User talk:Ahasuerus/Archive/2023
Cornish
Hi, and Happy New Year! Sorry to add to your plate, but it looks like we need Cornish for Myghal Palmer and Rebellyans. In the obituary, his brother-in-law says this was published in Cornish and that at the time (2005) Palmer was responsible for 4 of the 6 (sic) books published in revived Cornish.... --MartyD (talk) 14:02, 3 January 2023 (EST)
- No worries! Cornish is an ISO 639-2-recognized language, so it doesn't cause any issues. I added it a couple of minutes ago. Happy New Year! Ahasuerus (talk) 14:23, 3 January 2023 (EST)
AddPub Approval page issue
When the title of the new publication does not match the title of the record you are adding into, there is no warning anymore. See here. It cannot happen outside of an API call (as the field is greyed out) but that makes processing Fixer's AddPub submissions extremely finicky (and is potentially going to lead to more missed mismatches if anyone else uses the API to submit these and the handling moderator relies on the screens to tell them of a mismatch). Annie (talk) 14:28, 27 January 2023 (EST)
- PS: I think that the problem is that you never show the Publication title now on the screen - so there is no place for the warning to be shown. Annie (talk) 14:30, 27 January 2023 (EST)
- I figured that having a complete Title record in the Title table and a complete Publication record in the Publication table made more sense. The reviewer no longer needs to guess which Title field values are re-used by the Publication table.
- I also realized that, for manually created AddPubs, it's possible for the pub's title/authors to get out of sync with the associated title's title/authors. All it takes is for an Edit Title submission to be approved before the AddPub submission is processed. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:07, 30 January 2023 (EST)
Mismatched Quotes Weirdness
There is a mismatched quotes warning for the synopsis field in this submitted edit. The warning appears in the proposed value column with the warning cell completely missing. I realize that this is because the missing closing quote makes the browser think that the anchor tag is not finished. I don't know if we want to consider escaping values here, or if this is a rare enough occurrence that we shouldn't worry about a cosmetic issue. In any case, I'll leave it un-approved so you can take a look. Thanks. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 11:05, 16 February 2023 (EST)
- I see. I think this issue is limited to Notes and Synopsis fields because they are the only ones where we allow embedded HTML (although I see that Help:Using Templates and HTML in Note Fields doesn't mention Synopsis.) I suppose the ideal solution would be to tell the browser that it should stop parsing HTML at the end of the current table cell, but I am afraid I don't know of a way to do it. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:04, 16 February 2023 (EST)
Yellow warning request
I think we need one more yellow warning on the approval screen: when AddPub had been already submitted and someone changes the type of the original we are adding to, you don't get any indication of it. Example here. I swapped the type from novel to chapbook pre-approval so I can make it in one step so I knew to check but if the approver does not open the resulting new publication, there is nothing to tell them that the work just approved needs work (And with the type missing from the top, they cannot even spot it on the screen). Annie (talk) 11:48, 23 February 2023 (EST)
- PS: I think we may end up in the same situation with a ClonePub as well - I just don't have one handy as an example. Thanks! Annie (talk) 11:56, 23 February 2023 (EST)
- All done. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:41, 7 March 2023 (EST)
- Awesome! Can you look at this one. See the top of the screen that says The Scourge Between Stars • (2023). Historically, and everywhere on the server, the year is shown that way anywhere ONLY if the title date is different from the one of the publication you are working on - so different from 2023-04-04. So seeing a year in bracket, always sent me doing sanity check on dates to see if one may need adjusting. But they match here. Is that intentional? Annie (talk) 11:20, 9 March 2023 (EST)
- All done. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:41, 7 March 2023 (EST)
- No rush and if it ends up being too complicated, I can get used to it behaving this way going forward. It looked like a quick way to see that the ebook date is not the same as the paper we are adding it to when I do the ebooks for Forthcoming books - that made me recheck the date on the paper one as well a few times today. I can just start comparing the dates on my own instead and ignore the year up there - both dates are on the screen now after all. :) Annie (talk) 18:23, 9 March 2023 (EST)
Author birthplace question
The editor originally entered the birthplace for M. L. Weems as 'Anne Arundel County, Province of Maryland, Thirteen Colonies, British America'; triggering an exception for noncompliance with this template. I tried substituting 'England, Kingdom of Great Britain' for 'Thirteen Colonies, British America', but the software still see it as an exception. Is 'Province of Maryland' causing the software to look for USA? What is the correct fix? I'm stumped. John Scifibones 16:55, 25 February 2023 (EST)
- Checking the code, I see that it expects the names of US states to be followed by ", USA" with a few exceptions: California allows "Baja California", Hawaii allows "Kingdom of Hawaii" and "Republic of Hawaii", Montana allows "Bulgaria", etc. Some of the original 13 colonies allow ", British Empire", but Maryland is not one of them. I'll need to update the code to support ", British Empire" for Maryland and the rest of the colonies. Thanks for identifying the problem! Ahasuerus (talk) 17:12, 25 February 2023 (EST)
- Should I go ahead and update the author in anticipation of the change? John Scifibones 17:42, 25 February 2023 (EST)
Self-Approver
Hello, can you please comment on https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Community_Portal#Self-Moderation_Request? --Stoecker (talk) 06:44, 11 March 2023 (EST)
Offutt EILSB
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5606444; Do you think the day of publication or the ISBN should be entered? --Username (talk) 08:49, 13 March 2023 (EDT)
- Help:Screen:NewPub#Date says that:
- The base date optionally may be made more precise (e.g., supplying the month or day of publication) using information from a secondary source, if that source's date is otherwise consistent with publication's stated date. The source, and which details of the date were obtained from that source, must be recorded in the publication notes.
- so we could make the date more precise and state the source in Notes.
- Re: ISBN, Help:Screen:NewPub#ISBN allows padding a 9-digit SBN with a zero to make it a valid 10-digit ISBN, but creating a 10-digit ISBN based on a much shorter catalog ID ("64-490") seems like a stretch. We could always raise the question on the Rules and Standards page. For now I have approved the submission. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:49, 13 March 2023 (EDT)
Problem with an approved edit
When you have a few minutes, would you mind taking a look at the thread Neal Stephenson / Snow Crash? Thanks John Scifibones 19:31, 18 March 2023 (EDT)
- That's odd. I will restore the full backups (which include submission history) on the development server tomorrow morning and see what I can find. Thanks for reporting the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:55, 18 March 2023 (EDT)
- It turns out that this and 4 other publication records were corrupted in 2007-2008. At the time we had major issues with server stability and our software was still going through a "growing pains" phase. I am going to create a database patch and apply it to the live server in a day or two. Until then these 5 publication records' Notes fields will remain uneditable. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2023 (EDT)
- Thank you for taking care of this, I know you're busy. John Scifibones 17:11, 19 March 2023 (EDT)
Possible minor bug on title-pub date check when adding collections
Hi, I just added the UK ebook of Kelly Link's White Cat, Black Dog collection, which seems to have preceded the US pubs by ~3 weeks. I was expecting it to warn me about the pub date being before the title date, but didn't get any yellow warning, which can be seen here. It did spot that 2 of the stories which inherited the US title/pub date are after that pub date though.
My guess is this might be down to one of two things:
1. It's a collection, whereas normally when I get the warning it's on a novel - do those title types perhaps use different code? 2. The check/warning wasn't done here because I cloned the pub, rather than doing an AddPub as I usually do. Again, maybe different checks are being done?
I won't update the title date for the collection, or the 2 stories, until you've had chance to look into this - I think if I fixed things, it would cause the yellow warnings on the linked submission page to disappear? Regards ErsatzCulture (talk) 09:51, 14 April 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks for reporting the problem! Let me try to replicate it on the development server and see what I find... Ahasuerus (talk) 14:10, 14 April 2023 (EDT)
External IDs and Submission Conflicts
Figured I'd mention this, in case you have some good and simple idea for it. Yesterday I processed a lingering submission that had a host of changes, one of which was adding an LCCN external ID reference. There were no external IDs at the time of submission. After that was submitted, someone with self-approval rights (happened to be a moderator) edited the same pub and added OCLC/Worldcat and Reginald-3 external ID references and accepted that submission.
No surprise, when I went to process the lingering submission, that considered the external ID situation to be add LCCN and remove both OCLC/Worldcat and Reginald-3. I know the same would have been true had there been a conflicting edit to any other field. It got me to thinking, though, that if we treated external ID removal as some sort of negative addition (a la the use of 0 for removing a variant parent ID) rather than absence of the identifier, then these two additions to the External IDs would not have conflicted.
Thanks for listening. --MartyD (talk) 13:15, 20 April 2023 (EDT)
- I am afraid I am not sure what "negative addition" would mean in this case. The current logic simply deletes all old External IDs, then adds the ones that were submitted. How would the proposed logic work?
- To use the scenario described above as an example, if a publication has an OCLC ID and a Reginald-3 ID and a new submission has an LCCN ID, how would the software know whether the submitting editor meant to add the LCCN to the two IDs already on file or to replace them with the LCCN ID? Ditto for "Web pages" and other multi-fields.
- I suppose we could create new options to "Remove IDs/Web pages/etc", which would be similar to the "Remove Titles from This Pub" option. Once it was in place, we would change the behavior of EditPub to add new values without deleting old values. Is this in line with what you were thinking? Ahasuerus (talk) 14:22, 20 April 2023 (EDT)
- Yes, I was thinking that "blanking" a value would actually submit some sort of change-this-to-a-special-value that would indicate it should be removed (a la parent ID = 0), rather than simply causing it to be absent. 0 or -1 or DEL might be a good candidate. The back-end processing would have to be more complicated, as it couldn't just delete and add. But it could, for example, delete all of the IDs in the submission (rather than all of the IDs on the pub) and then add the ones in the submission back, except for the special-value ones. You could probably structure the insert's SQL cleverly to not have to filter in the code (e.g., insert into xxx values (...) where [new id value] <> 'SPECIAL-DELETE-THIS-VALUE';). --MartyD (talk) 09:56, 21 April 2023 (EDT)
- The reason we can use "0" as a special value is that our Title IDs cannot be 0. On the other hand, we have no way of telling what strange value a third party may decide to use. We wouldn't want to find ourselves in the same position as a certain government agency which used "Test" as a dummy last name (for testing purposes) until they discovered that people with that last name actually existed :-)
- Luckily, we don't need to use special values. We can use a new XML element name for a list of "External ID Type-External ID value" pairs to be removed.
- That said, I am not sure that it will cover all possible scenarios of External IDs getting added, removed and replaced. Let me draw a few diagrams and see what scenarios I can come up with... Ahasuerus (talk) 12:54, 21 April 2023 (EDT)
ISBN Search Case Sensitive
ISBN search is now case sensitive which is a bit of a pain.
- https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=162755646x&type=ISBN returns nothing
- https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=162755646X&type=ISBN returns the pub
Can we get it back to being case insensitive? Probably would just need to convert search term to uppercase when ISBN selected. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:24, 24 April 2023 (EDT)
- That's odd. I'll take a look. Thanks for reporting the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:02, 24 April 2023 (EDT)
Merge variant with parent problem
See this submission, but Keep ID and Drop ID are both present. The Drop ID is a variant of the Keep ID, but in the XML it's trying to set the merged record's Parent to Drop ID, which is rather odd. And I also think maybe the message means to say that the proposed parent does not exist? --MartyD (talk) 13:46, 6 May 2023 (EDT)
- Earlier this morning I recreated the problem on the development server. I then created FR 1565, "Disallow Merge Title submissions which would create circular VTs". The FR reads:
- Currently, the software lets you create a MergeTitle submission which would merge a variant with its parent and make the resulting title record a variant of itself. Since circular variants are not supported by the ISFDB software, these types of submissions are invalid.
