbage version of the Hildebrandt cover, but I found a copy on Etsy for $6 and hope to have in a week or so. I will scan that cover and upload it. The cover was also used as one of the Flight of Fantasy cards put out by Tim Hildebrandt titled Demon Flight. aardvark7 (talk) 12:00, 10 January 2023 (EST)

R. B. Russell corrections

The following stories should be moved to the R. B. Russell page, again from email discussion with RB Russell (one of these stories is already on the RB Russell page) 2 stories from Ray Russell (1924-1999) Company (2009) Mathilde (2011) this should be combined with the Mathilde entry already on the R. B. Russell page

the one story under Ray B. Russell (Delicate Cutters) R. B. Russell states this is his story, does not need a separate page

Thanks again Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

Changes made. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:41, 10 January 2023 (EST)

one last Steve Duffy correction

for Steve Duffy: the duplicate entries for the story "Bears: A Fairy-Tale of 1958" need to be combined (one is "Fairy Tale" and one is "Fairy-Tale", but same story) Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

Change made. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:34, 12 January 2023 (EST)

James White / Hospital Station

I am editing and PVing Hospital Station - Ballantine fourth printing. The story on page 84 is titled "Trouble with Emily" but the Contents section of the pub record has "The Trouble with Emily" so I will correct it. This pub has been PVd twice but both PVs are inactive hence this post. Teallach (talk) 16:15, 13 January 2023 (EST)

Baxter - Voyage... the essay 'Lost Mars'

I'm trying to resolve the titling for this essay; see Baxter's Author Record # 102 - find 'lost mars'. Dirk and I agree that the 3 entries there (Afterword: Lost Mars / Afterword: Lost Mars (Voyage) / and Lost Mars) are all the same essay. A few of the pub records show PVs no longer active. What, if anything can I do to sort this? Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 13:00, 14 January 2023 (EST)

I have the UK 1st ed hc of Voyage. This pub has three PVs, all inactive (I'll get round to PVing it myself... one day). In this pub, the afterword is titled: "Afterword" [over] "Lost Mars". It starts: "In our world, Challenger was the name..." and ends: "... walked on Mars at Mangala Vallis in 1986." It is 5.75 large hc pages long. I hope this assists you in resolving whether all the afterwords are the same. Teallach (talk) 16:40, 14 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks Teallach, that's one of the four inactive PV pubs accounted for exactly. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 17:10, 14 January 2023 (EST)

I have the second printing of the HarperPrism paperback. The afterword is titled "Lost Mars", and is definitely the same as Teallach described. I made the later versions variants of the first (perhaps the title of the first appearance is wrong, but unfortunately there are no active verifiers). Result is here. Thanks for finding this! --Willem (talk) 08:32, 16 January 2023 (EST)

I think that's the best that can be done under the circumstances. Thanks for sorting that out Willem. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 21:26, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Password problems

Hi,

before Christmas I have created a new account (DieFliege) and have added new data. But unfortunately I forgot my password. I have tried to reset the password but I have received no email. And there is no chance to send an email without being logged in. So, I have created another account (Pinudeycos) to be able to send you this message. That's not good organized! Please reset my password of the account DieFliege. My email address ist zukoe@ok.de.

Regards, Erich —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Pinudeycos (talk • contribs) . 15:31, 14 January 2023 (EST)

I am sorry I missed this request when it was posted a week ago. Investigating... Ahasuerus (talk) 11:43, 22 January 2023 (EST)

Here is what I have found in the database:

• User account DieFliege does exist.
• It has one primary verification and two submissions (5518038 - canceled and 5518327 - approved) associated with it.
• The user account DieFliege has no email address associated with it. It makes recovering the password safely impossible since we have no address to send a new password to.
• User account Pinudeycos is associated with the email address listed above.

Given the evidence, it is quite likely that the two accounts are indeed owned by the same person, but it's not a 100% guarantee. It would be unsafe to start resetting passwords based on circumstantial evidence.

Since "DieFliege" has only one approved submission and one primary verification, I would suggest using "Pinudeycos" from this point on. It has an email address on file, so its password can be reset if the need ever arises again. Sorry about the hassle! Ahasuerus (talk) 13:06, 22 January 2023 (EST)

Thank you, I will use my new account Pinudeycos for further additions.

R. B. Russell and Rosalie Parker additions

I have been in email contact with R. B. Russell and he appreciates the updates/corrections on his page. He has sent some requests to be added to his and Rosalie Parker's ISFDB pages if possible for R. B. Russell

