ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard/Archive 13

The discussions are archived from the ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard page, for posts from September 2012 through May 2013. Please do not alter them. If necessary, start a new discussion on the Moderator noticeboard.
Links to other archive pages can be found at ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard/Archives.

Fixer - October 2012

The US portion of the October 2012 haul has been submitted. I am still playing catch-up (and trying to do a more thorough job of it now that I have more free time), but we are getting there. Of course, we will never be 100% current since Amazon keeps adding pubs retroactively (nor do they have everything), but my guess is that we will be mostly caught up in another week or, at most, two. Now, if they could only get that yellow ball out of the sky so that I wouldn't get a headache every time I ventured outside before sunset... Ahasuerus 05:52, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

The UK portion has been submitted as well. Ahasuerus 17:55, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Correcting verified info

I corrected the catalog number for the three time primary verified [1] Don Erikson 16:22, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

It's better to notify the active verifiers on their user talk page. A notification like this, especially on the moderator noticeboard, might be overlooked by a verifier who is not a moderator. Mhhutchins 17:30, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Taking over an editor's submissions

Can another moderator please step into this discussion and try to explain the basic ISFDB principles of merging and varianting. I could just reject the submissions and leave it at that. Or I should just stay away from this editor's submissions entirely. If other moderators would handle them I'd be fine, regardless of their decisions, but seeing them back-up in the queue is frustrating. Mhhutchins 17:34, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Preview of Submissions

Hi everyone,

Would it be possible to preview a submission before it's submitted? This would be especially helpful when one is adding notes about a title as those, which can be replete with commands, look nothing like the final product. Of course, the preview could be accompanied by a warning such as: "This is only a preview and the changes are not final until accepted by a moderator."

Thanks! --Rob 18:24, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Something quite similar was requested a couple of years ago. To quote FR 2805054:

• User fills in text fields, and hits submit.
• On the next screen, three sections appear: a data warning section, the input data layed out in table form (as the moderator would see it), and an editable form. The user then has the opportunity to correct the form, and resubmit.
• Once no errors exist, a confirm button would appear, and the user could submit.
• The same apps could be used to modify rejected submissions.

There is also FR 2799118:

• Develop a script which will allow a moderator (or an editor) from a review submission screen to 'edit' a proposed submission. This script will open the appropriate edit screen for the submission, and then prepopulate the fields with the previously entered data. The Submit button on this re-populated page will both Submit the revises edit as a new edit, and it will reject the imported submission with a note "Submission revised to NEW SUBMISSION NUMBER".

I agree that the ability to preview/edit submissions would be desirable and I expect that it will float to the top of the FR list once we get the current workload out of the way. Ahasuerus 21:37, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Eva Figes / The Tree of Knowledge

The only publication we have for the recently deceased feminist author Eva Figes, The Tree of Knowledge, would appear to have no genre connection (Publishers Weekly, Amazon UK, Kirkus Reviews), and the primary verifier is not active. Proposing a deletion of author and title. PeteYoung 18:34, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

I have no objection to the deletion. I could find no sf/h/f elements in this title, but someone might consider it "speculative historical fiction". (Not me.) For the record, deleting the pub record and its title record will automatically delete the author from the database (unless there's some stray review hanging around.) Mhhutchins 23:58, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Binding "PT"?

This edition of Blood Lite II : Overbite has a binding of "pt" and I'm curious as to what the heck that is? Ofearna 09:32, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a typo for 'tp' - however Amazon say that's a mass market paperback, i.e. it should be 'pb'. BLongley 10:30, 26 September 2012 (UTC)

partial content export/import

How can I export the contents of Bewitched.... into the e-pub version at E-Pub and NOT have the "bonus material" (last 3 items in book) go with?

Thanks Ofearna 18:22, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

You can do it, but it's going to take two submissions. Import the contents to the record, then remove the unneeded content records. Mhhutchins 18:51, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Once I've imported the contents, how do I remove contents; they're grayed out... Ofearna 19:06, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

There's a function under the Editing Menu of publication records: "Remove Titles From This Pub". Check the box of the contents you want to remove. Mhhutchins 20:40, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

FantasticFiction Images

It looks like Fantastic Fiction has changed the URL for their images which has caused widespread breakage throughout ISFDB. Their image links have changed the initial part of the URL from "www" to "img1". Example:

• Prior: http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n1/n5831.jpg
• Current: http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n1/n5831.jpg

From yesterday's database dump, this is impacting 800 pubs (I didn't check author images, but I've seen at least one broken there as well). I'm not certain if the change is stable (i.e. they won't reverse it) or if it's always consistent that only the first part changed (only did limited spot checks). We probably should pay attention to this and, if it's not a temporary glitch, either have a clean-up project (if we want to be conservative) or Ahasuerus can consider making the change directly in the database (if we're confident the change is consistent). -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:20, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

According to FR 3419096, which was filed last October:

• They have recently changed how they store their images, moving them from "www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images" to "img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/".

so it looks like the change occurred about a year ago. Checking our data, I find 177 "img1" URLs and 800 "www" URLs. Let me run a little script to confirm that all of our "www" links can be safely migrated to "img1" and then I will do a mass change... Ahasuerus 17:33, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

They may have started using the new format that long ago, but they probably only depreciated the old format within the last few weeks. Images that worked a little while ago are no longer displaying now. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:48, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

The FR only covered auto-crediting of FF images. At the time, it seemed new images needed crediting too, no mention of deprecating the old ones. I think Marc Kupper has been our main contact with FF in the past, he might be the best person to ask whether this is a stable and permanent change. BLongley 04:59, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

True Deception by Patricial Waddell

I was going to post some information about this book (http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?969507) when I came to my senses and sanity prevailed. However, I still have to ask. It seems that Patricia Waddell may have plagerized Robert Ludlan, Ken Follet, and others. If you go to http://jeremyduns.blogspot.com/2011/11/highway-robbery-mask-of-knowing-in.html?showComment=1322273291105#c5345520585733905946 you will see detailed examples. Is it a coincidence that her writing career went "poof" after this book appeared? Her website http://www.patriciawaddell.com/ will take you to a very surprising place on the web. Other than reviews and articles about this, any real information on this author seems to have gone away. Should this controversy be noted in the Note field, or should this controversy just be ignored? I have read neither Ludlam or Waddell so this is all second-hand information. Should materials like this be ignored in the future? I'd go with the latter, but again, I have to ask. MLB 10:57, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

You can add links to reliable, stable webpages on both the author's summary page and title records. The links added to the author's page should be author-specific. Links added to title records should be title-specific. The ISFDB tries to be as objective and neutral as we can in all situations. That's why we record factual information, and try to avoid speculation (no pun intended) as much as possible. Mhhutchins 15:30, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Hmmm. Plagerism is a pretty serious charge to make against an author, although the case seems pretty clear here. Until somebody actually goes to court, I would feel uncomfortable putting in such information on this site, even if Waddell's career seems over. There seems a big difference between getting a writer's name spelled wrong and mentioning that they are plagerizers. Look what happened to Craig Street's and Pauline Dunn's career when these charges were filed against him. MLB 08:16, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Edit Pub approval changes

A minor change to the Edit Pub approval page was implemented about 15 minutes ago. From now on, it will display images rather than raw URLs even when the URL hasn't been changed. Hopefully it will make it easier to spot defunct URLs and provide more context during the approval process. Ahasuerus 05:47, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Nice. We need a "Like" button similar to Facebook's. Mhhutchins 13:54, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

"Web Page" field upgrade request

An editor has posted a message concerning software changes to the "Web Page" field of the title record on the Rules & Standards Discussions page. It seems to be more of a feature request than a rules change, so I'm posting this message here to direct interested parties to the discussion. Thanks. Mhhutchins 20:50, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

New data cleansing scripts

A new script has been added to the list of moderator-accessible ISFDB Data Cleansing Scripts. Variant Titles in Series is the last listed script and it finds all VTs belonging to a series, which is typically a no-no.

I have another script which finds series which contain duplicate series numbers. Unfortunately, it takes 35 seconds to run and prevents access to title records while it runs :-( I need to tweak it to make it faster and then I can install it as well. Ahasuerus 02:22, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

"Series with Duplicate Series Numbers" has been added to the menagerie. Ahasuerus 04:32, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Help needed with variant submission

I could use some help with this submission. See Bob's response to my initial inquiry and the notes on the proposed parent. I don't know what to suggest for an appropriate treatment. Thanks. --MartyD 02:23, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Without getting into the specifics of this case, I can offer the following advice based on my knowledge of the standards, whether documented or in practice.

Variants are based on a change in either the title or the author credit. They should not be based on a change in text. If the work "ABC" by the author DEF has been abridged, and reprinted with the same name and as by the same author, a variant should not be created. The editor should record in the work's title field that the publication in B has been abridged from the work that was published in A.

There is an exception: if the work is reprinted as "ABC (abridged)" or "ABC (version two)" that would constitute a change in title, thus eligible for varianting. If the editor hasn't been recording the titles exactly as they appear in the publications, it will be very difficult to consider whether varianting should be done. In any case, a variant of a variant should not be allowed.

I want it to be understood that I'm not commenting on this submission. This is just a general comment about varianting standards. If you choose to accept or reject this submission, it should be based on the standards. Mhhutchins 22:46, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Fixer on Hiatus

Fixer is currently on hiatus and I am handling new Amazon arrivals myself. There is a more extensive discussion here. Ahasuerus 23:34, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Hurricane Sandy

As many of you know, Hurricane Sandy is approaching the East Coast of the United States. It's not clear how much damage it will do, but it is expected to be unusually large, affecting up to 800 miles of the coastline and remaining a powerful tropical storm as it makes its way inland. The main ISFDB server is in the Central Timezone and unlikely to be affected unless there is considerable damage to the Internet backbone, but some moderators (including me) may find themselves without power for a number of days. Based on what we saw earlier this year, the storm may also affect Amazon and some other sites that we use, although they usually recover much faster than residential areas. Ahasuerus 23:34, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Unmerging Entries

After doing a little research on-line, it seems obvious that the author (David) John James is clearly not fine-art artist John James. I have updated (David) John James page here on this site, giving his birthdate and deathdate from his Wiki page. On the other hand, artist John James is still alive, and producing art. Once upon a time in a galaxy far, far away he slummed in the commercial art field. His artstyle in the piece on this page http://www.johnjames.com/section368135.html is very close to that that is found in this publication http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?359882. James doesn't sign his work, but I would list the one site as his on this site, but even if this John James site is not listed here, the fact that the author James is dead, and the artist James is not, should cause these two contributors entries to be unmerged, shouldn't it? I think that this is above my pay grade (and I'm not getting paid at all) to do it. After all, if I screwed it up, there are moderators here who know where my email lives. MLB 12:53, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Author credits can't be unmerged. One of them will have to be disambiguated from the other and all of this credits will have to be changed. Regardless of his breathing status, the artist should be given the disambiguation. Even though he has more records, they're all from the same book. I'll do it. Mhhutchins 18:01, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Creating variant title records before creating publication records

I find this practice disconcerting for various reasons, largely because it creates a dangling, publess title record. As Marty pointed out to one of the editors who does this, there's a chance that the editor might forget to add the pub to the title once the title record is created. I think we should encourage editors to create the publication record first and then variant the title record to the parent title record. Not to name names, but the editors who are doing this are entering non-English publications, usually translations (but not always). Despite my telling him more than once, an editor continues to create variant title records and entering publication data in its note field, which surely shouldn't be done. (Now he's entering publication records under the wrong language title record, and I still can't stop him despite leaving messages on his talk page which he deletes. I don't want to just outright reject his submissions, but moderators shouldn't have to go behind editors to clean up messes when we've made the effort to educate them about the correct process.) Another editor is creating variant records for Eastern European titles, but I don't handle his submissions because I have no knowledge of the alphabet. Does any other moderator feel we should be discouraging this practice of creating variant title records first? Mhhutchins 18:18, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I totally agree this practice should be discouraged. Titles should be created by adding a publication. Perhaps Rudolf or Christian can explain this to the first editor in German. The other seems to be better aware of what he's doing. --Willem H. 19:26, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure the problem is with making variants first. If you make the pub record first and then forget to make the variant link, we still have a problem with the data. Either order is prone to being flawed if the person doing it doesn't understand the two steps required to make it work. Chavey 23:48, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

variant-ed wrong way

help.. made interiorart parent variant of cover art and it should be the other way around... Picnic on Paradise book by Joanna Russ cover by Chris Achilleos should be parent of Picnic on Paradise interior art by Chris Achilleos (which should be variant of the other). HELP!!!

