ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard/Archive 26

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This archive includes discussions from July - December 2019.

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Expanded archive listing

Science Fiction Monthly (1974-1976)

The magazine dates are globally wrong. Do I need to change each record individually, or is there another way to do this?

(Mike Ashley, in Gateways to Forever, p. 128, states: “The first issue of Science Fiction Monthly appeared on the last Wednesday of January 1974”, and adds in footnote #147, “All issues were undated, carrying only an issue and volume number, but technically the first issue was for February 1974 and it continued on a monthly schedule.” Also, v01n11and v02n11 both have Christmas covers = December issues.)

Thanks, Paul Fraser

When there's no official statement within the magazine, we assume that the (real) month of publication should be given in the magazine issue's entry. If there's a statement for February in a January issue, we would count it as for the second month of that year. But - since you state that the issues are undated - it seems they should stay the way they are. Stonecreek 14:39, 3 July 2019 (EDT)

Guide to Extraterrestrials

this edition note states "Stated 2nd Edition, 5th printing"

this edition note states "Fifth Printing per the number line of the 1987 Second Edition"

Which seems like they are the same edition.

Any danger of someone concatinating them ?--Mavmaramis 11:57, 4 July 2019 (EDT)

Sure there is! If you look a little closer they have different ISBNs and different fotmats! Stonecreek 13:00, 4 July 2019 (EDT)

Post-Approval page changes

As per FR 169, all post-approval Web pages have been modified as follows:

1. A "Next Submission" link has been added. Note that it skips Held submissions.
2. The links that appear on post-submission pages are now displayed on two lines:
   • "Next Submission" and "Submission List" are displayed on the first line.
   • Any other links like "View Title", "Edit Title", etc. are displayed on the second line.

Let's give it a few days and see if having two lines makes more sense. If not, we can easily go back to having just one line.

Ahasuerus 18:48, 13 July 2019 (EDT)

I like Next Submission! I also like the 2-line arrangement, but I don't have strong feelings about it. --MartyD 07:12, 14 July 2019 (EDT)

I like this a lot. It may be a good idea to skip submissions by other moderators in addition to held submissions. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:08, 14 July 2019 (EDT)

And can we also get the new link in ta_merge.cgi as well? That's the page you see after finding a duplicate and merging them after an approval :) Annie 12:38, 15 July 2019 (EDT)

It seems to be working correctly on the development server. Is it possible that you were viewing the last submission in the queue, so there was no "next" submission? Ahasuerus 14:12, 15 July 2019 (EDT)

I think that there were more. Will check again next time I see it. But I am pretty sure that when I got back to the original approved one, I had a "Next". Will post back when I can verify one way or the other. Annie 14:27, 15 July 2019 (EDT)

Never mind. It is effectively the last one because it is a new one (I start the merge based on the found duplicate, not one from the queue). So it makes sense - took me awhile... Annie 16:04, 15 July 2019 (EDT)

(unindent) I have added "Next Submission" and "Submission List" links to moderator review pages. I'll look into Ron's suggestion next. Ahasuerus 15:26, 15 July 2019 (EDT)

Can we move that "Submission List" link somewhere else on the review page - next line for example - I keep hitting it instead of Accept for the last few minutes. Or change the color. Or do something else to make it look different from the Accept next to it. Plus from a pure hand-eye coordination, hitting a middle button for the most common scenario is hard - I would much rather have the Accept as last in that line-up. Or have two lines - one for the two old buttons and a new one for the "escape from that page with no action" buttons. Annie 15:31, 15 July 2019 (EDT)

OK, I have moved the 2 new links to a separate line. I have also implemented Ron's suggestion: "Next Submission" links now skip submissions created by other moderators. One step at a time... Ahasuerus 16:08, 15 July 2019 (EDT)

I have standardized the format of the new links across all pages. I have also added more blank space around them to help avoid misclicks. Ahasuerus 11:25, 17 July 2019 (EDT)

