User talk:Albinoflea

Cartoons - Tales of the Unanticipated

Welcome. The methodology for doing cartoons is "The title should be "Cartoon: " followed by the caption, in the original case, between quotation marks. If there is no caption the words "no caption" should be used without quotation marks." This pub has a examples of both types. You can answer on this page.--swfritter 12:37, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, found the cartoon guidelines after I had submitted this. Both of the cartoons (on the fep and p 56) should be listed as Cartoon: no caption. It also appears (and I don't believe this is my doing) that the Review for Hemingway's Suitcase is not sorting correctly due to an incorrect date.

In a case like this, when a Pending Edit is held by a moderator, do I go back in and Edit the Pub to make the requested corrections or does it get worked out here? Thanks for the help, Albinoflea

I normally would have approved the submission and made the suggestions but since you are a new editor I wanted to make sure that we made communications first. The decision to approve or hold and communicate is considered on a case by case basis. Unless the moderator states otherwise it is better to wait for communication with a moderator. I also changed the title from "Tales of the Unanticipated, Winter/Spring/Summer 1991" to "Tales of the Unanticipated, Winter-Spring-Summer 1991" which is our standard way of listing multi-period titles. I might note that when you enter new titles into a pub the dates are replicated from the pub date if you leave the new content date empty. For some reason there are some contents dated 1990 for this pub.--swfritter 17:09, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

OK, that makes sense.

This was a edit for me, I was just adding in the interior art to an existing Pub, so I can't vouch for the title or the dates, but it's all good information to know. Albinoflea 20:42, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Starshore

I added a wiki page for the magazine and placed the issues in a magazine series. Should make it a little bit easier to find the mags.--swfritter 12:55, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for this; I was aware that it needed done but couldn't find instructions on how to accomplish it. Albinoflea 03:15, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

On this page you will find a link to this page. Dynamic grids for magazines are new. Rather maintaining them in HTML on the magazine wiki page I used a link to the dynamic grid.--swfritter 17:23, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Great, I was wondering why I couldn't easily see if there were other issues of this title available, when I could for other magazines. Albinoflea 20:42, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Robinson's Sixty Days and Counting by Easton Press

I believe you meant to remove the cover art when you created this record for the Easton Press edition. Also, I've had to go back and close the html on several of your submissions. You don't have to close lines () but you must close links (</a>) and lists (). Thanks for contributing. Mhhutchins 15:27, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, must have missed that when I cloned the previous pub; I've added and linked a proper scan of the Easton edition. Sorry about the sloppy HTML, I'll try to be a bit more detail oriented. Albinoflea 22:27, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Er, sorry, not quite. If you want Image:60-days-and-counting-easton.jpg used on this publication, you still need to edit the publication record and enter the actual image URL, which in this case would be http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/6/62/60-days-and-counting-easton.jpg. See Help: How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki, Particularly step 6. By the way i think HTML "li" tags are for "list items" just as "ul" tags are for "unnumbered lists". Thank you. -DES ^Talk 22:53, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I did edit the pub and insert the link as outlined; I believe you approved the edit. It is showing the new image properly now; was that my doing or yours?

I cleaned up the HTML with a new edit; hope everything is OK now. Albinoflea 04:21, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

I did approve your edit changing the image URL, that got the displayed image working correctly. I made no changes beyond approving your edit. The HTML looks fine at this time. Willem H. appears to have approved your edit to the HTML. Thanks again for your contributions. -DES ^Talk 12:19, 28 August 2010 (UTC)

Pirate Writings #8

I've accepted the submission updating this issue but moved the ISSN from the ISBN field and placed it into the notes field. You may still see some magazines using the ISSN in the ISBN/Catalog # field, but the standards have changed since those were entered. There are several unlinked review titles also. Do you know if these are speculative fiction books? If so, you can create a record for them and link them to the review record. If they're magazines or graphic novels, the review record should be dropped and an essay record created for each. If you need any assistance in doing this, just ask and I'll gladly help. Thanks for contributing. Mhhutchins 05:46, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks for clarifying.

This page still says "For magazines, it is allowable to enter the ISSN." http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Help:Screen:NewPub so I imagine that should be updated to reflect the new standards. Who takes care of that?

Looking at the review section again, it appears that the unlinked titles are mystery novels. Should I create entries for these? Again from http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Help:Screen:NewPub "Non-sf works should be entered but if an onerous number of non-sf-related works are reviewed in a column you are entering, discuss the situation on the Bibliographic Rules page to decide what can be eliminated." And if I don't create entries for them, do I need a separate essay record for each book, or does the essay record for the whole review column suffice?

Thanks for the help. Albinoflea 07:34, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

It's better a create an essay record for each. There's a chance that any of the three authors might someday write speculative novels and we'd have a record of these reviews in the db. I will create an essay for the three reviews. You can look at it afterward and see how it works for any future entries. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

OK, I see what you did, that makes sense. Thanks. Albinoflea 22:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

It would also have been acceptable to create NONGENRE records for each of the reviewed books. Rules of Acquisition #16 allows "Otherwise ineligible books (but not comics, games, manga or films) reviewed in SF magazines". Which way to go is an individual judgment call. -DES ^Talk 02:49, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Hadn't noticed the NONGENRE hiding in the pubtype dropdown. Thanks for pointing this out. Albinoflea 15:00, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

You are right the help was out-of-date. i have corrected it. Thanks for pointing this out. -DES ^Talk 14:19, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for updating the help, DES. Mhhutchins 16:04, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks DES! Albinoflea 22:15, 29 September 2010 (UTC)

Adding contents to an existing pub

Hi. I noticed you entered the contents of The Martians by hand. Do you know about Import Contents and Export Contents? You can use these to duplicate contents from an existing publication into another one. All you need to know is the tag of the publication at the other end of the operation. That can save a lot of merging effort. The tag is the series of letters and digits after the "?" in the link to the publication. It is also listed as a field when you Edit This Publication. --MartyD 10:31, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I had seen the Export Content and Import Content links listed in the Editing Tools but did not know what they were used for. It definitely would have saved me some time last night; sorry if it caused you some extra work as well. Albinoflea 16:36, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

p.s. I did the merges, except for If Wang Wei Lived on Mars and Other Poems with If Wong Wei Lived on Mars and Other Poems ("Wang" vs. "Wong"). That might need to be a variant. I see Locus agrees with the "Wang" spelling, but many verifications agree with the "Wong" spelling, including your own verified THMRTNSHBF1999. Perhaps you could double-check and if necessary add that into the discussion you started on the help page? —The preceding unsigned comment added by MartyD (talk • contribs) 06:39, 2 October 2010

Well, that is interesting and probably something that wouldn't have cropped up if I hadn't re-entered by hand. I have the UK edition here and the spelling Wang is correct. (It's a reference to an actual Chinese poet named Wang Wei, so I guess that's not too surprising.) When I get home I'll have to check the Easton and Bantam editions, but I suspect from what I'm seeing in the Google Books preview that Wang is also correct for those editions as well. Albinoflea 16:36, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Variant titles

I was just about to approve those variant titles you had submitted but I see you canceled them. :-)

Initially I'd held off on approving as I tend to normalize titles and so was writing a note to you plus doing some research. For example, one of the titles you wanted to do a variant on was Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. I generally would change the title to The Dark Knight Returns as "Batman" is the series name. I was looking at the help pages and decided a strict interpretation would allow for

• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
  • Variant Title The Dark Knight Returns

and so I was going to approve the VTs you wanted to set up. Often in ISFDB we will see the title record with The Dark Knight Returns and the publications under that will be named Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Returns, etc.

You had also wanted to add a VT to Dreams of Dark and Light of Dreams of Dark and Light: The Great Short Fiction of Tanith Lee. That's valid per what's in the help but the normal practice is we don't include the full sub-title at the title-record level.

The last one was to add a VT to the shortfiction title record Effing the Ineffable for Effing the Ineffable: An Essay. Note that Effing the Ineffable: An Essay already exists meaning that VT should have been done using the "parent already exists" part of the make-variant screen. Usually we try to capture the actual title used at the start of a story. When I see something like "An Essay" as part of the title I'll look at the table of contents, copyright acknowledgments page, and the page headers for the story itself to decide if "An Essay" should be included in the title. Often I'll find that the collection/anthology editor used Effing the Ineffable and so I'll use that and add a note explaining that the title on the first page of the story is Effing the Ineffable: An Essay but that Effing the Ineffable was used in the table of contents, copyright acknowledgments, page header, etc.

I did a quick check and only one title in ISFDB currently uses ": An Essay" meaning most people must be following that practice. 88 of the 126,211 NOVEL titles in ISFDB have ": A Novel". With that one it's possible "A Novel" does not appear often on the title page. --Marc Kupper|talk 04:21, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations; I saw that you were holding those variants, so I went back and looked at the help pages and decided I was mistaken... :)

I must admit I'm a bit confused about the different situations when the creation of variants is permissible, but re-reading the help I believe the key take-away for me is that to qualify as a variant the pub must actually have been published under the variants, but my variants were in support of reviews of the pubs in question, so they don't qualify.

I believe in this situation I need to edit the pub and insert the actual titles that the pubs being reviewed have been cataloged as then make a note of the variants in the pub note:

If the review uses a non-canonical title which is already recorded in the ISFDB as a variant of the canonical title for this work, simply enter the title used in the review. If the review uses a title which differs from any of the known titles for this book, but which still serves to unambiguously identify the book (e.g. if the review has a misprint, or abbreviates the name of the book), then enter a corrected title, but make a note in the notes field for the publication that the review title was spelled incorrectly, and give the form of the title actually used in the review. from http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Help:Screen:EditPub

Is that correct? Albinoflea 04:40, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I think it is, although I'll let Marc answer for himself. (Note that "Effing the Ineffable" may come under the 'variant already exists' rule.) However, when a title has actually been printed what variants to create, and in particular, what to do with subtitles is something of a judgment call. For example, i don't enter subtitles like "A Novel", "An Essay", etc. even if they are on cover, copyright page, and title page, unless they seem essential to identifying the work. Some others do, in some cases. I don't, however, remove such when already there. Series name prefixs I do generally remove, except when they seem essential to identification or are by far the most common way the work is referred to. For example I retain the prefix on the various "1634: " books. In the case of The Dark Knight Returns the name starting with 'Batman" was so used in publicizing the movie, I might use it. Just a few comments, nothing binding. -DES ^Talk 13:33, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

A misprint/retitling of a book's title and/or misprinting of the book's author credit based solely on a secondary source (like a review) is not sufficient reason to create a variant and/or pseudonym. Reviews should be linked to the title record as published. If the system doesn't automatically link the review, (because it was unable to find an exact match) you can search for the book and link manually. Misprinted author credits should be corrected with a note in the review's note field, otherwise stray authors without pubs are created. The best approach is to enter the review credits (title, author, reviewer) as stated in the pub. Then after the submission is accepted go back to see if there are any reviews which the system was unable to match. Search for the book title (you may have to cross-check using author search as well if the book's title is misstated.) If it exists use the "link review to title" function. If the search found that the title is not in the database, create a record for the title, making sure the title is actually a book. If the review is for a graphic novel, music recording, film, etc, change the review to an essay. I had linked the reviews of the Frank Miller and Tanith Lee books to the proper title record before I saw this discussion. Mhhutchins 15:45, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Also, it's worth checking the reviews that have been automatically linked to see if the system got it right. It's not uncommon for a review of a collection or a non-fiction book to incorrectly link to a short story, poem or essay of the same name. BLongley 17:26, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Very true, and I've changed the link on more than a few (I recently changed all of the reviews of Joe Haldeman's The Hemingway Hoax from the novella to the novel record). I think the system automatically chooses the first title it finds so it's usually the first title entered into the database. Mhhutchins 17:49, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

I seem to see two different ways to go about handling the situation where a pub is reviewed and a non-canonical/non-variant title is listed in the pub where the review was published:

a) Change the title in the review listing to match the canonical title of the pub in ISFDB, then insert a note for the pub containing the review as to the title discrepancy. Links from the review to the pub being reviewed will be created automatically by the system but should be double-checked for accuracy.

b) Enter the non-canonical/non-variant title as it is listed in the review in the review record, then go back and manually link the review record to the pub that's being reviewed using the "link review to title" function.

Is there a general preference or consensus as to which method should typically be employed? Method b would seem to remain truer to the pub itself yet requires an extra step, while method a requires less work but splits the information between two locations. Albinoflea 19:01, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Definitely A, because B creates stray authors and unlinked reviews. Mhhutchins 19:57, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Eh? I'd definitely go for B - it's TITLE corrections we're talking about, not AUTHOR corrections. Stray Authors are a pet hate, unlinked reviews less so - but neither A nor B lead to those. BLongley 23:13, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

The author credit was not specifically mentioned, but I didn't want Albinoflea to think the review's title record (which includes the author of the book under review) has to match the review as published. Option B would lead to a stray author, if the author credited in the review is wrong. Sorry if I misunderstood the problem as presented. Mhhutchins 23:29, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

We might be advising on the wrong problem. :-/ I don't adjust titles if I can link them correctly. I'll adjust authors to someone that exists and leave a note. If I can't figure out what it should link to, I'll just leave a note. For secondary sources (where I can't, for instance, be sure which volume of Best SF/F/H is reviewed), that's safest. BLongley 00:15, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

My question didn't address the issue of author linking directly, so thanks to Mhhutchins for bringing it up. Some follow up questions:

1) Just to be sure we're on the same page, are we talking about the author of the review, or the author of the title being reviewed? Or both?