Did the SAME DANGED thing on Priest-Kings of Gor and Priest-Kings of Gor. Ofearna 21:55, 6 November 2012

I fixed these for you. It's a two-step process you can do yourself:

1. Remove the existing variant relationship (here, go to the coverart title, use "Make This Title a Variant...", and enter 0 as the existing partent ID.
2. Once that is approved, go to the interiorart title and make it a variant of the coverart title.

I'm pretty sure you can't do the second until the first change goes through, as the software wants to prevent you from making a variant of a variant and doesn't understand the "please swap these" nature of the second step. --MartyD 13:46, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Laurel-Leaf vs Dell Laurel-Leaf

Here's a question to answer. I've listed books on this site as both Dell Laurel-Leaf and as Laurel-Leaf. Now, if Laurel-Leaf has always been a Dell imprint, and if they both have separate charts, shouldn't both be merged for clarity's sake? And under which should I list my entries as? I think some of my mistakes have been because of cloning. MLB 18:30, 12 November 2012 (UTC)

It seems like they should all be listed as "Laurel-Leaf / Dell", even though none of them are listed that way now. Of course we don't do that with any of the other Dell imprints, i.e. Dial Press, Delacorte Books, and Yearling Books. Chavey 03:22, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Unlike most publishers, Dell seems to retain the publisher's identity on all their imprints. Bantam is similar in this respect (think "Bantam Spectra"). I see nothing wrong with keeping "Dell Laurel-Leaf" as a separate entity, and this appears to be how the vast majority have been entered into the database (see here). Something happened in the later 1990s and now there are many records for just "Laurel-Leaf". I think it may have been removed from under Dell and is now the paperback imprint for the juvenile division of Random House. If this is reflected in the actual books, and only verifiers can confirm this, then "Laurel-Leaf" should remain separate from "Dell Laurel-Leaf". So to answer your question, MLB, take your cue from the title pages of the books. If Dell isn't mentioned then enter the book as "Laurel-Leaf". What pubs are you specifically trying to enter? Mhhutchins 03:48, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Check out the Amazon "Look Inside" of this 2011 publication. There's no mention of Dell. Mhhutchins 04:04, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I got a stack of Joan Lowery Nixon juveniles, some mystery, some supernatural, and when I cloned the ones that were already listed on this site, the publisher was listed as Dell Laurel-Leaf. Even the ones that I did correctly, had Dell on the spine. As the Laurel-Leaf books are listed both ways, I thought I would ask which was correct. Now I know, I'll go back and change my incorrect entries. MLB 17:08, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

When you clone, you have the option to change any field that doesn't match your copy. (You shouldn't change the author and title fields because you may have a variant title). You don't have to match the other fields of any previous entry. But use the title page and not the spine for the publisher credit. Although there is no documented standard about where to get the publisher credit, I personally feel there should be, and that the best place is the title page. An editor can always make slight corrections based on how most of the publisher's books are in the database, but if there's a dramatic difference stick with the book, not the crowd. Mhhutchins 17:28, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Tesseract by Joseph Addison

This book is not by the Joseph Addison who died in 1719 as listed. Copyright is 1988 and author was born in Scotland according to bio in book. I have no other info on author.--Teddybear 21:40, 18 November 2012 (UTC)

I've disambiguated the older author because we have his precise birth dates. The newer author remained as "Joseph Addison". Mhhutchins 20:18, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

Incorrect author attribution, "Starkings to Firebirds"

I can log in, but am not authorized to edit. The author data on the page noted below is incorrect: the essay "From Starkings to Firebirds" (from the New York Review of Science Fiction, March 2012) is by Mike Barrett, not by Eileen Gunn. Could someone possibly correct this for me, or give me the power to edit? Thanks! (I am Eileen Gunn, and I approve this message.) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gunn (talk • contribs) .

Fixed. Thanks for the heads up! Ahasuerus 05:32, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Ahasuerus! (It's been a while...) Gunn 08:57, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Differing displays of "also as by"

I've occasionally wondered why there are two different ways to display stories that appear "also as by". Take a look at the summary page of Ian R. MacLeod. Why does "Grownups" display on one line as:

Grownups (1992) [also as by Ian MacLeod ]

While "The Dead Orchards" is displayed on two lines as:

The Dead Orchards (1994) also appeared as:

Variant Title: The Dead Orchards (1994) [as by Ian MacLeod ]

Does it depend upon which title was first in the database or do the dates of the individual records make the difference? I'll do some testing to see if that's the factor. Mhhutchins 20:11, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

That didn't take long. If the variant title appeared before the parent record, it's displayed on two lines, even if both have the same date. So when I changed the date of the variant to after the date of the parent record, it appeared on one line. Here's the kicker: when I changed the date of the variant back to the original date, it remained displayed on one line. Strange. (BTW, this is for variants based solely on a change in author, not a change in title, which would naturally be displayed on two lines.) Mhhutchins 20:18, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Since I "fixed" the display of the MacLeod stories, that's no longer a valid example of the situation I'm describing. So go to the summary page of Theodore Sturgeon and look at how "The Purple Light" (1941) is displayed compared to "Nightmare Island" (both were published as by "E. Waldo Hunter"). Mhhutchins 20:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

In the case of "The Purple Light", both title records have no language codes assigned, so everything works as expected. With "Nightmare Island", the main record is set to "English" while the "E. Waldo Hunter" VT has no language code assigned. The display logic says "Oh, the language codes are not the same, so this VT must be a translation" and uses the " also appeared as:" approach. If you edit these records, their language codes will be set to English and everything will go back to normal.

I guess it would make sense to modify the logic so that only VTs whose assigned language code is explicitly different from the parent title's language code would be treated as translations. Ahasuerus 21:19, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

So it wasn't my changing the date that corrected the display. Any update to a non-language record will make it default to English. Now that I know what causes it, it should be easy to rectify any that I come across. But if it's not too complicated to change the logic, your solution would save a lot of individual submissions. Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:27, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I have made the change on the development server and it seems to be working fine. However, our source code repository (SourceForge) is currently undergoing maintenance, so I can't easily install the enhancement on the main server. The repository should be back after midnight server time, though, so the delay should be manageable. Ahasuerus 02:16, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Done. Ahasuerus 07:25, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Wow, that was fast! Much appreciation. Mhhutchins 16:44, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

It was a nice change of pace after pre-processing 2,000+ ISBNs found by Fixer :-) Ahasuerus 19:00, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

I'll see if there's anything else I can find for you to work on between those mind-numbing tasks. :) Mhhutchins 19:32, 28 November 2012 (UTC)

Well, I have a long list of FRs and bugs to work on and I'd rather be spending my time on them, but then "forthcoming books" will start falling behind. Decisions, decisions... Ahasuerus 00:49, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Software development difficulties

(This should only affect developers.) Our external software repository, SourceForge, has been unstable since their last upgrade in late November. Their problems (sporadic authentication failures, inconsistent behavior of tags, etc) have no impact on the operations of the ISFDB database proper, but they are making development difficult. I am working on putting a workaround in place so that we could install certain patches that are otherwise ready, but in the long run we may have to migrate to another repository. Ahasuerus 02:59, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

SourceForge finally crashed overnight and was rebooted this morning. Everything appears to be back to normal now. Hopefully they will be more stable going forward. Ahasuerus 18:50, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

SourceForge is beginning to lag again: the Web interface takes over a minute to synchronize with the back-end repository after new commits. It appears to be the same problem that they had in late November and then over the last few days, so I suspect that the underlying cause hasn't been addressed yet. Please be extra careful committing and even "statusing" items -- yesterday night a failed status command made mincemeat of a script on my development server. Ahasuerus 00:06, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

The Chronicles of Narnia

Re: The Chronicles of Narnia
I noticed that this boxed set has a publishing date of 1994. However, I've found 2 places that put the date as 1970: Here and Here. I've also found 1 place that put the date as 1978: Here. I'd like to change the date, but am confused which one to use since WorldCat lists 2 different dates for the same ISBN.--Astromath 13:05, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

An ISBN can be re-used by a publisher for years, so there is nothing surprising about seeing several different publication dates for the same ISBN. It also happens not infrequently that a boxed set is composed of books with different publication dates themselves. For example, if the publisher printed lots of book #1 in 1978, book #2 in 1980, and book #3 in 1984, they might create a box in 1985 and put one copy of each of those books in it. We would give the box set a publication date of 1985, while some places might use other dates (esp. the last pub date of a book in the box, such as 1984 in this example). Then, as they continue to sell the boxed set, they might begin to use later printings of books in the same box, or in a newer box. In a few cases, where we have the information, boxed sets in the ISFDB are listed with notes for the publication dates of each book in the notes.

Unless you have good reason to believe otherwise, you should assume that each of those boxed sets is the equivalent of a different publication of the box. Thus the title record would probably have a 1970 date (the earliest one you've found), and each of the other "publication dates" that you've identified should be identified with separate publication records. Do NOT change the publication date of existing box sets, since those publication dates almost certainly correspond to actual publication dates. Chavey 02:44, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

So in other words, this record's publication date can be changed from 1973 to 1970 as found in WorldCat. But the 1994 date is to be left alone here. Would this be correct? I tried my best to find a publication date of 1994, but failed miserably.--Astromath 15:15, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

You can change the title record date to 1970, which is what you've linked to, but don't change existing publication record dates. Ideally, changing that title record date would be accompanied by adding an actual 1970 boxed set record, i.e. create a publication record for the set referred to in OCLC 10785216. The 1994 HarperCollins boxed set is listed in AbeBooks with 16 copies for sale, although only 1 of them appears to be the hard cover version. The 1994 paperback boxed set is in WorldCat at OCLC 732685031, although we don't include this particular publication (Hmm, maybe I should enter my copy :-). The 1994 hard cover boxed set is in WorldCat at 41097486. That hard cover 1994 edition's WorldCat record can be found by going to that publication record, looking for the "WorldCat" link under the sidebar section on "Other Sites", then clicking that link. I've also just added a direct link to that in the "Notes", although this is redundant, given the links in the sidebar. Chavey 17:04, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

I've looked at the WorldCat record that you linked to. It mentions the publisher being Harpercollins Juvenile Books. However, the boxed set I have does not have "Juvenile" in the publisher's name (at least I don't think so. I've already boxed it back up with other books in my collection, I'll look at it again in a little bit). The boxed set I have is 100% identical to the image in the paperback boxed set record with listed date as 1994. I don't think it is the same record. I also seem to remember of buying that boxed set way before 1994 (I'm thinking of the early 70's, though I no longer have the receipt to prove it). If I bought that set 20 years before 1994, then it cannot have a pub date of 1994. I wish they would list the pub date on the box itself. It'd make things a whole lot easier.--Astromath 02:21, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

I've rechecked my boxed set. It is by Collier Macmillan Publishing Company, not Harpercollins Juvenile Books.--Astromath 12:33, 21 December 2012 (UTC)

Wild Card Series

Re: Wild Cards
I have volumes 13, 14, & 15 that state on their covers that they are part of a series called "New Cycle". E.g. Volume 13 has above the title on the cover "Book I of a New Cycle". I'm not 100% sure if the volumes following these three are part of the new series since I don't have any volumes past 15. Should these 3 volumes be edited to be part of a sub-series of the Wild Cards series? Should the other following volumes be included even if they don't say "New Cycle" on them? I don't know. Need guidance from the experts out there.--Astromath 02:44, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think "New Cycle" was meant as a series title. In volume 18, 19 and 20 there's nothing that points to this. Could it be the new publisher (#13 was Baen's first) who needed a new start for the series? --Willem H. 10:23, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

I suppose it's possible. After looking a little closer at those three volumes, they seem to comprise an unstated full trilogy. But since I don't have the later volumes, I cannot say for sure. I guess we can leave them alone. I've already added notes (waiting for approval) about the "New Cycle" series title in the individual pubs.--Astromath 12:40, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