- When it happens, the submission review software makes the submission unapprovable and displays the following error message:
- "The proposed parent title is the title record which will be kept after the merge."
- We want to change the software to catch this problem at submission creation time. The error message listed above should be retained in case a title record is turned into a variant between the time the submission is created and the time it's reviewed/approved. However, the text should me made more explicit:
- "This submission would result in a title that is a parent of itself, which is not allowed."
- Thanks for identifying the issue! Ahasuerus (talk) 12:46, 7 May 2023 (EDT)
Suboptimal behaviour on art award categories for "proper" titles
This isn't a bug IMHO, but it's definitely not ideal - if you're adding an award entry such as this one for the Locus Poll Art/Illustrated category, then only the author gets shown, when it's probably the case that the artist(s) is at least as responsible for the work being nominated. However, if the nominated work was never entered as a title/pub, then the artist does show up along with the author in the untitled award record (example).
(I'm guessing a similar situation would be in play for translated works, and for audiobook awards if we record any.)
I can't think of any easy solution for this - obviously the ideal would be if/whenever proper "roles" for a work are addable to the database - but I'm just mentioning it, in case there's anything you can think of as an interim workaround. Maybe something could be done with the award note field, but it'd still be a bit clunky?
Apologies in advance if this is something that is already known about and has been considered... ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:40, 13 May 2023 (EDT)
- When we create a "title-based" award record, we link it to one -- and only one -- title record. As long as this limitation remains in place, we can't link an award record to multiple title records at the same time.
- That being said, I am not sure we have this title entered correctly. If you look at this publication record and pull up its Amazon UK page, you will note that it is described as follows:
- From the Eisner and Bram Stoker-award winning team of Snow, Glass, Apples comes a delightfully humorous and charming new graphic novel adaptation.
- This suggests that this is not just a reprint of Gaiman's 1992 story "Chivalry" illustrated by Coleen Doran, but a new (derivative) graphic novel by Gaiman and Doran. Once we create a new SHORTFICTION title record for the graphic novel and enter Gaiman and Doran as its authors, we should be able to link the award record to it. Does this make sense? Ahasuerus (talk) 20:16, 13 May 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks - I've pinged the PVing editor who submitted that title & pubs. ErsatzCulture (talk) 08:16, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- As the PV and editor that created all of these pubs, I may indeed have attributed the authorship wrong. The copy I have in-hand shows the following on the title page: "Story and Words" [over] "Neil Gaiman" plus "Adaptation, Art, and Illuminated Manuscript Lettering" [over] "Colleen Doran" plus "Lettering" [over] "Todd Klein". Relooking at this, I can see why the author's should be both Gaiman and Doran. If I just change the title record, will that flow down to the pub records as well? Phil (talk) 08:39, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks - I've pinged the PVing editor who submitted that title & pubs. ErsatzCulture (talk) 08:16, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- I am afraid not. I think the quickest way to address this issue would be to do the following:
- Remove the 1992 SHORTFICTION title from each of the 4 affected CHAPBOOK pubs
- Change the authorship of the CHAPBOOK title record to "Neil Gaiman" and "Colleen Doran"
- Change the authorship of the 4 CHAPBOOK publications which include this title record to "Neil Gaiman" and "Colleen Doran"
- Edit the "Chivalry" INTERIORART title by Coleen Doran to be a SHORTFICTION [sic!] title by Coleen Doran and Neil Gaiman; make sure to set the "graphic format" flag
- I think that should do it, but we can review the records after the changes are made. You may also want to add a link to this discussion to the Moderator Note field of your submissions. Thanks for chiming in! Ahasuerus (talk) 11:32, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- Those changes are submitted except for setting the graphic format flag which has to be done after the type is changed to SHORTFICTION. In this process, I also discovered I had consistently misspelled Colleen (including in the other titles and cover artist) so there are also submissions to correct that. Sigh. Phil (talk) 15:06, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- I am afraid not. I think the quickest way to address this issue would be to do the following:
- Everything has been approved and the "graphic format" flag has been set. I believe the only thing that we still need to decide on is whether the previously discussed award record, which is currently linked to the CHAPBOOK title, should be linked to the SHORTFICTION title instead. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:31, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- The prior award record has been deleted and a new one created against the new shortfiction record. Thanks both. ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:55, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- Everything has been approved and the "graphic format" flag has been set. I believe the only thing that we still need to decide on is whether the previously discussed award record, which is currently linked to the CHAPBOOK title, should be linked to the SHORTFICTION title instead. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:31, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
- There is no need to delete an award that is pointing to the wrong record. While on the 'Award Details' screen, select 'Link Award' from the 'Editing Tools' menu and enter the correct record #. This will preserve any useful information. This one for example. I won't need to repeat the research. John Scifibones 20:12, 14 May 2023 (EDT)
Odd & now missing approval
Hi Ahasuerus. I just approved this submission[1] and got an error message, but when I checked it went through, except it's not in the recently approved or in author history. Thought I should let you know.Kraang (talk) 10:52, 15 May 2023 (EDT)
- I see that the submission errored out -- see this list of Errored Out and "In Progress" Submissions, which can be accessed from the "Moderator Links" section of the navigation bar on the left. "Errored out" submissions are typically due to server problems that we have no control over. Some months the server that we rent experiences more of them than other months. For example, it happened 19 times in December 2022, but only 16 times in January-May 2023. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:31, 15 May 2023 (EDT)
Invalid Page Numbers
Please see this pub and the first page number (`42). Is non-standard punctuation something that should be added to the cleanup report? -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:32, 21 May 2023 (EDT)
- It's 142, I fixed it in my (pending) edit. Whoever entered contents messed up several page numbers. --Username (talk) 12:43, 21 May 2023 (EDT)
(edit conflict) From the last database dump:
mysql> select pubc_page,pub_id from pub_content where pubc_page like "%`%"; +-----------+--------+ | pubc_page | pub_id | +-----------+--------+ | `42 | 303295 | | 1` | 389098 | | |9` | 472957 | | `51|28 | 249793 | | 80` | 919331 | | 6` | 927024 | +-----------+--------+ 6 rows in set (6.89 sec)
So seems a common enough occurrence of people missing the 1 key and hitting ` instead. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:45, 21 May 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks for identifying the issue. I will update the cleanup report once I finish the current task. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:42, 21 May 2023 (EDT)
- I have updated the cleanup report to include values with a "backtick" (`) character. The new data will become available tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of any other punctuation characters that could be included because we record page numbers as they appear in publications, including oddball values like "C-1", "C!1", etc. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:46, 23 May 2023 (EDT)
Figuring out a Russian name
This story is by a Russian from the Soviet era (1954 or before). Any chance you can figure out who it is? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:00, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- [2]; right-click, translate to English, if that helps. --Username (talk) 19:22, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- As far as I can tell, there's no one with the name Арефьев in the database. I couldn't find any connection other than that one page. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:35, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- Here it is: Тайна полигона by С. Арефьев (I went brute force based on the Japanese name -- there are only that many possible spellings in Russian of that last name. I will update the record. :) Annie (talk) 19:33, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- Cool. Thanks (to you and Username). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:37, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- And now we have a more-or-less complete entry for the first Japanese science fiction magazine! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:39, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- And I just tracked down the original Russian publication of that story as well :) Annie (talk) 19:43, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- Awesome! That's a pretty quick turnaround on translating a story and publishing the translation (end of August to December in the same year). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:47, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- Yep - it is possible that the translation was done based on pre-publication proofs. I am seeing a few reprints in Russian magazines and newspapers in September 1954: serialization in very early September in За тяжёлое машиностроение (based in Yekaterinburg) and a full story in Молодой сталинец (in Tbilisi) in the middle of the month so I suspect the story was making the rounds before it officially came out. I cannot find anything before that August publication (and that magazine makes sense as a first publication) but now I am curious just how many I will find (I see at least one later serialization in 1957-1958). Maybe there is an earlier one out there in the same year - Fantlab puts in in 1954 (with no details on where) so it is unlikely to find it earlier than that I'd think. :) Always fun to track down old stories :) Annie (talk) 20:17, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- Awesome! That's a pretty quick turnaround on translating a story and publishing the translation (end of August to December in the same year). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:47, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- And I just tracked down the original Russian publication of that story as well :) Annie (talk) 19:43, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
- (after edit conflict) Quick turnaround indeed. I am not an expert in the area of Soviet-Japanese relations, but the first thing that comes to mind is that the Soviets were trying to improve their relationship with Japan around the same time. In July their First Deputy Foreign Minster Andrei Vyshinski claimed that the USSR wanted to promote trade and cultural exchanges with Japan, ultimately leading to a "normalization" of the relationship. In September Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet Foreign Minister, said that the USSR "expresses its readiness to make normal its relations with Japan". It culminated in a Sino-Soviet "Joint Communique" in October in which both countries "express[ed] their readiness to take steps to normalize their relations with Japan". Perhaps the editor(s) thought that it made late 1954 a perfect time to publish a Russian story. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:26, 26 May 2023 (EDT)
Weird Duplicate Submissions
This was probably just some weird hiccup, but I thought I would mention it: I made an edit to a publication after accepting the submission. From my side, I got a single moderator approval window. But when I went into the moderation queue after approving that, I saw about 30 duplicate submissions (see Recent Rejections from 2023-05-28 08:39:42 to 2023-05-28 08:39:44). As far as I know, I didn't do anything different than normal when submitting (ex. holding down a key while submitting). I certainly didn't inadvertently pop-up 30 different tabs or anything like that. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:56, 28 May 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks for letting me know. It is exceedingly odd. On rare occasion, something happens between Apache and MySQL that results in a duplicate submission, but I don't think I have ever seen 30 duplicates.
- Checking Apache's log file, I see:
- [Sun May 28 08:39:42.498256 2023] [cgid:error] [pid 1597558:tid 1597806] (104)Connection reset by peer: AH01270: Error reading request entity data, referer: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/editpub.cgi?952950
- which matches the time frame and the publication ID. So something clearly happened at the Apache level, but I am not sure what it was. There are online reports of a regression bug in this area under Apache 2.4.39, which was fixed in 2.4.40, but we are running a later version. I guess we'll have to keep an eye on it. Thanks again. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:41, 28 May 2023 (EDT)
- I just noticed I got 3 dupe NewAwards when I was adding this year's Clarke Finalists yesterday; nothing as excessive as described above, but mentioning in case it's of any use. 5685820 and 5685819 are the same as 5685821, 5685816 is the same as 56885817. The submit times on the first three and the second pair are the same, the edits which were accepted have approval times a couple of seconds later. I don't recall noticing anything atypical at the time. This was on latest Firefox on Linux.