2) Also, if a title being reviewed has more than one author in its ISFDB entry, but the review doesn't mention all of them, is it necessary to add the other authors in?

3) Is the linking of reviews to titles something that a moderator typically does during the review process? Or should I count on going back after it's been approved to do myself?

4) If I need to create a record for a title that was reviewed but is not currently in ISFDB, should I do that before I submit the pub containing the review so that review record is auto-created? I'm guessing the attempt to create the link only occurs when the review record is submitted, so that if I create the record for the title that's being reviewed after I've already submitted the pub containing the review I would need to manually create the link.

Thanks, and sorry for all the questions. Albinoflea 04:16, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

[unindent] No need to apologize. It's the best way to learn (even the Help pages can only do so much.)

1) The author of the review should be entered as stated, regardless of whether it's a pseudonym or misprint. The author of the book under review should match the ISFDB record for the book. 99% of the time it does so don't worry about that until after the submission is accepted. Just enter it as stated and check the pub after submission to see if the authors link properly. Only then should you worry about correcting the review (for the author being review, NOT the author of the review, which I stated above should be entered EXACTLY as printed.)

2) It's not necessary to have all of the pub's authors in the review record for the system to match it, but if you know the book has multiple authors and the review falls to mention all, it would be nice to add the missing authors (but not mandatory).

3) As a moderator I will do it for newer editors, while letting them know how it should be done. Other moderators may handle it differently, because generally it is not the responsibility of the moderator. If you're entering the publication and intend on doing a primary verification of it, it would be better if you did the linking.

4) I usually check to see whether some obscure item from an obscure publisher has an ISFDB record, and, if it doesn't, I will create a record for it, before I submit the publication with the review. That's just me, because it saves me from doing the link manually. But it does require opening multiple tabs (or windows), researching, etc. and other editors may not be feel it's worth the effort. It's a personal thing, so it's up to you about which method you use. Don't create records for films, music recordings, comic books, manga, graphic novels, and non-genre works for authors below the "threshold". Make the review into an essay including the name of the work and its author(s) in the essay's title. Mhhutchins 17:34, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

On your last point I slightly disagree. I automatically create records for non-genre or nonfiction works (but not films, comics, Magna, graphic, novels, etc) reviewed in genre pubs, even if they are by authors below the threshold, to avoid dangling reviews. RoA #16 specifically makes such works IN. -DES ^Talk 23:20, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Nothing in the rules require that I create a record for such a book. I'm not going to go into the database and remove such title records, but I don't see the point of including a nonfiction book about the planets by a scientist (who's never written a work of spec-fic) when a graphic novel based on a Jim Butcher story is far more closer to spec-fic yet is excluded based on the same set of ROA. The review is recorded because it's in a genre magazine, but that doesn't mean I have to create a pub record for the book. In fact, I'd rather there be a stray author than a non-genre nonfiction book record. My method of changing the review into an essay ensures that neither are created. Mhhutchins 23:33, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

BTW, sorry to be filling up your user talk page with this discussion, Albinoflea. Any further discussion will be taken to the Rules and Standards page. Mhhutchins 23:35, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

(after EC) No, nothing requires you or anyone to create such a record. I happen to disagree that a stray author is preferable to a record for an otherwise OUT book. There was a public discussion that led to the adoption of this RoA earlier this year, and the consensus seemed to be (IIRC) that stray authors should be avoided even at the cost of extra records. In any case, I think you should not be telling Albinoflea "Don't create records for ... non-genre works ..." when the most recent consensus and the RoA indicate otherwise. If you had written "Feel free not to create records for ... I always covert such reviews to essays" I would have no objection. -DES ^Talk 23:44, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Albinoflea, this indicates the some of the ways in which people here disagree, as well as the ways in which they agree. I hope it is instructive. -DES ^Talk 23:44, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

And hopefully not too disconcerting. Those of us left active have had far more serious spats, but we're still here. BLongley 00:01, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

[unindent] As Mhhutchins said, no need to apologize. You're asking all the right questions,Albinoflea. I do differ from some opinions expressed above by other moderators: e.g. in (1) I'd adjust Reviewer names (and leave notes) as well as Reviewee names for an obvious misprint - I hate stray authors that much. Sometimes that's an important difference between Fan-Writing and Professional writing. e.g. Dave Langford versus David Langford. For (2), I do worry that reviews sometimes credit the editor of even a single-person collection. Correcting such makes me think I'm corrupting what the review actually says. (3) I agree - it's not the Mod's job. We're overworked already. :-( BLongley 00:01, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Don't worry, it's all good; I moderate for a few other sites and I know how things can get. Not only do interpretation of the given standards vary, but the rules change with time so it's a constant struggle to mod the new submissions while attempting to bring earlier submissions into accordance with the new guidelines.

I also work in a library, and if you've seen the mess that is WorldCat you know that there's plenty of variation among the catalogers, and they've got the monstrous Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules to fall back on.

Anyhow, I appreciate all of the work you guys do; this site is a terrific resource, and like most sites that rely on user-generated content there's a few core people behind the scenes that make the site great due to the effort they sink into it. Thanks. Albinoflea 00:17, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Yet another question: If a review is later re-published as an essay under a different title, is it still possible to have one be a variant of the other if their pub types are different? Albinoflea 05:05, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Linking reviews to title records

OK, a bit confused again. I had a pub approved, which contained a review. I created pub entry for the pub being reviewed, and it was also approved. I'm going in to link the two records using the Link Review to Title function, and I'm getting the following message in a bright yellow box.

Error: Title record does not exist.

If I'm doing this correctly, the pub's record number is 333036. There's no help page listed on the Screen List page for the Link Review to Title function, but that's the only thing that makes sense to plug into the only field on that screen; I did try the pub's tag instead, and that threw a Python error:

<type 'exceptions.ValueError'>    Python 2.5: /usr/bin/python                                   
Thu Oct 14 11:14:31 2010                                                                        
                                                                                                
A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to 
the error, in the order they occurred.                                                              
/var/www/cgi-bin/edit/submitlinkreview.cgi in ()                                                
   50                 sys.exit(0)                                                               
   51                                                                                           
   52         if int(title_id) == int(parent_id):                                               
   53                 print '<div id="WarningBox">'                                             
   54                 print "<h3>Error: Review record can not be linked to itself.</h3>"        
builtin int = <type 'int'>, title_id = '1183524', parent_id = 'HGWLLSNLVP1984'                  
                                                                                                
<type 'exceptions.ValueError'>: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'HGWLLSNLVP1984'        

Do not use the publication record number in this function, it will not work (or will work incorrectly). Instead use the title record number. A review is generally considered to be a review of a given title, and not merely of one of its publications. From the newly created publication record, click the "Title reference" link. This will put you on the title record display page, where all publications of the title are listed. The record number for the title is in the browser address at the end. This is the number to use in the "Link review" function. Note that this is the same number that you would use in a "Make Variant" with an existing parent -- the process is not unlike making a variant title. I hope this is helpful. -DES ^Talk 16:33, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

In the example above the title record number is 1183499. -DES ^Talk 16:34, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

See also Help:Screen:LinkReview, now in the screen list but always linked from the top of the Link Review display. -DES ^Talk 16:41, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, OK, you're exactly right, I was confusing the pub record number with the title record number. Albinoflea 18:44, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

The title record for the Wells book would have linked automatically with the review record (because I remember accepting the submission adding the pub before you updated the magazine containing the review), but they didn't match exactly. (You've since moved the colon in the title record to match the review.) Now you'll need manually link the review record to the pub's title record: 1183499. Mhhutchins 21:25, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Yes, got tripped up by that extra space before the colon... and I thought I was being so careful...[sigh] Albinoflea 21:41, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, so I've been going back though my various submissions to make sure any reviews I entered are correct and properly link to their pubs. I came across a review I had entered from Critical Wave #29 and after further investigation believe that the title being reviewed is a comic or graphic novel is therefore not eligible for inclusion. I was going to remove the review, and re-enter it as an ESSAY entry as a non-genre review as someone above suggested; however, when I use the Remove Titles From This Pub function I get the following warning:

WARNING: Unable to locate the title reference for this publication.

Removing titles while in this state is dangerous. Check to make sure the publication type is correct (collection, novel, anthology, etc.). Then come back and remove the title in question.

The Help:Screen:RemoveTitles page doesn't mention this, so I just wanted to check to see what the best course of action was before I proceed. Albinoflea 22:06, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

That's a bug in the FANZINE pub record type. Ordinarily the title reference for a magazine is the editor title record, but for some reason I can't explain, the editors given in pubs with the fanzine type aren't given the same reference title as editors of magazines. Go ahead and ignore the warning and drop the review from the pub. Mhhutchins 23:34, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks for clarifying, I've submitted the removal request.

I didn't see anything related to this in the bug tracker in SourceForge, should it be added? Albinoflea 03:26, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Oddly, the review is still appearing in the list despite the removal being approved; I've re-submitted. Albinoflea 02:28, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Can you tell us which review of which title is still appearing in which list? I suspect that this might be a case where people remove a review title and reenter it as an essay, but don't delete the review. The false review doesn't get deleted automatically. I've fixed a few dozen recently from locally-run scripts, but it seems people are missing that step quite often. BLongley 23:27, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

It wound up taking the second time around. I can't see the details, but the relevant entries in my Recent Edits list are:

2010-10-16 22:37:05     TitleRemove     Mhhutchins      Critical Wave, #29
2010-10-16 23:21:55 	PubUpdate 	Mhhutchins 	Critical Wave, #29
2010-10-18 00:03:10 	TitleRemove 	Mhhutchins 	Critical Wave, #29

I'm assuming the time/date stamps refer to when approval occurred, and not the time of my original submissions.

Now that I think about it I believe that what transpired was that I submitted the TitleRemove request and the PubUpdate edit containing the re-entry of the review as an essay about the same time; however, during the editing of the pub record the review still showed because the original removal had not yet been approved. So, when Mhhutchins was working through the queue, he approved the removal first, then he approved the pub edit, which still listed the review thereby recreating it in the system. Since this happened within a short period of time, by the time I back around to checking the pub record the review had been re-created and so looked like it was never deleted. I guess this could be confirmed by looking at the title record IDs for the two TitleRemove operations, where they would be different numbers if this sequence of events took place; if they were the same it would indicate that the original TitleRemove didn't take.

In the future I'll wait for individual steps in the process to be approved before moving on to the next step. Albinoflea 01:40, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Bridal Gown Shroud

Hi. Is the Bridal Gown Shroud you submitted "SF"? The description I found on Amazon suggests it is not. See the "Definitions" and "Rules of Acquisition" sections here for details. If you have the book and think it fits, that's good enough for me -- just checking. --MartyD 01:31, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

I do not have a copy and cannot be sure; the subject headings applied in OCLC (Feminism and the Arts, English Fiction 20th century) are too vague, and the titles of the works listed on Google Books aren't of much help either. My submission was entered in order to tie up a review from Critical Wave #29, and the author does have other pubs in the system. My ultimate justification was Rule of Acquisition #16:

In - Otherwise ineligible books (but not comics, games, manga or films) reviewed in SF magazines. This is done to avoid creating "dangling" reviews pointing to non-existent titles.

Albinoflea 03:20, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

That's in fact a perfectly good reason. I accepted the submission. Thanks. --MartyD 10:25, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

In such a case a novel might be recored as type NONGENRE, but we don't have good support for non-genre collections (or short fiction). I added a title note and a tag. -DES ^Talk 20:46, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Kim Stanley Robinson's Me in a Mirror

You have verified this pub containing Me in a Mirror and this pub containing The Man in the Mirror. There is another Me in a Mirror that has the same date as the first one, but states it's a variant of The Man in the Mirror and has no publications. Are these stories truly variants of each other? If no, then that blank record should be deleted. If yes, than I would think Me in a Mirror should be the parent as it's the first published version (i.e. still delete the blank record and make the other Me in a Mirror the parent of The Man in the Mirror)? Thanks. --JLaTondre 15:27, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for catching this, they are variants so I've submitted a delete request on the blank record and will rework the parentage as you suggest. Albinoflea 05:06, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Fifty Key Figures...

Hi. For your Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction, I changed all of the content entries from NONFICTION to ESSAY. NONFICTION is only for books (like NOVEL), not for shorter works -- for those we use ESSAY. While I was at it, I added "(Fifty Key Figures in Science Fiction)" as a qualifier to the "Introduction" and "Contributors" titles. For standard/generic content titles, the parenthetical qualifier helps distinguish one from another on the author's bibliography page. --MartyD 02:27, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for that, will make a note for the future. Albinoflea 04:04, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

The Future of the Jovian System

See this question about the above piece appearing as two different types. --MartyD 13:25, 12 February 2011 (UTC)

Marblehead

I have the submission to add this title on hold. Though I can find a trade paperback record on OCLC and Amazon, no such luck with a hardcover (Amazon notes it as unavailable and there are no copies for sale there or AbeBooks, usually a good sign it's vapourware). The ISBN you put in is 9780977452750, which doesn't hit anywhere. Do you have this edition? --~ Bill, Bluesman 21:31, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

I took the ISBN from here : http://www.lulu.com/product/hardcover/marblehead-a-novel-of-hp-lovecraft/5118279, so I'm guessing it is a POD title? It's reviewed as a HC in an issue of Locus I'm working on, but no ISBN given. In this case would it be best to leave the ISBN out? I'm only submitting so as to avoid a dangling review. Albinoflea 22:22, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to butt in, but because it's a POD book, it's rare for such records to appear in OCLC (libraries would not likely order a POD title). It's possible that Lulu manufactured books aren't available on Amazon because they have their own POD imprint. I say keep the ISBN as is, but record the source for your data, something you should always do if you're not working from the book in hand. (I do seem to be harping on that a lot lately, but editors tend to drift away from the standards when not reminded.) Mhhutchins 22:29, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Beat me to it! I'll accept the submission, and add a note. Thanks! --~ Bill, Bluesman 22:32, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Result is [here] --~ Bill, Bluesman 22:38, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks guys, it looks like from their About page that Ramble House has been one of the POD pioneers, it may be worth adding some sort of note to their Publisher entry? Most of their stuff looks like mystery reprints, but there's some stuff that is relevant to ISFDB. Albinoflea 02:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

We have the note "Print On Demand(POD) publisher", is there anything more we could add usefully? BLongley 16:01, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Was that note there yesterday...? I must have totally missed it.