ISBN 978-0-505-51336-6

Re: A Yank at Valhalla & Doomstar
Could somebody please confirm that the ISBN of A Yank at Valhalla is correct?--Astromath 03:46, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Looks like a mistake. See this. --MartyD 11:31, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Stealing Magic by Tanya Huff

How do I pull the Edge version of Stealing Magic off the Tesseract versions? They're not the same book, or even exactly variants as the Edge version has more stories Kind of like with Rat Tales and The Missouri Moffia Presents Rat Tales, but they're already created and linked as different versions of the same book. Ofearna 20:30, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

Go to the Template:186556, and pick "Unmerge titles" from the menu at the left. Check the boxes on the one(s) you don't want to be grouped with the others (in this case, the Edge publication), and Unmerge. This will turn the ones you picked into standalone titles, which you can now work with. This is moderated, so it's safe to give it a try. --MartyD 11:47, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

I figured this was the way, but as I was told specifically NOT to use the Un-Merge, I thought I'd ask first ^-^ Ofearna 16:29, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps someone said that to you in the context of covers? Unmerging cover records has had some problems (I think it created new coverart titles credited to the publication's author, not to the artist). As far as I know, unmerge on everything else works fine. --MartyD 23:39, 24 December 2012 (UTC)

The Best of TREK® #3

Re: The Best of TREK® #3
I've put in content for this pub and is now waiting to be accepted. I'm adding a couple comments here. One concerns #4 "The Klingongs (?)"... The "(?)" is supposed to be there. It is not a mistake. Second deals with #7 "A Sampling of Trek Roundtable" on page 61. This is actually a collection of letters from fans. I put it down as essay and listed the author of each letter separately. If this is not the way to go, feel free to modify it as you see fit. One other thing, after hitting the "save" button, I noticed I forgot to include the interior art in the content as well as the notes. The interior art is 8 pages between page 78 & page 79. The artists are Mary Lowe, Martin Cannon, Ralph Fowler, & Ron Wilbur.
I'll be doing the same thing for The Best of TREK® #4 shortly. TREK® #4 has the same "Roundtable" problem as TREK® #3.
It would have been a great help if the Trek magazines & their articles were already entered. Then it would only be a matter of linking the Trek articles with the Best of Trek books.--Astromath 22:52, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

You still would have had to merge the records so it would not have been less a task to enter the individual articles. Feel free to enter the magazines if you have copies of the issues, and then merge the title records if there are any already existing in the database. Mhhutchins 15:31, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

I've accepted the submissions, but I see that you entered the letters as one record (not "separately" as you state above). This implies that the one record is a collaborative effort for all authors involved. Ordinarily you'd create individual records for each letter in the title format: "Letter (TITLE OF PUBLICATION)". Mhhutchins 15:33, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I don't have any Trek magazines. As far as the letters are concerned, I wasn't sure how to do it. In the book it is one record (chapter heading) with several letters under that chapter heading each with the letter's author. I didn't want to label it as a COLLECTION because it would seem to imply that it was a series of fiction letters. I used what I thought was best. If there was a better way, I did not know. I also did not want to add clarifiers to the letter authors such as "[letter 1]," "[letter 2]," etc. The way you mentioned about creating individual records for letters might be ok for magazines, but I'm not sure if that would be the best way here.--Astromath 01:46, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Graphic Novel Adaptations

I know that we don't usually add graphic novels, but how about adaptations of novels into graphic novel format? Or, like, the Dark Tower graphic novels from Stephen King? Just leave them off? Just asking, b/c I have several and would only consider adding the adaptations and possibly the Dark Tower books... Ofearna 17:08, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

The policy, as I understand it, is to ask "How is it credited on the title page? Is it credited as "written by Stephen King"? Or is it "based on the novel by..." or "adapted by ... from the novel"? Only if the graphic novel claims that it was written by Stephen King would it qualify for inclusion, since the writer of the graphic novel is above the threshold. In all other cases, the "writer" of the graphic novel is someone who surely is not above the threshold, and hence does not qualify. Chavey 18:35, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

So, for the Game of Thrones GN vol 1 the title page says adapted by Daniel Abraham, but the copyright page says © 2012 George R. R. Martin ? Ofearna 01:30, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

We only use copyright when there is no author credit on neither the title page nor the front cover. The graphic novel was written by Abraham, and copyrighted by Martin. So if it were eligible for inclusion, only Abraham would be credited as the author. If this is the same author, it's eligible for the database. And keep in mind: we do not create individual records for each issue of the comic book series, but only one record for the collected publication. Mhhutchins 01:56, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

It is the same guy : from the preface by George R.R. Martin "...[Daniel Abraham] is a triple-threat in his own right, writing epic fantasy under his real name, urban fantasy as M.L.N. Hanover, and science fiction (in collaboration with Ty Franck) as James S.A. Corey." I'll add it! Thanks so much for your help. Ofearna 03:54, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Alien

Re: Alien
I just updated this record and I forgot one piece of information: the price. It is $1.75. I did not want to cancel the submission and re-enter everything again. That would've been a pain to do.--Astromath 01:48, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

An editor always has the option to make subsequent submissions to update a record. Mhhutchins 01:57, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Changer's Daughter

There's a new edition of Legends Walking out but they're calling it Changer's Daughter. I do not have the book (yet). Do I create a new novel then variant it or how should I add this new book? Thanks. Ofearna 16:46, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Create a new publication record ("Add New Novel" function). After the submission is accepted go to the original title, copy down its record number (the numbers after "title.cgi?" in the URL field). Then go to the new title record and click "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work", and enter the record number of the original title in the Parent # field. Submit. Mhhutchins 17:29, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

BTW, make sure you fully source the data in the Note field. Mhhutchins 17:31, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Got it ! Thanks (I may see if the local library has bought this so I can check details). Ofearna 18:13, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Omnibus of anthologies

Should an omnibus of two anthologies Freedom have a list of contents or just the two included anthologies? Ofearna 18:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

A primary verifier should enter all the contents, while retaining the title records for the anthologies. In this case, it would be easier to "Import" the contents from the two records of the previous publications, making changes to the omnibus record to reflect the actual publication. Mhhutchins 21:07, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

At the Earth's Core

Re: At the Earth's Core
I've notified the verifiers but they may or may not need help on this. It is noted in the notes that the artist's signature is not found on the cover. However it is on the cover. Look at the "man" in the lower right corner with his right hand stretched out. The signature is below the man's sleeve on the rock. The problem is I cannot read it. I've tried to help by uploading a higher resolution image scanned from my collection.--Astromath 20:08, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Posting this on the pages of the two verifiers was sufficient. In a situation like this, it's out of the hands of a moderator until one or both of them make a submission to change the record. Mhhutchins 21:10, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Angeli e Demini by Dan Brown

Can someone confirm this title, because it should be 'Angeli e Demoni' (at least, in Italian...). --Pips55 22:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

The cover of this pub as shown by Rue des livres and Anobii clearly says "Angeli e Demoni", so I assume it was a typo. Scanning the submission table, I see that the record was created by Bill Longley on 2012-02-16. Ahasuerus 00:48, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

And it would have been nice if the data had been sourced. Mhhutchins 01:04, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

I will correct the title, thanks --Pips55 21:31, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

BTW, is there a way to search for the submitter of the data, so that I can ask directly without bothering everyone ? Thanks --Pips55 22:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Not at this time, I am afraid -- unless you are willing to review the full list of "Recent Integrations" (1,321,000 records as of earlier this week) one submission at a time. Ahasuerus 00:48, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Well, maybe another time ... Thanks --Pips55 21:31, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

RPG question

Should role playing game (RPG) books and supplements really be included in this database? I just noticed several GURPS pubs listed. What's the criteria for RPG pubs specifically? Personally, I don't think they should be included, otherwise you open a whole can of worms (just like my question about UFOs did). Look at TSR & Wizards of the Coast fiction pubs. There's probably a couple hundred or more non-fiction pubs from them alone that only deal with RPGs (I have a lot of them).

If the criteria is along the lines of "if the non-fiction pub deals with a fiction pub, then it should be included", then there are many non-ficiton Forgotten Realms pubs that also deal with the Forgotten Realms fiction pubs. Ditto for Dark Sun, Greyhawk, etc. Again, my opinion is don't include them.

Opinions? Discussion?--Astromath 01:14, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

According to the Rules of Acquisition:

2. Speculative fiction is defined to exclude:

• [...]
• Games, game guides and game paraphernalia -- but works of fiction based on games are included
• [...]

So they are OUT under that policy. --MartyD 11:43, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Your question seems to have two parts:

• Games: Games, game guides and game paraphernalia are not considered speculative fiction for ISFDB's purposes as MartyD stated above. However, our rules (#5) allow in non-genre works credited to a genre writer over a threshold. The threshold is a bit murky, but Terry Pratchett is certainly above it which is why GURPS Discworld would be included. NOTE: The work must be credited to the genre writer, not merely based on the genre writer's works.
• Non-fiction: Non-fiction about speculative fiction (as defined by ISFDB's criteria) is allowed (rule #3). Therefore, non-fiction about Forgotten Realms speculative fiction (but not its games) would be allowed. This would be the same as all the non-fiction about Tolkien's works.

If you see works that clearly don't meet the inclusion criteria, please submit them for deletion. If you see works that may be borderline, you can raise it for discussion at ISFDB:Community Portal.

By the way, Rules and standards discussions would be a better place for this discussion. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:07, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Thx for the info. Since there is so many different discussion forums, it is hard to judge which one to go to.

As far as the inclusion criteria, I don't think I'm the best judge because I would want to include everything RPG related which is clearly wrong.

I have some board games based on Dragonriders of Pern and Doctor Who, could those be included? How about the Doctor Who RPG? or the Star Wars RPG? GURPS also has a supplement for the Wild Card series. I'll transfer these questions to the community portal per JLaTondre's suggestion.--Astromath 15:20, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

IMNSHO: Board games: OUT. Same for 'Collectible Card Games' - although it seems current activities may be permitting some of these in under the artist being "above the threshold". (So don't take my answer as an absolute rule, I may be in the wrong here.) Who wrote the Dr Who and Star Wars RPG books? As books, they are closer to the border of our IN/OUT rules. BLongley 16:39, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Help w/cover diff for Wolf's Head Wolf's Heart

Wolf's Head, Wolf's Heart has one piece of art by Julie Bell for the hardback and a totally different piece of art was used for the paperbacks. I've been told NOT to diff images so, how do I spit the HC off on this? Thanks Ofearna 22:14, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Making a temporary change in the Artist field of a publication record will "unmerge" the pub from the combined cover art record. I've fixed them. Mhhutchins 22:46, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks!!! Ofearna 23:20, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Author credit for letters

Did the moderator who accepted the format used to credit the authors of the letters in this record question the submitter? I know we've allowed this editor to be "creative" in his entry standards (in my case, by default, since I refuse to handle his submissions), but the format used here defies ISFDB standards to an even greater degree than is usually accepted from this editor. Mhhutchins 00:48, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The question applies to this record also, essentially the same entry standards issues. I merged together the identical letters in these two publications, and asked the editor correct one of the misspellings, but was not an original moderator. Chavey 20:22, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

If I did it, it was not intentional. I've been giving leeway on the titles and trying to encourage fix-ups, but not on author credits. --MartyD 00:14, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Moderator approval changes in the latest patch

Two changes have been implemented:

• When a New Pub submission includes known pseudonyms, a yellow warning is now displayed. Please note that this only applies to pub-wide authors/artists as opposed to Contents authors. There is a separate FR to address the latter issue.
• Submissions by other moderators can no longer be accessed from the New Submissions page, which should prevent accidental cross-approval. If we need to process another moderator's submission, e.g. if a moderator becomes inactive, we can still access it by copying and pasting the submission number into the appropriate URL.