- No expectation on you doing any investigation on these, just providing some datapoints if you need them. One thought though: if this keeps happening and no other solution could be found, could you maybe have some sort of hidden field in the edit forms with an UUID generated by JavaScript when the user hits the submit button, which might allow dupes to be detected server side? ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:05, 8 June 2023 (EDT)
See here. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:37, 1 June 2023 (EDT)
Unreject link
It looks like the unreject link doesn't show up in the moderator view (see here), but does show up in this view. Can the unreject link be added to the moderator view page? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:42, 1 June 2023 (EDT)
- Thank you! Now I won't be confused trying to figure out where it is. (^_^;; ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:56, 2 June 2023 (EDT)
Submission language
Discussion moved to ISFDB:Moderator_noticeboard. Ahasuerus (talk) 07:57, 3 June 2023 (EDT)
Minor bug: editing an existing pub's date does not have the yellow same warnings re. title date as when adding a new pub
If you add a new pub that has an earlier date than the title date - which I've had a lot of on stuff like Star Trek ebooks - you get a yellow warning about being earlier than the title date, which reminds you to update the title record.
However, I've just noticed that if you edit a pub to bring the date forward, you don't get the same reminder. Last night I had to fix a couple of pubs for various things including earlier UK pub date, and it was only today when I went to add one of the corresponding ebooks that I realized I never got the title date warning when editing the existing pubs. I've just done some tests to confirm that's the case. Not a big deal in an of itself, but may be a fairly simple copypaste to add the same check when editing an existing pub?
(I linked the message(s) I've left on Annie's page, as this is a US pseudo-publisher of what are actually UK pubs, which seem to be prone to multiple incorrect fields in the Amazon data that Fixer pushes through; I dunno if there's anything that could be done to warn the approver to be extra careful with submissions for that publisher?) ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:33, 5 June 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks, I'll check the date warnings.
- Re: Mobius, I have tweaked Fixer to let the reviewing moderator know that "Mobius" pubs are suspected UK imports. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:30, 5 June 2023 (EDT)
- I have run a few tests on the development server and here is what I see. If you change one of the title dates in the Content section, the software compares the new date with the publication date. If the former is later than the latter, a yellow warning is displayed. However, if you change the publication date value in the Metadata section, the software doesn't compare the new vale with the dates of the titles associated with the pub. FR 1569 has been created. Thanks for identifying the issue! Ahasuerus (talk) 15:18, 6 June 2023 (EDT)
Image linking permissions
This author would like to add his website to the list. Would you mind outlining the procedure here. Thanks, John Scifibones 16:29, 7 June 2023 (EDT)
- I appreciate it. John Scifibones 17:06, 9 June 2023 (EDT)
Fixer and Clay Harmon's The Flames of Mira
See User_talk:Anniemod#Alice_James_-_Grave_Danger_.2F_Clay_Harmon_-_Flames_of_Mira for a bit more background/context on this.
This is a Solaris/Rebellion title that came out in hc, ebook and audio last summer, and has a tp due at the start of July. None of those pubs came from Fixer submissions, which I thought was a bit odd, given that (IMHO) Solaris/Rebellion is a reasonably high profile publisher, albeit not Big 5.
I download the Fixer files intermittently, and I can see that the ISBNs and ASINs were known. The hc ISBN (9781786185419) was priority 1, but I submitted it first, 2-3 weeks ahead of publication. The ebook ASIN (B0B1QKFFG9) was priority 1 for several months, but I added it earlier this year, several months post publication. The tp (9781786189615) has been in 'n' state since at least February; I have scraped data for it from Waterstones from November last year, and it hasn't changed pub date in that time. Naively I'd have assumed that it would have been given priority 1 as with the hc?
Obviously I'm more than happy to submit these pubs (*), but I'm just mentioning it in case Fixer is doing something funny with them. Here are relevant bits from the Fixer files I have; the dates are split into 2 groups due to me getting a new dev box recently:
$ grep -P "(B0B1QKFFG9|B09TQ3ZCT7|B09TQ2K1HG)" */ASIN*txt _fixer_20220611_/ASINs2022-06-11.txt:B09TQ3ZCT7||n _fixer_20220611_/ASINs2022-06-11.txt:B0B1QKFFG9||n _fixer_20220820_/ASINs2022-08-20.txt:B09TQ3ZCT7||n _fixer_20220820_/ASINs2022-08-20.txt:B0B1QKFFG9||1 _fixer_20230204_/ASINs2023-02-04.txt:B09TQ3ZCT7||n _fixer_20230204_/ASINs2023-02-04.txt:B0B1QKFFG9||1 $ grep -P "(9781786189615|9781786185419|9781786185426|9781786185402)" */*ISBN*txt _fixer_20220611_/ISBNs2022-06-11.txt:1786185415|9781786185419|1| _fixer_20220820_/ISBNs2022-08-20.txt:1786185415|9781786185419|8| _fixer_20230204_/ISBNs2023-02-04.txt:1786185415|9781786185419|8| _fixer_20230204_/ISBNs2023-02-04.txt:1786189615|9781786189615|n| $ grep -P "(9781786189615|9781786185419|9781786185426|9781786185402)" *ISBN*txt ISBNs2023-04-29.txt:1786185415|9781786185419|8| ISBNs2023-04-29.txt:1786189615|9781786189615|n| ISBNs2023-06-03.txt:1786185415|9781786185419|8| ISBNs2023-06-03.txt:1786189615|9781786189615|n| $ grep -P "(B0B1QKFFG9|B09TQ3ZCT7|B09TQ2K1HG)" *ASIN*txt ASINs2023-04-29.txt:B09TQ3ZCT7||n ASINs2023-04-29.txt:B0B1QKFFG9||8 ASINs2023-06-03.txt:B09TQ3ZCT7||n ASINs2023-06-03.txt:B0B1QKFFG9||8
(* With the proviso that the Solaris/Rebellion website is pretty horrible - at least for our purposes - so I've never bothered writing scrapers for it, and rarely look at it. As such, I'm less likely to spot anything that Fixer hasn't caught, than for pubs from the other main UK publishers) ErsatzCulture (talk) 09:00, 8 June 2023 (EDT)
- Checking this ISBN in Fixer's "data stores", I see that this is a known issue with the way Fixer processes UK publications. It's caused by the fact we don't have access to the Amazon API on the UK side. When Fixer finds a new ISBN/ASIN at Amazon UK, we query the US API since it's the only option that we have. If the ISBN/ASIN is unknown to the US API as of the time when it appears on the UK side, Fixer records the date when the US API was queried. The date is later checked to prevent Fixer from querying the US API over and over again, which is good if the ISBN/ASIN is never made available on the US side, but bad if it pops up a few weeks (or months) later.
- In the past I would have said that this was the best that we could do given our limited access to the Amazon API. However, there is an additional twist. A couple of years ago Fixer began capturing UK- and US-specific lists of Amazon "browse nodes" for each published (as opposed to announced) ISBN/ASIN. Importantly, this list of browse nodes is built separately and doesn't rely on the Amazon API. In the case of ISBN 9781786189615 it means that Fixer knows that it is associated with browse nodes 9803, 16190, 16205 and 10159265011 on the US side.
- What this means is that I can create a script to examine Fixer's data stores and create a list of ISBNs/ASINs which the Amazon API was not aware of at some point in the past, yet they have at least one associated US browse node on file. I can then send a list of these ISBNs/ASINs to the Amazon API and get their data.
- I am currently sick and can't really code, but I'll add this issue to my list of things to do. Thanks for reporting the problem! Ahasuerus (talk) 12:04, 8 June 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks for responding. First of all, please don't feel any obligation to respond to this comment, or this item in general.
- A question which can hopefully be easily answered with just a yes or no answer: Is the content of the XML files that are in the Fixer dump zip based solely on data obtained from the Amazon US API? I've never examined those XML files before, but I see they have a load of interesting data that's not in the .txt files. However, when I tried grepping for "Flames of Mira" or the tp ISBN 9781786189615, I couldn't find either of them, which makes me suspect they are from your website scraping?
- (The angle I'm coming at is that if I had a list of UK ASINs and/or ISBNs that Fixer was aware of, but wasn't able to progress due to lack of info from the API, then I could plug them into my workflows.)
- Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:51, 8 June 2023 (EDT)
- "Fixer_dump_*.xml" contain API-provided data about outstanding ISBNs/ASINs. They do not include ISBNs/ASINs without API-provided data. "ASINs*" and "ISBNs*" list all known ISBNs/ASINs, including rejected (priority 9) and submitted (priority 8) ISBNs/ASINs as well as all ISBNs/ASINs which were not recognized by the Amazon API. I'll try to clarify User:Fixer#Fixer_Dumps_and_Lists when I am feeling better. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:43, 8 June 2023 (EDT)
Russian Science Fiction
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5689904; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5689906; The '68 cover image is now unstable; essay "note" in '68 should be "notes" and book title added in parentheses to differ it from same-titled essay in '69. Also, since title is written on covers and inside books with the year on a separate line ISFDB titles should probably have a colon before the year. --Username (talk) 13:22, 11 June 2023 (EDT)
ISBN things
Hi. While working on a submission involving a 1965 pub and an entry we had dated 1965 yet with an ISBN-10, I discovered that the SBN system was formulated in 1966 and went into use in 1967 (see here). So we couldn't have even an SNB-converted-to-ISBN on a pre-1967 publication (or pre-1966 if we want to be double super extra cautious). Such a combination must indicate a data error. Perhaps (a) worth a clean-up report and (b) a different/stronger warning than the ISBN-on-a-pre-1970-publication that comes up now.
And if that's not enough, while on the subject of submission warnings, I noticed I can change the publication date on an entry with an ISBN to something pre-1970, and there is no warning that the date conflicts with the presence of an ISBN. Don't know how often an occasion for such a warning might come up, but I figured I'd mention it. --MartyD (talk) 16:19, 11 June 2023 (EDT)
- Good points. FR 1572, "Cleanup report to find pre-1967 pubs with ISBNs" and FR 1573, "Enhance yellow warnings for invalid ISBNs", have been created. Thanks for identifying and researching the issues! Ahasuerus (talk) 19:55, 11 June 2023 (EDT)
- And now ISBN-related yellow warnings have been updated. All at no extra charge! Ahasuerus (talk) 10:57, 17 June 2023 (EDT)
Weird broken Amazon image URLs
Do you remember a week or two ago a brief discussion on AvR's talk page about The Shadow Casket. The image for that is now broken - for me at least - and I'm pretty sure that given the number of people in that convo, we'd have noticed if the image was broken.
The URL is https: //m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T1/images/I/81FChyMyBoL.jpg , and I remember seeing a broken author author image that had a similarly odd URL. I felt a bit guilty for not fixing it at the time, but maybe that's for the best, as it means I can see the URL. The author page is Christine Lynn Herman and the image URL is
A query of the authors table finds 31 that have this type of Amazon URL, and every single one of the half-dozen I checked is broken (apologies for not working out how to stop MediaWiki trying to render the URLs):
MariaDB [isfdb]> select author_id, author_canonical, author_image from authors where author_image like '%IMAGERENDERING%'; +-----------+-------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | author_id | author_canonical | author_image | +-----------+-------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | 10435 | Kathleen Duey || | 22753 | Heinrich Hoffmann |
| | 29899 | Liz Kessler |
| | 39861 | Derek Landy |
| | 131176 | Alexandra Bracken |
| | 161583 | Diane Cook |
| | 177558 | Stefan Bachmann |
| | 183281 | Paul Flora |
| | 188214 | George P. Saunders |
| | 190229 | Andreas Wolf |
| | 192019 | Kass Morgan |
| | 196879 | Claire Legrand |
| | 232554 | Devin Goff |
| | 233842 | Beth W. Patterson |
| | 234917 | Christopher Jackson-Ash |
| | 235568 | Ruben Wickenhäuser |
| | 239090 | María Kodama |
| | 254317 | Amanda Foody |
| | 256354 | Linsey Miller |
| | 273305 | C. S. Poe |
| | 275416 | Kimberly Rei |
| | 281179 | Akwaeke Emezi |
| | 281212 | Juno Dawson |
| | 289093 | Christine Lynn Herman |
| | 301962 | Salla Simukka |
| | 317118 | Christian Wehrschütz |
| | 347902 | Julia Glass |
| | 360495 | Little Chmura |
| | 360510 | Lisa Eckhart |
| | 361089 | Philip Chase |
| +-----------+-------------------------+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ 31 rows in set (0.060 sec)
A similar query on the pubs table finds 590 matches:
select pub_id, pub_title, pub_frontimage from pubs where pub_frontimage like '%imagerendering%';
I've looked at a smaller number of these, and they're all broken. Seem to have come from a variety of editors, so it's not just one person being weird. The most recent pub (going off max pub_id) was submitted in April, which makes me thing Amazon may have been doing something weird, but have now stopped?