Aside from their mention in the RoA there's not much on the wiki about POD items and tips for handling them, although in this case really the issue was with me not documenting my source as Mhhutchins pointed out above. Albinoflea 17:15, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Oddly enough I just noticed on the homepage that today is Lupoff's birthday... Albinoflea 02:50, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Locus

Thanks for updating the April 2007 issue, and much thanks for following the standards that I unilaterally created and used for the first 400 issues (and the 2008-2011 ones). The one problem (if you look at the record) is that the magazine reviews aren't link. The database's system for recording and creating magazine records is different than that used for book publications. Unlike books, magazine records don't have title records. They do have editor records, but those should not be used to link reviews. And can't be used in most cases because editor records are usually merged into one-year groupings in order to create magazine series and issue grids. Currently, there's no way to get around this. Because they don't link to the issue being reviewed, I simply choose not to enter them at all. But that's no reason to remove the review records. I am concerned that someone else will come along and try to link them before they realize it can't be done, and then delete them altogether. An unlinked content record bugs some editors! Again, thanks for entering this issue, and I hope you get a chance to enter any others you may have in hand. Mhhutchins 03:21, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

First, let me say that having entered in a single full issue of Locus I have a new found appreciation of the amount of work you must have spent entering the 450+ issues you taken care of... thanks for that! Unfortunately this was the only issue I have at the moment that you haven't gotten to already, but if I acquire more I'll be sure to lend a hand.

I looked for information about linking to magazines that were reviewed in the Guidelines and didn't find anything beyond a discussion in the rules and standards section that seemed to indicate what you've spelled out more clearly above. Given the current state of affairs, I can see why some editors would be reluctant to include them if they're not linked, because without links they would be difficult to track down in the system and wouldn't contextually appear on that pages where they would serve the purpose for including them to begin with.

Is your advice then to leave these here since they've already been entered, but in the future to omit them?

Perhaps some note should be included on the [Contents/Project Scope Policy] or the [Reviews section of the EditPub page] regarding this? Those were the first places I looked, and I assumed that if it was frowned upon it would have been mentioned there. Albinoflea 05:03, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

It wouldn't hurt to leave them in the record for now. If you enter any more issues, just skip those reviews. The reason there's no stated policy about inclusion is that it's not very common for one magazine to review another. This was usually reserved for fanzines who were reviewing the prozines. When the ISFDB was created (I wasn't around then), it was policy that fanzines were not to be included in the database. Shortly before I came, fanzines began to be entered and any previous restrictions were changed. Unfortunately, any fanzine specific problems were never dealt with, and this was one of them (although it's uncommon you will occasionally see reviews of other magazines in the prozines as well.) I'll see what I can do to make the current situation more clear in the Help section of the Wiki.

With the current db structure I can see only a single solution to the problem: an editor can enter the titles of the specific stories that are being reviewed, which I have done sporadically, and only in a few exceptional cases. It's tough enough entering a record that reviews upwards to fifty books in a single issue. Can you imagine also entering review records for an additional 20-25 short stories? Once I've completed entering the remaining issues of Locus, I may (strong "may" there) go back and enter the reviews of short stories. This would include mentions of stories in collections and anthologies, not only magazines. That is, if I haven't burnt out... Mhhutchins 05:45, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough; I'll follow your lead on this. I imagine that with the database as large as it is now, there's too much torque working against any deep changes in structure.

I suppose the trick to entering short story reviews would be making the decision as to what merits being called a review; the stories that are mentioned usually only get a sentence or two. Nevertheless, I imagine in some cases it would be valuable information to capture, so I can see why you'd keep it on your long-term to do list. Albinoflea 06:24, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

It might be worth a Rules and Standards discussion with possible software Feature Request off-shoots, as leaving out contents also bugs the more fastidious magazine editors. I think the compromise at present is to enter reviews of Magazines and Fanzines as Essays - WHAT is being reviewed can be entered in title notes for the essay, or more controversially as bracketed additions (search for "Barbed Wire Kisses" for examples). The latter style has also been used for Media Reviews (search for "Mutant Popcorn"). Linking to magazines CAN be done to some extent with the current software situation but it's one-to-one: a column that mentions several magazines can't be linked to them all, and the merging of magazines by year (which IMO is taken to extremes at times, it was only intended to reduce the length of some Editor's pages) means that even a simple case of reviewing multiple issues of the same magazine will not always work if they're spread across a year boundary. I'm sure we could develop something better if it's really desired. BLongley 15:56, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Nature, August 11, 2005

Please recheck the starting page for the Robinson story in this issue. Mhhutchins 02:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Page count for Nature is by volume; this issue is paginated from 753 to 888. I attempted to make note of this with the Volume 436, pp 753-888 note, but will make it more explicit. Albinoflea 03:00, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I missed that note. Mhhutchins 03:52, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

It's ISFDB policy to exclude cover images for non-spec-fic magazines, so I rejected the submission updating the pub. The image will also have to be removed from the database. Here's the Help page giving the policy for entering such publications. Mhhutchins 03:56, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, didn't realize there were separate rules for non-genre magazines. How do I remove the images from the database? Is that the same as removing them from the wiki? (I don't see a way to do that either.) Albinoflea 04:20, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I had the wrong wording there. Because I rejected the submissions the images never made it to the database. They're still on the wiki though. I'm not sure if non-mods can delete images. Go to the wiki page for the image. If there's no link under File History called "Delete All", just let me know, and I delete it. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:43, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't appear to have those permissions, so if you could delete it, and also the one I uploaded for the Jan 6 2000 issue, that would be great. Thanks. Albinoflea 04:58, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Modifying verified publications

Hi. I approved your cover additions to The Memory of Whiteness. Please remember that when modifying verified publications, you should notify the primary verifier(s) on their talk pages. For covers and notes, it's fine to notify after the fact. For data field additions or changes, you should try to check with the verifier first (not all verifiers are active, so sometimes you have to just go the notify-after-the-fact route for all changes with those folks). It's a bit tedious, but it helps identify different publications. I dropped a note on Orcax' talk page about the cover addition. Thanks, --MartyD 10:49, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks for adding the note, will try to be more consistent about this in the future. Albinoflea 01:29, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Envisioning the Future

Can you confirm that the pieces by Rabkin and Robinson in this pub (pages 191 and 199) are fiction and not essays? Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:41, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I just found a copy of the Robinson piece as published in Nature and it appears to be a facetious review of two fictional books. The title as given in magazine appears to be editorial and not authorial. I've also discovered that the piece was reprinted in Night Shade Books' The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson, although the ISFDB record for the pub doesn't list it. Can you check your copy to see if the piece actually appears in that book? Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:14, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

I have updated the ISFDB record for the issue of Nature in which the Robinson piece appeared, and have confirmed that the piece is fiction. I still need to know if the piece by Eric S. Rabkin is fiction. It's the only piece of fiction by him in the db. Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:24, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

The Robinson piece in question does not appear in my copy of the The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson, although a second piece he wrote that appeared in Nature as part of the Futures series Prometheus Unbound, At Last is collected there. (This is true for both the ARC and HB that I have access to.) I'm curious though as to where you might have seen it reported that it was included.

I had questions about the Rabkin piece for the same reasons you did; but its general format actually matches that of the Robinson piece, where two books, Science Fiction: Literal Narrative and the Adolescence of Humanity published by the Lagrange Historical Collective, Oxford, Europe in the year 2999, and SciFiUniverse: How We Became Human published by La Familia Crick, Heinlein, Mars, also from 2999 are "reviewed". So, in my opinion if the Robinson piece is speculative so is the Rabkin piece. In the Introduction, Barr writes "Rabkin imagines a far future that functions as a power fantasy for science fiction critics. His imaginative text, a next millennium review of two works about science fiction..." Albinoflea 02:00, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Locus #555, April 2007

I've done a second primary verification of this issue, making a few changes. The page count was changed from 70 to 72 (magazine page counts differ from books in that we include the covers, not just the last numbered page). I separated the column "Locus Looks at Books: Divers Hands" into four separate records for each of the inclusive reviewers. (It's a personal quirk, and may not even be ISFDB standard, but I hate to see one piece credited to more than one person when it's clear that each person wrote their contributions individually.) The "Books Received" and "British Books" columns were changed to credit the compiler (they're credited in the short paragraph at the beginning of each column). Also, the obituary for Paul Walker on page 67 was added. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:15, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, sound good... best to be consistent with the other Locus entries you've contributed. Albinoflea 19:51, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Working on another issue of Locus which also has Terry Bisson's This Month in History included; can you suggest a better way to list this other than in the pub notes? Albinoflea 23:18, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

I knew I'd eventually have to get around to solving this issue. Creating a record for each one seems like overkill to me. What do yo think about just one record per issue, without any pagination? Then we can go back and add the page numbers in the note field of the pub record, and then place the title record into a title series. I'll do an issue and let you see what I'm talking about. What issue are you entering? Mhhutchins 00:00, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I did three issues (#540, #541, and #542). But now that I've entered them as essays, I'm re-thinking that they're really fiction. What do you think? Mhhutchins 00:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I changed them to shortfiction. Mhhutchins 00:27, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm currently entering #521.

I agree that they're fiction, and glad to see you put them in a series. One record per issue seems fine, although there's a part of me that doesn't care to leave them unpaginated... but if we're putting all the page numbers in the pub note then that works well as a compromise; that's what I did for #555 when I was working in that, I just didn't put a title record in for it.

Perhaps a series comment is in order? Albinoflea 02:11, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Chapterbooks...

...are container types, such as anthologies and collections. When adding a single story chapterbook, you should also create a record of the content, which is usually a SHORTFICTION record with the same title, by the same author. (If you know the word count, you can give that in the length field. as short story, novelette, etc.) Would you like to update this record, adding the content, or would you prefer that I do it so you can see the results, before and after? Mhhutchins 21:32, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Ah, did not know that... took a stab at it given your description, let me know if that is correct. Just trying to line things up for Locus #492, where it was one of the reviewed titles. Albinoflea 21:45, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

PKD Bibliography, Revised

I'm thinking the Afterword and Annotator's Note in yours are identical to the original edition, and have merged them. I'm not so sure about the compiler's introduction. Is there anything in it that would indicate the changes in your edition? According to a reader's comment on Amazon, there's only three corrections in the whole book, and that it's a xerographic reproduction of the original. Mhhutchins 00:28, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure that it's xerographic, but it certainly doesn't seem like much changed at all.

The compiler's introduction starts off : "This bibliography attempts to cite all the published works of Philip K Dick through late 1984." Perhaps he just changed the date...

The note at the end of the Acknowledgements which I partially quote in the pub note reads : "This printing incorporates a small number of bibliographically important corrections, specifically in items 7-BOOKS (Counter-Clock World), 73-STORIES (The Mold of Yancy), and 141-STORIES (The War with the Fnools), and corrects the dates of the Univers series of French periodicals (actually paperback in format.) It was not possible to retypeset the entire book, so the many items of information about foreign editions which readers have kindly sent in are waiting for some future completely revised edition." Albinoflea 22:42, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Author's legal name

I accepted your edit of the author data for Manchu, but changed the legal name from "Philippe Bouchet" to "Bouchet, Philippe". The rules are explained here. --Willem H. 08:38, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Willem, I'll make note of it; haven't done many Author edits to date. Albinoflea 00:54, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Before They Were Giants

I added some notes to this verified pub and changed the publication date from 2010-08-24 (a leftover from Amazon) to 2010-09-00. I'd also like to make "Planet Stories (Paizo)" a publication series (this is #28). Hope you can agree. Thanks, --Willem H. 19:42, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

All sounds good to me, thanks. Albinoflea 21:18, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Also check out this image... I'm guessing pre-publication artwork. Albinoflea 06:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Update to The Wild Shore

I have your submission to update this pub, but malformed HTML in the notes field is not allowing me to accept. I will have to do a hard reject just to get it out of the queue. You can resubmit, but make sure the HTML is correct. Another issue: I see you're changing the page count from 377 to "[6]+377+[1]". Will you be adding content records for the maps? (I have a second printing of that edition.) Usually we don't use such notation unless we intend on adding content from unnumbered pages. Of course, you may have added it in your submission, but the bad HTML prevents me from reading anything after "OCLC: " in the note field. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:33, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Dammit... I would give my left arm for a "preview before submit" function. Sorry for the gaffe, I'll resubmit. Albinoflea 03:52, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's very easy to make a mistake with HTML. Sometimes I wish there were a better way of linking. Mhhutchins 04:13, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and unfortunately web design is a large enough portion of my job description that I have no excuses on this one. Albinoflea 04:35, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I've since learned that I can resize the pub note window when I'm writing the note, so that I can see what I've typed without scrolling, which is a big help.Albinoflea 21:43, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

As for the page count, there were already entries for the maps, and I had assigned pages to them. But in general I have been adding bracketed-unnumbered page counts for all my submissions. The Help pages in the wiki don't specify that this is a special purpose notation:

Sometimes a publication will have unnumbered pages before page 1. You may record this by entering the count in [brackets]. For example [6]+320 would be a publication with six unnumbered pages and then 320 numbered pages. At times you will need to count backwards from the first numbered page to see which is page 1 and then would count the unnumbered pages that are before this. Likewise, you may record the count of unnumbered pages at the end of a publication. For example, [6]+320+[4].