Ahasuerus 04:00, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Excellent!! Chavey 17:20, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

I ended up testing the first change today while adding contents to a bunch of Non-Fiction books. The change may work for authors of submitted books, but it does not work for authors of essays within those books. (I don't know if it works for authors of stories inside an anthology.) I was keeping an eye out for the warnings, received none, but still "broke" nearly a dozen pseudonyms. Chavey 01:40, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

That's right, the change didn't affect the part of the software that handles "Contents" titles (which really needs to be rewritten, but that's a different story.) There is a separate feature request, FR 3598981, to address this issue. Ahasuerus 03:16, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Understood. My "Excellent!!" gets downgraded to a "Very Good!" :-) Chavey 04:49, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

The pseudonym thing works like a charm. Thank you --Pips55 21:59, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Author Merge bug

Please note that merging two authors can result in losing email addresses and author-specific web pages (Bug 3596913). It's not a trivial bug to fix, so it will probably be another few weeks until I get to it. Ahasuerus 05:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Add Award improved

The Add Award form (aka "Award Editor") has been improved. The help note at the top of the page no longer mentions verifications. The bolded warning has been rewritten to be (hopefully) less confusing. The IMDB Title field no longer pretends to be a URL field. Ahasuerus 06:16, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Patch r2013-06 made further improvements to the Add Award page. An attempt to add an award to a deleted title no longer results in a Python error. Ahasuerus 17:05, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Mattew D. Hargreaves vs. Mathew D. Hargreaves

I believe that http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?57081 and http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?121918 are actually the same person. You might want to have the verifiers check the spelling and make sure that they are not inadvertently putting an extra "T" in Mathew as that is the correct spelling.SFJuggler 01:29, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

All the "Matthew"s come from a single publication which was verified by Dcarson. I notice that record also has a single T version (in the publisher field). I'll drop him a note pointing here. -- JLaTondre (talk) 02:43, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

It should be a single T. I'll correct my entry. Dana Carson 16:00, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

John W. Campbell Memorial Award

The way our John W. Campbell Memorial Award pages are displayed has been changed. Since the award explicitly specifies "1st place", "2nd place" and "3rd place" (in addition to occasional special awards), I have changed the display logic to show each title's place that year just like we do for Locus awards. This means that we can now change the values in the "Category" field from "Win", "Second Place" and "Third Place" to "Best Science Fiction Novel" and the software will display everything correctly as long as you set the value of the "Level" field appropriately, i.e. 1, 2 or 3.

I have changed the values for 1973-1978, but 1979-2012 still need to be changed. Calling for volunteers while I continue working on other award improvements. Ahasuerus 03:44, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Series data in variant title records

Will the moderator(s) who handled the submissions that created the records on this list please inform the editor about adding series data in the parent title record and not the variant one? I will gladly fix them, but I'd rather not approach the editor concerning the situation. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:30, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

I'll talk to him about it and fix the ones in this list. I see it's growing.... --MartyD 12:29, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Looks like if two titles are in the same series and one is then made a variant of the other, the series info remains on the now-variant. So a second edit is required to fix it up. --MartyD 01:22, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Yes, through testing I've been able to determine that the only way that series data is removed from a record is if it is made a variant of a record which has no series data. Only then will the data be removed from the (now variant) record and transferred to the (now parent) record. If the parent record already has series data, it will not affect the data that's in the variant record, even if they have different series data. Mhhutchins 01:36, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

More Award fixes (r2013-08)

A whole bunch of fixes were installed about an hour ago. Here are the highlights:

• Ampersands in titles and categories no longer cause Python errors. I will be changing the Help text to remove the workaround that we used in the past.
• Malformed years are no longer allowed.
• Non-title awards are no longer messed up when their titles include Unicode characters
• Award "levels" are now limited to 1 through 99. In the past you could enter any value, which would then cause Python errors.
• The Edit Award form no longer has problems with authors whose names include Unicode characters
• IMDB titles are no longer lost during award editing
• A "View Award Year" link has been added to the New Award post-approval page

There is still a lot of work to be done before award editing can be made available to all editors, but we are getting there. Ahasuerus 08:42, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Some good improvements! Thanks for the work. Chavey 14:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

We try :-) Ahasuerus 21:06, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

"Delete an Award" fixed

As of 5 minutes ago, it should be possible to delete awards from the Title display page. I also changed "Remove an Award" to "Delete an Award" because you are really deleting an award record rather than removing it the way you remove a Title record from a pub. Ahasuerus 06:13, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Even more award fixes (2013-11)

A new patch has been installed. The following changes have been made:

• Add/Edit Award doesn't let you edit the Title and Author fields for title-based award, so they are now greyed out.
• Edit Award no longer lets you delete Categories, Levels or Years. You can still delete all authors for a non-title based award. If you leave the title field blank, the system will automatically use "untitled".
• Add/Edit Award no longer lets you enter an IMDB title for title-based awards. You can still enter IMDB titles for non-title awards.
• List Award Level options are now listed vertically rather than horizontally. Hopefully the new layout will make it clear that you need to enter a Level value when you select the "Level" radio button. An error message is displayed if you don't.
• When adding/editing a title-based award, its title record is now hyper-linked. If you are adding/editing a non-title award, this fact is mentioned at the top of the data entry form.
• Much of the code has been rewritten, but hopefully nothing got broken in the process.

Ahasuerus 22:24, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

ISBN-10 minor bug alert

FYI -- a bug for you all to be aware of. I just ran into a situation where a valid ISBN-10 with an "X" final digit was not recognized as a proper ISBN because that check-digit was entered as a lowercase "x". The ISBN-13 was calculated correctly, but the software considered the ISBN-10 to be a catalog ID / non-ISBN. Changing it from "x" to "X" caused it to be recognized. --MartyD 00:46, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

This one's been around quite awhile. When I would see it used in submissions, I've notified the editor who used the lowercase "x". Or I've corrected those that I've run across which had already been accepted into the db. I've always assumed that other moderators were already aware of this, so I didn't post a message about it. Mhhutchins 01:13, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

It'll give me motivation to see if I can get my development environment working again. I wasn't aware of it when I did all that ISBN work, or I would have fixed it. --MartyD 01:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Keep in mind that the latest versions on SourceForge include some of the commits listed on the Development page that haven't been installed yet, which will cause most of the awards-related pages to error out. We should be back in sync in a few days, though, at which point I will use an archival tag to mark the currently stable version. Ahasuerus 16:04, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

That sounds like a good "low-hanging fruit" fix to get back into practice with. It'd be good to have you back again, we've left Ahasuerus as almost lone coder/fixer for a year or more now. (By the way, is there an FR for "Top Coders" yet? I don't know how best to count contributions, but would like to be on the list for my 50+ contributions.) BLongley 03:56, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Two possible approaches come to mind:

• cvs -q log |grep "author: blongley"|wc reports 307 matches. The list includes multiple commits per script and multiple scripts per Bug/FR, but it's 100% automated.
• Parse the subpages of Development/Archive and look for "BLongley". It will require a smarter script to extract the data, but the results will be more accurate,

Ahasuerus 16:04, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Both approaches would stretch my abilities, and neither satisfies my desires. I want all coders listed, by amount of useful code contributed. I know it's impossible to evaluate the quality of the code programatically but some sort of points system like 'created by - 2 points", "extended by - 1 point" with a multiplier by the number of times the script is used might be somewhere close. BLongley 16:45, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, you could simply run "cvs -q log" and redirect output to a file, then write a script that would search for "author:" and aggregate data that way. Alternatively, you could access SourceForge via HTTP (using Python or another tool of your choice like iMacros), list all of the "Closed" Bugs and FRs, then check who they were assigned to. Ahasuerus 22:56, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Still sounds too like too much effort for the little benefit I want. I am mildly interested in whether you've overtaken Al as top developer - and whether I've managed to get to third place yet. An automated list might make a few more developers jump into the fray, but I suspect there's actually under a dozen of us at the moment. But given my current state of health (apparently I should be dead already) I'd quite like to be remembered here. Even an update to "Major Contributors Until May 2006" would be good - although I bet Michael would just get another top place! ;-) BLongley 09:54, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

No, that's one list I wouldn't appear on. I didn't start here until February 23, 2007, more than a month after you, Bill. Mhhutchins 20:54, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I meant updating it to something more like "Major Contributors up to 2013". You'd certainly be a top contender if not THE top. You seem to have caught up that month and found several more I didn't have access to! ;-) BLongley 21:18, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Al wrote all of the original ISFDB 2 software back in 2005-2006, i.e. before we started using CVS, so I am afraid we don't have enough information for comparison. On the other hand, some SF writers continue to publish books after they die, so I don't see why developers can't commit new changes after their breathing status changes! Ahasuerus 19:22, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, that should make it easy to define Al's contributions - if it's that old it's him to praise (or blame.) Don't get too hung up on this question though - if I can't even phrase the requirement, or begin to code anything like it, it can't be too important. BLongley 21:26, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) I thought I would add that it might be useful to use a tool like cvsps when considering attribution as that should par down the list of changes somewhat (it tries to group changes committed at the same time by the same user since these "patchsets" were likely committed via a single command and likely are related). Incidentally, most contemporary revision control systems use patchsets and not individual file revisions (CVS is seriously dated) Uzume 15:02, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

CVS is admittedly old and rather ugly. However, because of the limited number of developers and conflicting changes on this project, it gets the job done without too much trouble. Moving to a more modern repository would introduce a learning curve which would be hard to justify in cost-benefit terms, so there are no current plans to upgrade. Unless SourceForge and others start dropping support for CVS, of course. Ahasuerus 00:56, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

Support for new award types

I am in the process of rolling out a series of changes that will eventually (hopefully later this week) let us add new award types on demand. There should be no user-experienced changes in the meantime, but if you notice any differences, please post your observations here. TIA. Ahasuerus 15:51, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Ooh, I think that's one of mine! It's been so long that I've forgotten what I was going to do with it next - defining award levels for an award type? Please do let me know what should happen next, and whether this will be a priority in future. BLongley 16:50, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Award levels are a moderately big can of worms. There are a few bugs associated with levels, e.g. Bug 3600738 and Bug 3600170, but more importantly we need to decide what we want to do with them going forward. At this time the award level field is used for three different purposes:

• Record nominations and wins for most awards
• Record poll positions for Locus, Campbell and Asimov's Readers' Poll
• Record preliminary nominees, withdrawn nominations, etc for award levels 70 and higher (no longer fully supported)

There is a fair amount of logic in the code to enforce these differences. Of course, using the same field to record different types of data is a fundamentally bad idea, so eventually we will need to change the underlying approach. I would expect that it will be at least another month before we can start looking into these issues, though, because there is still quite a bit of "stuff" that needs to be done first. Ahasuerus 23:22, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

"Moderately big"? I found awards to be one of the worst areas of code we have, hence the huge number of changes to address just one problem! BLongley 07:01, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

It's only "moderately big" because the bugs can be fixed relatively easily and because we will need to add at most two new fields to separate the different data elements that currently share the same field. The use of two character codes for awards is a bigger issue, but not insurmountable and I expect that we will be rid of them in another couple of weeks if everything goes well. Ahasuerus 19:33, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

No doubt you're getting a similar feeling - many thanks for tackling it. I think we can take a rest when you've finished Award types, I think only Darrah really wants new Award types, the rest of us have plenty to do anyway. BLongley 07:01, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Well, the ultimate goal is to let all editors edit awards and I think we need to clean up the underlying software beyond allowing adding new award types before we open the flood gates. Also, I expect that I will make the menu option to add new award type bureaucrat-only because much of the time the addition of new types is something that needs to be discussed ahead of time. 19:33, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

"Bureaucrat-only"? - I guess that means you, unless Al is secretly working on stuff without telling us. BLongley 22:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Al does make an appearance now and then as time permits. You can see his contributions by going to his User page and clicking on the "User contributions" link. Ahasuerus 22:54, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm fine with that though, I trust you. BLongley 22:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I may be the only full time bureaucrat at the moment, but things change. Al was our bureaucrat/sysop/etc for a while and there is no telling who may be in this position in a year or three. (People are, as one SF writer put it many decades ago, not only mortal, but unexpectedly mortal. And he didn't even know about gafiation!) Anyway, the important thing is to have a process in place while people come and go. Ahasuerus 22:54, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, what's the process if you suddenly find yourself crushed by your book collection in a major earthquake incident? (I'm told that America has lots more earthquakes than Britain seems to, you'd think we were on different planets.)