Thanks! I like the added space. Annie 14:44, 17 July 2019 (EDT)

(unindent) Can we get the new buttons on the screen that is shown after a Reject as well? Thanks! Annie 15:30, 19 July 2019 (EDT)

Makes sense. Let me see what I can do once I finish Fixer's September AddPubs. Ahasuerus 17:04, 19 July 2019 (EDT)

Done. Ahasuerus 20:51, 19 July 2019 (EDT)

Wrongfully ignorant edit rejection and mess-up

Jiří Hájek was (I'd rather not speculate on how this happened), and remains as of now, linked to the politician https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_H%C3%A1jek (1913–93), even though the essays were written by one of his many namesakes, the (in)famous literary scientist https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ji%C5%99%C3%AD_H%C3%A1jek_(kritik) (1919–94; sorry, there seems to be no source in English). I took the trouble of correcting this in my edit http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?4342116 only to see it rejected by User:Dirk P Broer with the Cancellation/Rejection Reason given "There was no Czechoslovakia in 1913, nor can the new picture be used". Well, that is exactly the point: the writer in question was actually born not in 1913 (and hence Austria-Hungary), but 1919 (just nine months after Czechoslovakia's independence)! Does anybody think they can explain this better than I was apparently able (the only attenuating circumstance is the timestamp that may well put it before the morning coffee), and ideally resurrect the the edit without making me jump through the hoops all over again?

The situation was made worse by the edit http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?4342375 copying my Note "... literary scientist ... Not to be confused with namesake foreign minister (1913-1993)!" while keeping the rest of the data, creating a self-contradictory biographical chimaera.

I don't even start to understand the other half of the comment: I didn't put in any "new picture" (well aware of there being no free one); I removed the old one (copied from Wikipedia and belonging to the elder, non-SF statesman, so it could be safely purged from ISFDB altogether if there is an easy way) and also replaced the link to Wikipedia-EN of the politician with one to the online (yes, Czech-only) Dictionary of Czech Literature after 1945 containing a thorough entry and even a photo.

--JVjr 20:44, 22 July 2019 (EDT)

Mistakes happen sometimes. Sometimes edits can be confusing and may get rejected because of that. I think I've fixed it now: Jiří Hájek. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 21:41, 22 July 2019 (EDT)

Not quite... needs an additional web page added (http://www.slovnikceskeliteratury.cz/showContent.jsp?docId=374), and current picture removed :) MagicUnk 10:14, 23 July 2019 (EDT)

Updated and deleted the picture. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:16, 23 July 2019 (EDT)

Ilna Ewers

Hello, please correct the name to Ilna Ewers-Wunderwald. Thanks Henna 14:36, 24 July 2019 (EDT)

Done Annie 15:16, 24 July 2019 (EDT)

Hallo Annie, many thanks. Henna 15:43, 24 July 2019 (EDT)

The Three Cablleros

HELP!!!

I don't know how to communicate with someone who could help me with the following: I just discovered that to my great pleasure, pride and emotion, one of the two books I wrote for NEL back in 1976 - THE THREE CABALLEROS - from Walt Disney Films, has become a collective item sold by AMAZON at $44.75!!! My question is, am I entitled to a fee, royalties or whatever reward in connection with this unbelievable miracle?

Thanking you in advance,

Jimmy Corinis

P.S. The funny thing is that a series of detective stories I was discussing THEN with Dot Houton (I think), one of your Editors, who died of cancer before completing the deal, is now published by Phoenix Press established in Nashville, USA. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jimmy Corinis (talk • contribs) . 23:19, 31 July 2019 (EDT)

It really depends. If it's just copies that already exist being sold (whether in new or used condition), with no new ones being produced by the publisher, it's unlikely. It also depends on your contract with the publisher. Do you have a link to the item on Amazon? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:30, 1 August 2019 (EDT)

Wrong Title

My Uncle Dean B McLaughlin reviewed his record and advised "the trouble with slickenslide" was not correct it should be "the trouble with slickenside" (no L). A geological term. I can't figure out how to get to his page to make this correction. Can someone please assist. Thank you. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Deans-nephew (talk • contribs) .