The /images/I/ URLs look like they could be transformed into working ones - although I've not yet tested - but the /images/S/ ones don't look like anything I recognize. ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:53, 11 June 2023 (EDT)
- I've noticed the same thing but didn't bother writing about it because I figured nobody would care much or that it was just temporary. One instance I mentioned to RTrace for a book he entered recently and he deleted the image but I've seen others since; they say "Bad Request". Amazon is not good and they changed their images to that stupid image-rendering thing last year, I think, then forgot about it and now we have some broken images. A mod is needed to fix that, I guess. --Username (talk) 17:06, 11 June 2023 (EDT)
- I had a feeling I'd seen some discussion about broken images that might have been the same thing as this, but I didn't find anything after a brief search.
- I've hacked up a script to submit automated edits to fix these via the web API, but I need someone to enable my access to that. Once that's done, it should be relatively painless to submit the image fixes in batches, albeit fairly tedious to accept the ~600 edits. ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:25, 11 June 2023 (EDT)
- I have created SR 217 to give you access to the Web API. I hope to get it done tomorrow morning. Once the permissions are in place, please confirm that the first couple of auto-generated submissions are formatted correctly before submitting the rest of the batch. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:07, 11 June 2023 (EDT)
- I think that these URLs are temporary - thus stopping to work after a time. I wonder if we won’t be better off changing the software to enforce the Amazon URL formats automatically - that will also solve all the formatting parameters not being cleaned up. The image ID in these is correct - it is the path that is broken. Annie (talk) 18:40, 11 June 2023 (EDT)
- Given the number of possible formats and Amazon's relatively frequent changes, I am not sure we could account for all possible permutations and make on-the-fly translation viable.
- Possibly I'm misunderstanding the question, but the ones with the 10 character ID are easily fixed using a regex like this:
good_image_url = re.sub('.W.IMAGERENDERING.*images', , bad_image_url)
- I've fixed the first 100 pubs with these image URLs via the API e.g. 5690444. Every single one was previously broken, and all of them were fixed with that part of the URL removed. I've not looked at the longer URLs e.g. https: //m.media-amazon.com/images/W/IMAGERENDERING_521856-T2/images/S/amzn-author-media-prod/ustlqjalpaddc5khvjlerenak6.jpg , as these only crop up on the author pages.
- I'd guess any Amazon image URL containing "IMAGERENDERING" should prompt a yellow warning at the least? ErsatzCulture (talk) 10:47, 12 June 2023 (EDT)
- My understanding of Annie's idea -- "chang[e] the software to enforce the Amazon URL formats automatically" -- was roughly as follows:
- The submission validation software would extract the "ID" part from the submitted URL, presumably by looking for the value between the last "/" character and ".jpg|.gif|.png"
- The software would then build a stable image URL by inserting the extracted ID into a standard URL
- If this is turns out to be possible, then I would be all for it. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:55, 12 June 2023 (EDT)
- At least for covers, all of these variations lately (IMAGERENDERING and the WEBP ones (see this one for example), already have an /images/I/ in their paths. I think that this is a newer way for Amazon to do formatting - they used to stick it into the filename, now they do that so I have a feeling we will see more of these. But unlike the other formatting, some of these are apparently unstable/temporary (I'd guess they are caching images in specific sizes as opposed to re-sizing every time thus the files disappearing when the server caches expire).
- So if we check for /images/I/ and grab what is behind it, we should be able to easily replace with one of the two valid prefixes thus clearing any images/I already coming in. The author ones are in difference spaces and naming so I would not touch them I think... Annie (talk) 11:39, 12 June 2023 (EDT)
- My understanding of Annie's idea -- "chang[e] the software to enforce the Amazon URL formats automatically" -- was roughly as follows:
Web API niggles/observations
Some stuff that may or not be easily fixable, I can do the wiki docs, but I'd prefer for you to be aware of that before any make any changes:
1. Web_API still refers to http rather than https URLs, notably in the submission.cgi section. For the GET API calls, there seems to be a seamless redirect to the HTTPS URL, so you don't notice the problem, but the POST fails with a non-obvious error message about malformed XML. (Or possibly the redirect "fix" is due to me doing the GETs in a browser, but the POSTs from a script/library, with the former redirecting but not the latter.)
- Thanks for doing the research and reporting your findings! I have updated the documentation page. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:52, 12 June 2023 (EDT)
2. Despite the sample code at Web_API#Example_python_script_utilizing_submission.cgi implying otherwise, I always got HTTP 200 status code back. It would be super-nice to have more meaningful HTTP response codes for errors, but I don't expect that from a "hobby" site, given I've seen plenty of commercial/professional APIs guilty of the same crime. It would be good to have the Wiki docs explicitly say though that you might get a 200 status code, but have an error that you need to dig into XML to see.
- The documentation page has been updated, thanks. Low priority SR 218, "Update HTTP error codes within the WebAPI", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:10, 12 June 2023 (EDT)
- Done -- please see Web_API#Error_Conditions_2 for details. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:56, 18 June 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks. If it's OK, I'll experiment tomorrow with doing some deliberately submissions to see if the responses returned are what I'd expect? I'm on the last <100 of the ~600 broken Amazon image fixes, so I'll pick from a handful of those. ErsatzCulture (talk) 19:05, 18 June 2023 (EDT)
- I think it should be fine, at least within reason. The WebAPI doesn't perform the kind of in-depth validation that the regular, manual, submission process performs, so things like missing required fields could cause problems and probably error out at submission review time. Malformed XML, a missing License Key value, etc should be straightforward. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:04, 18 June 2023 (EDT)
- No worries. I just wanted to test that the script I had did the right thing when an HTTP error status was returned, but I didn't want to cause alarm if you've got something that monitors the logs or alerts you when such bad requests come in. I've done about half-a-dozen, and I'm happy that my code does what it should, so you won't see any more. ErsatzCulture (talk) 07:32, 19 June 2023 (EDT)
3. On my first accepted edit via the API, the (self)mod page had a yellow warning, because I'd slightly mangled the fixing of the Amazon URL. In an ideal world, the yellow warnings would be included in the API response - whilst still having an "OK" status - but I guess the code/workflow doesn't have the checks for all the different types of edits when the API request is parsed. Rather than worry about adding that functionality - which I doubt has a good cost/benefit ration - there should probably be a brief mention on the Wiki docs that yellow warning checks won't appear in the response.
- Web_API#Successful_Completion has been updated, thanks. Low priority SR 219, "Enhance validation of WebAPI submissions", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:19, 12 June 2023 (EDT)
4. I suspect the self moderator UI is much less user friendly for doing large numbers of acceptances, compared to the "real" moderator pages? To accept just one of my API submissions, I have to do:
1. Click on My Pending Edits 2. Click on one of the edits 3. Scroll down the page a bit (unless I have a large screen and/or reduce the zoom) 4. Click on Self-Approver View 5. Scroll down a bit again 6. Click on Approve 7. go back to the first step to do more
I think the mod pages have some sort of "go to next edit in the queue link"? It would be nice if the post-approval page had something like that, but I suspect this would have to be added to every single such script?
(This UI isn't a problem when you're doing submissions manually, because there's only one or two extra clicks and scrolls, which are minimal compared to the actual entry of new data.) ErsatzCulture (talk) 08:16, 12 June 2023 (EDT)
- Good point. The current self-approver workflow was created for the manual submission process; I didn't think of the implications for the Web API side of things. FR 1574, "Self-approvers should be able to go to the Next Submission", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:28, 12 June 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks for all the tweaks. Like I say, I've had to deal with APIs that had a load more WTFery, so the fact that I was able to get these fixes in quickly was a relief.
- (I've considered whether to do the AddPubs from my tooling via the API rather than copypaste, but it seemed like that would only make the unambiguous submissions really easy, but all the awkward ones would still need a lot of manual intervention - like Annie has to do with Fixer submissions - so whilst it would probably reduce the total amount of time I spend on AddPubs, the average level of brainpower and effort required per submission would probably rise.) ErsatzCulture (talk) 10:52, 12 June 2023 (EDT)
Conflicting edits issues
When you have a chance: see this. I had noticed that for a long time (long before the migration) but I keep forgetting to ping you about it. Thanks! Annie (talk) 18:11, 15 June 2023 (EDT)
Translator (and other contributor types) status?
Do you have a projected time frame for when the contributor type feature might be added? When it gets implemented, we can add this award, which is given to translators in Japan. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:32, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
- I am afraid it will require a significant amount of design and development work, so it's a long term goal :-( Ahasuerus (talk) 13:55, 24 June 2023 (EDT)
- I remember it being a major feature to add, and that it would take a lot of work. Hopefully, it will happen in the next couple years. Thanks for all your hard work. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:26, 26 June 2023 (EDT)
- Unfortunately, my health hasn't been all that it could be for the last 4 years, so my current emphasis is on updating the existing software -- including Fixer -- to be able to continue to function even if I become unavailable. There are certain related dependencies like Al's work on upgrading the software from Python 2 to Python 3, which is a big can of worms. Wheels within wheels... Ahasuerus (talk) 18:59, 26 June 2023 (EDT)
New spammer
I just blocked & deleted two spammers (Slotmm and SPIN68GACORR) who I suspect are the same person/bot. In the meantime user accounts Slotmm13 and SlotMega38 are created, obviously also from the same source. Should these be blocked before spam is added, or should I wait? --Willem (talk) 16:13, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
- I would block them. If it turns out they are legit, they can always be unblocked. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:26, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
- I agree that these 2 are obvious spam accounts and can be blocked. Unfortunately, we have literally thousands of idle spam accounts which have been created over the years, so it's a drop in the ocean. Many have suspicious names, but it's not always a 100% guarantee, so I usually leave them alone until the owner spam-edits a page. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:40, 22 June 2023 (EDT)
SciFiwise
Please see this post regarding image permissions. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:32, 23 June 2023 (EDT)
Fixer and disambiguating similarly named imprints
Hi, does Fixer have any configuration regarding imprints and their ISBN ranges, and how the latter might be used to disambiguate when we have similarly named imprints?
I've just posted a head's up on Annie's page about 2 newish UK imprints, which both appear on Amazon as "Magpie". If Fixer picks up releases from either of those - and I think it has done at least one - it would be good if it could put the correct name in the submission based on the ISBN. Obviously things aren't going to be that simple for ebooks or audios that only have ASINs.