Well, yes, but mostly on the West Coast (go to this map, enable JavaScript, zoom in onto the US and select "30 days, All" in the drop-down list on the left) while I am on the East Coast these days. There is also New Madrid Seismic Zone, which was used in Walter Jon Williams's The Rift, but it's pretty far from the East Coast as well. We do have occasional earthquakes here, but nothing major (he said confidently.) Granted, when the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts, then yes, ISFDB operations (and a few other things) will likely be affected. Ahasuerus 04:38, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Have you mastered the Gilbert Gosseyn method of reappearing? Is there an Ahasuerus Junior waiting for you to fail? Do you have a will that states "I leave the passwords and responsibilities for the ISFDB to X"? X being the person suddenly put on the spot. I don't want to be X really, I fancy myself more of a Q - James Bond style, not Star Trek the Next Generation kind. BLongley 00:42, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Al has all the passwords and he knows where the bodies are buried, so everything will devolve back onto him. What he will decide to do about it will depend, I suppose, on where we are at that time. Not that I have any immediate plans to check out (and my doctor agrees), but you never know. Which brings up another point: Fixer and his database are not publicly available and there is a great deal of information there that we wouldn't want to lose. I'll have to think about it... Ahasuerus 04:38, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm waffling again aren't I? Better take my medications and try and sleep some more. Now, what is it I'm supposed to take at this time of night? The red pill or the blue pill? I know there's a brown pill to wash them down with. BLongley 00:49, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

And I agree there's a lot to fix before we open it up to everyone. I find it quite ironic that we were originally considered to be an Award-listing site predominately, and now we have so many problems with it. You might want to ping Michael Hutchins directly, I think he had strong opinions about some "awards" that were really just poll placings. BLongley 22:00, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I don't recall the conversation about polls, or if I ever had any strong opinion about awards and whether the ISFDB should devote more or less effort to them. Look at the list of major editors of the award functions, and you'll see I've done very little work on them. And those were usually at the behest of another editor or an author who was having problems editing them. Frankly, I think other sites do them better, especially the Locusmag website. As another editor once said, and wisely IMHO, the ISFDB can't be everything to everybody, and that we should concentrate on our strengths. But having said that, I don't have any problems with the way the ISFDB handles awards, whether they're polls or not. I've even entered a few Locus poll results, most years of which are still not complete. But I don't understand the listings given for the 2011 results. Why all those "9"s when the actual standing in the polls can be given? To get back to the topic at hand, anything that can make it easier to enter new award types, regardless of whether they're handled on an editor, moderator, or bureaucrat level, or whether they're polls or true awards, is fine by me. Mhhutchins 23:30, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I seem to recall that Locus usually announces their winners and runner-ups first (see this page for the 2012 announcement) and publishes a complete list (the 2012 version can be found here) later. My guess is that the final version was not available at the time when our list was last updated. Ahasuerus 23:52, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

So it appears that only those titles polling in the 2-5 position are considered as runner-ups when it comes to the actual award, while the remaining titles are just poll results. That would make it easier to enter those missing years. Mhhutchins 00:21, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Their Web page says that "Beginning 2005, the top five finishers in each category were revealed as 'finalists' prior to announcement of the winners at a public event". So it looks like they shifted their approach to be somewhat more in line with other awards, but their final listings (e.g. see the 2010 page) still list all nominees in the order of votes received and without separating the top 5 from the rest. So it's kind of a hybrid poll-award (pollard??).

At this time our software assumes that the Locus Poll Award is a poll rather than a traditional "win/nomination" award, so it expects all of them to have poll rankings. I am reasonably sure that I will be rewriting the way we handle "award levels" in the foreseeable future anyway, at which point will make the software smart enough to handle poll places and nominations at the same time, so this will be less of a headache. Ahasuerus 04:46, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I think "the Locus Poll Award" was exactly the phrase Michael objected to with a comment like "there ain't no such thing". But I'm hopeless at searching the wiki and my memory is not perfect and I wouldn't want to put words in Michael's mouth if my recollection is incorrect. Did I mention my memory is getting faulty and that I can't recall how to search the wiki? ;-) My recall of the ISFDB awards history is that Al did a fine job at first but gafiated: I used some of my early development time to create the Awards Wiki page that listed awards by year so that we could spot gaps: that encouraged Al to come back and do a bit more. Then Darrah showed an interest in award editing so we enabled him as the only non-mod user able to try the frankly broken tools. He's now a mod himself but still seems keen: I'm not so keen on developing so much for so few users, but if we're getting more and more interest in such work then I could be persuaded to have another look at what's broken. There was a worry that the "official" SF awards site was going to close down, and I posted about that here. We didn't volunteer to to take it over but I think it's been saved. That's what we should aspire to I think - but only if we have enough people interested in using us rather than them. We are aiming rather high at times and our resources are spread pretty thin - e.g. I feel like a small portion of Marmite spread on a huge piece of toast by someone that actually wanted Marmalade. BLongley 10:33, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

I find your memory as keen as ever, and I would hope mine is, too. So neither of us can use that as an excuse for our inability to search the Wiki. That fault, dear Bill, lies not in ourselves, but in our stars. Mhhutchins 19:29, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

The stars? Damn, I was going to blame our outdated Mediawiki. Still, it's good to know my inability on Wiki searches isn't my fault, it's Astronomy to blame. Or did you mean Astrology? Did you even write that or is it a quote? It looks vaguely familiar but you know what my memory is like - somewhere between a sieve and a colander.BLongley 21:35, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves ...

Julius Caesar (Act I, Scene ii) - William Shakespeare

Mhhutchins 23:32, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Ah, it was you rewriting something "classic" then! And like many classics, it's something I've probably got but haven't actually got round to reading. I think I picked up the complete works of Julius Caesar in one big volume for 99p a few years ago - not read any of it though, so don't know why I even half-recalled Brutus Shakespeare. Of course I remember "William" though - I have to, it's what my parents call me! BLongley 00:31, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Carl Brandon Society Award

Please note that although the Carl Brandon Society Award is now a choice on the New Award page, it's not fully supported at this time. If you select it, the submission process will error out. I expect to fix the problem in a day or two. Ahasuerus 00:30, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure Darrah can wait a little while longer, it's been over a year since I started the process! BLongley 09:57, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

OK, the Carl Brandon Society Award is now fully supported. I have entered the winners (see this page for an example), but I think my entries are a year off. If I understand their rules correctly, there is a two year gap between the year of publication and the year of award, e.g. their Web page says that "The 2010 Carl Brandon Awards will be presented at Worldcon in Chicago, August 30 - September 12, 2012" and "The winners of the 2011 awards will be announced in 2013". According to our rules, we use the year when the award was given as the "award year", so we will need to correct what I have entered. Also, we may want to add the year of publication to each category, e.g. "2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award" rather than just "Carl Brandon Parallax Award". Ahasuerus 21:27, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Let's see what Darrah has to say about it. We could use the feedback before attempting any more award improvements. BLongley 21:43, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

The Carl Brandon Society got behind on the award, partly due to getting things going, and partly because they suddenly became the awarding organization for the Octavia E. Butler scholarship award -- which drew off a bunch of their volunteer time. So we ended up with a situation where, for example, the 2008 awards and the 2009 awards (to use the year of publication eligibility) were both awarded on Jan. 16, 2011. That will cause some problems with the way we currently list such awards. I know that they would certainly prefer it if the awards were listed with the year of publication eligibility. Chavey 18:44, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Dark Angel (Max Allan Collin)

I think this: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?18351 should be changed to "Dark Angel (Max Allan Collins).04:17, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Do it. Or let us know why you don't want to do it yourself. BLongley 07:04, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

Wanted: 7 Fearless Engineers!

The cover shown here on Goodreads throws some doubt as to our records, where Nelson Tremaine is considered to be the author (under the name of the common pseudonym for these two authors: Warner van Lorne).--Dirk P Broer 12:59, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

The two Tremaines appear to have been brothers, which may explain the use of a joint pseudonym.--Dirk P Broer 13:02, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

Apologies if I'm being a bit thick at the moment, but what exactly is your question / point? We're used to either on this Moderator noticeboard but I really don't know what you're expecting us to do. BLongley 00:58, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

We don't use cover credits for bibliographic data. That particular "book" appears to be from an Amazon listing (because it provides an ASIN). And since that publication is not in the database, how can it be used as evidence that our listings of other publications of the title are wrong? I would advise not using Goodreads at all when it comes to bibliographic data...unless it's the only site on the Internet that has the data you're looking for. In which case, I'd advise extreme caution. I think our current attribution of that story's author is SFEIII. Mhhutchins 02:03, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

I found the Amazon listing that matches the Goodreads listing. "Look Inside" and you'll see the story is credited to Warner Van Lorne. So I suppose the point is moot. BTW, am I reading the Goodreads listing wrongly or does it actually state that the Kindle Edition was first published February 1939? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mhhutchins (talk • contribs) .

When Goodreads says "(first published February 1939)" it means that the "work" (or "title" to use our terminology) first appeared in February 1939.

By the way, keep in mind that quite a few Amazon covers for recently reprinted obscure titles look like they were automatically generated based on whatever title and author name happened to be stored in the database. It's possible that the actual books use the same auto-generated covers, but then again, maybe not. This was one of the reasons why I asked Fixer not to submit pubs from "reprint factory" publishers. Ahasuerus 04:06, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

That reminds me - a while ago I processed some Doctor Who reprints from Fixer. Quite interesting works, they had almost identical covers to the original Target/Wyndham editions: but now they all get a new introduction by a celebrity author/fan. I haven't seen them in Fixer submissions recently so I presume you're handling them manually if they're indeed appearing in the queue: but it does make me think that again, we have a title series that should be a publication series or two: the Doctor Who Target books often appeared as US Pocket books with celebrity introductions by people such as Harlan Ellison. I'm beginning to think that we need a mass title-to-publication series capability - this recently came up with the Star Trek Original Series numbering. Do you think we can pin down the actual requirements or would you prefer I just learn to write one-shot scripts to partially fix these when they're identified? BLongley 12:13, 18 January 2013 (UTC)

Help with suggestions on submission

Before I suggest something to Bob, I'd like a little affirmation or correction. See the billions of things I have on hold. One example is here (look at the Preview, and go to the title page), which shows:

The Works of Robert E. Howard

The Kull Series

By This Axe I Rule! Untitled Story ("Exile of Atlantis")

Although they're presented as subordinate and in a smaller font, the primary portion of the title is By This Axe I Rule! / Untitled Story ("Exile of Atlantis"). What's the right (or best) thing to do with the series(es)?

1. By This Axe I Rule! / Untitled Story ("Exile of Atlantis") and

   Put that into a "The Kull Series" series, putting that, in turn, into a "The Works of Robert E. Howard" series?

   Put that into a "The Works of Robert E. Howard: The Kull Series" series?

2. The Kull Series: By This Axe I Rule! / Untitled Story ("Exile of Atlantis") and put that in a "The Works of Robert E. Howard" series?
3. The Works of Robert E. Howard: The Kull Series: By This Axe I Rule! / Untitled Story ("Exile of Atlantis")?
4. Something else?