1. If there is a category for Novellas, then Bloody Baudelaire (2009), The Dark Return of Time (2014) and The Stones Are Singing (2016) were hardback publications. (Bloody Baudelaire is listed as a chapbook, which it wasn't.)
2. Novels: Can we add Heaven's Hill, published by Zagava (2021)? ISBN 978-3-949341-15-1, hardback, 326 pages
3. Under non-fiction, can we add the following (all have fantastic content that fit the isfdb remit): (all written by R. R. Russell
   • Robert Aickman, An Attempted Biography, Tartarus Press, 2021 (ISBN 978-1-912586-36-3, hardback, 396 + vi pps)
   • Past Lives of Old Books, Tartarus Press, 2020. (ISBN 978-1-912586-23-3, hardback, 282 pages)
   • Occult Territory: An Arthur Machen Gazetteer, Tartarus Press, 2019 (ISBN 978-1-912586-14-1, hardback, 272+xiv pages)
   • Fifty Forgotten Books, And Other Stories, 2022, (ISBN 9781913505509, paperback, 256 pages)
4. for Rosalie Parker, under collections'
   • Sparks from the Fire by Rosalie Parker, 2018, Swan River Press, collection of short stories, hardback, ISBN 978-1-78380-023-0, 40 Euros., 201 pages. here is a TOC for this collection from the Swan River website
     • “The Bronze Statuette”
     • “The Fell Race”
     • “View from a Window”
     • “Holiday Reading”
     • “Sparks from the Fire”
     • “The Birdcage”
     • “Tour Guide”
     • “Wing Man”
     • “Jetsam”
     • “Writers’ Retreat”
     • “House Party”
     • “Job Start”
     • “Productivity”
     • “Voluntary Work”
     • “Messages”
     • “Entitlement”
     • “War Games”
     • “The Attempt”
     • “Breath of Life”
     • “Acknowledgements”

also, The Old Knowledge & Other Strange Tales was reprinted as a hardback 2nd edition by Swan River Press in 2012. and again, thanks for your time on these matters Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) . 17:35, 15 January 2023 (EST)

Regarding the Bloody Baudelaire chapbook, at ISFDB we classify as CHAPBOOK any short fiction that is published by itself, with no other content. So, if a novella (as in this case) is published as a book all by itself, it is considered a CHAPBOOK title type on ISFDB. Please see this page for more details on that.

The Dark Return of Time is considered a short novel (more than 40k words), and is therefore listed here as a NOVEL title type. Same for The Stones Are Singing.

I'll see about adding the other titles you mention. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:23, 16 January 2023 (EST)

Okay, I've added Heaven's Hill, Robert Aickman: An Attempted Biography, Past Lives of Old Books, Occult Territory: An Arthur Machen Gazetteer, Fifty Forgotten Books, Sparks from the Fire, and the second edition of The Old Knowledge & Other Strange Tales. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:07, 16 January 2023 (EST)

Add story credit to my page

Please add to the page of Joseph P. Kervin:

• "And Who is to Say, 'Is Redemption not Divine?'"

  Shadow Dance (magazine )Number 11, February 1994.

  Editor, Michelle Belanger

  44 pages

  $3.00

  digest size

  Cover: Kimberlee Traub

Thank you, Joseph P. Kervin —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Joseph P. Kervin (talk • contribs) . 20:54, 15 January 2023 (EST)

This has been done. See here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:50, 20 January 2023 (EST)

Genre help wanted

I've uploaded a shortfiction piece. It's in three files 1 here, 2 here and 3 here. Would you judge it genre or non-genre? Sorry for the poor quality.Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 00:53, 20 January 2023 (EST)

Sure, it's genre: a well-known stone-age family transported into our days it is. A nice find! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:12, 20 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks Christian for that verdict! I'll get on it. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 13:35, 20 January 2023 (EST)

Cleanup Reports

I'm working on the Cleanup Reports for a while. Now I found in the section English Titles with non-Latin characters and without Transliterated Titles several titles that apparent don't need any transliteration or whose necessity is not apparent to me. I don't mean foreign alphabets. Some titles also have apostrophes. What shall I do in this case? --Zapp (talk) 07:38, 22 January 2023 (EST)

This is a bit more complicated than it looks at first glance. Let's use Carl Sandburg's How They Bring Back the Village of Cream Puffs When the Wind Blows It Away⁠ as an example. The title looks OK, but if you pull up the raw data behind the Web page -- Control-U in most browsers -- and search for "Title:", you will find that there is a &#8288 at the end of the title. It's an invisible word joiner Unicode character, which is used to format text in documents. Similarly, P'ei Hsing's Sun K'о looks like it uses the Latin alphabet, but the last letter is actually "&#1086", the Cyrillic "o".

The proper steps to take are different depending on the scenario. When the wrong alphabet is used, e.g. a Cyrillic character instead of a Latin character as in the "Sun K'o" example above, we just need to enter the correct character and the problem will go away. On the other hand, if you come across invisible characters and uncommon Unicode punctuation (Unicode has a lot of special characters for apostrophes, spaces, etc), please post you findings here. We have a special software module which automatically converts Unicode oddities to standard punctuation and strips invisible characters at data entry time. It's not comprehensive because Unicode is huge, with thousands of supported characters, so I need to update the software every time we come across something new.

I am going to review this report later today and see what I can do to update the software. Thanks for reporting the problem! Ahasuerus (talk) 10:26, 22 January 2023 (EST)

I have added the two offending Unicode characters to the list of characters that we auto-translate and fixed the data. I've also fixed the Latin/Cyrillic confusion. Never a dull moment :-) Ahasuerus (talk) 11:42, 22 January 2023 (EST)

I see, thank You. --Zapp (talk) 15:58, 22 January 2023 (EST)

R. B. Russell and Rosalie Parker small corrections

The R. B. Russell novel Heaven's Hill entry has 2 almost identical entries, one has the page count and one has the price. These entries should be combined. This should eliminate the 2 bibliographic warnings. For the TOC for the Rosalie Parker collection Sparks from the Fire, the entry for the story "House Party" has a superfluous "11" this should be deleted. Thanks again, Roger —The preceding unsigned comment was added by RogerSSS (talk • contribs) .