This maybe isn't going to be a big problem, as it looks like one of the 2 Magpies probably won't be publishing many ISFDB-eligible works, but if there's something already in place that can help avoid mixing them up, then that'd be great. Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 19:29, 25 June 2023 (EDT)
Newest DB backup not accessible
Getting a "You need access / Request access, or switch to an account with access. Learn more" message on browsers that have Gmail sessions, and on one that doesn't, it prompts me to log in.
Sorry for jumping on you a few minutes after you uploaded them, but I usually try to sync my local data ASAP.
OTOH, given that Reddit and Twitter both seem to have destroyed their services in the past 24 hours, maybe Google has decided to join them and broken something on their end? ErsatzCulture (talk) 14:16, 1 July 2023 (EDT)
- Nope, it was a permissions issue on the file. It should be fixed -- please try it now. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:31, 1 July 2023 (EDT)
- All looks good now, thanks. ErsatzCulture (talk) 14:55, 1 July 2023 (EDT)
Historical publication data via forthcoming books page
I dunno if you've seen this /r/printSF post yet? (Too early for your TZ I suspect.) I'm currently refusing to post to Reddit due to the API changes and (more pertinently) how they've been managed, but if not, I might have posted that there's an AFAIK undocumented feature with the forthcoming books page to get it to display historical data e.g. August 1980.
Assuming this isn't a problem in terms of increased CPU/memory load - I guess it's selecting hundreds of rows from titles, pubs, authors, publishers plus the "inbetween" tables, so it potentially is - maybe there could be some calendar page vaguely similar to the magazine grid - to make that historical data more accessible? Maybe only to logged in users, similar to advanced search? ErsatzCulture (talk) 07:17, 3 July 2023 (EDT)
- The Forthcoming Books page uses the same logic/code as the "Month of Publication" search available from the regular Search drop-down. Is this what you had in mind? Ahasuerus (talk) 09:20, 3 July 2023 (EDT)
- Ah, thanks - yes, that does get to the same end result I was thinking of. Despite using the search box and drop-down any number of times most days, I don't think that option had ever registered in my brain :-( In other circumstances, I'd be embarrassed, but the fact that someone else also failed to notice it - thanks for replying to him on Reddit BTW - makes me think that it's not as discoverable as it might ideally be?
- If you are happy with the general idea, and amenable to adding it to the site after being reviewed, I am more than willing to build a "historical publications" script that would fit alongside the ones in the "Other Pages" sidebar section. ErsatzCulture (talk) 11:43, 3 July 2023 (EDT)
- Could you please clarify the content/layout of the Web page(s) that the proposed "historical publications script" would generate? Would it be a single HTML table with:
- one row per year
- one column per month
- an "fc.cgi" link in each table cell
- ? Ahasuerus (talk) 12:09, 3 July 2023 (EDT)
- Yes, probably with the restriction that it only shows a decade at a time, and some sort of nav bar across the top to allow you to choose the decade, and defaulting to the current decade if non-explicitly specified. Obviously it'll be clearer when there's something real to look at, but that approach strikes me as easier for a user to deal with than having all years on one page. Again it'll be easier to tell once there's a real page, but I'm guessing there aren't enough pubs to bother with decades prior to the 1900s, and maybe not until the 1920s or 1930s? ErsatzCulture (talk) 12:31, 3 July 2023 (EDT)
- Could you please clarify the content/layout of the Web page(s) that the proposed "historical publications script" would generate? Would it be a single HTML table with:
- That sounds a bit like what the Titles Ranked by Awards and Nominations page does, although the details would be necessarily different. If we were to replicate the layout of the main HTML table, we could have the links in each "Year" cell take you to an intermediate page with a single-row table with cells for January-December. Clicking the name of each month would then take you to "fc.cgi" for the month/year combination. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:41, 3 July 2023 (EDT)
- NB: as far as I can think, this would just be a fairly dumb script that doesn't touch the database at all - whilst I'm sure it would be nice to have something like counts of the number of pubs in each year in each cell, that's probably way too CPU intensive, unless there are some extant cached stats - e.g. the underlying numbers for this chart - that could be leveraged? (Without looking at the code, I think those charts are generated weeekly as images, as opposed to having cached data that's rendered into charts on request?) ErsatzCulture (talk) 12:31, 3 July 2023 (EDT)
- Our weekly charts like Titles by Year of First Publication are SVG-driven with the stats retrieved from the database every Sunday morning. The reason that they are rebuilt once a week is that the SQL code locks multiple tables when it runs, which affects performance.
Untitled awards for people who don't have author records, and transliterated names
This is a minor issue in the overall scheme of things, and off the top of my head, I can't think of a solution which isn't either (a) more effort than it's worth and/or (b) a bit hacky, but I'll mention it just in case you can think of something:
I added all the Chinese Hugo finalists yesterday. For the categories which are for people rather than works, and so use the untitled award functionality, it would be nice to have some sort of facility for entering and displaying transliterated names. This mostly affects editors, but artists and fanwriters can also be affected if their work doesn't really fit ISFDB requirements for published work.
For these people, I entered them with their names in Chinese characters, which I think makes sense given that's the region where their work has been. However this is obviously not great for people who can't read those names. Being able to enter transliterated names for untitled awards would help a bit.
Possibly you could add a trans_author_id column to awards as a foreign key to trans_authors, but that would only allow for a single transliteration, which may or may not be enough? Obviously there'd need to be code changes to support that.
Alternatively, there could be some convention to indicate author transliterations in the award_author field, similar to the + syntax for separating multiple authors. (I appreciate the + is an internal implementation detail that's not exposed to editors or site visitors.) e.g. 鲁般|Lu Ban. This feels like it might be a bit hacky though? ErsatzCulture (talk) 09:13, 7 July 2023 (EDT)
- When "transliterated values" were added to the core ISFDB tables (authors, titles, pubs, publishers, series, pub series), the underlying principle was to allow an unlimited number of transliterations per original value. The reason for it was that the existence of multiple transliteration systems per language/alphabet/script. For example, there at least a dozen reasonably well known transliteration systems for Cyrillic. Since it's a one-to-many relationship, we needed to add a new table for every "transliterated value" field -- see Database_Schema#Transliteration_Tables for a list of the currently supported tables and their schemas.
- Re: awards, we have FR 1295, "Allow entering transliterated values for awards-related values". Currently it covers Award Type names, Award Category names and custom "Displayed Award Levels" (see FR 656 for details.) I am going to add "Title for awards not linked to an ISFDB title record" to the list. Thanks for pointing out this gap. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:52, 7 July 2023 (EDT)
- P.S. Re: "the + syntax for separating multiple authors", I assume you are referring to the fact that author names are delimited using the "plus" sign in submission payloads. It was a kludge implemented early on. It prevents author names which include legitimate plus signs from being recorded correctly. Unfortunately, changing it to proper XML would require not only non-trivial changes to the software, but also updating existing XML in the submission table, a non-trivial undertaking. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:01, 7 July 2023 (EDT)
A slightly different issue/suggestion: A fairly cosmetic change that might help, and I think should be relatively uncontroversial and easy to implement - the only way to see the award record is by clicking on the * hyperlink, which isn't very visible or intuitive. For untitled awards, could we make the title (for stuff like dramatic presentation) and/or author name be a hyperlink to the same award_details.cgi page? For these Chinese finalists, I've tried to provide details about who they are and what they've done in the note (example), but that's not very discoverable. One downside is that for entries that have a mix of "proper" authors and "untitled" authors (e.g. the episode of The Expanse that has 2 known authors and 2 unknown authors), having the hyperlinks go to different types of page could perhaps be mildly disconcerting? ErsatzCulture (talk) 09:13, 7 July 2023 (EDT)
- I am looking at 2023 Hugo Award and I agree that the asterisks don't look particularly intuitive. They are a bit more intuitive on 2022 Hugo Award because numbered entries put them in context, but it's still not ideal. I am thinking that replacing "*" with "details" would be a step in the right direction. I am going to post about this issue on the Community Portal to see what other editors think. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:33, 7 July 2023 (EDT)
Setting up a local instance of the database+Apache+etc in the HTTPS era
So as a consequence of the above - and at least one other recent convo - I thought it was long past time I got a runnable copy of the site running on my current dev box. I've done this in the past, but not recently. I'm just looking at the README (which hasn't changed since 2018) and I notice it doesn't mention the PROTOCOL value which is now in localdefs.py, and as the default value of https.
At this point I start to shiver nervously, remembering how much pain it can be getting https working on a local dev box e.g. LetsEncrypt cert generation doesn't work unless you do network/firewall faffery, locally generated certs expire after a week and can be finicky about localhost vs the actual machine name, browsers disable some browser features on unencrypted pages etc etc.
My guess is that changing PROTOCOL to http should avoid all of that, and go back to running an instance of ISFDB as it was in the pre-HTTPS era. Whilst I'll experiment with doing that, I wanted to check in with you to see if that sounds right, how you run a dev system these days, etc.
I do see that ISFDB:Personal_Linux_Website has the PROTOCOL value as http, implying that should work. If that Wiki page is kept up-to-date with current practice, maybe the best thing to do is to update the README to point at that page, so that we don't need to keep 2 sets of docs in sync. Also, maybe change the copy of localdefs.py to default to http, as I could imagine that's something that a complete newbie to the code might not notice needs changing from the default?
Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 10:18, 7 July 2023 (EDT)
- You are right, the README file is out of date. Wiki-based instructions -- see https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Installation_instructions -- were updated in September 2022 after the HTTPS migration, but I'll need to review them to make sure that all Web pages are internally consistent. I'll try to move any shared text to templates. SR 220, "Update installation instructions for HTTPS/Python 2.7/MySQL 8", has been created. Thanks for reporting the issue!
- The good news is that my development server is running on HTTP/Cygwin without any issues and the only difference vis a vis the live server is that the PROTOCOL value is set to "http". Ahasuerus (talk) 14:23, 7 July 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks. As you could probably infer from the demo screenshot I posted to Community Portal, I got my dev system working. There were a few more hurdles that had to be dealt within, compared to the last time I got the site code running locally - my newish dev box uses the latest Fedora (38), and that defaults to Python 3.11. By default, this means all the CGI scripts fail over the print statements not having parentheses. There is a version of Python 2 available, but you'd have to explicitly reference it in the shebang line as #!/usr/bin/python2, but /usr/bin/python is hardcoded in the Makefiles.
- In any case, I've been using a virtualenv to get a clean, separated version of Python 2 for working on the ISFDB code, and introduces an additional wrinkle. There's a not-too-bad solution to create a ~5 line wrapper script that invokes your virtualenved Python 2 on the CGI scripts, and you have to set that wrapper script as the value that replaces _PYTHONLOC.
