User talk:Ahasuerus

See User talk:Ahasuerus/Archive for discussions prior to 2022.

PLEASE NOTE: If you're writing to inform me that you've either added a COVER IMAGE or NOTES to any of my VERIFIED PUBS, please follow THIS LINK and add it to the bottom of the list. A link to the pub record would be appreciated. Once the pub has been reviewed, I'll remove your note from the list. Thanks!

Author Merges & Alternate Names

I merged "J. C. H. Rigby" (148444) and "JCH Rigby" (287823) resulting in the "new" JCH Rigby. One of them (I'm not certain which at this point, but think it was the 287823 entry) had an alternate name of Charlie Rigby. When I did the merge, the alternate name was lost. That caught me by surprise. When a merge is done, the normal expectation would all the information is merged. Title merges handle variants so I would have expected author names to handle alternate names. Ideally, it should handle the alternate name. If not, there need to be a big warning that further action is required. I wonder if we have lost alternate names because of this... -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:06, 1 January 2022 (EST)

Let me take a look... Ahasuerus 11:33, 1 January 2022 (EST)

OK, I think I can see the sequence of events. Let me run the weekly/monthly backups and then I will try to recreate the problem on the development server. Ahasuerus 12:17, 1 January 2022 (EST)

I have wrapped up and deployed the cleanup reports which were in a semi-ready state yesterday. Hopefully I can recreate and fix this problem tomorrow. Ahasuerus 20:19, 2 January 2022 (EST)

I have been able to recreate the problem on the development server. Luckily, it doesn't seem to affect VTs, so any lost "alternate name" associates will appear on the cleanup report that looks for "stray" publications. Bug 795 has been created. Thanks for identifying the problem! Ahasuerus 17:11, 3 January 2022 (EST)

OK, I believe the bug has been fixed. Ahasuerus 18:06, 3 January 2022 (EST)

Out of curiosity: aren't we standardizing names anymore to J. C. H. Rigby? Regards, MagicUnk 05:32, 4 January 2022 (EST)

Originally, we always added a period and a space after an initial. As Template:PublicationFields:Author says:

• Initials should normally be entered followed by a period and a space as "Gordon R. Dickson" or "K. D. Wentworth", even if the period or space is omitted in the publication.

However, we later realized that some authors deliberately use their initials as a "pseudo-name" like "JCH" and that the practice has been getting more common recently. That's when we updated Template:PublicationFields:Author with the following caveat:

• However, when it is clearly the author's choice to omit the period, or when the author has a single letter name that is not an initial (e.g. "Harry S Truman") the period should be omitted. In the rare case where an author prefers two (or more) initials as if they were a name (such as "TG Theodore"), without a period or space, and is so credited, we follow the author's preference.

Ideally, our search logic would ignore periods and other punctuation in names, but we aren't there, so this s the best compromise we could come up with. Ahasuerus 10:08, 4 January 2022 (EST)

Given we can have alternate names for authors, would it make sense to create an ISFDB-standard name as an alternate for search purposes? ../Doug H 13:36, 1 February 2022 (EST)

It's been known to happen, e.g. see PS Cottier, an alternate name used by P. S. Cottier. I am not sure if this is the consensus approach at this time, though. Something to ask on the Rules and Standards page, perhaps? Ahasuerus 14:58, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Rejection Issue

I screwed up the HTML on this submission which is causing the moderator display to not show correctly. I tried editing the URL to change it to http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/mod/reject.cgi?5187168, but that seems to get the ID from the post and not the URL. Need some help on how to reject this submission. Sorry for the inconvenience. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:51, 2 January 2022 (EST)

Done. You were close -- the correct CGI script name is "hardreject" :-) Ahasuerus 12:19, 2 January 2022 (EST)

Misaligned

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisheryear.cgi?35762+1991; http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisheryear.cgi?35762+1992; Another 2 cases where the ? mark after the last title causes it to be in a different row. I think you're the one who fixes this kind of stuff. --Username 11:43, 1 February 2022 (EST)

That's right, I usually handle software issues. However, I am looking at these two Web pages right now and they appear to be displayed correctly. I have tested it under Firefox, Google Chrome, MS Edge and Tor so far. Which browser and which version are you using? Ahasuerus 12:40, 1 February 2022 (EST)

I recall that months ago I brought this up and I think it was you who discovered it was some issue with covers with that rollover thing next to the title that were causing the problem, and then you fixed it; it's on 1 of these message boards somewhere. Recently, I brought it up again after discovering more of them, but was told you were in charge of that stuff, but I don't think I bothered asking you about it then. Now that I came across these 2 problems by the same publisher (in Poland), I see that the first 2 covers are displayed in 1 row and the 3rd cover (the ones with the ? next to them) are displayed below the first two, in a separate row. I believe this is exactly the same issue as the other times I brought it up, so I guess the answer is to do whatever you did that first time to fix it. I use Google Chrome on a laptop with Windows 8.1. --Username 12:49, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Oh, you are looking at http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisheryear.cgi?35762+1991+1 and http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisheryear.cgi?35762+1992+1 (note the additional "+1" at the end), which display cover scans for these publications. Now I see the issue. Let me check our archives to see what was causing similar problems in the past... Ahasuerus 13:06, 1 February 2022 (EST)

OK, it should be fixed now. Could you please check if everything looks OK? Thanks for reporting it! Ahasuerus 13:21, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Yes, they're fine now. I found my previous message, http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Moderator_noticeboard#Jumbled_Covers, in case you want to look at those, too. --Username 13:26, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Thanks, I have updated that discussion on the Moderator Noticeboard page.

What happened was that I fixed this issue on the Title Covers page back when it was first reported some months ago, but I didn't realize that the Publisher Year page had the some problem. And then I missed your January post on the Moderator Noticeboard.

If you come across any other ISFDB pages which display mouseover help for covers and mess up the display, please let me know. Ahasuerus 14:28, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Author:W._A._Harbinson

It looks like there was only one use made of the Melvyl template. I notice you created the author wiki page Author:W._A._Harbinson and in the last sentence said what he'd been doing for 'the last eight years'. Checking the log, seems that was back in 2008. Bit misleading after 13 years. I wonder what kind of editor let that kind of thing get on the wiki. ../Doug H 14:55, 1 February 2022 (EST)

I have moved the author-provided autobiography to the database proper, clarified that it was posted in August 2006 and deleted the Wiki page. Thanks for catching it! Ahasuerus 15:08, 1 February 2022 (EST)

Dating publications - a thought

My last point in the discussion was that of verified data being sacrosanct and all else to be annotated with source. I've been digging through multiple sources to document some non-genre Asimov most recently OCLC. I dug into entry with 4 sources with a date of [1954] and got c1954, sixth printing (in associated scan only), one doesn't have the book, and the fourth connection just hung. I'm currently wrestling with how to record such references when I create a pub, because if I don't record it, someone else might either use it to create new publications or modify an existing one. With that for context, I can see that the idea of documenting sources will need to be addressed as a community. You're probably already wrestling with it, let me know if I can help. ../Doug H 12:42, 4 February 2022 (EST)

Mismatched Double Quotes

The Mismatched Double Quotes cleanup report might need an ignore option. A single double quote is a valid abbreviation for inch (which is the usage in the two current records). -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:37, 7 February 2022 (EST)