I sort of like #2, and I really don't like #3. I could see either variation of #1, so I'm not sure what's best. Thanks for the help. --MartyD 03:18, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

My opinion: Title of the work: "By This Axe I Rule! / Untitled Story ("Exile of Atlantis")". Place the pub record in a publication series called "The Works of Robert E. Howard". (But you may have to disambiguate that because another publisher has used the same name.) Once you've merged the content record of "By This Axe" it will automatically be in the Kull of Valusia title series. Mhhutchins 03:28, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

I suppose the second story would be made into a variant of this one, but I can't tell you why that one isn't part of the Kull series, even though it appears in several collections of the series. I don't know enough about Howard's work to say. Mhhutchins 03:39, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Arnoldo Mondadori Editore

As far as I know, these [2] [3] [4] [5] publishers are the same one (the last one is actually a publication series of the same publisher): Arnoldo Mondadori Editore (as confirmed by Catalogo Vegetti). Before performing a merge/rename that involves hundreds of publications, I would like to know if there was any discussion in the past on the subject that could provide some reason for the actual situation, which I find unsatisfactory since there are three 'Mondadori' publishers in Italy (Bruno, Giorgio and Arnoldo) along with a few co-operative publishing efforts involving Mondadori (for instance Interno Giallo / Mondadori. Thanks --Pips55 23:04, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

There was this discussion with Ernesto which merged most of them as "Mondadori (Italy)". (You can see there were even more publishers involved then.) As long as you're certain that it's the same publisher, I see no problem in merging them. First, the two "Oscars" need to have the publication series added to them so they won't get lost (one has been PVed, so you'll have to confirm that change with the editor). And there's another PVed (by the same editor) under "Mondadori". I would also suggest changing the names to simply "Arnoldo Mondadori". You would also have to update this to show which "Mondadori" is the publisher. Mhhutchins 23:41, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, that was what I needed; I contacted the Verifier and will proceed as soon as everything is sorted out. --Pips55 22:56, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Fireman Fictions

I see that this site has entries for The Fireman, Fahrenheit 451, plus one short story collection, one excerpt, plus other associational materials. Would it be a good idea to move all of these items into a series titled something like "Fireman Stories"? Just asking. MLB 10:54, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

If these are part of a true title series (their relationship is more than just thematic), then add the series to their title records. Mhhutchins 18:50, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

H.B. Vestal / Sojarr of Titan

Sole PV Dragoondelight of this pub suggests I should enter any serious update here, so that's why. I found H.B. Vestal listed as cover artist of Sojarr of Titan here, click on '1949 Prize Sci-fi #11'. Next question: Vestal, H. B. Vestal and Herman Vestal are not yet pseudonymed. Which should be the parent record? Horzel 15:42, 28 January 2013 (UTC)

If there is no obvious choice, we usually go for the most complete name. I'll make Herman Vestal into the canonical name, and the others into pseudonyms. Feel free to make submissions that variant the records of the pseudonym to the canonical name. Mhhutchins 04:52, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

I've updated the record for Sojarr of Titan to credit Herman Vestal. Mhhutchins 05:00, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you both. But there must be an easier way than to make 82 submissions that variant the records of the 2 pseudonyms to the canonical name. I'm sure this could be done in a single SQL statement. Horzel 10:48, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

There is an outstanding FR to add a menu option to do just that. Ahasuerus 10:55, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

With the help of some macros, I made those 82 art items into variants of ones by Herman Vestal, so those 3 bibliographies should all be listed correctly now. Chavey 20:35, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Fixer 2013

As most of you know, I took over all Fixer submissions in late October 2012. As I wrote at the time, a review of Fixer-generated publications had found that:

• in many cases Amazon's deficiencies -- missing binding codes, garbled titles/author names, etc -- remained uncorrected. There were also missing VTs/pseudonyms, missing (or incorrect) series attributions, incorrect UK/US prices and so on. Based on these findings, I decided to send Fixer on vacation (he says that Maui is great this time of the year) and take over the approval process for a while. It's been an interesting (if time consuming) experience and I hope that I will be able to use it to make Fixer's submissions cleaner in the future.

Based on my handling of Fixer's monthly catch for the last three months, I have made certain software improvements that should hopefully make the approving process a little easier. I have also improved and expanded the Help text that covers Fixer submissions to bring it up to date.

I am almost ready to recall Fixer from his vacation, but before I do that, I would like to ask all moderators who are willing to handle these submissions to read the Help text linked above. Once you do that, please consider whether you will have the time to do the extra work that is often required when handling Fixer's handiwork, thus avoiding the problems that I mentioned back in October. If you do, please indicate so below and I will change the software to add you to the list of moderators who can approve/reject Fixer's submissions. TIA! Ahasuerus 04:14, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

List of kamikaze moderators who volunteer to process Fixer's submissions:

• Ahasuerus. Ahasuerus 05:03, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
• MHHutchins. Mhhutchins 05:08, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
• MartyD. MartyD 11:23, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
• JLaTondre -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:01, 29 January 2013 (UTC)
• Bill Longley. BLongley 15:31, 30 January 2013 (UTC)
• Bluesman. --~ Bill, Bluesman 18:58, 3 February 2013 (UTC)
• Kraang Kraang 20:57, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

OK, the display logic has been modified and the 5 lucky souls listed above should be able to access Fixer's babies. There is a dozen guinea pigs Fixer submissions currently in the queue. Please let me know if you experience unexpected behavior. Ahasuerus 01:24, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Has it changed back to the previous status quo? What looks like Fixer submissions in the queue were uploaded by you, preventing other mods from handling them. Or are these different and you want to work them yourself? Mhhutchins 19:43, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the experiment was not very successful. On the plus side, I did get valuable feedback (from someone named Michael :-) re: publishers and adjusted Fixer's logic accordingly. On the flip side, a review of Fixer-initiated pubs uncovered pretty much all of the problems that prompted me to take over back in October: missing binding codes, Amazon-garbled titles, missing VTs, missing series information, etc. As I wrote on your Talk page a few days ago:

• Well, I was kind of hoping for (at least) that level of thoroughness... I guess my problem is that it's not unusual for me to spend 5-15 minutes on a single Fixer submission, looking for the author's Web site and other bio data, entering series data, tagging, cleaning up publication details, adding missing pubs, etc. The results are usually quite pleasing, but the downside is that it takes me roughly 2 weeks per month to process everything. Which means that the time that I can spend on development is cut at least in half (since I also have to take some time off now and then) :-(

• I guess it may not be realistic to expect other moderators to spend an equivalent amount of time on Fixer's handiwork -- they have other things to work on, after all, and not everyone is retired -- but then I have to go back, review/tweak the results and probably spend almost as much time following up. Hm... Perhaps some kind of compromise solution may be called for, e.g. I could handle the top tier stuff myself and then release the rest of the monthly catch on Fixer's behalf.

So, Fixer is back on hiatus for now. Once I finish processing the UK part of the March catch, which should happen in another 36-48 hours, I will do a cleanup pass and then see if I can do another test run consisting of "second tier" pubs on Fixer's behalf. Ahasuerus 00:16, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Michael D. Taylor = Michael Taylor?

I would guess that it is pretty safe to assume that our Michael D. Taylor is the same as this Michael Taylor, but before linking the information I'd like to hear some other opinions. Christian, Stonecreek 15:50, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. The first wrote a single story published in F&SF more than 30 years ago, and the other writes and produces a Star Trek television series. What is the evidence that connects the two? And then we have Michael Taylor who is very likely two different persons: one with a self-published novel and the other a cover artist for semi-professional publications. So at this point there appear to be four different Michael Taylors: three in the database and one in Wikipedia. Mhhutchins 17:47, 30 January 2013 (UTC)

Oh, well, I didn't came over the other Michael Taylors. You're right: it could be any other of them with a near same probability. Stonecreek 15:12, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Pagination in multi-issue compendium

See The Complete Marvel Tales and what was done with the page numbering. I'm sure we've run into something like this but haven't seen it and didn't know if I should suggest something different. Please drop a note for Bob about a more appropriate solution (I probably won't be back at this for 24 hours). Thanks. --MartyD 12:36, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Until the software is changed to allow content ordering I don't see a way around this. There's as many solutions, none very good, as there are editors. Take a look at how some of the Ace Doubles with collections are entered. Bob's solution is as good as any. My suggestion: let it be. Mhhutchins 17:39, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree - let it be. (Everyone sing along now!) We're not getting close to content ordering changes yet - I thought our main problem was with poetry collections, where two or more poems appear on the same page, and we can't use fractional page numbers to differentiate. This seems a harmless workaround. BLongley 23:09, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Livello 7

Trying to preserve Ernesto verification while extracting this pub from the magazine series he erroneously created, I succeeded in creating a containerless collection ... Is there any hope ? --Pips55 22:44, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Sure. Edit the pub and under the Contents section create a new title record which matches the pub's title field and type (in this case Livello 7 and COLLECTION). This creates a new "container" (title reference). Try it and see how it works. Mhhutchins 22:55, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

What a relief! Now I see a reason for a Collection type in the contents section. Thanks --Pips55 23:26, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Now that you know how to return a title reference to a publication record, I would advise changing the publication to a NOVEL. I can see no reason why this is considered a collection. Those appendices are supplements to the novel, and should not be considered separate pieces of shortfiction. The English version of that publication is correctly typed as a NOVEL. I suppose "Il diario dell'ufficiale PP X-127" could be considered part of the novel as well, but I don't think it should have its own content record. My copy of the English version has a fictional "Introduction" but it would not be correct to create a content record for it because it's part of the novel. Mhhutchins 00:05, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I know, and I was very much in doubt about it. What drew me to the collection choice was the fact that I could not judge the shortfictions content (I do not have the book, I own a magazine edition which presents only the novel) and the cover title was different from the novel title, as far as Fantascienza.com reports it. --Pips55 01:29, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

That's why I'm thinking the actual title of the novel is Livello7 and that "Il diario dell'ufficiale PP X-127" is that part of the novel that's NOT the appendices. BTW, why is the first appendix an ARTICOLO and the second is a RACCONTO. What's the difference? The English version has them both as SHORTFICTION (I would have entered them as ESSAYS.) Mhhutchins 01:39, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

A quick glance to this English original (available by Google books) seems to sort things out: the Preface and "Il diario dell'ufficiale PP X-127" are the novel, according ISFDB rules, the first appendix is an ESSAY (ARTICOLO) while the second is a SHORTFICTION (RACCONTO). If you agree, I will modify my submission accordingly. Thanks --Pips55 23:30, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

Works for me. We need the English publication and its direct Italian reprint to match in all aspects. Mhhutchins 03:27, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

All About Strange Monsters of the Recent Past - Waldrop

I have extensive notes to add to this publication (artist info, physical description notes, limitation clarification, cover image) but PV is no longer active.SFJuggler 20:58, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

It wasn't necessary to post this message here. According to the notification statement posted on the talk page of non-active primary verifiers: If this user is the sole verifier of a publication record, please post only notices here concerning the addition of images and notes. Post inquiries regarding any other changes to the verified record at the Moderator noticeboard. Since your update only added notes, all you had to do was post a message on the verifier's page. If there had been a second primary verifier, you would only have needed to post a message on that verifier's page. Mhhutchins 04:22, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Bradbury rebound book

I have a copy of Ray Bradbury's book "Fahrenheit 451" that would seem to be a paper back in a hard cover. The front cover at the top shows the name "COVER CRAFT". The back cover shows "Prefection Learning # 02980" and a ISBN number 0-8124-1555-8. The copyright page shows ISBN 0-345- 34296-8 with (second printing: April 1991), and a number line 19 18 .... 12. I need some pointers on how to enter this publication. --RUSSWOTHE 22:38, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

This message was lost at the bottom of the page and appeared to be part of the previous topic. If you wish to start a new topic, don't use the "Edit" tab, which edits the entire page. Click on the "+" tab, which opens a new dialog window. Enter the name of your topic in the "subject/headline" box, then type in the message in the larger box.

Now to your question. Perfection Learning purchases publisher copies and rebinds them in a hardcover for schools. Just enter each of the field as you would entering any other publication, but change the publisher (as stated on the title page) to "Perfection Learning Rebound", give the ISBN as stated on the back of the book, and in the Note field enter the publisher and ISBN that's given in the interior. Then, add any further description of the book in the Note field, including the printing number line data (this would be the original publisher's data, not the rebinder's data). Unless there's a printing date on the boards, don't use the interior dating as given on the book's copyright page. Just enter "0000-00-00" in the date field. Mhhutchins 23:13, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Correction to a pub verified by Ernesto Vegetti

Hello! A correction is needed for Galaxy #9. The cover artist is identified as "Dember" while the cover is the copy of one by Gaughan: Galaxy Magazine, December 1958. Thank you! ForJohnScalzi 04:03, 6 February 2013 (UTC).

And another one. The cover artist in Galaxy #69 is given as "Dember" while it's Wentzel (from Galaxy Magazine, June 1961). Thank you. ForJohnScalzi 04:07, 6 February 2013 (UTC).

Both have been fixed. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:15, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Islands in the Sky by Arthur C. Clarke. First Edition Second Printing ?