The Heaven's Hill publication records have the note "Publisher's website uses the same ISBN for both the limited numbered edition and the limited leatherbound edition." As these are two different editions, we have separate records even though they have the same ISBN. Looking at the the publisher pages, they only list the page count for one of the editions; hence only one record has a page count.

For Sparks from the Fire, the 11 was a page sort that was missing the | symbol (which causes the number to not show). I added that. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:04, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Urania Help

I need help, information & guidance. I recently added 3 Urania Collezione issues (Pub records 931803, 931815 & 931818). However I see that if I ask the DB to call up the series publication Urania Collezione, these issues are not there (Pub. Series Record # 1632) Instead they are listed under Series Record # 29322. To me this means that either I have done something wrong, or there is something else I need to do. I originally entered these as a new collection since the others in Pub. Series Record # 1632 were also Collections. Help me Obi-Wan. aardvark7 (talk) 09:12, 25 January 2023 (EST)

You entered 'Urania Collezione' and the related #'s in the Title Data Series and Series num. You should have enter them in the Publication Data Pub series and Pub series #.

Two edits will be required to fix each publication.

1. Title: City - Edit the title record removing the Series and Series Number.
2. Publication: City - Edit the publication record and enter the information in the Pub Series and Pub Series Number.

Follow the same procedure for the other two. John Scifibones 11:06, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Title Merge problems

I cancelled this submission because when I clicked the submit merge button the result was the exact opposite of the selection I wanted to keep; keep showing as DropId [3131671]. I've tried several times with the same result. Also tried merging 4 Arthur Clarke title records (all slightly different) and KeepId turned out to be one I didn't want to keep - if all that makes sense! Any ideas what's going wrong?

Have a look at this current submission where the same thing has happened. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2023 (EST)

When merging, ignore the record number. Pay attention to the highlighted fields. The software will always store the resulting merge in the lowest record number. This submission is the reverse of what we want. Here is the merge for 'The Second Preamble'. I'll cancel my submission after I process yours (note: there is no pub date 2008-07-00). Does this help? I'll fix any punctuation or case problems post merge. John Scifibones 20:18, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks for your answer John, but can I ask you not to fix after merge so I can see and learn from it. I did see that the 2008-07-00 didn't exist and would select the 2008-08-00. The 'lowest number' bit I wasn't aware of. I thought the retained title is the title in the green field and not the red, but looking at your Second Preamble, the title to keep, "The Second Preamble: Frederik Pohl says: (The Last Theorem)", is neither the lowest record number nor the 'green field'. I guess I'll just have to pay attention to the radio buttons and hope for the best :) Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:56, 25 January 2023 (EST)

In case it's useful, see How merge works in the help. --MartyD (talk) 08:56, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Absolutely on point, thanks for that Marty. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 09:07, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Now I see your confusion. "(The Last Theorem)" at the end of the titles is the disambiguation. This is unnecessary and we want to remove it! John Scifibones 21:02, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Now, that has nailed it, I have been working on so many "Introduction by Joe Schmoe (book title)" that I overlooked that there's no ambiguity with any of these Last Theorem essays. Doh! I also now understand what you meant on Pete Young's page where you referred to "The sixth title just needs a simple edit". Well, another happy customer, thanks for your help.

Submitted 5 merges and 1 edit for all "The Last Theorem" essays. I think that covers everything. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 21:49, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Magic. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 22:03, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Well done, thanks for cleaning this up. I have two more picky points; you asked me not to edit anything. We have one case violation and two missing lengths. Will you take care of them? John Scifibones 22:13, 25 January 2023 (EST)

Submitted 1 case and 2 lengths. Something's not quite right with the Serbian translation titles. The translation linkage seems to be working but not the varianting. Hints please, I'm not familiar with translations, although I note that the translations help says they have to be varianted. On the Serbian titles pages the variants are showing, but not as variants on the English titles. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 00:17, 26 January 2023 (EST)

(unindent) Kev, They are displaying correctly. Check 'My Preferences' under the 'Logged In As' navigation menu. Make sure 'Display translations on Title pages' is checked and 'Display translations on Author and Series pages:' is set to All. I don't believe this is the default setting. John Scifibones 08:28, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Great! That gives me what I was looking for. I was having problems getting the right combination of settings. Many thanks. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 08:55, 26 January 2023 (EST)

Urania Millemondi

I recently added a new series book Urania Millemondi #80 pub record 932195 How do I get Gardner Dozois to be listed as Editor?? I didn't see this option anywhere. aardvark7 (talk) 09:35, 27 January 2023 (EST)

By marking it correctly as an anthology and not as a collection. Done now: here :) A few things here though:

• Look at the other Uranias and make sure this does not need to be entered as a magazine (Italian magazines are a bit... confusing). See this series and the other Urania series.
• "Those Shadows Laugh as "Quelle ombre ridono" " - is the title printed like that in the magazine or is it from your source(s)? If your source, it is VERY likely that the title in the magazine is Quelle ombre ridono and the rest is just the source way to show what had been translated. If so, the titles you have are incorrect
• I changed that Introduction to an essay and added the title of the book into the title as we always do with essays with common titles - all non-fiction parts on fiction books are called essays and not non-fiction.
• Where is 2016-00-00 coming from for the stories? We date variants per their own first publication NOT with the date of the original story. So we need the source showing that these stories were published in Italian in these translations in 2016. Annie (talk) 10:49, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Hi Annie. I was basing it on the Urania Collezione series. I have also come across some Urania that are not here. Still looking on how they are done.