You have made an edit with the change so looks like you figured it out. However, there is a welcome message on your talk page that provides links to the help. Let us know if you have additional questions. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:06, 4 August 2019 (EDT)

A bit of an issue for me...

Lady, and gentlemen. I am struggling with getting my submissions completed due to the long (at least longer than it used to be) delays between my submissions and approvals by a moderator. It used to be not more than 12 hrs, and mostly much faster. However, nowadays it's regularly 24 hrs or more. This makes it difficult for me to keep track of additional edits I still have to perform once a batch of new pub record submissions have been processed, such as varianting, adding cover scan, adding additional information uncovered during research, etc, thus slowing down my ability to add new pubs to the database. Is it just because of holiday season, or are we with less than optimal number of active moderators nowadays? MagicUnk 14:09, 4 August 2019 (EDT)

As with any volunteer project, participation can be cyclic. It is also a late summer weekend so vacations, etc. are occurring. Your edits have been approved. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:04, 4 August 2019 (EDT)

Yes, the vacation season is frequently a problem. Most years I try to compensate when the submission queue gets extra long, but I haven't been feeling well lately. Fixer keeps telling me that I should have purchased an extended warranty for this body. Ahasuerus 10:33, 5 August 2019 (EDT)

Especially weekends during the vacation season... I usually try to clear the queue during the week (although due to geography and that small problem with time zones, it happens too late for you to be able to follow up - although I am pretty sure I catch the week-day ones before you are back up) but I am rarely around on weekends at the moment. Annie 14:05, 5 August 2019 (EDT)

I was in Suriname in early August, with no connection to the internet...--Dirk P Broer 04:32, 12 September 2019 (EDT)

I've been out the last week or so, with only occasional bits of time where I can do things here. I should be mostly back to normal now until the end of the year. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:31, 12 September 2019 (EDT)

Pubs with Multiple COVERART Titles

Could please the entries

• In Our Own Worlds: Four Tor.Com Novellas
• Matched Trilogy
• 2x Shadowfever
• Silo / Schakel / Stof
• The Country Beyond the Curve / Empire
• 4x The Earthsea Quartet
• The Fire Chronicle (probably 4x also, when the report runs next time)
• The Morgaine Saga

be removed from this Cleanup report? They are all valid. --Stoecker 17:19, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

Regarding the two Shadowfever entries (1 and 2), it looks like it should be one cover art entry with two artists. I'm not seeing multiple cover art on those entries. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:55, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

Well, not into the photo, but in reality it seems the outer cover and the book cover are two things. I have similar books from Andreas Eschbach, where the dust cover is partly transparent. --Stoecker 18:12, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

If that's the case, the artwork on the outer cover should be entered as the cover art, and anything visible through a transparent part of the cover should be entered as interior art. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:28, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

Why? Both cover-parts are clearly exterior. If there still exist rules to add additional coverart parts as interiorart, then they probably predate the multi-coverart possibility and should be revised as they are counter-intuitive. For me the biggest difference between interiorart and coverart is if they are visible (or at least could be) in the provided cover photo or not. That's something every user/editor can see. --Stoecker 17:21, 21 August 2019 (EDT)

Here's the link to the report. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:56, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

The Fire Chronicle should also be one cover art entry with two artists. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:58, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

Hmm, as art by Jon Foster has nothing to do with the border I'd keep this as is. Joining them will cause trouble with reused images like e.g. here which does not have the same border: [1], also I found at least one audio-book which has a much larger version of the red background art, so maybe it is used alone as well somewhere. --Stoecker 18:28, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

The others have all been ignored. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:59, 20 August 2019 (EDT)

There are some new:

• The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
• Fire Chronicle (some more)
• Sharra's Exile
• Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover
• The Emerald Atlas and Gift Bundle