- All of this is a longwinded way of saying that I want to write a patch that allows you to do something like "make -B install /path/to/preferred/python/executable/or/wrapper/script", with the default being the existing /usr/bin/python setting. Unfortunately I've pretty much forgotten all I ever knew about Makefiles, not that I've ever found them particularly intuitive. In the short term I got round the problem by hardcoding the wrapper script's path in local.mk, but that's obviously no good for anyone else. I'll try to dig out some docs on Makefiles and submit a patch sooner rather than later - although where it will get prioritized against all the other projects I've created for myself lately is a good question :-(
- BTW, I saw the Fixer stuff you sent through the other week. I did have a brief look at it, and I think there's similar stuff I'd like to suggest/provide a patch for, to make it more amenable to working in alternative environments. Unfortunately because Fixer doesn't directly impact me, I doubt that'll be any time soon. (Although looking at the code, I think it might be possible to leverage some of the Fixer functionality to improve my tools, to make them more proactive about finding pubs, rather than the current setup which is very dependent on me noticing that certain pubs aren't in the DB - see User:ErsatzCulture/ISFDBCheckerWebExtension for some belated docs, the code has been in my public GitHub repo for a while. ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:18, 14 July 2023 (EDT)
- Re: making "make" changes, I would suggest raising this issue with Al. He's been working on the Python 3 upgrade and may have modified the build process as part of the project. My cursory review suggests that it may be possible to turn "/usr/bin/python" into another variable defined in common/localdefs.py Ahasuerus (talk) 19:20, 14 July 2023 (EDT)
Awards where the title has multiple authors, but some have declined
S. B. Divya has announced that she declined 2 Hugo nominations. One is a novelette, and I've added an appropriate entry for that, even if I guess it's not technically official until the stats report becomes available.
The other is more awkward, as it's a joint editorship of a semiprozine. I've added a note to explain the situation, and to try to pre-empt any complaints. However, this isn't visible on the title page or her award page.
One "solution" would be to unlink the award from the title, which I think might then allow you to edit the authors? I'm definitely not going to try that without a second or third opinion, and losing the link to the title record doesn't seem good. There might be some hack with editing the award_author value to lose the leading "S. B. Divya+", but I don't think that would solve the problem with the title.cgi or eaw.cgi pages?
I don't know if you're already aware of them, but there are a couple of other issues doing the rounds at the moment - e.g. wrt anthology contributors being listed as awards nominees - but this one seems like it might be more urgent to deal with, to whatever extent is feasible.
I'll ping Rtrace, as he's by far the most prolific on the awards records, and may have thoughts. Thanks.
(BTW, I haven't forgotten about the stuff I raised on Community Portal the other day regarding making the links to notes more obvious, but there have been a number of things that have sprung up from doing these awards, that have taken much of my attention.) ErsatzCulture (talk) 07:38, 10 July 2023 (EDT)
- "Some authors/editors accepting a nomination and some authors/editors declining it" is a scenario that I don't think I have seen before. I can't think of a way to handle it given the current database schema, but perhaps I am missing something. I would suggest starting a discussion on the Community Portal to see if other editors may have other ideas. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:07, 10 July 2023 (EDT)
- Willdo ErsatzCulture (talk) 11:52, 10 July 2023 (EDT)
Conflicting edits issues - revisited
Hello Ahasuerus, I'm wondering if you'd managed any progress on this topic? I know it's not much in the great scheme of things but the effect is a bit disconcerning nonetheless. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 13:12, 10 July 2023 (EDT)
- I am afraid I haven't done any work on this issue on the development server. I am currently in the middle of building a big patch which will affect around 20 modules, so everything else is on hold until I finish it.
- My (very tentative) take on this is that having a post-submission page displayed should not be able to affect the approval process. Post-submission pages and the approval software are entirely unrelated. It's more likely that some types of data are not captured properly when certain types of submissions are created, which then affects the approval process. I'll post an update when I know more. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:30, 10 July 2023 (EDT)
Evil Is Live Spelled Backwards
I added this info to your "Images, etc." as you requested & it promptly disappeared. So I'll try here on this publication which you PV'd: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?244337 I have submitted Goodreads (external ID) & an online retrospective review. This title is still getting read. Two of these three reviewers recommend it. Mike (talk) 02:15, 11 July 2023 (EDT)
- Your note was added to a 2009 note about the same pub :-) I have moved it to the bottom of the page and created a separate section for it. After approving the submission I moved the review URL to the Title page since it primarily discusses the novel as a whole as opposed to the Paperback Library edition. Ahasuerus (talk) 08:07, 11 July 2023 (EDT)
Rewriting known broken URLs to working versions in the code
Hi, I noticed last night that CSFDB was returning an error page. I've been corresponding with Arthur Liu on his Hugo stuff, and mentioned it to him. I don't fully understand the details, but it's something to do with having to renew their HTTPS certificate, and some intermediary agency preventing them registering it with the Chinese government per laws there. As a consequence, they'll be changing the domain name to be csfdb.cn, although this will take a while due to the joys of bureaucracy.
Presumably all the local URL paths will stay as-is, so as a short-to-medium term fix, any references to the old domain in the URLs here should be fixable by replacing csfdb.scifi-wiki.com with csfdb.cn. Is there any logic in the code to support that sort of thing? If not, would you accept a patch for it if I came up with one; ideally that could support any other domain name changes that might come along in future.
A query of the webpages table shows were have 272 records that reference CSFDB, so it's not a completely impossible task to do them manually. And thinking about it, I could rejig the work I did a few weeks ago to fix them via the API fairly easily, but maybe it'd be a useful thing to have anyway, e.g. for switching from http:// to https:// links if a site stops supporting insecure links.
Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 19:02, 26 July 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks for researching this issue. Domain names and URL paths do change from time to time, so it's a known issue.
- I am afraid there is no menu option to handle URL migrations because of the number of possible permutations. Normally, we handle them by writing custom code. For example, when Visco images migrated from "www.sfcovers.net/Magazines" to "www.philsp.com/visco/Magazines" in 2016 (FR 848), we had to create a custom script to re-point our image URLs.
- I expect that we will end up doing something similar for our CSFDB URLs once we confirm that the new domain is up and running and that their URL paths haven't changed. If you want to give it a shot, I'll be all too happy to test and install the code. TIA! Ahasuerus (talk) 21:38, 26 July 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks. TBH, rather than write a one-off script to directly update the database, I think I'd prefer something that generates a bunch of API requests; to me, that fits in line more with how the database works i.e. having a proper audit trail in the edit history. Obviously it's a bit annoying needing a (self-)moderator to approve them all, but it's a minor hassle in the overall scheme of things. ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:08, 27 July 2023 (EDT)
- P.S. And now self-approvers can see the "Next Submission" link. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:20, 27 July 2023 (EDT)
- Hi, csfdb.cn is now live, and I've adapted the script I used to fix bad Amazon image URLs to fix the author URLs; the first 20 have gone through. The additionm of the next submission link makes this less annoying to process lots of these, so thanks for that.
- Arthur Liu noticed that the old CSFDB domain wasn't one that gets turned into a nicer string, like say sf-encyclopedia.com or lccn.loc.gov. I see this logic is controlled by the recognized_domains table, but I don't see any UI for updating it - I'm guessing it's a moderator or bureaucrat thing? If so, can you add it please? Details are:
- * domain_name = csfdb.cn
- * site_name = CSFDB
- * site_url = https://csfdb.cn
- * linking_allowed = 0
- (I don't think there's any need to do this for the old csfdb.scifi-wiki.com domain)
- Thanks. ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:02, 5 August 2023 (EDT)
- P.S. And now self-approvers can see the "Next Submission" link. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:20, 27 July 2023 (EDT)
- Yup, the (recently added) menu options that let you list/add/edit/delete "recognized domains" are only available via the Bureaucrat menu -- see Help:Screen:BureaucratMenu. I have added SCFDB to the list and everything appears to be working correctly, e.g. see Ben Aaronovitch. Thanks for working on this! Ahasuerus (talk) 20:47, 5 August 2023 (EDT)
- No worries. I think I've done all the webpage fixes now, but there are still 5 notes left to do, which I'll do manually tomorrow. (I suspect most are from untitled awards.)
- FWIW, the script I wrote to do all these batch API edits is on GitHub. Pretty hacky, but as these are (hopefully) one-off fixes, I don't know that much more engineering effort would be merited. ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:54, 6 August 2023 (EDT)
- Yup, the (recently added) menu options that let you list/add/edit/delete "recognized domains" are only available via the Bureaucrat menu -- see Help:Screen:BureaucratMenu. I have added SCFDB to the list and everything appears to be working correctly, e.g. see Ben Aaronovitch. Thanks for working on this! Ahasuerus (talk) 20:47, 5 August 2023 (EDT)
Murder of the U.S.A.
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5734699; Added artist; I cancelled my first edit because after adding Archive.org link I searched for artist and title on Google and exactly 1 hit came up, the PDF on Luminist which actually has a cover, although artist isn't mentioned unless you look at the cached version and then there's a microscopic "Ancona" among the text; maybe it was on one of the flaps. --Username (talk) 09:39, 6 August 2023 (EDT)
- Good catch. After downloading the PDF and enlarging the cover scan, I can see the signature. Approved, thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:05, 6 August 2023 (EDT)
Synopsis issue
Hello,
I am trying to remove the synopsis from here and no matter what I try, it complains about the type being unable to have the field. Can you check the verifications and make sure that these are removable if needed (I can always work around by changing the type, then cleaning it, then reverting back to chapbook but figured that needs fixing so I will leave it like that until you have a chance to look at it). Thanks! Annie (talk) 12:08, 9 August 2023 (EDT)
- It looks like there were 2 separate issues with this record. When I tried removing the synopsis line, I got the following JavaScript error: "CHAPBOOKs cannot have series data." After removing the series value ("Real Reads"), the submission went through.
- P.S. For reference purposes, here is what the Synopsis field used to say: "Real Reads are classic books, retold for young readers and English language students." Ahasuerus (talk) 12:48, 9 August 2023 (EDT)
- Huh - it was complaining to me only about the synopsis so I totally forgot about the series... I wonder why you did not see the synopsis warning... :) Thanks for looking into it.
- PS: I copied the actual wording from the publisher over on the publisher page -- so the old note is superfluous. Annie (talk) 13:07, 9 August 2023 (EDT)
- I wonder if the difference was due to trailing spaces. I blanked the Synopsis field using Control-A and I think I saw a space on the second line. Let me see what I can find on the development server. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:16, 9 August 2023 (EDT)
- That was my first thought as well at the beginning so I deleted that extra space on the second line - and tried again -- it seemed empty to me after that but maybe a carriage return or a non-printable symbol remained. Firefox on Windows 10 (in case it ends up being a browser thing). Annie (talk) 13:22, 9 August 2023 (EDT)
- I wonder if the difference was due to trailing spaces. I blanked the Synopsis field using Control-A and I think I saw a space on the second line. Let me see what I can find on the development server. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:16, 9 August 2023 (EDT)
- It turns out that pop-up validation wasn't accounting for new lines in EditTitle and EditPub. I am not really sure why I didn't use "trim()" when I first added JS validation. Perhaps I was trying to support older browsers -- like Firefox prior to 3.5 -- which didn't recognize trim()? In any event, it's been fixed now although you may need to reload the JS code using Control-F5 to invalidate the cache. Thanks for reporting the issue! Ahasuerus (talk) 13:44, 9 August 2023 (EDT)
Minor bug that causes a 404
Not something to be overly worried about, but:
- *With a browser with all cookies, saved session details etc cleared* (e.g. in a browser icognito window) go to the site homepage www.isfdb.org
- Click on the Recent Activity sidebar link, you should get taken to https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/recent_activity_menu.cgi
- Hit the Log In sidebar link, you should go to https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/dologin.cgi?recent_activity.cgi+0
- Enter credentials
- You then get directed to https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/recent_activity.cgi , which says "Not Found / The requested URL was not found on this server."
I have seen this on both Firefox and Chrome (current versions on Linux).