The Italian titles come from both Mondourania & Urania Mania. The Urania Mania source also gives the English Title and date. Uraniamania.com is odd in that you have to find the Book name (Urania Millemondi) then find the book number. However the web page stays the same so you can't link directly to it.

The English title as Itialian title I did based on a Urania Collezione that had been entered by someone else. I did it this for both this item and a Urania Collezione that I entered.

will do it anyway folks want, I just need guidance. There are lots of other Urania Millemondi items out there. aardvark7 (talk) 11:56, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Yeah, the titles are almost 100% not printed like that in the magazine and we should be using just the Italian titles and NOT the abomination we have now as a title (and they need varianting - I assume you are working on that, together with adding the notes on the translator in each story)?). Same with the dates - unless you have a source for the date for that story in Italian (and you need to add it as a note into the record once created), use the date of the book. Can you show me the other book where you saw this kind of titles?

I'd advise not to add another one until we sort this one out completely so you can have the correct process and add the next one with less required changes post-approval :) Annie (talk) 12:28, 27 January 2023 (EST)

I am not having any luck find that book yet. I will let you know when I do. As to varinating, from what you said, I am guessing that a book can be a variant of more than one?? Just looking, my Urania Collezione #200 looks to have a number of stories that appear elsewhere.

An easy one is my Urania Collezione #221. It has only one story Luna chiama Terra... that is a translation of High Vacuum. High Vacuum is Title Record 8422. Luna Chiama Terra... is title record 3135055. So for that record I would hit Make this title a variant. In Option 1 I would enter the parent# as 8422 and Link to existing parent, correct??

Each story gets varianted to its own parent. See this one for an example. Incidentally, this is also a good example of how we handle Urania - a magazine with a collection/anthology inside of it. The Italian magazines are... interesting. I will look again over the weekend to see if we may need to convert that to a magazine to match everything else. :) Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

So actually in Urania Collezione #200 I would not link this , but link to stories to their Original title parent instead, like I think I do for the above example, correct??

Yes - each title gets linked to what it is a translation of. Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

And I assume as I was linking these, first I would change (as an example) Trouble With Time as "Problemi di Tempo" back to Problemi di Tempo. Do this for all the stories first, then start linking (varinating) after these have their correct names.

Yep. While you are there and editing the title, add also a note with the TR template (each story needs to have one). Unless you change the titles with a Publication edit - in which case you still need Title Edit to add the translator. Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Uraniamania shows all of the titles and such in the book, the page they are found on, their original title and original pub date. So the dates should come out too, correct?, as these dates don't match the date of the book.

Nope. The original date is the date of the original in whatever language it is published in, not of the translation. Translations and variants are dated based on their own publication histories. Use the date of the book for these unless you can add a note with the name of the book/magazine where the ITALIAN edition was published first. Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Sorry I bounced around, I have entered 3 or 4 Urania Collezione and the one Urania Millemondi so I have work to do. Also it was only recently I found the page/title/date info on uraniamania (have to hit a tab and the site is in Italian) and I have have to update some. aardvark7 (talk) 15:10, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Comments above. Annie (talk) 16:52, 27 January 2023 (EST)

As an FYI, I entered my Urania Collezione as Collections as all of the others were that way. As far as I can tell, my Urania Millemondi #80 is the first one of this series. If you don't decide to change it to a magazine, anthology makes sence to me.

Also I was going to variant out my Urania Collezione #157, City book, but I'm confused. There are two records for City, both share a large number of covers. One is Title Record # 23788 listed as a collection and the other is Title Record # 41546 listed as short fiction. I am thinking my version goes under Title Record # 23788 as it is the collection, not just the short story City. Oh and I checked, Nither mondourania or Uraniamania breakdown City into its parts.aardvark7 (talk) 10:01, 28 January 2023 (EST)

Artist Credit on Harvest Home paperback by Thomas Tryon

The listing for the paperback edition of Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?293925) incorrectly credits Melvyn Grant as the cover artist. I know that Grant is credited as the cover artist in the book Paperbacks From Hell, but the credit is wrong. The actual artist is William Maughan. I have attached a file showing comparisons of Maughan's signature on Harvest Home and The Infernal Device with Melvyn Grant's signature from the cover of The Black Mountains by Fred Saberhagen. I have also attached images to show the difference in Maughan and Grant's art styles. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Batlash (talk • contribs) . 10:17, 27 January 2023‎ (EST)

• 
• 
• 

  Comparing signatures of William Maughan and Melvyn Grant

Don Erikson is the PV for that pub, and he's not currently active here. I agree with your assessment and have made the change. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:13, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Terra SF II: The Year's Best European SF / Karl-Michael Armer -> Karl-Michaël Armer

These edits https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5552335 and https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5552334 seem to be stuck. I see no messages on my talk page. Is there an issue, or a better way to approach this? --Glenn (talk) 15:53, 27 January 2023 (EST)

It looks like you are removing the title in one submission, then adding it back in the other one. Since the only difference is that you're trying to change from "Karl-Michael Armer" to "Karl-Michaël Armer" (basically adding an umlaut), both submissions need to be rejected (which I've now done). Currently, the database software doesn't distinguish between characters like "e" and "ë". That will probably change in the future once UTF-8 is fully integrated into the database, but for now we simply treat them as identical. I have modified his legal name to include the umlaut, though. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:22, 27 January 2023 (EST)

Request: merging two author pages

Hello Mods, I would like to put a request in to merge the pages for author "J.D. Scott" under "JD Scott." I can confirm they are the same author, because I am the same author (and I use "JD" without the periods). Thank you so much.