The last 3 are similar to Fire Chronicle in the fact that they have center and border art, but Exile and Darkover show the reuse of the border art I mentioned as possibility above. Also for all of these other pubs already have been set to ignore in the past. The new ones are only these, where I imported the same cover art. --Stoecker 17:28, 21 August 2019 (EDT)

The ignore works per publication - so when you import the art elsewhere, they need ignore. :). I’ve ignored those now. Annie 01:27, 22 August 2019 (EDT)

Next Submission and New editors

When you work on the moderator queue from the queue itself, newish (aka not enough wiki comments) editors show up in a different color (Green - to complement the Blue for your own and the yellow of other moderators). So it is easy to realize that this editor may need some extra help and to make a decision to skip if you are not in the mood to deal with that (it happens to all of us) :)

However - if you use the very handy "next Submission", you lose that visibility - and there is no warning anywhere that this is a newish editor. I propose to add that information on the moderation screen itself - a bar of color or text at the top - so one can make a decision similar to what we used to do before "next Submission". Thoughts? Annie 18:05, 17 September 2019 (EDT)

I like this idea. Maybe "New Editor Submission" at the top, highlighted in green? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:37, 17 September 2019 (EDT)

Prices in French "Folio SF" pub series

I have just added a note to this pub series, stating that prices never appear on books belonging to it. I (or anyone else) will have to remove them all. Please pass on the word to any editor attempting to enter such prices (usually indicated by the publisher's site or Amazon, but absent from the book itself), as they are starting to multiply (namely, on nearly every non-verified pub). TIA ! Linguist 06:50, 20 September 2019 (EDT).

I don't know about this series, but if the data is really taken from the publisher's website (including the price, which the publisher should know about), it would be correct to index the prize, I'd think.

In the last century German hardcovers usually had no price indication in or on the book, but the price is indexed here, since it is obtainable (usually from DNB). Christian Stonecreek 10:19, 20 September 2019 (EDT)

In a lot of countries publishers do not print prices on or in their pubs, but oftentimes publish recommended prices though. So I would say prices from secondary sources such as national bibliographies and publisher's websites are valid and can (should) be used, albeit with caution. Source must be identified in the notes of course. If we wouldn't, we could never have prices in these cases. Are these secondary-source prices accurate at all times? Well, no, unfortunately not. However do note that some secondary sources are quit reliable compared to others. National bibliographies and publisher's websites tend to be quite reliable and oftentimes agree with each other, compared to online bookshops such as Amazon or bol.com. Which is why I won't use Amazon nor bol.com as sole price source at all.

On a slight tangent; do we actually have a rule/guidance on which pricing sources are allowed and which are not? I at least am not aware of a rule preventing us from using secondary sources. Cheers! MagicUnk 11:17, 20 September 2019 (EDT)

[after conflict].

I'm afraid I don't see things quite the same way ! What we record is what we can see on the book, and indicating a price that is not actually there can only be misleading, as far as identification is concerned. Moreover, publisher or Amazon prices are liable to change (generally increase !) with time, so that to my mind, the relevancy of such "theoretical" prices is tenuous (to say the least), even if restricted to the notes. More generally, I have a tendency to beware of data obtained from publishers, as their criteria don't seem to be the same as ours (page counts often differ, for instance); and as far as Folio SF books are concerned, the source of the prices indicated is usually not even given (the only exception being apparently C1's PVed records, contradicted by the mention of secondary sources). For practical reasons, I hold that (authentic) PV data trumps any other. Linguist 11:36, 20 September 2019 (EDT).

Prices from secondary sources are ok as long as they are documented (both the source and the date of the consult). However - when we do know that the books in a series never have prices, we have 2 choices:

• Note that it the notes and make sure we do not add a price. Maybe we can even put "Category X" as a price.
• Add it from a source with a date (MagicUnk does that (sometimes) when pulling prices from different places).

