ISFDB talk:Help desk

This is the talk page for the Help desk. It should be used to discuss what should or should not be on the help desk, how to format, organize, and archive the helpdesk, and in general should be about the help desk itself. Discussions of the actual ISFDB, and how to do things on it, should be on the actual Help desk page.

Archive

Should we archive older posts on the help desk? The page is getting rather large. -DES ^Talk 10:02, 15 Feb 2008 (CST)

We are now up to archive 05. -DES ^Talk 17:15, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Help Desk Category - Is the Help Desk, a Help Page?

A question has been brought up about including (paraphrased) 'Non HELP: namespace' pages in Category:ISFDB_Help. Should pages without the 'HELP:' prefix be excluded from the Help Category? In most cases, that's an accurate line for 'In or out' decisions, but the purpose of Category:Categories in general is to guide people to the appropriate page. The first line on ISFDB:Help_desk is "This page is for questions about how to do something, either in the ISFDB or the ISFDB Wiki." If that's not a help page, then I don't know what is and I believe it should be included in Category:ISFDB_Help and now that I read it involves Wiki help, I think it should also be included in Category:Wiki_Help. Kevin 17:52, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I strongly disagree. This page is indeed for giving help to people, but to me a "help page" means a documentation or manual page, not an interactive page such as this one. I think the newly created Category:ISFDB_Help (which i agree is a good thing) should be limited to those pages in the Help namespace that explain how to work with the database proper. -DES ^Talk 18:01, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I would be inclined to create a Template:HelpHeader along the lines of Template:BioHeader (or Template:PublisherHeader) to provide a standard header for all such pages, and at the same time put them into this category (which would mean that the category name could be changed by one change in one place, if that ever seemed desirable.) -DES ^Talk 18:01, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with David here. The Help Desk should not be placed into the Help Pages category, for the very reason that he cites. If it must be categorized, then create a Community Portal category and place it along with the other pages linked from that page: moderator notification page, rules and standards discussions page, verification requests. In other words, areas for discussion. MHHutchins 18:14, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Category:ISFDB_Help is for getting people to the help. and as you said above "This page is indeed for giving help to people,..." As far as I can tell, your objection is that this page is not a static Help page. Do you also object to the link I added to the text of Category:ISFDB_Help that points directly at the Help Desk (with a brief explanation of what it is for)? Both objections (and I am assuming the second objection in addition to the first) are equivalent to objecting to having 911 or 999 mentioned in the phone book, since it's not a normal phone number. :D Kevin 18:24, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

A category is for grouping things of the same sort together. The help desk is already linked from the Moderator noticeboard, and from at least two existing help pages. I think i would put a link to it from my proposed Template:HelpHeader so that it would be directly linked to from every static help page in Category:ISFDB_Help. But although this page is inded for giving help to people, it is a different sort of page from the help pages, and it gives peiople help in a different sort of way. That distintion is enough, IMO, to guide people to it by a different route. -DES ^Talk 22:19, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree that static (mostly) help pages should be distinct from dynamic conversation pages. An INDEX to all the help pages could say "as a last resort, go and ask for new help on the Help desk" - but doing such probably reveals a fault in the help pages. Of which we have many, don't get me wrong - and they're poorly indexed, and "Category:" pages probably won't help anybody that goes to our main Wiki page and looks for help anyway. BLongley 22:49, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

I have now created, and am in the process of applying Template:HelpHeader. Let me know what you think. I tend to agree that a mosre structured set of help indicies is probably more useful than catefories, but the categories can be useful, and cost little time or effort. -DES ^Talk 23:03, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay... I have no objections to putting a link on every page of the help section, with a disclaimer that you should read the help first. Also no objections to a Help Template. (As opposed to putting it once in a list and once at the top of that list with a disclaimer that you should read the help first). You guys do understand that you argued against including it, (I believe) for fear of overwhelming the page with lazy users (who will ask before reading), and now, you are putting it EVERYWHERE in ISFDB_Help... except the automatically generated list of help pages? I'm fine with your decision... anyone is welcome to revert my change, as long as you understand that you went from 2 links in my solution to 80 links in your solution. Kevin 23:56, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

My concern was not to prevent people finding the Help desk, nor to avoid "overwhelming the page with lazy users", but to try to make the difference between the Help desk and the static manual-type help pages clearer. Perhaps this is not the way to do that. Nothing is grsven in stone. -DES ^Talk 01:45, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

See Template_talk:HelpHeader for my comments there on the Header.Kevin 23:56, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Good place to zip Strange Horizons archive page?

Luckily a webzine that catalogs issue contents. Where would be a good place to place a zipped copy?--swfritter 23:53, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

I've moved this post to the proper page, and will delete it from this page once you've seen this. Thanks. Mhhutchins 01:44, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Series information from the getpub.cgi web api?

I'm trying to create a low bandwidth way to auto enter book data into a database, based on an ISBN. I'm doing this for an independent specialty bookstore I work at. Right now the well documented web API (http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Web_API) shows how to get XML data... but the data one can get seems to be very limited.

This API doesn't return any "Title" data -- I'm specifically thinking of series information (not publisher series info, but series info).

Since the getpub.cgi is clearly bringing in data from tables other than the publication table, I wondered if there was any discussion of increasing the number of fields that are returned in this query. Since it is all XML based, it including additional series field (or others) should not break any custom applications out there. Including series information would be a really cool, for starters.

Also, other than the text title field, this XML result doesn't include any title record numbers to programmatically go back up the tree and get the series data, or any other data associated with the Title (other editions, for example).

Are there any undocumented web API's that might return full Title Information associated with an ISBN/publication record?

Right now it seems like the web search form and data scrapping is the only way to get "title" data, as opposed to "publication" data. which is kind of messy, and probably takes up more bandwidth than one would like.

I've searched around a bit, but am not seeing any other documented web API's. In an ideal world, the getpub.cgi would allow query parameters to allow the results to include more/less fields, like series or related publication information. is this possible? Is there some undocumented bits to this api that do that?

Any information, or discussion about what gets included by default in the returned XML data would be appreciated.