But perhaps it has evolved as such over time? Albinoflea 03:52, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not sure if anyone ever used it for anything other than adding content for unnumbered pages. Otherwise there's really no value in the effort. Another thing, I wonder why you linked the OCLC record. In most cases, clicking on the Worldcat link under "Other Sites" will lead you directly to the OCLC record. The only time I can see using it is for non-ISBN records, or when OCLC has several records and you wish to link to a specific one. My purpose in bringing this up is not to nitpick, but to make sure you're not taking extra steps that don't reward the effort. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I honestly never really noticed the Other Sites links; didn't realize that they linked on ISBN. I can see where that would be useful, but also (like you mentioned) where there are several records it might be helpful to disambiguate. (For instance the Grafton MM version of Pacific Edge I added info to earlier shares an ISBN with the later HarperCollins version with different artwork... ) I must have got the idea from the wiki:

When a publication appears in Worldcat, it is a good idea to list the Worldcat record number (shown as "accession number" in FirstSearch records). When data is derived from Worldcat as a source, this is essential.

The simplest way of doing this is: "OCLC: nnnnnnnnnn".

A basic link can be provided like this: OCLC: <a href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/12345678">12345678</a>

I guess in general as I try to learn the ins and outs of the ISFDB I've been following the documentation, erring on the side of whatever listed method provides the most data... Albinoflea 04:31, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

That's a pretty good rule to follow. That last bit from the help wiki about WorldCat was definitely written before the "Other Sites" links feature was implemented. I'm sorry the documentation is so out of date and somewhat wonky. I wish I had the time to go through every page and clean it up, but that would take up so much of my ISFDB time that I'd never do any moderating, not to mention working on my own projects. And unfortunately, no one else has taken up the banner to clean up the help documents. Another trouble with making changes in the documentation is that discussions usually wind up with no clear decision, even though what was discussed eventually works it way into becoming the de facto standard. Mhhutchins 04:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

That's OK, I know documentation is everyone's least favorite thing to do. And with all the scripts they've been running for you lately I'm surprised you have the time to moderate. :)

And I guess if I've performed close to 300 edits so far and you guys have only seen fit to slap my wrist 20 or so times the documentation can't be all that bad. Albinoflea 05:01, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, we seem to scare off a lot of editors before they've got as far as you. You do realise you're one of our Top 100 Contributors already? BLongley 22:35, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

And it's quite humbling to realize that even having broken the the ranks of the top 100, I've still only submitted 1/400th of what you guys have managed... Albinoflea 21:43, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, we've been around a bit longer. ;-) I hope you're still enjoying it enough to keep going though? BLongley 23:27, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Up to 59th now. I hope your time spent getting a local ISFDB copy working hasn't put you off. And please DO add your comments on the process - the page is so out of date it assumes people are on Windows XP or suchlike. BLongley 22:25, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Moving on up! And no worries about the local copy, the only way we learn is to leave our comfort zone every once and awhile. I'll add whatever I learned to the Windows install page so hopefully it will be (slightly) less painful for the next person in queue. Albinoflea 17:18, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Please do - as you can see from Development#Developers_and_Testers, we haven't got many people coding or testing. Feel free to add yourself to the list when you think you can help. BLongley 19:21, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

Ellipses

At the end of titles, ellipses should be entered as [space][period][space][period][space][period] (example). At the beginning of titles: [period][space][period][space][period][space] (example). In between words: [space][period][space][period][space][period][space] (example). This is spelled out somewhere in the help. (This is in regards to this story. Mhhutchins 22:10, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about that; it was a direct cut and paste from the website. I'll be on the lookout from now on. Albinoflea 18:29, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

It's not a major worry, but we did discuss this a while ago and more-or-less decided (in our strange democratic way) that we should go with what the old help said, despite many entries to the contrary. I think Ahasuerus has changing the "..." titles on his "things to do" list, but as individual submissions going through Moderator approval - which would be as welcome as "X, the Y Fairy" submissions usually are. :-/ BLongley 20:29, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Does the system perform any "sanitization" of user-submitted entries? It seems like automatically substituting the "canonical" [space][period][space][period][space][period] for [period][period][period] or the ellipsis (U+2026) character in a user's submission for the title would eliminate this problem, at least for new entries. Albinoflea 21:01, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

There's very little. The only thing I can think of off-hand is that if a user enters a 4 digit date, then they'll get a warning that it should be in YYYY-MM-DD format, and it will add "-00-00" automatically. But this does sound like a potentially agreeable FR. BLongley 21:39, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to add a Feature Request

On another talk-page, you said "It occurs to me from a User Experience stance that the page that is displayed after a submission is made, (which now just typically shows a chunk of XML), could be employed to prompt for some of these types of follow up tasks." This sounds like a good idea, if a little vague: I've added many improvements to the follow-up pages for Moderators, mostly linking to the screens that they might want to look at next. I'm happy to do similar for any other screens, if you can clarify what's useful. (I get "Moderate submission" and "Return to Viewing" links which suit me, but it's been so long since I couldn't moderate my own submissions that I'm rather blind to what non-moderators might want.) BLongley 22:25, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, let me think about this and I'll make a few proposals.

I think the big challenge/opportunity is to try to help the new user start to think like a veteran, which in my mind means thinking through the consequences of a submission. You might think you're just editing a pub, but in reality you're also creating a dozen new title records, author records, review records... and this process is not at all transparent to the casual user.

Maybe reviews will need linking, titles merging, variants made, primary verifiers will need contacting, etc, etc, etc. But the big problem is that many of these secondary things can't be started until the submission has been approved by a moderator, so there's a certain lag. Anything that can be done to help users navigate this process will ultimately help retain new users and ease the burden on current moderators.

Still a bit vague I'm afraid, but I get your drift. We could do things like check whether you've added a new author and encourage you to edit that new author's details, once it's created. Maybe spot whether a review won't automatically link, so you can go find the book reviewed. The delays involved in waiting for moderation will always cause problems, I think, but there must be some types of edit that could be improved. Keep thinking! BLongley 21:47, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes, it's still vague but that's why I said I'd think about it... ;)

How difficult would it be to list the secondary records that are also created by an edit/submission? Albinoflea 22:00, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

Fairly difficult. When it comes to multiple records created by one submission, even the moderator doesn't get easy links to all new records created. If you can read SQL, then you can spot things such as new author creation, but not all moderators are coders - in fact, our top moderator freely admits he doesn't read any of that "jibberish". It might be wise to reduce those messages - e.g. I just approved one new publication to check how bad it is, and there's 24 SQL statements listed. To update 6 tables. A bit much really: that can probably be done better, although it's useful for newbie ISFDB programmers like me to see those for debugging purposes. But the stuff displayed for non-moderators could be shorter and more useful. BLongley 23:16, 14 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, what if we take a different tack; the submitpub script already generates the XML, which contains a summary of everything that's going on with a submission, it's just not terribly easy to look at or make sense of.

Could this XML be transformed into something that was more helpful to the end user? For instance, list all the <Author>, <cAuthors>, <cBookAuthors>, <cReviwers>, etc. together; with a label that says "The Following Authors and Artists are being created or linked to as a result of your submission" or some such statement. And likewise something similar with <Title>, <cTitle>, etc. And maybe some sort of encouragement that they should check up on these things later... (ideally some of these things could also show up in someone's pending or recent edits list.)

I'm not sure that if before that XML is displayed, somewhere behind the scenes the system knows which of these authors and titles are going to match/link and which will won't; I'm guessing not (or not until the Moderator has approved it, which is the same thing for this scenario), so there's no way to distinguish at this point what will need more work from the submitter. I also notice the site's search form is using a POST rather than a GET method, so you can't pass search parameters through the URL, so there's no easy way to programmatically create links for them to see if a particular Name or Title is in the database. But at the very least we would be letting users know that's there's more going on with their submission than at first meets the eye. Albinoflea 18:07, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

The XML is generated without any checks as to the existence of any new contributors, titles, etc. We've "improved" the Moderator screens to point out some things like "new author", "new publisher" etc, and we can copy some of that to the post-submission screens for editors if desired. It's a balancing act - we don't want to scare off editors that think XML looks scary, and we don't want to discourage Moderators that can do bibliography but have no coding skills. Long-term, we probably want a user option that effectively allows you to choose simple, normal or "DEBUG!" messages, where you can hide the XML or hide the background checks for new stuff or show all the sordid details. And we've recently discovered that we're not all that good at performance testing, with such a wide variety of test systems. :-( Still, keep the comments coming! BLongley 19:22, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

KSR's Sixty Days and Counting

Can you confirm that the ISBN of the Bantam edition is also stated as the ISBN in this Easton Press edition? Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:03, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Same situation with Fifty Degrees Below. Mhhutchins 15:04, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah... no on both counts. These were some of my first pubs and I think I didn't clean up the clones very well. I've submitted edits, thanks for catching.Albinoflea

Cygwin

Hi. I noticed your updates to ISFDB:Personal Windows Website, and I thought I'd mention: you don't need to run inside a Cygwin window/shell. I never do. All of those commands work fine from an ordinary Windows command prompt. When (or if) the Wiki speeds up, I will tweak the wording a little to make that clear. Also, if I get a chance tonight (+14 hours), I will see about fixing up the two files that Ahasuerus edited so that the most recent version of the sources will build and run properly. --MartyD 10:15, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Seconded. I didn't even know you COULD have a Cygwin window! BLongley 16:44, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification; I just assumed since I had Cygwin open that this was the desired target, but it makes sense that you could run them from Windows as well. I seldom have my Windows command prompt open anyhow, so it's just as easy for me to fire up one over the other...

If you can get those files merged that would be great. We currently use Subversion at work, (and I really only ever update one file over and over again) so I'm not really in a position to advise on how to make better use of Tortoise... but if the goal is to have more testers it might be worthwhile to get the branching process standardized. Regardless, keep me posted and thanks for all the help. Albinoflea 21:26, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I don't use Tortoise myself, just plain command-line CVS. And I'm not sure that the goal is to have more testers - although such would undoubtedly be useful. When you look at the backlog of Bugs and Feature Requests, we need more Designers, Developers and half a dozen Ahasueruses (Ahasuerii?) too. BLongley 02:39, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and what is up with the wiki? Is it the new anti-spam measures that I've seen you guys talking about? Albinoflea 21:26, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Don't know. Might be a database problem.... I updated biblio/biblio.py and common/SQLparsing.py. If you get those and rebuild, the author summary display should work for you again. --MartyD 00:43, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that seems to have done the trick. Albinoflea 02:20, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

And I just messed with common/SQLparsing.py myself for an Award bug.... :-/ We can play nicely with each other, honest! BLongley 02:42, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I saw that. I didn't alter any of your changes. All I did was pull forward the additions that were removed. --MartyD 10:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to alter my changes - I'm usually an "incremental improvement" person and there will usually be an even better solution available if someone with more expertise than me cares to take it on. I do appreciate that we have an awful lot of modules with outstanding changes, and I've just increased Ahasuerus' testing backlog by another dozen or so - but if either of you care to put the "Tester" hat on we might help him out. BLongley 18:40, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Since I'm not terribly familiar with how everything is connected yet, it might be helpful for me to know what I'm supposed to be testing for with the various submitted patches; something along the lines of "new option available on screen X, try submitting pubs of type Y and Z..." Albinoflea 13:23, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I'd recommend familiarising yourself with all the "Moderator" options that you can now try locally. If you spot anything wrong there then either it's an existing problem or a new one, and we'd like to know of either. If you want something more specific, look at the "Edit Award Types" under "Moderator Only Links" and create a new award type and try giving it to titles or people. Then moderate them and approve them, or reject them, then look at how the titles or authors appear after the updates. Check how Recent Rejects and Recent Integrations look. Find all the obscure little-used areas of ISFDB affected. Basically, try out anything you can think of - if WE have to tell you what to test then you might concentrate on only the things WE have thought of, and the problems are almost always in something we HAVEN'T thought of. BLongley 23:30, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

Gothic Studies

You should give a date or issue number in the title field of this pub record and this editor record. You also have the option of placing the editor record into a magazine series. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:26, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Don't know how I missed that... I gave to the review and introduction. Thanks for catching.Albinoflea 14:09, 18 June 2011 (UTC)

FReq 3318609: Artwork status as alternate Magazine Issue Grid display

I gave it a go:

Is this what you had in mind? I have a nasty feeling that there may be too much stress on our server (and others!) to implement it like that, but if it's really useful we might be able to do it by year, or some other subset. BLongley 20:39, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

I like it, but don't see the need to pull images from other servers. A blank one indicates that we need to add one to our server. Mhhutchins 21:03, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Wow, that's great, it really does capture the essence of what I was trying to describe!