PS: I just discovered this wonderful resource this week! This is completely awesome, and I hope to contribute more soon. —The preceding unsigned comment added by Jdscott (talk • contribs) 20:18, January 31, 2023‎

I corrected the author attribution for your story in Gingerbread House Literary Magazine, May 2017. Thanks for alerting us to the error. John Scifibones 23:24, 31 January 2023 (EST)

Merging Interview and Essay in House Carfax

JLaTondre is working on House Carfax issues today which I added links to a while back; I merged Pavey's story "Boo-Hoo Forest" in a (pending) edit but got a message saying interview can't be merged with any other type (although when I tried to link that error page here it said something different, "can't merge two types" or something like that, why words changed I don't know) when I tried to merge the Joan Schramm interview/essay re: Clive Barker, so J as a mod probably knows why that is and can merge them himself. I would have asked this on his board but I get an archive page ending in 2022. --Username (talk) 12:59, 11 February 2023 (EST)

Charles de Lint / Moonheart: A Romance

Could a moderator please look at the discussions here:Philfreund and here:GlennMcG and advise me which of "Moonheart" or "Moonheart: A Romance" would be better as the canonical title. Teallach (talk) 18:47, 14 February 2023 (EST)

We don't have a policy. The spirit of "canonical" is that it's the best-known/most popular form. Especially where the subtitle is not actually any sort of title, I'd let prevalence dictate and, if neither is more prevalent, then go with the first appearance. --MartyD (talk) 08:28, 19 February 2023 (EST)

Pratchett & Gaiman / Good Omens

I am editing and PVing Good Omens
Only PV is inactive, hence this post. I propose to:
1) correct title to "Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch" as per title page
2) correct page count to 383
3) correct price to £4.99
4) upload and link cover scan
5) Import content and Coverart record
6) add explanatory pub notes about all this
Because of the different price, my original thought was to create a new pub record for a second 1992 printing. However, the pub records for later PVd Corgi printings such as this 1994 one indicate there is only one 1992 printing. I am aware that publishers' printing histories are sometimes erroneous but I think it is much more likely that the existing 1992 pub record is incorrect, particularly as the record is so skeletal and the verifier PVd it without making any edits. If I hear no objections within one week I'll proceed with the edit. However, if a moderator thinks it's better to create a new record then please let me know here. Teallach (talk) 18:58, 16 February 2023 (EST)

Changing it seems good to me. It looks like the data is just a copy of the record for the 1991 edition. As long as you're making yourself a verifier, I recommend making the changes to match your book and dropping a note about what you did on the inactive PVer's talk page. --MartyD (talk) 09:40, 17 February 2023 (EST)

Will do. Yes, I also thought the pub record looked like a copy and paste job. Thanks. Teallach (talk) 14:13, 17 February 2023 (EST)

Changing Publishers

Re: https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Rtrace#Dark_Music, is there a way a mod can do something so that when a publisher's name is changed whatever info may be in its record will stay the same? A bug fix or something, since I assume it's not supposed to happen and must be a bug? --Username (talk) 10:53, 22 February 2023 (EST)

When you edit a publication and change the name of the publisher from one thing to another, the software interprets that action as "not that publisher, this one". It removes the existing publisher link and makes a new link using the newly-supplied name, just as if you had entered the publication from scratch. It is not a change to the publisher record itself. Why the software implements that behavior is more obvious if you consider changing a publication's publisher from "Doubleday" to "Baen". You wouldn't want that to edit the "Doubleday" record's name. The software does not know your intent. So editing the publisher on the publication switches publishers. Editing the publisher record changes the details of the publisher. This same behavior is true for author credits. Adding to that, the drop-a-reference behavior is such that if the last reference to a publisher record (or author record) is removed, the now-orphan record is deleted automatically, and any information on that record is lost. --MartyD (talk) 08:44, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Atheneum publisher.

I've been having a discussion with Philfreund in regard to the publisher Atheneum. I picked up a copy of 'Ware Hawk. But there seems to be a dispute in regards to what constitues a publisher and a publication series. My copy has "A Margaret K. McElderry Book" on front flap of dustwrapper and on title page and copyright page. Also on copyright page under this is "An Argo Book" with the Argo logo on the spine. So should both "Argo Books" and "Margaret K. McElderry Book" be publication series ?--Mavmaramis (talk) 13:55, 23 February 2023 (EST)

The "A/An XXX Book" often indicates that the book is out by the XXX imprint of that publisher. Not sure what we need to do with this one but just as a note: we can only have one publication series per book so it cannot be both in the DB (we have a template to add the second in case we ever add support for multiple pub series).