I do not have a strong preference but I agree we need to standardize and make sure we do not confuse people (and identification). The whole point of the French price categories is that you do not re-price books, you re-price categories. So knowing that the book is from 1978 and Category 5 (making up numbers so bear with me for a moment) tells anyone in the French-speaking world what the price of the book was in 1978 and at any points since (I think)? The publisher knows what the price is BUT that price can change overnight based on the category and with undated prices, it is misleading.

Incidentally, I am not sure all of those "from publisher site" are from the publisher site and not straight Amazon data. This is the option that allows you to add books without adding notes (and having a moderator ask you for notes) so... I think people misuse it. Annie 13:49, 20 September 2019 (EDT)

I would indeed be in favour or allowing price categories to appear in the price field, either as Annie suggested, or perhaps with a special symbol (like square brackets or *, for instance). But as far as the French system goes, it seems to me quite pointless to indicate a particular price in addition to that, as it is variable for the same category, and this variation is not apparent on the book. Finally, in the case of "Folio SF" books, all prices of unknown, uncertain or undated source (including bogus PV) will have to go (I will nevertherless be willing to transfer dated publisher prices to the notes, although I find this quite useless). Linguist 05:11, 21 September 2019 (EDT).

You are probably right about French books - I was talking in general. Russian books (for example) from some eras also rarely have prices but they do not have categories so sometimes dated notes would help. Is it always possible and easy to find the category of a French book which had been priced as a category? If not, that would be the case where noting a price makes sense.

If we can note the category for all those Folio SF books either in each of them or if they are the same on the series page, then I would agree that saving notes on prices at certain dates is useless. Annie 05:28, 21 September 2019 (EDT)

If a price category has been assigned to a book, it is always visible (usually on the back, where the price would normally be). These price categories started developing in the 80s, but some publishers, such as Fleuve Noir, were a bit slow in using them (in the 2000s in this case). They are indicated by a number or a letter, often framed. Before that, you can have three different situations : books with a price; books with no price; books with special symbols indicating price category : repeated logos, stars, squares, diamonds, circles, dominoes, and what not. When they are present, they are quite visible. As far as Folio SF goes, the category is usually indicated in the notes of nearly all PVed pubs. Linguist 06:29, 21 September 2019 (EDT).

I'd still say we should keep the prices if the entries are contemporary. We are interested in the price at the time of publication (not in a changed later price), and it seems that the price stated at a publsher's website & indexed here at that time is absolutely in the spirit of ISFDB. Christian Stonecreek 08:19, 21 September 2019 (EDT)

I agree with Christian. MagicUnk 00:42, 22 September 2019 (EDT)

Hiding submissions held by other moderators?

Back in January 2019 I enhanced our Web API to allow putting robot submissions on hold automatically. Basically, a robotic submission can have a special field with the name of the "holding" moderator. If it exists, the submission creation process puts the submission on hold on behalf of the listed moderator.

For the last few weeks Annie has been using this functionality to help process Fixer-identified ISBNs. Although the results have been overall very positive, it has made the main submission queue very busy and hard to navigate.

Based on this experience Annie and I would like to suggest that we change the default behavior of the main moderator queue page. The idea is that the page would no longer display submissions held by other moderators. Only "unheld" submissions and submissions held by the viewing moderator would be displayed. We would also add a "full" view of the moderator queue which would show all outstanding submissions, which is to say the current behavior.

What do you think?