My initial reaction seeing the borders in gold makes me think of the unverified issues, so I think we would want to use gold for issues that don't have images so that color doesn't take on its opposite connotation. I took your image and modified it slightly:

In this case, imagine white borders indicate ISFDB hosted images, while the dark blue indicate non-ISFDB hosted images. (Using Mhhutchins' suggestion of not displaying the image for stuff on other servers.) Gold indicates an issue we don't yet have an image for yet.

It is hard for me to gauge the impact on the servers, as I don't know how often the issue grid pages are viewed. Restricting the years displayed as you suggest may mitigate this.

A bigger concern on that front would be the Wiki's ability to create thumbnails from uploaded images; for a magazine like Locus with 600 issues we'd see a load of 90 Mb if each image is being loaded at the full 150 kb and being resized by the browser, vs. less than 400 Kb for thumbnails that are only 75px tall. I can't see your code, so I can't be sure, but I notice that in most places I've peeked, ISFDB is not using resized images or thumbnails, so I'm assuming the wiki isn't configured to create thumbs... is that right? Albinoflea 06:01, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

There is apparently something wrong with the thumb generator at the moment. It seems to create empty directory for thumbs, but it doesn't display them for some reason. I don't know enough about it to tell if it's a configuration issue, but I suspect that it may be. I'll need to dig some more.

Taking a step back, there are a couple of separate problems here. First, our bandwidth is limited. I don't know what the current monthly allowance is, but if we go over the limit we will be either cut off or have to pay more money. The last time I discussed this issue with Al, we were nowhere close to the limit, but if we start serving pages full of images, it may change.

Second, we don't know how it may affect server performance. Our performance is already shaky and adding an extra load may push it over the limit. Linking to other sites shouldn't be a problem since it's their bandwidth that we will be abusing. Ahasuerus 06:57, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

You could check how badly we (OK, I) abused our bandwidth yesterday - the processing was on my PC but the Images came from live servers. We can relieve the bandwidth problem by compressing the images on the server-side (although I don't yet know how to do so) but that would of course increase the CPU usage charges (if they charge for that rather than just bandwidth) and may affect other users. I'm going to resist further testing in this area for now - it IS rather pretty but I don't want us cut off! BLongley 07:52, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

In the meantime, while Ahasuerus checks how far we can go with images, I returned to the original questions: "a) whether an issue had artwork, and b) whether the artwork was hosted by ISFDB". It strikes me that while the Image display should be a permanent feature, if we can afford the bandwidth, missing or non-ISFDB cover images are more suited to temporary Wiki project pages. If people want to know what we need/want scanned, just tell me what Magazines they are happy to work on and I'll create such. Or provide the SQL for such for general use - I've posted such before at Talk:Database_Schema, but we should probably have a proper area for "Useful scripts that you can only do offline so far". BLongley 17:01, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

If we can get the thumbnail generation/configuration straightened out, that would save a ton of bandwidth, not just on the issue grid but also on any of the pub display and author display pages that are currently pulling full sized images. I would say definitely hold off on implementation until we can serve thumbs. Regardless, looks like most of the groundwork is done should that happen. Thanks, Albinoflea 20:27, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Robinson's Author's Choice Monthly

I've added notes to the record for this title. Mhhutchins 20:01, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks; I've submitted updated notes for the HC version of this to include the details you mention that match the TP version. Albinoflea 06:13, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

French KSRs

Made slight modifications to your J'ai Lu titles (mostly made french titles VTs of the english ones per new usage). Hauck 19:27, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Hauck! Albinoflea 06:02, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

La planète sur la table

Conformed this pub to the new multi-language policy. Hauck 13:39, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

And thanks again! Albinoflea 06:03, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson 1997 -> 1999

There is a mistake with the publication year in this pub (1997, not 99). I correct it. BarDenis 17:47, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

"Red Mars", by Kim Stanley Robinson

I added a note to your verified 22nd printing of this book, that this edition did include the solar panel discussion of re-charging the batteries on pp. 196-197. This is relevant to the discussion on the Red Mars title page, where the story has been added about Robinson correcting a scientific error in the original version. Previously, the range as to when this was included was listed as "between the 15th and 25th printing"; that was narrowed somewhat to say "between the 15th and 22nd printing". Chavey 22:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Chavey, I'm the one that left that note on Red Mars, but I guess I had forgotten to update it. Hopefully one day I'll be able to pin down the exact printing where the change first appears. Albinoflea 06:01, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Identical images

Re 2312: If two publications have identical cover art, there's no value in uploading a file for each book. It's better to upload one image, and then link it to the two records. Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:46, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

And three times is even more unnecessary. Mhhutchins 05:49, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Make that four times. Mhhutchins 05:52, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, technically there are tiny differences... :)

But I catch your drift and will desist of such practice in the future. Albinoflea 05:56, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Page count is not the same as pagination

It looks like you're trying to enter the pagination in the page count fields in several of your latest updates. For instance in this record: "x+561+[5]" indicates that the last roman-numeraled page is "x", the last arabic-numbered page is "561", and then there are five unnumbered pages at the end. But your notes say that there is an acknowledgement on page 563 and an author bio on page 565. So the last numbered page must at least be "565". Mhhutchins 06:03, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah... sorry, was building off of Stonecreek's original notes on the Orbit US edition. The pages in question do not have page numbers, so the page count fields are correct, but I will amend the notes to reflect that the Acknowledgements and About the Author sections are on unnumbered pages. Albinoflea 06:10, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Entering a translated publication

You should not enter a translated publication under the original language title record. It will take three more submissions to fix it:

1. Unmerge the publication
2. Change the language of the new title record
3. Variant the new title record to the original one

If you just use the "Add New Novel" function, it will only take one more submission to variant it to the original title record. Please consider this method when adding a publication for which there is not a current matching title record. Thanks. Mhhutchins 01:32, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Cloned the other Minotauro edition to create this record, which was submitted during the pre-language field era, so it didn't exist as a variant already unlike the Dutch edition I had been working on previously... I'll be sure to double check that in the future. Sorry to create more work. Albinoflea 04:54, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Primate in Forest (From Chapter One: Fifty Degrees Below)

Can you confirm that this record is titled "Primate in Forest (From Chapter One: Fifty Degrees Below)" on its title page and not just "Primate in Forest"? If the latter, the source should be given in the note field, not the title field. We use the "(excerpt)" disambiguation only in titles that are identical to the work from which they're excerpted. Thanks. 05:01, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

I haven't picked a copy of that up yet, but it looks like I can perform a transient verification from the public library down the street. Will update if needed once I find something out. It also seems odd to me that this excerpt is listed as part of the Capital Code series; shouldn't it just be down in the short fiction with the other excerpts? Albinoflea 05:11, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

If it's a self-contained short story, there's no problem with it being part of the series, even if it was later incorporated into the novel. If it's an excerpt, there's nothing technically wrong with it being in the series. I don't think there's a rule that prohibits it, but I personally would not place it into the series, even though editors do it quite often. According to the Locus index, it was presented as an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, even though it was first published in this form a month or so after the "novel-in-progress". (It also should be typed as SHORTFICTION without a length designation, if it's an excerpt.) Mhhutchins 05:34, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, have the book in hand now.

The title page does have

Primate in Forest

(From Chapter One: Fifty Degrees Below)

but the bit about the excerpt is not in bold like the title, in a smaller font, and on a separate line. Neither the Table of Contents nor the Running Page Headers list anything beyond "Primate in Forest". My inclination is to ditch the qualifier and just leave the bit in bold. Or am I just interpreting the evidence to suit my own prejudices? Any thoughts? Albinoflea 01:45, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you about dropping the subtitle. You can always add a note in the title record concerning the subtitle. In the long run, it's between you and any primary verifier. Mhhutchins 05:25, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, I appreciate the input. I've already left a note for the primary verifier, so I'll see what their opinion is before initiating any changes. Albinoflea 06:19, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Geschöpfe der Sonne

Re this publication: you've included a NONFICTION record in a COLLECTION record. Any nonfiction work included in a larger work should be typed as an ESSAY. The NONFICTION type is reserved for a stand-alone published work. Mhhutchins 01:22, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

That is something I believe I knew at one point... I've got some re-learning to do it seems. :( Albinoflea 02:42, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Territories

Like nature, I abhor vacuums. So I did some research to find out who was the editor and publisher of Territories. And found this article on SFE3. After adding the data (and sourcing it), I discovered that Erich Zann was the editor and publisher of issues 2 and 3 (based on your verifications). So it appears SFE3 is lacking information as well. Hopefully, some day a primary verifier will come along. Thanks for adding the stub records. Mhhutchins 05:14, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that; I noticed your addition after you approved them and it makes me wonder since SFE only lists Gibson as an editor (and my two issues clearly list Zann as editor) if perhaps Zann might be a pen name for Gibson.

I haven't turned up any evidence to support this, but it might make sense since Erich Zann is a character in a Lovecraft story. There's also a note in the subscription info to explicitly not send checks made out to Erich Zann in issue #3, and Zann is only credited with the editorials and reviews and never with the essays or interviews...

Finally, it strikes me as odd that there's nothing else in the ISFDB by Zann except the items that are attached to the Territories issues I entered, even though his ISFDB author number is 4000 or so lower than the newest entries in the system, so it presumably was a pre-existing empty record before I entered in my issues yesterday.

All speculation of course, but still... I wonder. Albinoflea 05:36, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

You know, the idea that Zann is a pseudonym never occurred to me (I don't read Lovecraft). But your theory presents a strong case. A little more research might bear some strange fruit. Mhhutchins 06:16, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't read Lovecraft either, but it was the first thing that popped up on Google after searching. He has an email address listed on his blog, I'll just cut to the chase and ask him. Albinoflea 06:59, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Poems in Les Martiens

Hello, I took the liberty to vt two poems (_Je dis au revoir à Mars_ & _Couleur canyon_) directly to their "mother" titles instead of being vts of vts. Hauck 16:29, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Ah, thanks! I was unaware that such variant chains could be created! Albinoflea 01:04, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

License tag for the file of the unknown signature image

I added a license tag to the image file you uploaded of the unknown signature for the Orbit edition of The Gold Coast. If we ever identify the signature, we can update the artist's name. Mhhutchins 16:10, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

So that was done using the "Sig Image Data" template? And does that automatically add the Artist:unknown Images and Artist Signature Images categories to the image as well? Albinoflea 20:39, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

I see you beat me to updating this... thanks! Albinoflea 07:14, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I missed your first response, so: yes, adding a license tag to most images will place them into various categories. And I adjusted it after I saw that another editor had identified the artist. Mhhutchins 14:28, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Mars la rouge

Hello. I took the liberty to change the artist credit for your verified here. A doubt was nagging me as Didier Thimonier is frequently credited for french book club edition, but for covers that are not his (he's likely the designer). In this case, the cover is indeed by David Hardy, as shown in this pictorial book on page 40 & 41 under the title _Terraforming Mars_. Hauck 12:23, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Ah, yes, it's here on his website too. Thanks for catching that! Albinoflea 18:43, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Glimmering

What was the source for the date of the author's notes in this publication? Usually, the date of the contents is the same as the publication date if this is the content's first publication. Thanks. Mhhutchins 06:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

That was the date given at the end of the Notes; I could have sworn I had read something about that being proper procedure, but rereading the Help section (and the fact that you're questioning it) leads me to believe I should change it back to 2012... Albinoflea 03:00, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

OK, I've submitted a correction and added the date in the book as a pub note. Albinoflea 03:03, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

Robinson's Roter Mars

First, thanks for adding additional and better information to 2312! Second, based on the information on Don Dixon as being the cover artist for Roter Mars I'd like to drop the other two 'artists': Carella seems just to be miscredited and 'Atelier Ingrid Schütz' doesn't seem to have done more than to design the image of the publication series. Would that be okay? Stonecreek 04:32, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I think that would be fine, as long as we included these details in the publication notes. It's funny that all the American printings of Red Mars with the Dixon artwork crop his signature off the bottom, but the German one includes it even if they don't give him credit... Albinoflea 21:52, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that'd be the preferred way of doing it for me, too. I'll take the steps and change it. Thank you. Stonecreek 10:46, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Heyne Jahresband Science Fiction = Heyne Science Fiction Jahresband?

Hi, I also own this pub and have put it into a title series. But in my copy 'Jahresband' and 'Science Fiction' are interchanged. Is a change OK with you?

In addition, I think it'd be better to state 'First edition, first printing' in the notes (instead of 'First German printing'), since it is an original edition.

And furthermore, I tend to give the original story titles for the illustrations. After all, they normally don't have any language adhering to them and could be used in any language edition, while it remains the unchanged piece of art. In fact two of the illustrations (by Jim Burns, whose I already merged with the original, and Gary Freeman) had an original English publication (and it may pop up that John Stewart's illustrations have that also as background). What do you think? Stonecreek 10:58, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

You are correct about the title, thanks for catching it!

As for 'First edition, first printing', I was going for a more literal interpretation of 'Deutsche Erstausgabe'. Perhaps 'First German edition, first printing' would be a good compromise, since that's what's stated, and then a note indicating that the anthology is an original German edition?