I've not checked the code, but I suspect this might be when the subpage for recent activity was introduced about a year ago (recent_activity_menu.cgi?) but there's still a reference in code to the old page name/URL (recent_activity.cgi)?
I doubt many others will come across it; I only did because I have my Firefox configured to clear out all cookies and saved info every time the browser exits, as a privacy/anti-tracking measure. ErsatzCulture (talk) 06:49, 15 August 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks for reporting the problem! Your guess was right on target. I first called this menu option "recent_activity.cgi" and that's what the redirect code used. However, I changed the name to "recent_activity_menu.cgi" before deploying it to the live server, but forgot to update the redirect code. The reason that it worked on my development server was that its CGI directory had the original version of "recent_activity.cgi", which was masking the problem. Everything should be fixed now. Thanks again! Ahasuerus (talk) 12:19, 15 August 2023 (EDT)
Galactic Rejects
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5743237; Should publisher be Dell Laurel-Leaf? --Username (talk) 12:45, 16 August 2023 (EDT)
- Good point. Updated and approved, thanks.
- I also note that we have Dell Laurel, Dell Laurel-Leaf andDell Laurel-Leaf Library plus a related publication series, Laurel-Leaf Library, under Dell. Unfortunately, I don't know enough the publisher to tell if some or all of them need to be consolidated. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:04, 16 August 2023 (EDT)
- See this discussion; https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Willem_H.#Galactic_Rejects. --Username (talk) 15:03, 16 August 2023 (EDT)
King Dragon
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?687; I just added links to both printings, 2nd has 1 less page here, should it be same as 1st printing? Last page after 277 is an unnumbered full-page illustration. --Username (talk) 15:15, 16 August 2023 (EDT)
- I have checked my copy and can confirm that it has a full-page illustration on the page that follows page 277. Help:Screen:NewPub#Pages says:
- ...you may record the count of unnumbered pages at the end of a publication. For example, 320+[4]. As before, only do this if there is additional content in these pages that requires the creation of a content record, as when there is an afterword or book excerpt which appears on unnumbered pages.
- I suppose a full-page illustration counts as "content". However, we don't have a separate Title record for it since all 50 (!) illustrations are covered by a single INTERIORART Title, so the condition "requires the creation of a content record" is not satisfied. I am going to update Publication Notes to explain what's going on. I'll leave notes on the Talk pages of the two active editors who verified the first printing in 2019-2021. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:35, 16 August 2023 (EDT)
Monster of the Prophecy
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5747602; I replaced cover with sharper and slightly bigger one that frames the info better on the left side and makes it easier to see. I've added a lot of Smith Archive.org links, corrections, ID, etc. today in case you see their titles come up soon as I believe you worked on a lot of them long ago; maybe you'll be able to improve them further after approval if you feel like it. --Username (talk) 21:18, 20 August 2023 (EDT)
- Approved, thanks. I have uploaded and linked a somewhat higher quality scan -- https:// isfdb.org/wiki/images/6/69/TMNSTROP1983.jpg . Ahasuerus (talk) 09:09, 21 August 2023 (EDT)
The Castle Keeps
Germane to this edition you PV'd: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?244357 I submitted note to moderator: Submitting pub note additions (Berkley Pub. Corp., assumed 1st ed., number on spine), & Goodreads external ID. Cheers. Mike (talk) 03:49, 21 August 2023 (EDT)
Author request
W/hen you have a minute, please take a look at this submission. The links are to well known sites in the public realm. Thanks, John Scifibones 10:00, 5 September 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks for letting me know!
- The current version of Help:Screen:AuthorData says:
- Web Page - Enter the URL of a Web page about this author.
- Eligible pages include:
- Author- and fan-run sites
- Biographic and bibliographic pages from online encyclopedias like The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Wikipedia
- Author-specific pages provided by publishers
- Author-specific pages at social bibliography sites like Librarything and Goodreads
- Reviews and interviews should only be used if there is no other online information about the author. Bookstore pages should be avoided.
- This list of eligible Web page types was clarified and expanded in 2014 based on the outcome of a Rules and Standards discussion.
- At this time the ISFDB:Policy#Data_Deletion_Policy section only covers biographical data and not links to third party sites. If the submitter/author would like to propose that we change our Data Deletion Policy to allow deleting links to third party sites based on author requests, I would suggest starting a Rules and Standards discussion.
- I have put the submission on hold for now. Would you like me to respond on the submitter's Talk page or would you prefer to handle it, in which case I will remove the hold? Ahasuerus (talk) 14:43, 5 September 2023 (EDT)
- I don't believe any change is needed in the standards. Please handle the response. Thanks, John Scifibones 18:42, 5 September 2023 (EDT)
Portuguese titles
Hello, I'm wondering if this topic will be followed through? Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 09:42, 6 September 2023 (EDT)
- I see that Annie was going to work on the Help language, so we should probably touch base with her first. As per ISFDB:Moderator_noticeboard, she is unavailable until September 11, but it wouldn't hurt to leave a question on her Talk page so that she could review it once she is back. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:07, 6 September 2023 (EDT)
(Purported?) ISFDB Facebook account active again
I just noticed that this FB account posted for the first time in what looks like a couple of years here.
I'm not sure if someone on here had previously said they'd created that FB account, but if not, I wonder if it might be worth explicitly flagging up that that FB account isn't anything official? The link to this site on their profile information is still a http:// URL, again possibly indicating it's an oldish account. ErsatzCulture (talk) 01:58, 9 September 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks for bringing this up. Back when the issue of third party sites came up in October 2021, we added a section on "other Web sites and social media accounts" to the ISFDB:FAQ. It explains that:
- ISFDB administrators may post announcements on this Blogspot Web page in case of extended unscheduled downtime or connectivity problems. There are no other official or ISFDB-endorsed Web sites, Web pages or social media accounts. Non-ISFDB Web sites and social media accounts maintained by individual ISFDB contributors (editors, moderators and administrators) are independent of the ISFDB and are not endorsed by it.
- When you say "flagging it up", are you thinking of mentioning this Facebook page in the FAQ as an example of an unofficial site/page, contacting Facebook administrators or something else? Ahasuerus (talk) 08:15, 9 September 2023 (EDT)
- Personally, I'd like to see something explicitly referencing it somewhere on the wiki as not being an official account. As I mostly only lurk on FB - I just use it for stuff local to my area; I don't get involved in any SFnal stuff there - I don't know if contacting Facebook/Meta would do any good, especially as I don't have any "official" role at ISFDB myself.
- If that account indicated it was unofficial, I personally wouldn't have any issue with it, although again, that's just my personal opinion. That it uses images taken from here - which seem to have been uploaded to FB in September 2022?, FWIW - definitely does give the unwitting visitor the impression that it's an official ISFDB account. ErsatzCulture (talk) 08:52, 9 September 2023 (EDT)
- Perhaps this subject is something that might be worth mentioning on Community Portal, in case anyone wants to claim ownership of that account, or for other editors to voice their opinion on what - if anything - should be done? ErsatzCulture (talk) 08:52, 9 September 2023 (EDT)
- We can certainly add ", e.g. this Facebook page" to the FAQ. I agree that we should post about this on the Community Portal to see if we can find out who maintains the page. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:35, 9 September 2023 (EDT)
Your Opinion
Please review this edit history. Here is our brief converstion. Is Stonecreek's decision to edit this publication while I was working on it reasonable? Clearly I don't think so. If you agree with me, what action should be taken? John Scifibones 11:19, 12 September 2023 (EDT)
- I have posted my thoughts and a proposal on the Moderator Noticeboard. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:50, 12 September 2023 (EDT)
Very minor bug: yellow warning about earlier variant date should not appear when parent has 8888 or 9999 date
This one shouldn't have the date warning, IMHO at least.
Not a big problem, but I think it should be an easy fix? Although maybe there are several different variants of this check that might need similar fixes?
Thanks ErsatzCulture (talk) 18:52, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
- The bug being what it is (and needs to be looked at) but I would like to point out that we do NOT create omnibus editions in the original language if they were not published there in that form. Or collections and anthologies - we just leave these as we find them (with an eventual parent in the language of the actual book if we need to bring it to the canonical name). Annie (talk) 19:44, 15 September 2023 (EDT)
- Good points. Bug 839, "Invalid 'Proposed variant date before proposed parent date' warning", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 08:17, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
- Isn't the issue really displaying date warnings for translations instead of it being a 8888 / 9999 date? The same issue happens if a translation is published prior to the native language version (you will see the yellow warning despite it being correct the native language version should have the date it was first published in the native language). If somehow The Last Dangerous Visions was finally published but under a different title for marketing reasons ("Finally, the Last Dangerous Visions" as a silly example) and it was varianted to the original, we would want the warning. Either the parent title record should get the published date or the parent / variant should be flopped. But either way, the yellow warning would be valid indicator that something should be done. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:02, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
- Good points. Bug 839, "Invalid 'Proposed variant date before proposed parent date' warning", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 08:17, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
- My take on the issue of translations is that the existing yellow warning is useful. As you said, it's possible for a translation to appear prior to the original text. However, it's also possible that the title date of our original record is based on a later printing and that further research may discover that the actual title date is prior to the translation date. A "yellow warning" is just a warning, basically a "take a closer look at this field", and doesn't necessarily mean that the entered data is wrong. To quote a famous SF author: "Better to have, and not need, than to need, and not have" :-) Ahasuerus (talk) 16:24, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
- Done. There are other submission types that may cause similar issues, but I didn't touch them (for now) because it would require a lot more digging. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:29, 17 September 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks!
- Just going back to Annie's point about not creating "fake" parents in the original language, there are now 3 versions of this omnibus title record (2 in English, 1 in German). If that parent didn't exist, should those English and German titles be recorded as unrelated titles, or should one of them become a fake parent record?
- As it happens, there does seem to be a Chinese omnibus publication, so I'll see about adding that and making everything correct. ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:31, 17 September 2023 (EDT)
- The current practice (for the last decade or so at least, probably longer) is to make the earliest variant a parent when there is no original language publication -- regardless of the language. That way if the original publication comes up (ever), it can go on top as a parent but in the meantime, they are organized. Annie (talk) 10:36, 18 September 2023 (EDT)
- Done. There are other submission types that may cause similar issues, but I didn't touch them (for now) because it would require a lot more digging. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:29, 17 September 2023 (EDT)
Another (possible) minor bug: Handling of interviewee variants
Hopefully this won't spiral off like the previous talk item ;-)
I made Doctor Hosam El-Zembely - who only existed as as an interviewee for a single title record - a pseudonym for Hosam A. Ibrahim Elzembely. I then went to make the interview title record a variant, so that it shows up under the new canonical author. A couple of things:
1. Doing the usual Make Variant, it just has the regular Author 1 field, and a + button. I had a quick look at the canonical_author table to see how the data is modelled there, and presumed that if I added an extra author field, and added "Hosam A. Ibrahim Elzembely", it would do the right thing. It didn't :-( As this was easy enough to fix by editing the new parent title record, I don't think it's worth worrying about "fixing" the make variant page to fully support interviews. (I don't think I've ever really touched them prior to this.)
2. Once I'd fixed all the data - I hope? - I noticed that the title page maybe isn't ideal for indicating the varianting. On the new parent title record, there's no indication in the "Other titles" section of the interviewee name.
3. In a similar vein, the "published" title record shows that it is a variant, but doesn't show the interviewee's canonical name, which would explain why it has been varianted.