P.S. It occurs to me that we may also want to hide other moderators' submissions. Ahasuerus 17:23, 20 September 2019 (EDT)

With Next Submission skipping over held submissions, I don't find the clutter particularly troublesome. I find it useful to see what other moderators have on hold (in case there are more submissions in the same vein, in case I can help, etc.). --MartyD 08:29, 21 September 2019 (EDT)

Yep, I see this the same way as Marty. Christian Stonecreek 12:34, 21 September 2019 (EDT)

Perhaps Annie and I have a somewhat different perspective because we have been concentrating on Fixer's submissions for the last few weeks. When a queue has dozens of submissions being held by different moderators, it can be difficult to find the ones that are being held by you. Maybe what we need is not a change to the way the main queue is displayed but a new menu option to "view submissions held by me". Ahasuerus 11:06, 23 September 2019 (EDT)

It would be nice to also have a way to filter the queue by a specific submitter. When working on a new user's submissions or even handling an established editor working a specific task, it is sometimes good to handle their submissions in "bulk" (for example, new users who submit duplicate submissions because they don't understand our approval process or make corrections without canceling the prior submission). -- JLaTondre (talk) 18:45, 23 September 2019 (EDT)

(Sorry, I apparently missed the last response when it was posted.)

The proposed functionality appears to be a subset of what was requested in FR 927, "Add the ability to search submissions". It shouldn't be too hard to create an "Advanced Submission Search", although we may need to limit its use to moderators due to the extra load on the server.

However, the new functionality would be, most likely, made available as a separate Web page similar to the other Advanced Search pages, which may not be a good match for reviewing moderators' needs. I am trying to think of a way to integrate it with the regular Moderator Queue, but nothing comes to mind... Ahasuerus 18:40, 15 October 2019 (EDT)

How about pure JS-based Front End Filtering based on the submitter name? if it does not work in some browsers, well... nothing lost :) Or even a call back for the list with a specific field only... Not the same as Advanced Search - just a much smaller functionality. Annie 18:53, 15 October 2019 (EDT)

I like this idea (the one right above this). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:15, 15 October 2019 (EDT)

Yiddish submission of The Lord of the Rings

Can a moderator have an extra close look at three submissions I did and check if there are no glaring errors? A Yiddish speaker would be even better :) MagicUnk 07:35, 23 September 2019 (EDT)

Done. I've removed a few unnecessary capitals in the transliteration. Linguist 08:28, 23 September 2019 (EDT).

Thank you! MagicUnk 12:12, 23 September 2019 (EDT)

Archiving

I've got to archive a big piece of my user talk page. Every time I attempt it, I screw it up. Help, please. Bob 14:31, 26 September 2019 (EDT)

See if you like what I did - all before September is in its own archive now and I listed it to the list of your old archives. Annie 15:14, 26 September 2019 (EDT)

Thanks, Annie. Perfect! Bob 17:21, 26 September 2019 (EDT)

Doubleday, Doran and Co.

I request, or suggest if you prefer, that publisher Doubleday, Doran and Co. be merged with Doubleday, Doran under the latter short name. (I don't know that either does appear on title pages, as "Doubleday, Doran & Co." does [2]).

At the moment none of our 15 "Doubleday, Doran and Co." records is primary verified. We have about 100 "Doubleday, Doran" records, about 10 PV. The short name is integrated with a Doubleday sequence of publisher/imprint names, by publisher Notes. --Pwendt|talk 17:59, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

Doubleday & Company

Publisher Doubleday & Company should be merged with Doubleday --under the latter short name if our numbers of publication records are the criterion, supported by integration with other publisher/imprints in Notes.

In this case we have 7 "Doubleday & Company" records, all PV. There is a single Publisher wiki page for both, as Publisher:Doubleday is a redirect. --Pwendt|talk 18:08, 3 October 2019 (EDT)

Jack Vance translations?

As some of you probably know, Spatterlight Press specializes in Jack Vance works. In addition to English originals, they have published a fair number of translations, e.g. see this Dutch publication series. In 2019 alone they have published works in English, Dutch and Italian.

Fixer knows of 55 ISBNs associated with Jack Vance translations published by Spatterlight Press. Normally, I don't use Fixer's data to submit non-English works because it comes from US/UK sources, which tend to have poor quality data for non-English books. In this case, however, Spatterlight Press is a US-based publisher, so Fixer's data is pretty solid.