The illustrations... I think this might be something that needs to be discussed in the Rules and Standards area. I know for me at least I seldom have access to other variants of the artwork to verify if in fact they are the same, so I tend to leave them titled as the stories they accompany, because for all I know they could have been recycled from any number of sources. But I also get what you're saying about illustrations not really having a language (although there are a few exceptions, like maps) so if it would be easier all around to leave the original language title in place then that's fine by me if that's what people want to do, since in most cases those are derived titles anyhow and not actually present in the pub. Albinoflea 15:17, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

An illustration should be the same title as the story it illustrates. If it's determined that it's also a reprint of an earlier story with a different title (whether it's a different language or not), it can be made into a variant of the first known use of the work. Mhhutchins 15:29, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Just added the month of publication and a note of its source. Stonecreek 08:55, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Image license

I added a license to this image crediting you as the author and copyright holder. If you want to change it to your real name, feel free to do so. You can also add any restrictions to it by editing the page and entering them after the "Details=" line of the template. Thanks. Mhhutchins 01:42, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I think that what you've done should about cover it. Albinoflea 00:44, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Schöne nackte Welt

Hello! I added the month of publication for this book (accompanied by a note). Judging from p. 2 and the title of the title story I also changed the title to 'Schöne nackte Welt' (from 'Schöne Nackte Welt'). Thanks for adding this BIG anthology! Stonecreek 19:32, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the correction! Albinoflea 03:39, 30 August 2012 (UTC) Added a cover scan too. Albinoflea 06:52, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Fine! Somehow I like this artwork. I corrected a typo in the title story and its accompanying interior art - it's 'freiwilliger' instead of 'freiwiller'. Stonecreek 14:45, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

IASFM 35

Thanks for adding this item. I have found the pub. month and changed title and publication accordingly (with an exploratory note). I also put it into a title series. And I modified the title: added '. Folge', the variant in fact stated on the title page that I also overlooked so far. Sometimes you have to look on other submissions to see your own mistakes. Stonecreek 18:52, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Galileo's Dream

Have replaced the cover scan for Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream with another file that was already in place for your verified tp version. It does not display a large sticker on the cover, as the previous file did. Thanks. PeteYoung 09:03, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. There are some extremely minor differences between the placement of the tagline at the bottom between the two versions, but not I suppose significant enough. Albinoflea 07:22, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Cover artist for the UK eds. of Robinson's Icehenge

I believe it's the same art that was used on the first Tor paperback edition, which is credited to John Harris. Mhhutchins 20:38, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

I found confirmation that the art was done for this edition. See this sketch and this painting on his website. The sketch has its original purpose described, and dates it 1985. --MartyD 21:02, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

MartyD is correct, and his evidence is the same I would have proffered. This artwork was used for the Tor PB and Orb TP editions in the US, and the Orbit PB and McDonald HC in the UK. (Although it may have been slightly recolored towards a cooler palette on the Orb editions.) I'll add the credit and notes for these pubs. Albinoflea 23:54, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Hello, I just primary(2) verified this edition of Icehenge and would like to propose a change of publisher to Orbit / Futura, based on the stating of Futura on title page and backcover. What do you think of it? Stonecreek 18:23, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. I'll submit the change. Thanks! Albinoflea 06:45, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Cover artist for Robinson's Gold Coast

Hello, Albinoflea! I think I've found the cover artist you looked for: see here. I remember (correctly, I hope, I'd have to dig that issue out) that it even was presented as cover art for Robinson's novel. Would you like to add the information and variant the IZ cover art? I can do that for you, if you are too occupied. Stonecreek 16:42, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Excellent detective work! I've submitted the pub edit and when that goes through I'll work on the cover art. Thanks so much! Albinoflea 07:04, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

It wasn't much work of a detective. Instead Michael had triggered me looking up the verification page for older requests that I had missed during my vacation (he had just declared that he had put older requests into the archive) - once I had seen the art it was quite easy to point a finger at it.

I liked the cover art back in 1989 and remember that I had set my mind to see someday to obtain Robinson's The Gold Coast with this art: so thanks for bringing that to my attention after all these years! Stonecreek 09:35, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Well then, if not excellent detective work, then an excellent memory!

I'm just curious, does this artwork illustrate a different story in the magazine? It seems strange that they were both issued so close together. Albinoflea 04:12, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

No, it most definitely didn't illustrate any story in IZ #30. I think they got the right to use it as cover image but had in turn to give the source and did this way some advertising for Orbit. There were a number of covers for IZ around that time done in that way.

On the German edition of The Gold Coast (and others by Kim Stanley Robinson): Would you like to enter these someday by yourself or would you appreciate someone else doing it - could be me, for example ;-) . Stonecreek 09:54, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the info on IZ #30. Now I'll have to find a copy.

I've been slowly acquiring the German KSR editions, and I've submitted most of what I own so far with the exception of a few more anthologies. So feel free to enter anything that needs entering... I'll be happy to do secondary verifications when I can get my hands on them. :) Thanks! Albinoflea 02:07, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Der Drachenheld

Hello! I've just accepted Der Drachenheld, but I had to change the pub series and the name of the editor. You completely misspelled his name. Thanks! Rudam 13:07, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Rudam!

The pub series is actually listed as Heyne Science Fiction and not Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy on the title page, so I was only following what was listed. I've entered in several other books from the Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy series, and they all explicitly list the full series name as you've changed it. Did the series change its name over time? If so, perhaps I should make a note in the pub record; it doesn't seem that there are note fields for Pub Series the way there are for Title Series.

As for the editor, I don't recall what I entered, but it is possible I mistakenly entered Rainer Michael Rahn (credited with Redaktion) rather than Ronald M. Hahn (credited with Zusammengestellt). Then again, I may have misspelled something. Either way, thanks for catching. Albinoflea 07:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

It's no fault of yours, you correctly followed the name on the title page. In this case it's not a changing of the series name, but it seems more an abbrivation of the series name.

FYI: You've entered Rainer Michael Rahn (Redaktion means 'editor') but Ronald M. Hahn compiled ('zusammengestellt') the anthology. Thanks! Rudam 08:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

I've just verified the pub too and made some further modifications. I translated 'Deutsche Erstveröffentlichung' into 'First german edition' and modified the title of Bishop's story. Every word of the title starts now with a capital. Rudam 08:49, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Yet the case rules require that two of those words not be capitalized. Mhhutchins 14:04, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

BTW: for some reason I can't explain, the language of the contents defaulted to English. You'll have to correct the language to German for the title records of each content. Can you recall the steps your took to add the pub record to the db? Mhhutchins 17:52, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

One obvious explanation would be that I forgot to change the language to German when I submitted the pub... this seems more likely than some sort of sinister bug in the code. Regardless, I don't recall doing anything different than what I've been doing. I'll go ahead and submit the corrections to those title records; thankfully there aren't many. Albinoflea 07:08, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Quick question - did you know you can now set your default language for new publications? And change it as many times as you like within one session without having to relogin, if you're multi-lingual? (If I coded it right and Ahasuerus implemented it right, of course: I haven't tried it out on the live server due to my mono-lingual status. I know English, and can get by in American, Canadian, New Zealandish and Australian, but I'm not really a linguistic expert.) But I'd really like to know if that new feature has been noticed, even if it's not actually appreciated. BLongley 07:55, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Excellent news! I haven't made any edits for a little while, but I have a few new acquisitions (French, German, Turkish) that should put this feature to good use. Albinoflea 04:15, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I just added the month for this anthology. And for the interchanging of Rahn and Hahn: for some time I thought that Rainer Michael Rahn was a pseudonym for Ronald M. Hahn to hide editing difficulties with his job at Ullstein, so that one could have happened also to me. Stonecreek 16:38, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Chronicles of Bustos Domecq

Can you check to see if the publisher as given on the title page of this record is "E. P. Dutton"? I've started to separate those books published after the publisher became an imprint of the Penguin USA Group as simply Dutton, when previously it had the full name of E. P. Dutton. I'm assuming this 1979 edition gives "E. P. Dutton" as the publisher. Because it's been primary verified, I've not updated the record, but am asking you to do so, if the publisher as given in the record can not be confirmed. Another possibility is that this is published as "A Dutton Paperback", which was an imprint of E. P. Dutton. Thanks for checking. Mhhutchins 03:35, 9 November 2012 (UTC)

It is E.P. Dutton under the Dutton Paperback imprint as you indicate. I've gone ahead and fleshed the record out. Albinoflea 05:14, 11 November 2012 (UTC)

Science-Fiction Studies #37

Added a cover scan to your verified pub. PeteYoung 07:35, 19 January 2013 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you. Albinoflea 23:48, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Entering translated publications

I accepted the submission adding this variant title to the database, but if a translated title is not in the database, we recommend that your create the publication record first. After it is in the database, then make its title record a variant of the original language title record. Thanks. Mhhutchins 21:14, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. Albinoflea 23:49, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Maps in The Years of Rice and Salt

I'm not sure if it adds much value to the record to have separate content records for each of Ward's maps. In most cases in the db, even in other editions of this very title, there is only one content record called "Title of Work (maps)". Mhhutchins 04:25, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm... I get the feeling that we've had this conversation before, or one very similar to it... maybe with respect to maps from Antarctica or The Wild Shore? And I had some odd reasoning that in the end you begrudingly agreed had some small degree of merit. Can't seem to find it searching on the wiki though. Albinoflea 04:51, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

I can never find anything searching on the wiki! I still find very little value in this, unless an edition is published which omits some of the maps. A question: why are you varianting the titles instead of merging them? Aren't they the same maps or have the locations in the Hungarian versions been translated into Hungarian? And the titles and artist credit of the records are identical. We only variant if the title or author credit is different. Mhhutchins 05:43, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the place names in the Hungarian version have been translated into Hungarian (see my pub note), so I assumed in this case a variant was in order and not a merge. Albinoflea 05:54, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

So shouldn't the Hungarian maps have the title of the work (A ricz és a só évei) they illustrate instead of the English title? If they'd been entered that way, there would be no question that they would have to be varianted. I'll accept the submissions to variant, but you will have to go back and change the titles of each of the records. Mhhutchins 06:22, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

One more thing: the English versions have the wrong date. They were first published in March 2002. We don't use copyright year for dating records. Mhhutchins 06:24, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, good point about the titles. I'll go back and list those in Hungarian. And I'll fix the dates on the English version.

Found our earlier conversation: User_talk:Mhhutchins/Archive/2012May-Aug.

And also this: Rules_and_standards_discussions/Archive/Archive09#Added_map_entry_instructions Albinoflea 06:30, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Looking back at those discussions, I find nothing substantial has changed in my attitude, although this situation is slightly different. Back then we were talking about uncredited maps. Here we're talking about creating separate content records for each map. This is similar to a person creating a separate content for each illustration of a novel. For example, more than 80 records for the illustrations in this novel. That's an extreme example, but it points out that multiple content records for essentially the same work are allowed but, as I said, add no substantial value for the effort. Still, I've come to the same conclusion that if an editor wants to make that effort, and nothing forbids it, I'm not going to reject the submission. Mhhutchins 18:10, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the situations are different... I suspect the fact that this was a transient Verification made me want to be as thorough as I could, since I may have difficulty putting my hands on it again. Regardless, thanks for indulging me and helping me get things straightened out. Albinoflea 05:26, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Goldküste

You entered this record under the wrong title record. If you have to change the pre-loaded title or author of a work then you've used the wrong function. In this case you should have used "Add New Novel" instead of "Add Publication to This Title". You'll have to unmerge the pub record from its title record, change the language of the new title record, and then variant the new title record to the original English-language title record. Mhhutchins 05:49, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Looks like I explained this to you before. Mhhutchins 05:51, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

You'll have to fix this record the same way. It will take three submissions to do this, as I explained above. Mhhutchins 05:54, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

<Facepalm> Yes... yes you did. Albinoflea 05:57, 22 February 2013 (UTC)

Foundation, #38

Hello, I added some notes to this, and I also did a splitting of the respective essays of Silverberg and Aldiss & Shaw - varianting the essays by Silverberg to their original source. The summation of the essays by Aldiss & Shaw into one item would imply a collaboration, which wasn't the case. In fact, those essays might be published separately. Stonecreek 16:44, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and I also added two more editors, put the page count in magazine context and put Robinson's item into the The Profession of Science Fiction series. Stonecreek 16:48, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you! Albinoflea 05:20, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome! I also did a similar update for Foundation #40. Stonecreek 17:30, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Infinity Plus One

I've added further notes for this record and have made some other changes in the record. Even though it gives July as the date on the copyright page, both the publisher's website and Locus1 give the month of publication as November. I also changed the price from £45.00 to £60.00, based on the publisher's website (Locus1 gives the first price). Since mine was a presentation copy from one of the contributors, I don't know how much it actually cost at the time of publication. Does your copy have a printed price? Also, is the limitation statement pasted to the front loose endpaper of your copy? Thanks. Mhhutchins 20:14, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

I bought mine secondhand two years ago, so not sure how much they originally sold for wither. My copy (which I've just noticed is wrapped in two dust jackets?) has no price listed, and as you indicate with your copy, the limitation statement is pasted down to the front endpapers. Albinoflea 06:53, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

60 jours et après

Hello, I've taken the liberty to change the title from _60 Jour et après_ to _60 jours et après_. Hervé Hauck 20:32, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for catching that! Albinoflea 02:23, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

SFX

I've edited this publication to follow ISFDB magazine entry standards, adding the date of the issue to the title fields of the publication record and its editor record. Mhhutchins 04:51, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, got interrupted while entering this and came back to it later. Albinoflea 06:10, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

NYRSF #300

I've had this sitting in my inbox for a couple of weeks. Thanks for creating a record for it. I've made some changes based on the standards specific to this periodical. I also made the K. S. Robinson essay into a variant instead of a merge. because the titles differ. If the original publication doesn't have "Introduction" in the title, and have identical titles, please feel free to unvariant the two and merge them. Thanks. Mhhutchins 01:57, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Always glad to assist even if is only a drop in the proverbial bucket.

