ISFDB talk:Image linking permissions

Discuss revisions in the draft letter, or in our linking policy, here. This would also be a good place to document sites that have been asked for linking permission. -DES ^Talk 21:45, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I made two changes for clarity:

• "displays information about the titles, authors, and publications" to "is a bibliographic database"
  • Why overstate the obvious, after all?
• Extended this sentence with the last part: "When the publication page is displayed, using the image found at that URL as an image source for the page display, it can be clicked to access the image on the original site directly."
  • Without it, it was not grammatical, and mentioning that we also have explicit backlinks seems proper.

Circeus 20:34, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

• You are correct that the sentance about the display of the publication page was a fragment. However, your change seems to imply that that the host server is not accessed unless the user clicks, whcih is not correct. I have editied it further, so that it now reads: "When the publication page is displayed, the the page logic uses the image found at that URL as an image source for the page display, which results in a call to the host server. Also, the displayed image can be clicked to access the image on the original site directly." What do you think of thsi version?
• "bibliographic database" I have not changed this, but there might be people who are not clear on what a bibliographic database consists of, while "displays information about the titles, authors, and publications" is hard to misunderstand. Not a major issue, however.

Thanks for your revisions. -DES ^Talk 15:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Based on personal observations, a significant number of people (at least in the US) are not quite sure what the term "bibliography" means and confuse it with "biography" or something else. The percentage is probably lower in countries where the word "Bibliothèque" (or its derivatives) is common. Granted, we will be contacting people who own and maintain bibliographic sites, so chances are that they will be familiar with the term, but on the other hand it's entirely possible that our e-mail will be originally handled by a clerk or a techie with no bibliographic background. You can never be too careful! :) Ahasuerus 17:14, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

And not all such sites need be strictly bibliographic -- a general fan site, on the one hand, or a book sales site, on the other, may not think of themselvs as bibliographic, and their creators may not know or use the word, even though either kind of site will include some bibliographic information. -DES ^Talk 20:45, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Permission granted to what official address

When requesting permission from a website about deep-linking to their images, what name/email address do we give them for their response? Is there an official address a la "bigguy@isfdb.org"? MHHutchins 19:04, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I've never seen us have an official address. The permissions I've acquired have always been via one of my own email addresses - which makes proof of permission a bit difficult for anyone but me. I'm not volunteering to be the central address though. Should we ask people to CC Al on any responses? I think he's got the biggest potential need for proof of permission. BLongley 00:54, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, Al's name is on the front page, so he would be the logical choice, but I am not sure if he has the time for it. E-mail him and ask? Ahasuerus 03:09, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

The only reason I ask is because the form letter requests a cc response to the database itself. I don't mind that the contacted website respond to my email address. Just thought it would be better to have an official email address for the database. MHHutchins 03:26, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Well, we also have isfdb.moderators@gmail.com, which gets forwarded to ISFDB moderators. Which remind me that I need to update the list now that we have new moderators... Ahasuerus 04:07, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

That would seem appropriate both for a semi permanent archive, and to widely distribute the 'news' and act as a distributed archive record. Kevin 05:10, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

isfdb.moderators@gmail.com updated with Kevin's e-mail. Ahasuerus 16:06, 3 May 2009 (UTC)

Current Links Counts - Early June 2009

While updating the code to provide linking credits, I thought I would document the current number of off site hosted cover arts we have. Currently 68,607 pub records link to one of the websites listed on the image linking policy page. The databse has 73,755 pub records with cover art urls present, leaving 5148 websites uncredited and unapproved via documentation, but a closer look at the system has 4500+ records with a non-null 'something' in the record. I refined my search and found 480 publications that don't link to these sites, that have a "." in the field.

Name	Website	Count
Amazon	http://www.amazon.com	57,943
ISFDB Self Hosted	http://www.isfdb.org	5,962
Visco	http://www.sfcovers.net	2,139
Galactic Central (philsp.com)	http://www.philsp.com/	1,303
Fantastic Fiction	http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/	979
Bookscans	http://www.bookscans.com/	181
Ace Image Library	http://people.uncw.edu/smithms/ACE.html	91
Fantascienza	http://www.fantascienza.com/	5
ICSHI (A Van Vogh Site)	http://www.home.earthlink.net/~icshi/index.html	4
VanVogh (A Japanese and English site)	http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~we8y-mrt/vanvogt/	0
Magnus's Van Vogt site	http://vanvogt.www4.mmedia.is/	0
Other	-	480