Again, interviews are something that - IMHO at least - aren't a widely enough used part of the system, that I think these are things that need to be urgently prioritized, but I thought it worth bringing them to your attention. ErsatzCulture (talk) 14:52, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
- Please see Template:TitleFields:Interviewee. The interviewee should always be entered using the author's canonical name. I have updated the record and added a publication note regarding the difference between the pub version and the database version. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:26, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks, I was just about to respond :) Ahasuerus (talk) 16:28, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks both - I promise I did try to search for docs about this before posting on the Wiki... ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:30, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
- Thanks, I was just about to respond :) Ahasuerus (talk) 16:28, 16 September 2023 (EDT)
This World Is Taboo
Please see this conversation which would impact your verified The Med Series. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 06:48, 1 October 2023 (EDT)
Image upload
Hello, I'd appreciate it if you could have a look at this thread. I've just had a similar outcome to an image upload here where the software has apportioned a 2004 file name to a 0000-00-00 dated publication. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:41, 1 October 2023 (EDT)
- Sorry I missed the question when it was first posted! I have now posted an explanation. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:06, 2 October 2023 (EDT)
Potter Devils
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5715917; Not sure why this is sitting so long but as a PV can you approve it or at least tell me what the problem with it is? --Username (talk) 11:02, 4 October 2023 (EDT)
- I have found my copy and can confirm that it does have "JK" in the lower right corner. Originally I couldn't see it because I am colorblind and this particular combination of colors looks like "black on black" to me. I have approved the submission and notified the other active primary verifier. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:34, 4 October 2023 (EDT)
Awards (sort order)
The sort order for award type 'special', within award category, is alphabetical. I know it would be a major software change to make this customizable. Would it be a simple change to force 'Honorable Mentions' to always follow the poll results in 'Poll' type awards? Take a look at the 2023 Rhysling Awards. 'Honorable Mentions' display below preliminary nominees. John Scifibones 11:28, 4 October 2023 (EDT)
I see that the order is not alphabetical. It appears to be the order of the dropdown list. It should be easy to rearrange the list, assuming there are no objections. John Scifibones 13:12, 4 October 2023 (EDT)
- Award levels are currently sorted using the following relative positions:
- 71 : No Winner -- Insufficient Votes
- 72 : Not on ballot -- Insufficient Nominations
- 73 : No Award Given This Year
- 81 : Withdrawn
- 82 : Withdrawn -- Nomination Declined
- 83 : Withdrawn -- Conflict of Interest
- 84 : Withdrawn -- Official Publication in a Previous Year
- 85 : Withdrawn -- Ineligible
- 90 : Finalists
- 91 : Made First Ballot
- 92 : Preliminary Nominees
- 93 : Honorable Mentions
- 98 : Early Submissions
- 99 : Nominations Below Cutoff
- That's why "Finalists" appear before "Preliminary Nominees", which appear before "Honorable Mentions". It's been that way since ISFDB 2.0 went live in 2006. That said, it wouldn't be that hard to change this order if we could reach consensus re: the best way to organize "award levels". Ahasuerus (talk) 13:19, 4 October 2023 (EDT)
Beyond Infinity
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5783892; Month needs adding to most dates that are missing it; Goller signed the art so note about illustration seems true and interior art credit should be added. --Username (talk) 18:31, 5 October 2023 (EDT)
- Submission approved; INTERIORART title added; Notes updated. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:24, 5 October 2023 (EDT)
Can an omnibus contain an omnibus?
This pub is showing up on the "Publication Authors That Are Not the Title Author" report. However, if you edit the record, you will see it does have a matching container type where the pub and container are both "uncredited". In the display view though, the Le Fanu omnibus from the contents is shown as the container and the container record from the edit view doesn't appear at all. Is this a bug or is there a software limitation that an omnibus cannot be in an omnibus? -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:20, 8 October 2023 (EDT)
- When a container publication contains multiple container titles of the same type as the publication -- in this case two OMNIBUS titles within an OMNIBUS publication -- the software has no way of telling which container title is the "reference title". When the "reference title" is determined incorrectly, all kinds of things can be off, including cleanup reports and the display logic. That's why multiple OMNIBUS titles are not supported withing OMNIBUS publications.
- That said, it may be possible to change this behavior, e.g. by creating a "reference title" checkbox for titles within publications, but it would require more research. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:28, 8 October 2023 (EDT)
- I removed the extra omnibus and imported its contents instead. As a possibly easier fix that would handle most situations, if there are multiple omnibus records and one of them matches the publication record (same title, same author), use that one as the container? -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:11, 10 October 2023 (EDT)
- Sorry about the delayed response. I was going to get back to this topic after finishing some other tasks and then it slipped my mind.
- Substantively, I think it may work, but, as I recall, there are quite a few different places in the code that assume that there is only one title with the same container type as the publication. It includes SQL queries, which can be a headache when dealing with edge cases. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:25, 14 October 2023 (EDT)
Outcome
Your recent long entry for "Outcome" doesn't go to the right message because there's other "Outcome" messages on the board. --Username (talk) 12:23, 15 October 2023 (EDT)
- Unfortunately, the Wiki software responsible for displaying Wiki pages doesn't handle multiple identical section/subsection titles well. I have disambiguated the subsection title. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:44, 15 October 2023 (EDT)
Please come participate...
...in this discussion on page numbering questions. Thanks! ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 19:09, 17 October 2023 (EDT)
Day He Died
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5792629; Seems this is only on Luminist, no Archive copy. I don't see a price anywhere but other PV (Scott Latham) copy has a price. Maybe you can verify that price and move it over to your PV, replace the bad cover since both use the same one (uploaded by Bluesman), delete the redundant record, etc. --Username (talk) 18:52, 19 October 2023 (EDT)
- That's a good question. I'll take a look once I finish fixing the latest Fixer/Amazon mess. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:14, 19 October 2023 (EDT)
- I am looking at my copy right now. It's in a pretty good condition for a 75-year-old paperback, but even after re-inspecting the covers 3 times I don't see a price. However, checking the back of the book, I see a "Special offer to Bantam readers". It includes 3 lists of books which you can get by sending $0.25 plus $0.05 for postage to the publisher's address. My best guess is that User:Scott Latham, who verified the other pub, used this section to determine the price. This is similar to how the primary verifier of The Unexpected, another Bantam book from the same era, came up with the price:
- No price stated, but ad pages for current releases list $0.25 price.
- Let me ask on the Moderator Noticeboard to see what other moderators think of this practice. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:12, 19 October 2023 (EDT)
- I am looking at my copy right now. It's in a pretty good condition for a 75-year-old paperback, but even after re-inspecting the covers 3 times I don't see a price. However, checking the back of the book, I see a "Special offer to Bantam readers". It includes 3 lists of books which you can get by sending $0.25 plus $0.05 for postage to the publisher's address. My best guess is that User:Scott Latham, who verified the other pub, used this section to determine the price. This is similar to how the primary verifier of The Unexpected, another Bantam book from the same era, came up with the price:
Arbor House Treasury
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5798672; You're the only active PV so letting you know I added Roman numerals and links. --Username (talk) 18:30, 26 October 2023 (EDT)
Dinosaur Beach
Please see this submission which is regarding your verified pub. Looking at the supplied SFE3 link in the pub notes, I'm not seeing Whelan credited for this pub anymore. So looks to me, that the credit and statement should be removed. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:32, 24 November 2023 (EST)
- Checking https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/laumer_keith 's history on Archive.org, I see that they removed the erroneous credit back in October. I have removed/deleted the COVERART title and updated this pub's Notes field. Thanks! Ahasuerus (talk) 13:52, 24 November 2023 (EST)
Also, it would be a nice feature if when a moderator views the New Submissions page, any PubUpdate submissions that impact their Permanent primary verified pubs where marked somehow. That would draw moderator attention to edits they should probably handle since they have the book. -- JLaTondre (talk) 07:32, 24 November 2023 (EST)
- Sounds like a good idea. FR 1586, "Display a table of EditPub submissions affecting logged-in moderator's verified pubs", has been created. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:55, 24 November 2023 (EST)
Imperial Stars and The Third Star Man Omnibus
I sent a Russian version of Imperial Stars and Planet of Treachery by Stephen Goldin and Edward E. Smith, the cover is the same one that was later used in The Third Star Man Omnibus, I also put the illustrator's name as a variant of one that already exists.Hyju (talk) 04:32, 29 November 2023 (EST)
- Approved, thanks. I'll leave a separate note about the changes that I made on your Talk page. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:56, 29 November 2023 (EST)
- I sent several translations into Portuguese of books by some authors, I forgot to mention that the ones with covers on Amazon have Amazon data (format, ISBN, date, etc.), I also added some short stories by William Gibson that are linked to Neuromancer / Sprawl Trilogy, but were not considered to be in the same series, including adaptations of Johnny Mnemonic.Hyju (talk) 08:13, 6 December 2023 (EST)
- Thanks for letting me know. I'll take a look. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:54, 6 December 2023 (EST)
- I sent an update on the cover of an edition of Neuromancer by Aleph, it is credited to Pedro Inoue, but according to the publisher's own page, it is by Josan Gonzales, so much so that there is already a French edition with the same cover, being a variant of it.Hyju (talk) 05:53, 14 December 2023 (EST)
- Thanks for letting me know. I'll take a look. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:54, 6 December 2023 (EST)
Starship Sloane Publishing
Just a heads up, Justin Sloane requests we add "starshipsloane.com" to this list. Here is the thread where I instructed him to email you directly. Thanks, John Scifibones 09:47, 5 December 2023 (EST)
- Thanks for the heads-up! I'll be waiting for an email notification. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:53, 5 December 2023 (EST)
Living Statue
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?874526; Supposedly from Hissing Tales but it's not on ISFDB in that book, only in this magazine. There are archived copies of Hissing Tales so if you could determine which story it is and make it a variant that would be good; none of the French titles translate to anything like "living statue". I did a lot of Gary edits long ago and just did some more so after you make that variant I think everything currently available will be covered. --Username (talk) 21:53, 16 December 2023 (EST)
- Sounds good. I'll poke around tomorrow morning and see if I can find the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 23:11, 16 December 2023 (EST)
- So there is bad news and then there is good news. The bad news is that I haven't been able to find my copy of Bizarre Mystery Magazine, October 1965. It's in one of my "Miscellaneous magazines" boxes, which are poorly organized.
- The good news is that Céline Ther's La Magie dans l’oeuvre romanesque de Romain Gary et Emile Ajar (Université d’Avignon, 2009, p.324) and David Bellos's Romain Gary both agree that "The Living Statue" was a translation of "Décadence", which first appeared in 1962. Bellos also states that "Glass" is a translation of Les habitants de la terre. I have set up variants and will update the dates of the French originals later today. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:41, 17 December 2023 (EST)
- P.S. According to David Bellos's Romain Gary, "most of [Gary's] works appeared more than once in editions not only translated or back-translated, but revised, readjusted, adapted to the stage, reworked or retitled." I have updated the author record to warn our users that Gary's bibliography is unavoidably messy. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:46, 17 December 2023 (EST)
- Done. Some of the bibliographic headaches include Une page d'histoire / The Night of History, whose "setting was transferred from Bohemia (in 1945) to Serbia (in 1962)". Ahasuerus (talk) 13:09, 17 December 2023 (EST)
Abridgements
Can you please take a look at this conversation. I've never dealt in audio, which is probably a red herring anyway. ../Doug H (talk) 08:33, 19 December 2023 (EST)