Would anyone be interested in working on these ISBNs? If we have one or more volunteers, I could submit Fixer's records and put the submissions on hold on the volunteer(s)' behalf. TIA! Ahasuerus 18:51, 15 October 2019 (EDT)

I can give it a try. They did some French titles as well, and also some Tanith Lee and Robert E. Howard titles. --Willem 04:27, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

Great! Let me add your user name to Fixer's internal interface and then I'll submit a few test ISBNs. Ahasuerus 11:16, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

OK, I have submitted around 20 Dutch translations and put them on hold on Willem's behalf. In addition, it turns out that Fixer was aware of 8 Russian Vance translations, which I gave to Annie since I figured she would be better equipped to handle them. Let's see how it goes. Thanks again! Ahasuerus 12:08, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

Don't you just love Amazon (and whoever uploaded these books): "Galactic Effectuator (in Russian) (Russian Edition)" instead of "Галактический следопыт" or something at least containing the Russian title. :) How would a Russian speaking person find this book is a mystery. I'll sort them out. Annie 13:06, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

It's not too bad. The author and most of the titles are correct. A price in US$ for a Dutch book is a bit strange, --Willem 17:07, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

I am not entirely sure what should be entered in the Price field when the publisher is based in one country and the primary market for (some of) its books is in another country. Record the later and enter the former in the Notes field, perhaps? (And update the record once FR 1158, "Allow multiple prices per publication", has been implemented.) Ahasuerus 18:46, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

The joy of multinational corporations... --Willem 04:19, 17 October 2019 (EDT)

Well, we've always had publishers who sold their books in multiple countries. For example, UK publishers often printed multiple prices on the back cover: one for the UK, another one for Australia, another one for New Zealand, etc. However, back then it was easy to identify the "primary" price, which was usually the list price in the country where the publisher was based.

Then some genre publishers like Tor established presence in multiple countries (e.g. New York City and London) and it was no longer easy to tell which price was "primary". Now we have publishers, even small presses, which are based in one country yet selling to readers in another country. I guess it makes FR 1158 more urgent. Ahasuerus 13:06, 17 October 2019 (EDT)

Unfortunately the price on Amazon depends on where you're looking from (Fixer found $6.11 for Grote Planeet, I see $5.47. Amazon.nl has €4.99 and Spatterlight doesn't mention a price. I can move Fixer's US price to the notefield, but I don't see the added value. So far I just changed the price to the Amazon.nl amount. --Willem 04:19, 17 October 2019 (EDT)

and I'd rather have the language set at Dutch for these pubs. --Willem 17:07, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

That's a very good point. I have changed Fixer's submission logic to set the value of the language field to "Dutch", "German", etc if the title includes the words "Dutch Edition", "German Edition", etc. At this time it only works for a short list of European languages, but it's a start. Ahasuerus 18:16, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

Thanks! That saves at least one edit per title. --Willem 04:27, 17 October 2019 (EDT)

I'm also changing the source to Amazon.nl (the kindle editions) and Amazon.de (the trade paperbacks), etc. To be continued. --Willem 17:07, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

The Dutch ones use the correct alphabet. :) The Russian ones are... funnier. The price is from Amazon.com (we have similar fun with UK books when Fixer finds them on the US side first). And the language is an old problem of good old Fixer. Easy to fix for the most part. If any of the English and Dutch titles are the same, Fixer may decide to "help" you so you may need to unmerge. Welcome to the fun! :) Annie 17:28, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

Hadn't thought about the language problem before. At least the 'Check for duplicate titles' doesn't work for different languages. I hope Fixer uses the same logic.--Willem 04:27, 17 October 2019 (EDT)

Fixer's internal logic is very different. At this time it doesn't check language information when deciding whether a book is an AddPub. Let me see if I can fix it. (Even if I can, it won't be perfect because Fixer doesn't get accurate language information from Amazon.) Ahasuerus 12:58, 17 October 2019 (EDT)