PS: I'd argue that with ""A Margaret K. McElderry Book" on the title page, this should actually be in this publisher: Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum... Annie (talk) 14:02, 23 February 2023 (EST)

There is no Publisher Series set for 'Ware Hawk. What do we do about the Argo Book logo that's also on the title page? This pub has "Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum" as the publisher and "Argo" as the publisher series but it's also the only pub in the DB that has Argo as the publisher series. Phil (talk) 15:51, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Look at the rest of the books which should have Argo as a pub series and talk to their PVs if any? :) I'd do Argo as a pub series if I was adding the book most likely. Not all sources will have all the data so our data may be a bit fragmented - because they were missing data or because we did not copy the data over. And sometimes it requires some juggling and conversations to sort out what is a publisher, what is an imprint and what is just a pub series. Whichever way you go, document the decision (possibly even with a note about the spine/cover) in the pub series and/or publisher note.

Alternatively, if we decide that Argo is actually an imprint, we probably need a "Argo / Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum" record. I'll do some digging to see if I can find some information about Argo in this case - Pub series and imprints can be very hard to untangle and in some cases, we do our best to guess and then just keep it consistent.

I also hope someone else who has a better idea of the publisher in these years will chime in. Annie (talk) 16:09, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Looking deeper into this, it's not even clear that the use of "An Argo Book" is correct in the existing publisher records. That phrasing only seems to be used in the LCC description. The 'Ware Hawk title page and dust cover only show a rectangle containing a capital A over the word "Argo" which would lead me to believe that the correct name would be simply "Argo". Phil (talk) 13:10, 24 February 2023 (EST)

"A/An XXX Book" should always be recorded here as just "XXX" IMO - the series/publisher is XXX, the rest is just a way to say that it is a book from that series/publisher. Even when that spelling is on a title/copyright page. Kind of how "illustarted by", "Illustrations:" and so on can prefix the artist... Annie (talk) 13:13, 24 February 2023 (EST)

(Outdent) After thinking about it, I think the correct publisher should be "Argo / Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum". Is there any way for a moderator to change the publisher name here to that? This publisher and this publisher would need the same change for the Argo portion. Phil (talk) 15:57, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Yes, we can change the publisher name once we decide what to use. However, I think Argo should be a pub series - I cannot find any indication anywhere online that Argo was ever an imprint, let alone an imprint of an imprint. Annie (talk) 16:49, 25 February 2023 (EST)

I'm fine with that. Can you merge two publishers? "An Argo Book / Atheneum" becoming simply "Atheneum" will be the headache if not since there are currently 75 publications under that publisher. The other impacted publisher names only have 3 or 4 publications each. Phil (talk) 18:30, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Yes, publishers can be merged. Let’s give everyone else a few more days to post an opinion (and I will do more digging) and then I’ll merge or rename based on the decision. Annie (talk) 18:39, 25 February 2023 (EST)

Now that I've thought a little further, a merge won't be useful since we'll have to add Argo as a publisher series for each of those publications anyway. Phil (talk) 19:39, 25 February 2023 (EST)

I'm holding submissions to change publisher and remove pub series for this one pending a resolution here. P.S. I think it is correct as is. John Scifibones 10:44, 28 February 2023 (EST)

Also holding this edit for the same above reason. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 11:27, 28 February 2023 (EST) And the following: 1, 2, 3 and 4. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 16:50, 2 March 2023 (EST)

What a challenge it is getting Atheneum publications correct. I just looked at my PVd Susan Cooper books and found that I needed to change the publisher from "Aladdin / Atheneum" to "Aladdin / Margaret K. McElderry / Atheneum" since both are imprints and both are on the title pages. Phil (talk) 12:49, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Welcome to the glamorous world of imprints. We really need a better system to connect pieces and imprints... :) Annie (talk) 12:51, 1 March 2023 (EST)

Missing Grazer

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5587838; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?359518. I'm not sure what happened here. He does exist. --Username (talk) 20:34, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Delete images

Could someone please delete these three images - they're no longer required image1 image2 image3. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 21:57, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Deleted, John Scifibones 22:04, 23 February 2023 (EST)

Thanks John. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 22:19, 23 February 2023 (EST)

The A to Z of Zelazny

Hello ISFDB Moderators,

Thank you very much for adding the Interzone #294 listing.

About the Alexander Glass essay 'A is for Amber', could The A to Z of Zelazny be used as the title of the series? And 'A is for Amber' as the first in that series?

Although it isn't stated in the magazine, 'A is for Amber' is the first in a planned series of 26 essays ('B is for...' and 'C is for...' are in hand coming in IZ 295 and IZ 296; 'D is for...' is on its way). If it could be set up in the same way as Folded Spaces and Climbing Stories, that would be excellent. (But if you need to wait for the second to appear, I completely understand.)