My copy of this book shows the publisher as "The John C. Winston Company".The copyright page shows "Copyright, 1952" and "First Edition". L. C. Card #52-8970. At the bottom of the front cover flap is "NET $2.57". At the bottom left of the front dust jacket is a gold sticker with a logo and the words "Holt Library Edition". At the base of the dust jacket spine is a red and white logo with the words science fiction in red and HOLT RINEHART WINSTON IN BLACK inside the logo. There is no name Winston at the very base. Going just by the price I think this is a second printing. Because of the differences in the dust jacket should this be entered as a new listing? Is there any way to know if a price of $2.57 would make this a second edition? --RUSSWOTHE 21:52, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

It's a variant of the first edition, not a second printing. Publishers often publish "library binding" editions simultaneously with their commercial ("trade") edition. Clone the ISFDB record for the trade edition, and change the fields to match your copy. Add further descriptions in the Note field. Mhhutchins 22:20, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

Hold the boat. I just noticed you said it contains the Holt Rinehart & Winston logo, which means it had to have been printed after that publishing merger in 1960. Check the copyright page for additional info about a possible later printing. In the meantime, continue to clone the first edition, but zero out the date field. Mhhutchins 22:23, 6 February 2013 (UTC)

The Copyright page is almost empty. At the top is "Copyright 1952". In the center of the page is "First Edition". At the bottom it is stated "Made in the United States of America". And last line is L. C. Card # 52-8970". There is no line number or statement of printing. The book binding is that of a library binding so the book and the dust jacket would seem to be correct. NOTE: The book has no library markings as if it was never used. --RUSSWOTHE 17:29, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Two more bits of information. This book has the Alex Schomburg art work on the end pages. The back of the dust jacket list 34 books published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. One "Vault of the Ages" was published by them first in 1964. --RUSSWOTHE 19:10, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

If there's no statement of printing or date of publication, then my original advice stands. Just be sure to zero out the date field. Mhhutchins 20:36, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

Eligibility of DUFF/TAFF etc. campaign material

I have on hold a new pub by a new editor who is already present in the database. The 'pub' she wants to add is at the moment webpage only so I've advised her on its current non-eligibility (Talk), however I also have a query as to the eligibility of personal promotion/campaign material such as this, even if it's not a current campaign and even if it's publication format were acceptable. I can't point to any previous discussion on this (although there may have been some), and the Rules of Acquisition aren't explicit. but in this age of 'PDFs for everything' I think there may need to be some more guidance there for new editors. Feedback, please. PeteYoung 04:42, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't think it's eligible unless it were published as an essay in a larger publication (fanzine/magazine/nonfiction). I see your point about PDFs and have to agree with you that we should revisit this area of the Rules of Acquisition in a Rules & Standards discussion. These days anyone can convert a file to a PDF, post it on a website/blog/facebook page/whatever, and the current rules would make it eligible because it's downloadable. Mhhutchins 04:53, 7 February 2013 (UTC)

We only accept "web publications" if it's from a well-known reputable site, such as those that have won "big-name" awards. Similarly, I would suggest that we should only accept ePubs if they're available from "big-name" stores. It doesn't take much for your ePub to be available through Amazon, but at least it's one way to set up a modest hurdle against "everything". Chavey 20:47, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Award Edit changes (patch r2013-32)

Award Edit has been modified as per FR 3600713. After approving an Award Edit submission, you are now given the choice of editing the award or viewing the award year. In addition, if the award is title-based, you can also view/edit the title record. Ahasuerus 04:08, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Award editing - moderator changes (patch r2013-38)

All occurrence of award codes (e.g. 'Lc' for 'Locus' or 'An' for 'Analog') have been removed from moderator pages and replaced with full award names. If you see a rogue code, please report it to your friendly extermination authorities. Ahasuerus 23:37, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

And as an added bonus, Delete Award submissions are now linked to the Title record that they affect (if there is one.) Ahasuerus 01:41, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Import/Export linkage

As per FR 3603488, the moderator approval page for ImportExport submissions has been modified to link to the pub that the proposed additional content will be added to. Ahasuerus 02:47, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Correction to a pub verified by Ernesto Vegetti

Hello! A correction is needed for Fantascienza #7. The cover artist is identified as "Chesley Bonestell" while the cover is the copy of one by Kirberger: MFSF, July 1954. Thank you! ForJohnScalzi 04:22, 15 February 2013 (UTC).

The link you gave is to a different pub. You left out the last number. I'll correct the cover art credit in this record, and make a note. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:32, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Moderator cross-approval changes

Based on previously submitted feedback (see above), some changes have been made to the submission display logic. You can now view (but can't approve/reject) other moderators' submissions. Ahasuerus 19:13, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

David A. Hardy disambiguation

I need to disambiguate entries for David A. Hardy -- most are by the UK artist (and sometime essayist/letter-writer), a few are by the Howard essayist/Cimmerian contributor (don't know if he's US or not), although I suspect "few" will grow a little bit. I could go with "(artist)" and "(author)", respectively. Or I could leave the artist's name unadorned and just put "(author)" on the essayist. Opinions about treatment of the artist's entry? Other suggestions welcome, of course. Thanks. --MartyD 12:21, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps there's some identifying biographical information in the publications in which the non-art pieces were published. Some have been primary verified, so asking the verifier to check might be helpful. I would strongly encourage you not to disambiguate the artist's name or his credits. And there are some credits for the artist that are attributed to just "David Hardy" so those would have to remain as credited without disambiguation. Mhhutchins 18:16, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm in regular correspondence with Hardy-the-artist so notified him of the gist of the above and asked him to take a look. DavehardyO1 is not him, by the way. He says there are 4 titles there which are not his work:

Viktor's Doom

The Monster in the Jungle

Gunfighters of the Wild East

The Making of El Borak

Once Marty has settled on the disambiguation for the name(s) of the other Hardy(s), it's these titles that would need to be re-assigned. PeteYoung 11:33, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

A correction: as it turns out, DavehardyO1 is the artist. I've encouraged him to make more submissions, perhaps beginning with his own publications, and let him know it's probably more useful to continue further discussion about ISFDB on his Talk page (instead of via e-mail). PeteYoung 00:19, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes Bob was going to see if he could find some more information about the Howard-oriented Hardy, and I was waiting to see what Davehardy01 had so say. So, thanks for the follow-up. I will fix them up this weekend. --MartyD 01:13, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I made a "(II)" for the author of "Viktor's Doom", since that is actually credited to David Hardy, for which I also made a "(II)" -- I have to wonder if that mapping to David A. is a mistake, but I don't know where it came from. I made a "(III)" for the other three, pending any information from Bob that might allow a clearer disambiguation (and making people who like Roman numeral disambiguations happy in the meantime!). --MartyD 11:48, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Edit Publication Series and Edit Publisher fixed (patch r2013-54)

The moderator pages for Edit Publication Series and Edit Publisher should no longer incorrectly display the values of unchanged fields as changed. (This bug only affected records which contained Unicode and other special characters.) Ahasuerus 05:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Human Reaction

Please have a look at this comment which I left on the talk page of an editor two weeks ago. There was no reply yet. Is it okay if I go ahead and make the change? Thanks, Darkday 22:45, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

That editor is only sporadically active. It looks like someone was working on that record and left it in an intermediate state. (Notice the story hasn't been included in the pagination.) I can't be sure if it was the original verifier or another editor. What page is the story on? How is it credited on the story's title page? Mhhutchins 23:22, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Reading closer, I see that the story isn't in the collection but included in a separate publication. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be better to create a separate record for the chapbook. Is the title page of the chapbook credited only to Garrett? Mhhutchins 23:26, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

The cover, the copyright page and the colophon of the pamphlet mention only Garrett. The colophon furthermore says "200 copies were printed to accompany the limited edition of A Little Intelligence, and are not for sale separately." I assume that's the reason Ckovacs did not create a separate record. Darkday 00:09, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

But just because they were published to be sold together doesn't mean they should share one record. Feel free to create a pub record for the pamphlet, and I'll moderate it. Once it's in the database, I'll link it to the record of the collection's limited edition, and remove the content record. Are you familiar with the creation of CHAPTERBOOK records? Mhhutchins 00:47, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

I submitted a record for the pamphlet now. There is one thing I wasn't sure about: The copyright page of the pamphlet says "January 2009", so I entered that as the publication date. But the book the pamphlet came with has the publication date February 2009 in the ISFDB, so this is not consistent. Not sure what the source for February is, the copyright page of the book only mentions 2009. Darkday 23:52, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

Issue resolved on your talk page. Mhhutchins 04:41, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

John Dickson Carr

As I noticed his name in the list of authors who died on this date, and being a mystery fan as well, I thought I would have a look for any entry in Clute/Grant or Clute/Nicholls. He actually appears in both. Three novels listed in the ISFDB appear in both so I have verified them. A fourth (Fire, Burn!) also appears in both volumes but with a date of 1957, whereas the ISFDB gives 1956 so I have left this alone. The fifth novel (The Demoniacs) appears in neither reference (perhaps the title is why it was included?).

In addition there are a further 7 novels included in the main entries in the references (3 in Clute/Grant, 3 in Clute/Nicholls and 1 in both). Is this sufficient reason to inlude them in the ISFDB?SGale 15:52, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

I believe he is primarily known as a writer of detective and mystery stories. As such, his non-genre titles would not be eligible for the database. But if you're certain they're spec-fic, even borderline, do not hesitate to enter them into the database. The 1956 date for Fire, Burn! is for its first edition, according to Tuck, which may be wrong. OCLC dates it as 1957. I'm not sure why The Demoniacs is in the database, having never read anything by Carr. And it may have been because of the title. The Wikipedia article gives no spec-fic elements in the work. The only reason there are two nongenre titles listed is because they appeared in an omnibus that reprinted one of his borderline spec-fic novels. I'll remove them from the database. In fact, it appears that most of the stories in this collection are not spec-fic. (I could find only three that were borderline.) Mhhutchins 00:42, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

BTW, when you added this post to the page it appears you did a page edit. If you want to add a new comment, click on the plus (+) tab at the top of the page, rather than the "edit" tab. Doing the former way allows your topic to be posted on the "Recent Changes" page, and can help avoid most edit conflicts (when another person is editing the same page at the same time). Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:52, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I just checked Clute/Nicholls (I don't have Clute/Carr), and the three titles which they mention (that are not in the ISFDB) are "evocatively set" (whatever that means!), but they don't explicitly note them as spec-fic, only that they are among "his famous early detective novels". It only mentions one borderline-fantasy detection called The Waxworks Murder which is not in the ISFDB. You have to keep in mind that just because there is a reference for it in Clute/Nicholls doesn't mean there has to be one in the ISFDB. But if they describe it as spec-fic, or even borderline, feel free to add any missing titles to the database. Mhhutchins

Having read everything by Carr, happy to offer my 2 cents. The Demoniacs is NONGENRE, needs to be deleted. Both collections mostly contain non-genre stories, there are few borderliners (I am bit hazy about some stories, need to doublecheck). I disagree with Clute/Nicholls that The Waxworks Murder is borderline, it's nongenre. ForJohnScalzi 01:30, 28 February 2013 (UTC).

Book verified by non-active editor

Hello! I believ that there is typo in the name of cover artist in 152351 verified by Unapersson. It should be Richard Glyn Jones not Richard GlynN Jones, as stated. Moreover, the notes claim that artist credit is coming from abebooks seller, so I'd like to argue there are grounds for correcting the credit. Thank you! ForJohnScalzi 04:56, 28 February 2013 (UTC). Oh, and there is a verified 188141 from a truly alive mod with almost the same cover (not mentions Mal Dean, though!). Thank you! ForJohnScalzi

I have the US edition that uses the same cover art, and it is explicitly credited to Richard Glyn Jones, without Mal Dean. Please proceed to make it match the US edition and give that as the source for credit on this UK edition. Mhhutchins 05:00, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed the joke. Yes, I'm very much alive, truly and actively participating in life. :) Mhhutchins 05:01, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

Submission display problem

This started a few weeks ago, so it must have been generated in a recent set of software changes: whenever a field of a record being updated has a colon (:), the submission will display it as if it has been changed in the submission, when it actually is identical to the original data. Can this display error be fixed? Mhhutchins 23:15, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's a known problem (Bug 3603485), currently in the pipeline. Ahasuerus 08:16, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

In the meantime, I've discovered it's not just a colon, but several other non-standard characters. Mhhutchins 02:54, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Moderator-only Edit Pub enhancement (patch 2013-60)

After approving an Edit Pub submission, you can now go directly to the verification page for the changed pub. Ahasuerus 01:01, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Advanced Author Search fixed (patch r2013-64)

Advanced Author Search has been fixed. Moderators should be once again able to merge author records on the second and subsequent pages. Ahasuerus 04:30, 13 March 2013 (UTC)

Die Marsianer

I'm starting to clean up the German edition of KSR's The Martians, starting by removing all of the English content, then adding in the appropriate German translations and making variants.