Looking at them both I agree that a variant is in order for the KSR essay, so I will leave it as is. Thanks. Albinoflea 06:01, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Publisher check

Can you see if Spectra alone is credited as the publisher on the title page of this book and this one? Most books from the Spectra imprint are entered as "Spectra / Ballantine Books" (starting in 2009). Thanks. for checking. Mhhutchins 18:57, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

I have double-checked and updated the records. Thanks for pointing this out. Albinoflea 06:37, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Das wilde Ufer

I added the month to this publication of the novel. Would you like to be informed about additions of the month in the future, or is this of no major concern for you? Stonecreek 20:00, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

No, this is helpful; I am not territorial but it is good information to have. :)

Is Das wilde Ufer reviewed in Science Fiction Media #26 or is it just mentioned as a new release? Albinoflea 01:04, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the late answer. I just saw your question today. Probably there's only the list of reported new books. Are you interested in german reviews of Robinson books? There'll be probably not too many, because at the end of the Eighties there were fewer and fewer sf magazines in Germany, and that was the time when publication of his books was quite constant. (The ones from this century see only seldomly a german translation, alas.) Stonecreek 18:14, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I am interested in German reviews, or any reviews for that matter. Last month I found this site which was very helpful, but imagine (like any site) it is not entirely comprehensive.

Things seem to be improving somewhat; 2312 was published by Heyne and they are already working on a translation of Shaman as well. Albinoflea 02:03, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I sought my copy Science Fiction Media #26 and found that there's also a review of Das wilde Ufer. Are you hunting for the different publications or would you like to have scans of the reviews I have (or would it be sufficient to add the respective publications I have to ISFDB)? Stonecreek 09:38, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

I would very much appreciate scans of any KSR reviews you may have, and also of the covers of the issues they were published in. Entering them in the ISFDB would be helpful to a wider audience (and I see you have already entered issue #132) but I know how much work that can entail.

One day I would love to own copies myself, but my wantlist is very long and keeps growing longer... Albinoflea 22:06, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

So, I'll see on which reviews I can lay my hands on (and which of them are scannable: if the review is in the middle of a volume of Das Science Fiction Jahr this may prove to be difficult without damaging the book.) For covers: I'll install some stub records that'll enclose the covers where suitable; most of 'Science Fiction Media' have no cover art whatsoever, but start right away with informational text on the cover/p. 1, this changed somewhen after 1991, from which time I have only very few issues.

Will JPGs do, and what's your e-Mail address I may send the scans to? Stonecreek 08:54, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, my email address is stephen.fernie@gmail.com and JPGs will work fine. I have a few volumes of Das Science Fiction Jahr and I think I can get the ones I don't have without too much trouble, so no worries on that front.

I really appreciate this and if I can ever return the favor, please let me know. Albinoflea 19:59, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Okay, the scan worked for Das Science Fiction Jahr 1994 & Das Science Fiction Jahr 1998 (I'll send them soon), but I have some trouble to locate Das Science Fiction Jahr 2003. Do you already own that one?

It seems that a typo crept into Flucht aus Kathmandu: the cover and the review all show Katmandu (without the 'h'), so what does the title page say? Stonecreek 14:23, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Most of my copies of Das Science Fiction Jahr are older; I do not have the 2003 volume. Thanks for the others!

I will have to check on the Flucht aus Kathmandu spelling when I get home, both on this volume but also in Schöne nackte Welt. Albinoflea 19:25, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

I have verified that the spelling is Katmandu for all instances of the collection and novella that I have a copy of, so the error must be mine. I have submitted corrections; thanks for catching this! Albinoflea 01:29, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

I have found that the two german publications of the novella constitute separate titles after all (because they feature different translations). This is the main reason to state the translator in the title record: even when you have matching titles in all other regards the difference shows when trying to merge titles.

More scans will be on their way across the ocean soon. Stonecreek 17:45, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Excellent point. I suppose I should unmerge the titles to reflect the differences in translator.

My research shows that the novella was also included in Heyne Science Fiction Jahresband 2000, but I do not have a copy to verify if this is the Uwe Anton or Edda Petri version (or possibly even a third version), although I assume if it is by Heyne it would be the Petri version reprinted.

Thanks for the second batch of scans! Albinoflea 03:59, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I see you beat me to to the unmerge and record cleanup, and have even entered in some of the reviews. Thanks again.Albinoflea 04:07, 15 March 2014 (UTC)

I was able to find a source that attributes the translation of the 'Heyne Science Fiction Jahresband 2000 version of 'Flucht aus Katmandu to Edda Petri. Albinoflea 18:06, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

I'll try to take a look into the matter. I hope to get hold of two more relevant issues of 'Science Fiction Times' soon. And regarding your question on the fanzine Blizz please take a look here. Also, this site lists some of the contents (if you scroll down a bit). Stonecreek 10:18, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I can verify that it is the Edda Petri translation from 1987. The book is in the pipeline for entering. Stonecreek 15:35, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

As you might have seen, I verified the Bastei Lübbe paperbacks that I have, added some notes to them and put the cover image for Pazifische Grenze up. Stonecreek 20:01, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

[unindent]Thanks for the information on Blizz; I knew there was an interview with KSR in one of the issues but wasn't sure which one, but from the links you gave me it looks like #18. Albinoflea 02:33, 28 March 2014 (UTC)

"Me in a Mirror" by Robinson

Can you confirm that this is fiction? It's part of an essay series published in Foundation and reprinted as an introduction to a bibliography of this work. Thanks for checking. Mhhutchins 19:22, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's a weird one. It's the story about how he meets an alternate ego of himself (named "Kim", while he goes by "Stan"), possibly from the future, in the reflection of a mirror in his dorm room at UCSD, and how this alternate ego dictates all of his stories to him. There is quite a bit of dialogue between the two. It is, in essence, a creative writing response to the question "Why do you write Science Fiction?"

Me in a Mirror does have some autobiographical bits in it, but I would say it falls pretty clearly into the fantasy camp. It reminds me a bit of the last two-thirds of the introduction to The Planet on the Table, which is a fictitious conversation between Stan and the James Joyce statue in the cemetery in Zürich. If it wasn't for the first part of this introduction, which is a more traditional discussion of the stories and a thank you to his teachers and editors, I'd say it clearly deserves a fiction category as well.

Me in a Mirror is also in the short fiction section of the bibliography in PM Press edition of The Lucky Strike, which is uncredited in the book but which Stan compiled himself. Albinoflea 03:25, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

It's a non-fact/fictional essay, or a facetious fiction. Since there's no such category currently in the db, even though there are hundreds of such pieces in the database (almost all "in-universe" introductions and essays would fall into that category), it's up to the subjective opinion of the entry editor. For example, in this piece, an alter-ego of Michael Bishop drudges through the jungles of South America to find the alter-ego of Rhys Hughes. In this piece, the ghost of Mary Shelley visits Bishop in Pine Mountain, Georgia. In this one the author describes his funeral. I typed all as ESSAY, even though they're clearly not fact. But the pieces had purposes other than to tell a story. That was why I typed them as ESSAY. It seems clear, just from your description, that the Robinson piece has a similar goal. I'll leave it as your decision to classify as is. Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:22, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I notice it is the only entry in the series that isn't listed as and Essay, so if you'd like to change it for the sake of consistency I don't have particularly strong feelings about it. Albinoflea 17:32, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Red Mars

Hi. My copy of this record has 671 numbered pages, not 668. Is yours different ? It also contains an uncredited map of Mars (p. 8-9). Couldn't this be noted in the record ? Thanks. Linguist 16:54, 10 March 2014 (UTC).

Hello, thanks for catching this; I acquired a large group of UK paperbacks of KSR's novels a few months ago, and while I verified them I did not always edit the records. I suspect the information in the original record was taken from Locus or Amazon; I have updated it and added notes. Albinoflea 03:11, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

OK, thanks ! Linguist 09:04, 12 March 2014 (UTC).

Afterword to Green Planets

I see no point in disambiguating this afterword, as the title is rather distinct. (Unless you think the same title is going to be used again for an entirely different piece.) Mhhutchins 01:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I went back and forth on that myself; I was worried that someone might think it was the Afterword to a book entitled Still, I'm Reluctant to Call This Pessimism without further context. Albinoflea 01:45, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Paraspheres

I accepted your edit for your verified Paraspheres, but both the new and modified content contain the title "Why Fabulist and New Wave Fabulist Stories in an Anthology Named ParaSpheres?", which doesn't sound grammatical. Is there a missing "are" in there somewhere? Thanks for checking. PeteYoung 01:37, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the check-in, but that is the title verbatim from the book (although ParaSpheres is italicized, which isn't supported within titles in the DB.) Albinoflea 04:45, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Change of publisher for Seventies and Eighties incarnation of Foundation (?)

Hello. To my amazement I found the notion 'published (...) by North East London Polytechnic on behalf of the Science Fiction Foundation' on the copyright page of all issues of Foundation that I have from #4 onwards; it has to be determined which is the last issue that has this notion (#69 and the following issues have only 'Science Fiction Foundation' as publisher). After this question/answer I changed the publisher to 'North East London Polytechnic' for #s 4-36. Before proceeding, would it be okay to change this field accordingly for your verified #38 & 39? Sorry, that I overlooked that you verified these two, otherwise I would have asked you also in advance. Stonecreek 04:06, 8 April 2014 (UTC)

I am a verifier for #38, (but not #39) and I agree that it makes sense to update these, so feel free to change them.

I can also narrow down the range somewhat; #54 still lists the 'Polytechnic of East London' (perhaps the school changed names?) while #68 lists 'Science Fiction Foundation'. I haven't entered #54 into the DB yet but will go ahead and do that. Albinoflea 04:17, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

See here for what may be a definitive reply from one of Foundation's editors. PeteYoung 07:36, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Excellent... nothing beats going straight to the source. Albinoflea 20:52, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

Foundation 1992 editor records

I accepted the submission to merge the editor records into one record before I realized that the editors are different. Please confirm that your pub credits both persons as editor. I will ask the verifier of the other issue to see if his editor credit is correct. We may have to unmerge them. Thanks for checking. Mhhutchins 00:37, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for catching this; I've commented on Pete's page. Albinoflea 04:45, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

1995 World Fantasy Program Book

I'd like to make a few additions to the 21st Annual World Fantasy Convention — 1995 program book. I'd like to add the Eshbach essay beginning on page 35. I'd also like to add items for the interior illustrations throughout. Let me know if you agree. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 15:02, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Ron, go for it. I must have missed the Eshbach essay when I entered in details, although the original record was already there when I went to verify it. Albinoflea 05:32, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

A Short, Sharp Shock

As our Kim Stanley Robinson expert, could you comment on this discussion? Thanks, --Willem H. 19:13, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, I have commented, and will try not to let the "expert" bit go to my head. Albinoflea 05:33, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

Varianting SF Chronicle editor record

The editor record crediting "Andrew I. Porter" was properly varianted to the author's canonical name Andrew Porter. This is standard ISFDB practice. Mhhutchins 02:40, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Ah... okay. I guess I was terribly confused. Marty's comment seemed to indicate that no clean-up had been done; so I went to initiate the title merge and then just saw the variant without realizing that was an indication that the title merge had already been created.

I suppose that it is an odd case as well, since the Editor records for SF Chronicle seem to have been created as placeholders for Award records, so the name variant isn't really based on conflicting publications. It seems very strange that I'm the first person to perform a primary verification on any of these issues.Albinoflea 20:41, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Sorry not to have responded sooner, but I missed your original response. Yes, they were just placeholders because either no editor had copies of this magazine or chose not to create records for them. I subscribed for a year or so back in the late 80s or early 90s, but found that the news was pretty much the same as I was getting from Locus, which had better coverage of new releases and better reviews. (Somehow Don D'Ammassa's reviews just didn't fulfill my needs.) So I didn't renew my subscription and stuck with Locus. I wish Porter had put all his efforts into Algol/Starship, which I had discovered only after it had died. One day I might pull out those issues of SFC and enter them... It's just low on my list of priorities. Mhhutchins 05:16, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Okay, that makes sense. Most of the content is really newsy, so I can see why editors may not be keen to slog through entering in a run of them. I've picked up a few stray issues here and there which I will probably get around to entering once I get through my current stack. I tried to pattern the naming of what I assume to be regularly reoccurring SFC columns and features after your entries of Locus issues, so hopefully that will save some work later on.

Just about everything I discover has been dead a long time... sigh. Albinoflea 05:59, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

You'll have to elaborate on that last statement! It sounds...intriguing. For readers of speculative fiction about the future, isn't it strange that we look back to the past with such reverence and nostalgia? Mhhutchins 03:34, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

I suppose since I only started actively collecting about 4 years ago, there are huge swaths of content I am only now coming aware of... especially magazines, fanzines, and anthologies. I discovered Algol/Starship quite by accident digging through a stack of magazines in a used book store just two months ago, and by the time I discovered SF Chronicle even it had been gone for 7 years.