Cheers,

Gareth Jelley --Interzone (talk) 13:15, 26 February 2023 (EST)

We enter the title as per the pub. As this is a verified pub, I have asked the verifier (MagicUnk) to take a look at this conversation and respond. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:54, 26 February 2023 (EST)

Done. Have a look. MagicUnk (talk) 03:07, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Thank you so much, MagicUnk. It looks great. --Interzone (talk) 06:54, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Asimov - The Caves of Steel

I've established from my copy that these two pubs are the same book: date unknown and 1971. I want to keep the latter but then in deleting the former, we lose the inactive PV. Would that be ok, and is there anything else I need to consider? Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 10:31, 25 February 2023 (EST)

How can you tell the PVed one is the same printing? If you can indeed establish that for a fact, I recommend you keep it and fix it up and delete the other one, even though the record for the un-verified one is in better starting shape. Then we don't lose the primary verification. --MartyD (talk) 06:57, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Good advice Marty, considered and implemented. Thanks. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 00:29, 1 March 2023 (EST)

La terra morente

I was looking up this title as I may have a version not on file. Is there a reason why this book is listed both as an Omnibus and as a Collection? As far as I can tell they are the exact same book, ISBN, Title, all the same. Record 1436700 Collection. Record 1436698 Omnibus. aardvark7 (talk) 08:16, 26 February 2023 (EST)

This has an explanation. They are not two records for the same book. Rather, the Omnibus contains the Collection. Both happen to have the same name. Unfortunately, the "Publications" display shows you publications using the title and publications in which the title appeared. If you look closely at this, you will see the one publication listed is not a publication of the standalone collection, but rather is the omnibus (which contains this collection). --MartyD (talk) 06:45, 27 February 2023 (EST)

OK I see, sounds weird but no problem. Thanks for the info. aardvark7 (talk) 09:15, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Urania

Dear Mods, can we come to an agreement on how to treat all of the Urania titles. I come across a number that are not in the data base but I get conflicted on how to handle them. The Urania (collana) look to be all Type Mag. Then we go to Urania Collezione. Here we have types novel, omni, Coll & Anth. Each of these seem to be handled differently when entered. Classici Urania we have novel, Coll, anth and chap. I have entered one item from a new series (to the data base), Urania Millemondi. I entered it as an anth, but now I am thinking may be these should all be mags. I have pending Urania Millemondi 79, which I also have as an anth. It has two full length novels in it. This is all very confusing!!! aardvark7 (talk) 12:01, 27 February 2023 (EST)

Our Italian records are designed based on the input from an Italian editor who is not among us anymore. Thus the almost weird way we had recorded the Urania-s in there - apparently they are considered magazines in Italy so even if they look more like a publication series, they were added as magazines. Series that were added after we lost our Italian colleague had been entered based on the understanding of whoever was entering them and not always cleaned up or cleared by someone who actually looked up the history.

The basic rule is that inside of a single pub series/magazine, we should stay consistent for as long as the format and so on stay consistent. So future Uranias always get added as magazines.

For Italian books, I tend to check Fantascienza and see how they recorded the thing (that's where you get a NILF number from as well for the external IDs). Urania is here. Millemondi. Classici Urania. To me they all look the same so I would argue that if we had decided one to be a magazine, they all should be - and as Urania is established as a magazine, switching to a pub series for all of these does not make sense to me. Why we have Classici Urania as a pub series and not as a magazine is unclear... So for a new series? Pick a way. I favor magazines for these but going for pub series also makes sense.

So as you can see, clear as mud. It is indeed confusing :) Welcome to international publishing... Annie (talk) 17:18, 2 March 2023 (EST)

If memory serves, the first person to work on Urania was Ernesto Vegetti who died of a sudden heart attack in January 2010. He was an extremely knowledgeable bibliographer, but we were still hashing things out in the late 2000s and I am not sure we took full advantage of his background.

The next person to work on Urania was User:Pips55, who was active in the early 2010s but hasn't been seen since 2013. I don't recall what, if any, changes he made to the way Urania was organized. We changed our software to add support for publication series right around that time (2012-2013), so it's possible that he was just taking advantage of a shiny new toy and experimenting with it.

Spot checking magazine issues and pub series collections, I think the choice of the magazine format makes sense for the main series. Consider the very first issue, I Romanzi di Urania #1. It contains a complete Italian translation of one novel and the first part of a multi-issue serialization of another novel. Issue 10 contains 5 stories/novellas and the 4th part of a 4-part serial.

On the other hand, "publication series" makes more sense for Classici Urania, which generally published complete books: novels (mostly translations), some translated collections and a few translated anthologies. I don't think they included any serializations. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:39, 2 March 2023 (EST)

Something else to consider when dealing with Urania is that several translated novels which were originally published in the Urania magazine (and thus entered as serial) were later published as part of, e.g., the Urania Millemondi, or Urania Collezioni series as novel. While (presumably) the same translation, thus the same work, these title records are listed as two separate translations. See The Einstein Intersection, translated as 'Einstein perduto', or Miracle Visitors, translated as 'La doppia faccia degli UFO', for example.

