Talk:ISFDB Feature List

Features needed for beta

Al currently has the pseudonym editor and watchlisting ISFDB data on the feature list for pre-beta. My own list would not include the pseudonym editor, which I think would be handy but not necessary. I'd ask for:

• watchlisting titles
• resubmit rejected records

and possibly

• free text deletion reason field for deletetitle, delete pub
• free text rejection reason field for rejected submissions

An issue occurred to me regarding multiple submissions that would have an impact on resubmitting rejects too. Suppose you have an UpdateTitle submitted by editor A, and later, but before the UpdateTitle is approved, a MergeTitle submitted for the same title by editor B. Now suppose a moderator approves the MergeTitle first. The UpdateTitle is now going to try to update a record that no longer exists.

Rejected records might become "out of sync" in the same way. I don't think this is a showstopper, though; it's going to be relatively rare, I would think, and I can't offhand see a way it would cause data corruption, although I need to think about that some more. Including verification that relevant data had not changed since submission would be quite difficult -- I've written code like that and it's non-trivial. Mike Christie 04:48, 29 Nov 2006 (CST)

Not that I am necessarily advocating implementing something like that pre-beta, but would adding a "last edited" timestamp to all records and to all submissions (to be compared at approval time) help alleviate the problem? Ahasuerus 09:41, 29 Nov 2006 (CST)

A follow-up comment. Though I think there are lots of very useful features that would help, I think Ahasuerus is right that we don't yet know enough about how editors will really operate to assert that we have to have the watchlist and resubmit capabilities. I'd be willing to go along with just getting the bugfixes done and starting the beta. The risk, as Ahasuerus pointed out somewhere, is that we discourage editors who don't then return. I think good support from the moderators can ameliorate that risk.

If I get just one feature, I think it's resubmit rejects. That would cut down on frustration more than watchlisting would. If I get two features, it would be linking "recent edits" to the moderator display, for all editors, so anyone can see what was changed. That would be a crude watchlist. Mike Christie 05:02, 29 Nov 2006 (CST)

Numbering

Any objection to me numbering the features? I'd start at 90001. I think I'd lose the "Series" separator; I don't think there's a need to track those independently, is there? Mike Christie 07:26, 2 Dec 2006 (CST)