(unindent) Well, the first 20 are processed. The rest can be added to the queue. I probably entered a number of them while going through the Spatterlight site, I can always reject these. So far it was fun. --Willem 11:04, 19 October 2019 (EDT)

Great, thanks! I have submitted the rest of Jack Vance translations, almost all of them by Spatterlight Press. Some are Dutch, some are German and a few are Italian. The Italian ones will need to be unmerged. Ahasuerus 12:44, 19 October 2019 (EDT)

site error

I just want to alert you that the page for Benford & Eklund - If The Stars Are Gods displays the wrong book, some entirely different book, an SF anthology, not even by Benford. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Transformer (talk • contribs) . 04:28, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

Do you mean the novel or the novelette? Both look allright to me. --Willem 07:35, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

I'm not seeing any issues, either. Can you post the URL (http address) of the page where you saw the error? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:05, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

My guess is that they landed on the page of the story and thought they are on the novel page -- if you think you are looking at the novel and you see the Universe 4 covers under it, it does feel like a wrong book being shown. Annie 13:08, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

That's possible. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:56, 16 October 2019 (EDT)

Merge publisher records

This is my mistake, but maybe a moderator can fix it on the publisher page. I entered the publisher ACT in Roman characters, and it should be АСТ in Cyrillic. I can't tell them apart, but the software can--see how they're alphabetized, Cyrillic before English, under the transliteration AST. Publisher Record #67949 needs to be subsumed under Record #6715, which was already there with any number of books--or should I replace the publisher name book by book (a dozen or so) and leave an empty publisher page to be deleted? MOHearn 12:10, 18 October 2019 (EDT)

Done. It was the A: Yours was A, the original is А. Annie 12:36, 18 October 2019 (EDT) :)

Thanks! MOHearn 12:54, 18 October 2019 (EDT)

Saga Press rename request redux

Could an editor look at this request please? It may have been overlooked. Thank you! MagicUnk 02:20, 19 October 2019 (EDT)

Christopher Priest's "Episodes" collection

This currently exists as two separate title records in the database, with slightly different title values,one with the hc publication, the other with the ebook publication. I assume they should be merged, but I can't see how to do this in the UI, other than the brute force method of deleting one pair of title/publication records, and recreating the publication for the remaining title. Can anyone assist and/or clean it up for me? (Note: the hc entry contains the list of stories in the collection, whereas the ebook one doesn't.)

There also seems to be some ambiguity about the title - "Episodes Short stories" (note lack of hyphen or colon, and lack of capitalization of the first "s" in stories) is what is listed on the title page - visible on the Amazon UK preview - and on my UK Kindle edition), but "Episodes" is how it is referred to on [https://www.orionbooks.co.uk/titles/christopher-priest/episodes/9781473200647/ the publisher, author and Amazon UK product pages. The cover has an "A COLLECTION" subheading, but I don't see anything else mentioning that, so it seems unlikely to be part of the title.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by ErsatzCulture (talk • contribs) .

Hold on a second - you do not delete the publications just to merge the titles - this is like cutting down a whole forest so you can get to a tree :) You can merge via Advanced Search. :) I can easily merge them but let's figure out if need a merge or a variant here.

We go by title page. However "short stories" and "a novel" and similar ones are considered subtitles (which is why we add the : - look at the help page for the title field on a pub) and these specific ones are left to the editor to decide if they want to add them (I don't). The editor that has the subtitle had verified it so I would rather not change his. He is around usually - you may want to leave him a note

Looking at that ebook version and how the title is on its title page, I am inclined to add ":Short Stories" to it and just merge them. Which I just did -- if we ever get a verifier on this ebook and they disagree, they can change it). I will look into the contents next - the order look different in the ebook from what I am seeing so let me see what this is all about. :) Annie 22:49, 25 October 2019 (EDT)

Thanks for looking into this, and for reminding me about the merge functionality being under Advanced Search :-) ErsatzCulture 09:07, 26 October 2019 (EDT)