By the way, can someone remind me again why we can't have NOVEL-type title records in a magazine? (is this something to consider and start a rules discussion?) MagicUnk (talk) 08:43, 3 March 2023 (EST)

There is a fair amount of history there -- see Help:Use of the SERIAL type for the gory details. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:19, 3 March 2023 (EST)

I tend to think that the classic Urania series was added erroneously as a magazine series: they may appear as such judging on outer appearance and on the regular schedule of appearance, but so does the German Terra series and other likewise examples. I do own a few of the Urania publications and from those and judging by the general contents (publishing whole novels, anthologies and collections) and by the title pages where exactly those novels, anthologies and collections are stated (and not a magazine), Urania does appear as a publication series. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:17, 5 March 2023 (EST)

Peace Talks audiobook conundrum

There's conflicting information for the audiobook edition of Peace Talks by Jim Butcher. There's an existing record here for the UK edition of the audiobook with a UK price and the publisher shown as Hachette Audio UK. There is also the same audiobook shown on Amazon.com which has the same date with a US price but the publisher is Penguin Audio. The cover art is different but the narrator and length are the same. Both have the same ISBN / Audible ASIN. MagicUnk is holding this submission until we can resolve this issue but we are confused as to the best path forward (discussion here). Suggestions would be appreciated. Phil (talk) 08:18, 28 February 2023 (EST)

Maybe the ISBN on the Hachette one is a mistake. On Hachette UK, the audiobook ISBN is 9781405532488 (ASIN B086C8ZZGF on Amazon.com). On Penguin Audio, the ISBN for that is 9780593290705; you have to go to Buy to see it (ASIN B082YH6QL4 on Amazon.com). --MartyD (talk) 10:36, 28 February 2023 (EST)

I found the problem. The Audible ASIN for the UK edition is wrong. It should be 1405532483 which yields an ISBN of 9781405532488. Right now the UK edition Audible ASIN is the same as the one for the US edition yielding the same ISBN. Since the UK record has no PV, I've just submitted this edit of the UK record. My held submission here should now be OK. Phil (talk) 17:52, 28 February 2023 (EST)

That happens occasionally when there are two separate audiobooks for the same book (as opposed to the same audiobook just carrying the same ASINs but the same ISBN and publisher across markets) and someone either looks at the wrong Audible or clicks on the wrong edition of the one they are looking at. Same happens with ebooks now and again, especially now that Amazon does not show the ISBN cleanly. So I've learned to look and chase down the possibility for the record being a mix between two separate books. Annie (talk) 18:23, 28 February 2023 (EST)

Title Dates Before First Publication Date

Can I draw attention to # 142 on this report. The cover art date is correct in the 2019 printing; the artwork was 1st published on the 2018 printing. Tag Ignore? Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 17:47, 7 March 2023 (EST)

The correct date for this title record is 2019-04-04. The date the artwork is first credited to blacksheep-uk.com in the database. The canonical title caries the date of the first appearance. It only get tricky when the first appearance is credited to an alternate name, but that is not the case here. Please submit the correction and I will approve it.

Referring to an exception report by item number will rarely be correct. It changes when run but also as items are corrected. The title in question is #102 as I write this. John Scifibones 18:30, 7 March 2023 (EST)

Looks like a PV changed the artist attribution for the 2018 printing,now 2018-08-23 is the correct date for the variant. John Scifibones 17:24, 8 March 2023 (EST)

Delete False Variant Message

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/deletetitle.cgi?1369275; 14th Armada Ghost Book link to copy in a pending edit of mine, it's Smeaton in there, too, tried to delete false variant (so many false variants on this site; who entered them and why?) and got the above message, someone delete after my copy link edit is approved (assuming it doesn't get deleted automatically), thanks. --Username (talk) 11:20, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

It seems there's only the Smeaton version existing. So these two titles should have been merged in the first place. Please do so in a follow-up. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:46, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

The Dragon Hunter and the Mage

The above title is not in the db. It is an independently published book by a new author. Everything is cut and dry EXCEPT there is two editions of this book with two different ISBN numbers. Still nothing new but here is where I am having problems. Goodreads and Amazon has the 2nd edition as being published on April 25, 2016. Goodreads gives the date for the 1st edition only as 2016. World Cat only gives 2016 for both editions. OceanofPDF gives the 1st Edition date as April 25, 2015 and Open Library gives it as May 10, 2016. A number of the above sources show the cover of the 1st edition, which is the same as the 2nd edition. So for both editions I have the ISBN, page #, cover artist and publisher. Missing the price for the 1st edition. But how to enter this is driving me nuts. There is an Audio and Kindle version and in 2020, a French version, plus a sequel. But I need to get this correctly started before I can proceed with the rest. HELP!!! aardvark7 (talk) 15:20, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

Self-published books can be a pain that way :) I think you are overthinking it a bit - just add what you know. If I was adding based on the information above, I'd add the first edition with the OceanofPDF date and mention in the notes this is the source of the date and add the dates according to the other sources in the notes and then once approved, clone for the second with the Goodreads/Amazon date and all the other data you have. Open Library showing the first edition after the second is a bit... amusing. So if you add the ID from it, make sure to note the discrepancy in dates. We document what we find - as long as you list your sources and add notes on which piece of information comes from where, we can then update if we can find more information. Let me know if something does not make sense. Annie (talk) 16:18, 14 March 2023 (EDT)

S&S

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Markwood#Spaceships_.26_Spells; In case this guy doesn't respond I'd like a mod to see this because there's some confusion with the dates being those of the library binding edition, which has no month, instead of the trade edition, November, plus there's confusion because note says there's ISBN on back cover but I don't see any and it has trade price but has those brown edges which I, possibly in error, think means library binding. Plus the whole title being entered wrong thing. PV of binding edition is gone so no help there. --Username (talk) 16:22, 24 March 2023 (EDT)