I mention that here because the primary verifier Phileas is currently inactive. Albinoflea 03:01, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Fixer is back - April 2013

Fixer has undergone a partial rewrite/upgrade and is ready to make a reappearance. A number of Amazon-related quirks have been fixed, although a few remain and I will discuss them below.

The biggest change is that Fixer's internal queues have been reorganized to support prioritization. Here is what they currently look like for 2011, 2012 and 2013:

Month       2013                   2012                   2011
      new    0   1   2   3|  new    0   1   2   3|  new    0   1   2   3|
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
NONE   32    1   0   0   0|  288    0   0   0   0|  277    0   0   0   0|
Jan     0   43 137 121 397|  895    0   0   0   0|  917    0   0   0   0|
Feb     0   28 189 178 395|  749    1   7   3   3|  678    0   0   0   0|
Mar     0   50  91 145 267| 1036    0   1   2   0| 1043    0   0   0   0|
Apr     0  110  25  38   9|  940    0   0   1   0| 1424    0   0   0   0|
May     0  130   0  45   3| 1031    1   0   1   0| 1200    0   0   0   0|
Jun     0  101 362  15   0|  795    0   0   2   0| 1218    0   0   0   0|
Jul   790    9  18   0   0|  763    0   0   1   1|  803    0   0   0   0|
Aug   652   13   6   0   0|  882    0   0   0   0| 1195    0   1   0   0|
Sep   592    5   5   0   0| 1148    0   1   0   0|  272    0   0   0   0|
Oct   558    1   5   0   0| 1095    0   0   0   1|  335    0   0   0   0|
Nov   268    3   1   0   0|  967    0   2   1   0|  385    0   0   0   0|
Dec   187    2   0   0   0|  870    0   1   3   2|  585    0   0   0   0|

There are 5 columns per each month/year combination.

The "new" column contains the count of ISBNs found by Fixer that I haven't prioritized yet. The values for January-June 2013 are currently 0 because I have just finished a review of Fixer's findings for the first half of 2013. They will go back up once Fixer finds additional ISBNs, but I plan to continuously review new ISBNs and prioritize them accordingly.

The column labeled "0" contains the count of ISBNs that can't be submitted at this time because they are missing important data elements. Missing data often suggests that an ISBN has been delayed or canceled, so it's safer not to submit it and check again in a couple of months.

The column labeled "1" is for any ISBNs associated with:

1. Major SF publishers
2. General/university publishers
3. Specialty SF publishers
4. Established SF authors (even if self-published)

The reason that the value of this column for May 2013 is currently 0 is that I finished submitting and processing all major ISBNs for May earlier today. Conversely, the value for June 2013 is 362 because I haven't submitted (almost) any June pubs yet. Note that the count gets higher as you go back in time because Amazon frequently back-fills ISBNs associated with small presses, large print/library bound pubs, etc. Fixer will catch these ISBNs during subsequent runs.

The column labeled "2" is for less prominent genre publishers like Ellora's Cave as well as for minor SF authors whose work is currently cataloged in ISFDB. They too tend to be listed by Amazon around the time of publication or even after the fact.

The column labeled "3" is for everything else, which primarily includes vanity publishers and self-published books. Most of these ISBNs are listed by Amazon after they are published, which is reflected in the spreadsheet above.

Back to the previously mentioned Amazon quirks. Please keep in mind that the data that Fixer has access to is NOT always the same as the data displayed by the Amazon Web sites (.com, .co.uk, .ca, etc). For example, editorial reviews displayed by various Amazon Web sites may or may not be made available to Fixer for copyright reasons. This means that Fixer and I do not always have enough information to determine whether a book is SF, whether it's a graphic novel, etc. In addition, although Fixer queries both Amazon.com and Amazon UK, sometimes only one of the sites sends useful information back, which can result in the wrong price getting used when building the submission. If the price field says something like "£5.23", please check the other Amazon site to see if it may have better data.

At this time the plan is for me to continue handling all "priority 1" ISBNs that are listed by Amazon 6-10 weeks prior to publication. The load usually adds up to about 400ish ISBNs per month. However, now that Fixer supports prioritization, I can also start submitting older "priority 1" (and eventually "priority 2") ISBNs on Fixer's behalf. Hopefully, this will let us start back-filling our numerous lacunae without overwhelming moderators with the vanity- and self-published stuff that is so common these days.

So, what do you think? Sound like a plan? Suggestions? Possible improvements? Ahasuerus 04:56, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

I have submitted about 20 ISBNs on Fixer's behalf to give everyone an idea of what they may look like. Ahasuerus 05:01, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Oh goodie, more "Candy Fairies" titles. :-/ BLongley 10:08, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

Looks good submit away!Kraang 01:12, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Current non-fiction submission

There is a book in the submission queue (#3 as I write this) called "Impossiblie Possibilities". Publisher's description is:

"Are there intelligent beings on other planets - or in other galaxies? If so is there some way to communicate with them? Can man become immortal? Will genetic research ever produce a 'Superman'? Can an electronic brain ever learn to think for itself? Will ESP ever supplement - or replace - speech as a means of communication? Let Louis Pauwels & Jacques Bergier show you how Yesterday's Impossibilites are Tomorrow's Realities!"

This strikes me as more science speculation that a book about science fiction, so I'm not sure if it should be included. I'd rather someone else decide that, but since I found the description here, I thought I would pass that on to whomever wants to moderate this book. Chavey 23:18, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

There are two more works by these authors in the database, with several primary verified records, because they were reviewed in genre publications. Ordinarily, I would think such titles would not be eligible, but I guess one more title wouldn't hurt. (There are hundreds of clear-cut flat-out science books already in the database without any connection to sf except for being reviewed in Analog and other more science-oriented sf magazines.) I'll handle the submission. Mhhutchins 00:21, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Starseeker 2065

Since I believe it could appear that I have a personal conflict with Starseeker 2065, I will no longer moderate submissions from him. Chavey 04:03, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Fixer May 2013

As you may have noticed, there are about three dozen Fixer submissions in the queue. The good news is that once they have been processed, Fixer's "high priority queue" for January-June 2013 will be empty.

Admittedly, one could argue that some of these submissions are not exactly high priority, but in Fixer's defense they come from the tail end of this particular queue, which had some flotsam in it. Ahasuerus 06:06, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Tiberius

I've put on hold three edits from new editor Tiberius that look a lot like attempted vandalism. I will reject them eventually, but on the contributors list I see he/she already has a couple of edits credited, so I feel duty-bound to first give this editor the benefit of the doubt and see if he/she has anything to say for him/herself. PeteYoung 20:45, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

That name change makes it look like vandalism, but maybe he's wanting to add a pseudonym to the author and can't figure out how it works. I suggest rejecting the submissions, (you were going to have to eventually) and sending him an email asking him to respond to the post you made on his talk page. If he's serious he'll respond. Mhhutchins 01:16, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

You never know, it may be a child playing with his parents' PC. Ahasuerus 07:53, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

I've rejected and e-mailed, inviting some response either on his Talk page or by direct reply. I don't expect a response, to be honest, and Desmond may have it right. For the record, the edits were 1) to significantly alter the author's name in a pejorative way, 2) merge 3 separate short fiction titles, 3) merge 17 short fiction titles. Thanks for the input, if I do hear back via e-mail I'll update here. PeteYoung 19:37, 14 May 2013 (UTC)

Surprise, I've heard back from Tiberius in a private e-mail. He/she apologises for the "stupid antics" and goes into some detail justifying the attempt to deface Dagstine's entry. If other mods want/need/are curious to see the content of the message I will pass it on and notify him/her, I doubt he/she would object, and I've left a brief reply on Tiberius's Talk page. Maybe a more senior mod could take further action, ie. banning, if such is now considered necessary. PeteYoung 12:50, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Odd publication record with Yiddish edition

I just entered a Yiddish translation of James Branch Cabell's Jurgen and I attempted to enter the book using the Hebrew alphabet, by cutting and pasting from the Worldcat record. The use of the alphabet was partially an experiment to see if it could be done, or whether transliteration should be used instead. Everything seemed fine, except for the publication listing on the title record. The author's name, title and page count appear to be miss-ordered. I thought that perhaps the title being in Yiddish was causing this (since it reads right to left) and I experimented by changing the title to English, but that had no effect. I guess I have to assume that something in the alphabet is causing the display issues. I was hoping that one of the programmers could advise whether this is a bug, or if we should avoid the Hebrew alphabet. I'm also willing to take feedback on whether an author's name in a different alphabet is properly a pseudonym. Thanks in advance. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 00:35, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Non-Latin alphabets (Japanese, Cyrillic, etc) are currently supported in all fields with one exception: Author names really need to be entered using Latin characters for technical reasons.

Hebrew and Arabic characters present special challenges because when the browser sees them, it tries to display the whole "sentence" right to left, which doesn't really make sense in our case. There is a way to tell the browser to display everything left to right regardless of the alphabet and I will see if I can implement it. Thanks for reporting the problem! Ahasuerus 01:28, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

And thanks for the explanation. I've edited the record to revert Cabell's name to the Latin alphabet. That solves the question on whether transliterated names should be pseudonyms. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 01:46, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

OK, I think I got the Title page, including the Bibliographic Warnings section, fixed on the development server. However, the Summary page has a similar problem when displaying canonical titles and VTs and will need to be fixed next. Ahasuerus 02:13, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

I have installed a patch to fix the behavior of the Title page. There is still a known issue with the Summary page as well as minor issues with Publisher-related pages -- e.g. see the header of this page or the contents of this page -- but they will have to wait until tomorrow. Ahasuerus 03:34, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks again. Frankly, I can't figure out the problem with the publisher bibliography page. Rtrace^Talk 00:26, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

The header says "XYZ - Bibliography" instead of "Bibliography - XYZ" :-) Ahasuerus 03:12, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

I may be missing something, but I think that all the publishers are presented that way. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 22:46, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

You are right -- sorry about that! I was juggling the development and the live versions of the software and got confused :( Ahasuerus 01:22, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for finding all the other places where there are issues. I don't actually read or speak Yiddish. I acquired this because I collect Cabell. I don't foresee any other Yiddish books making it to my collection, but you never know. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 00:26, 17 May 2013 (UTC)

Well, plugging various holes (e.g. what happens if a Catalog ID contains an Arabic character?) took somewhat longer than expected, but I think we should be in pretty good shape now. If you run into any issues, please post them here. Ahasuerus 06:18, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Dave Simms / David Simms

I've noticed that this author has two pages on this site. One as David Simms and the other as Dave Simms as this author's reviews mostly all appear in the same magazine (Cemetery Dance) I'm assuming, perhaps wrongly, that these two pages could be merged. However, this is not my call. I just thought I should bring this to my superior's attention. MLB 08:35, 23 May 2013 (UTC)

Submission queue -- unintended change

The latest performance improvements resulted in an unintended change: the submission queue is now ordered by submitter and then by submission time rather than just by submission time. I expect to have it fixed shortly. Ahasuerus 00:39, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

Fixed in the latest patch. Ahasuerus 01:01, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

The Starchild Trilogy

I updated the entry of The Starchild Trilogy, a Doubleday / SFBC copy by Williamson and Pohl. My copy is older that the primary verifier's (who is no longer active), but my gutter code is a problem. My copy has a code of "H36" which is September 1966, but that date cannot be correct. The third novel in the trilogy is given a copyright date in the trilogy of 1969, so the earliest it could have been published is 1969. Please review and let me know what needs to be done with the pub date. Bob 22:03, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

If the ID number on the back flap of the dustjacket of your copy is "1310", you have the same edition that I have, not the one you linked to (which has the ID "01310".) This page on Doubleday gutter codes explains how a new sequence of numbers began in 1970. Mhhutchins 23:28, 31 May 2013 (UTC)