Conducting my KSR "research" has also demonstrated to me how much more fragmented things have become now that so much is digital, and although things are (potentially) more discoverable, they also disappear at an astonishing rate. Trying to track down interviews from the late 90s/early 2000s that solely appeared online is really disheartening... Albinoflea 06:38, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Walotsky's "Bridges"

I'm holding your submission to create a new parent for this record which is identical to the variant. What is your intention with this submission? Mhhutchins 05:07, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

So I was attempting to make it a variant of itself? I can't really see what my I did from my pending submissions page, but I'm guessing I must have pasted from the wrong page. I meant to Variant it to Cover: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 1992. I've canceled the original variant submission and re-submitted. Thanks, Albinoflea 05:36, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Here's how this could have happened (and probably did): you entered the parent record number in the upper half of the variant form, but clicked the submit button for the bottom half of the form, which is for creating new parent records. It wouldn't be a variant of itself, but a variant of another record which would be identical. Mhhutchins 05:44, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

I see, interesting. I don't think I've ever knowingly used the bottom half of the form.

Does this happen often? I wonder if we could build some sort of validation into the form, so that if you enter something into the top form but click on the bottom form button you get an error or maybe a confirmation page before the submission is added to the queue. Albinoflea 02:54, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

According to the "make variant" statistics you've used that function 406 times. It's strange that none of them have been to create a new variant, only to variant to an existing record. I'd say I've used the bottom one at least ten times more than the top.

That's interesting. I suppose since my focus is primarily on KSR, most of the parent titles already exist in the DB and I spend most of my time simply adding additional variants to them? Albinoflea 01:50, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

To answer your question: no, it doesn't happen that often. Quite rarely indeed. I've only seen it done maybe a couple dozen times in all of my years of moderating (and I've moderated more than 100,000 submissions from other editors!) Even so, your proposal for a warning sounds interesting. Not being a software person, I couldn't say how or if it could be done. Why not ask our software man, Ahasuerus? He should be able to tell you if it's possible. Mhhutchins 03:32, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Well, the easiest thing to do would be to split the current Web page into two: one for "turn this title into a variant of an existing title" and another for "turn this title into a variant of a new title". Internally, the current page is already a mash-up of two separate data entry forms, so moving them to two separate Web pages would be easy. Ahasuerus 21:54, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Hmmm... but then wouldn't you need two links from the Editing Tools section? And "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work" is already pretty lengthy.

I wonder if an even easier solution might be to align the two functions of the form side by side rather than one above the other? You could make the instructions for "Making the following title a variant title of the specified parent" and "If the parent title does not exist, enter the title information below to create it" bold and in a larger text, and separate them with a vertical line. I think that way it will be clearer that the form serves two functions, and when you scroll to the bottom for the submit button it would be more intuitive to click the button at the bottom of the column that you just entered data into.

Some sort of form validation might still be better at intercepting accidental self-parenting variants, but seeing as Michael says it's a rather rare I'm thinking that a change in layout might suffice. Albinoflea 01:50, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

The Anthology of Speculative Poetry #4

In your verified The Anthology of Speculative Poetry #4, the short story on page 6 is Phoenic'. There is another verified record for Phoenic without the apostrophe. That is contained in a later publication but has the same 1980 date. I wanted to double check the ending apostrophe before making the later a variant. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:41, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for looking into this; I can confirm that the trailing apostrophe is present in all occurrences of the title: at the beginning of he story, in the table of contents, and on the front cover. Albinoflea 03:43, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

NONFICTION

Re this record: a collection of essays is typed as NONFICTION. The ANTHOLOGY type is reserved for fiction. Thanks. Mhhutchins 00:46, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the clarification.

Should I be worried that the container publication isn't highlighted in yellow, or does that not happen for NONFICTION essay collections? Albinoflea 00:53, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

No. The system doesn't differentiate if a NONFICTION record has no content records or a hundred. Technically, NONFICTION isn't a container. It's similar to a NOVEL. When you're editing a NONFICTION (or NOVEL) record, you have the option of editing the title reference (displayed in the content section), but only if there is only one publication associated with the title. Otherwise they would be "greyed" out. You can't do that for a record typed as ANTHOLOGY or COLLECTION, even if there is only one publication associated it. They are technically "containers", and their title reference is "yellowed" out to prevent an editor from changing it in a pub update. You can add contents to NOVEL and NONFICTION records. Heck, you could even add SHORTFICTION contents to either one! That doesn't make them containers. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:31, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

I get what you're saying, but I'm not sure I voiced my original concern correctly.

Since this particular NONFICTION record is essentially an anthology of essays, the original NONFICTION entry is functioning as a container, by which I mean when I go to edit the pub record it has its own entry, but there is no page number assigned to it and it does not appear on the pub's public facing display. So something in the software seems to be identifying it as special and is suppressing it. But in edit mode the entry is just floating with all of the other added ESSAY entries in alphabetical order. That just seems odd to me.

For a NOVEL, sure, I have added INTERIORART, ESSAY, POEM and SHORTFICTION entries as appropriate, but when you do this to a NOVEL the doesn't the NOVEL entry itself display in the public-facing contents listing? Or is that only when you add a page number to the NOVEL entry?Albinoflea 05:52, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I can only surmise that's the way the software was designed to handle it. It doesn't seem smart, at least to me, to display a NONFICTION publication's title reference whether it has other contents or not. It could have stemmed from the fact that NONFICTION was originally intended to be a single full-length work, and not a container. When it was adopted as the type to use for collections of shorter nonfiction pieces, it continued to use the same display logic.

The display of a NOVEL record's title in a NOVEL-typed publication record seems to be the right thing to do, but only when there are other contents to display. Without other contents, then it's useless to display the novel's title record. Again, I didn't write the software, but I agree the choice to display one (NOVEL) and not the other (NONFICTION) was a good decision.

And no, a novel's title record will display when there are other contents in the publication record, even if you don't add a page number to the novel title record. There are thousands of examples of that throughout the database.

And yes, I agree that in the edit mode, the display of the NONFICTION title record might seem strange. Perhaps it would be better if it didn't "float" between the contents, but be set at the top of the contents section. Strangely, this has never been brought up by any other editor, and I've never even thought about it. Feel free to bring it to the attention of Ahasuerus, or point him to this discussion. Perhaps he has a better explanation of how and why the title records of different types are displayed in edit mode and in display mode. Thanks. Mhhutchins 06:56, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Das Orakel vom Berge

Hi. I made several additions to your primary verified record of PKD's Das Orakel vom Berge: artist, pub series, pub series # and some notes about the printing and page numbering. Hitspacebar 20:25, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Albinoflea 19:08, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Italian currency

The Italian lira is entered as, for example, "9,000 Lit". I reverted the changes you made to this record. This standard was set many years ago when Ernesto Vegetti started entering Italian publications into the ISFDB. See this pub series as an example. While there was a transition period when both currencies were stated, after 2002, all prices for ISFDB records should be entered in Euros. Thanks. Mhhutchins 04:17, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I wasn't aware of that and was recording the prices as listed on the item. Is it worth documenting the standard for Italian currency and/or Euro transition on the Price Field documentation? Albinoflea 16:56, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

Yes, it is, and it should have been documented at the time the standard was created. I'll do that now. Thanks for the heads up. Mhhutchins 17:14, 28 January 2015 (UTC)

SFBC edition of Galileo's Dream

Can you check this publication to see if it has an ID number? It's usually in a white box on the back of the dustjacket. If it does, that should be the number in the ISBN / Catalog # field. When I created this record (and most of the records for the SFBC editions), I was entirely at the mercy of the printed catalog. The number printed in the catalog didn't always match the ID printed on the book itself. Thanks for checking. Mhhutchins 03:37, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Sure thing, I just submitted an edit with the appropriate ID number. Thanks, Albinoflea 03:49, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Science Fiction Chronicle

Touching on this conversation and this one, as PV of one issue of SFC you might have some input on this one. Thanks. PeteYoung 07:13, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I've commented on Doug's page. Albinoflea 01:22, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

I've since added SFC #81 and left some more discussion points on Doug's page. Cheers. PeteYoung 23:19, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Neither Albinoflea nor Vornoff have chosen to enter the issue number in the title field of the issues they've entered. Since it is prominently given on the front covers, perhaps a discussion should be had before the remaining issues are entered. Thanks. Mhhutchins 23:43, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi. Ive edited the cover title pages on #134 and 143 to agree with the changes made in the pub's titles (adding the #'s after the comma) Doug / Vornoff 08:29, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank! Albinoflea 03:48, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Creating publications "to prevent a dangling review"

This should only be done if the publication itself is eligible for the database. (As all of the publications you've created for this reason.) Otherwise, make the review into an ESSAY. Thanks. Mhhutchins 02:58, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

I see you've done that for the latest record for an issue of SFC. Thanks. That leaves one review without a link: Brother Death by Philip George Chadwick, which I'm not sure is an eligible title. Perhaps the review lets you know if it's spec-fic. Mhhutchins 03:01, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I always try to use my judgement when adding these, and SFC seems to review a fair number of items that aren't in the DB yet, and I'm certainly rejecting more titles now than I would have when I was a new editor and attempting to be more inclusive.

Brother Death was actually written by Steve Perry, so I've corrected the entry. I accidentally closed my browser tab while entering the remaining reviews, and when I went to redo my work I must have conflated it with The Death Guard that was reviewed immediately before it. Albinoflea 04:07, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Shadow of the Mountain

re: Shadow of the Mountain in your verified Ghosts, Spirits, Computers and World Machines. O'Neill has another story titled The Shadow of the Mountain that has multiple verifiers. Would you mind checking if your publication indicates a previous printing and these should be varianted? Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:10, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

I've checked both the Prime Books edition and the Imaginary Worlds edition; in the Prime Books edition, the title is missing "The" on the Table of Contents, the Acknowledgments, and the first page of the story; in the Imaginary Worlds edition, it is present on the TOC but not on the first page of the story. The story begins (in both editions): "The muggy predawn darkness of the heavy jungle..."

The Prime Books edition lists the original publication of the story in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1985, so I suspect we can make one a variant of the other. Thanks, Albinoflea 21:47, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

Varianted. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:42, 1 March 2015 (UTC)

21st Annual World Fantasy Convention — 1995

Can you confirm the credit for the art on page 79 of this publication? Is it Hannibal "Kink" or "King"? Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:08, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

It is Hannibal King; I've submitted an edit. Thanks, Albinoflea 03:27, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Fragment

Re this title: Fragment implies an unfinished work. Is that true in this case, or is it simply an excerpt from a larger work? Thanks for checking. Mhhutchins 03:50, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

It is listed that way on the first page of the story in the magazine. Apparently "fragment" in Romanian can be translated as either fragment or excerpt; and in this case I don't think the full work was published until July 2014, so at the time of this issue's publication it might have qualified as unfinished. Albinoflea 17:00, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

I would suggest not using the disambiguation which would cause confusion, but giving "fragment" as a subtitle: "Senzoriada: fragment". A Google search shows the subtitle is in a smaller font, thus necessitating the use of the colon. That way, whether it's a true fragment or an excerpt doesn't matter. The ISFDB record reflects the title as published. Thanks. Mhhutchins 05:08, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Good call; I've submitted an edit to use a colon instead. Albinoflea 19:48, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Peter T. Garrett or Garratt

Can you confirm the credit for the reviewer on page 64 in this record? Thanks. Mhhutchins 01:01, 28 April 2015 (UTC)

It is Garratt. Albinoflea 01:59, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Painting of a Domed City

Hello, I was browsing through some messages when I came across a message onthis thread. Unfortunately the two links provided tell me that the "picture is no longer available" Might all be for nought but I do have a large collection of SF art portfolios as might the style/signature. Drop me a line on my talk page please, thanks. --Mavmaramis 08:02, 17 May 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks for getting back to me. I had a good look at the artwork - and what a really nice picture it is - very truquoise and green. It's just a shame that I can't identify the artist, style or even signature. It's not like anything I've seen in any of my 50+ art portfolios or even on the net (places like 70s Sci Fi Art or The Vault of Retro SF on Facebook). I hang my head in shame at being the bearer of bad news. --Mavmaramis 17:41, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

I took a peek at the image, and it really looks like something created by a street artist I watched a few months ago in Reading, England. The technique and end result look very similar to things he created in 5-10 minutes using a box of enamel spray paints, a few cardboard stencils and a spatula. May I ask where you found this? PeteYoung 00:43, 4 June 2015 (UTC) [Pasted from my talk page --Mavmaramis 16:10, 7 June 2015 (UTC)]

A Short, Sharp Shock

Hello, this publication appears on a Cleanup report as it doen't have any content. Can you add it? Thanks. Hauck 13:19, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, taken care of. Albinoflea 21:06, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. Hauck 10:32, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Pb edition of Green Mars

Re this publication: What do the extra pages given in the page count field refer to? We normally don't give a page count for unnumbered pages unless we create content records for any substantial text which may appear on them. Mhhutchins 05:18, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Same question about this record and any others which you may have entered that have the extra pages in the page count field. Mhhutchins 05:20, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

These date back to some of my early editing... before I had a grip on what to include. I will go back and clean them up. Thanks. Albinoflea 01:39, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

Starshore Summer 1990

Hi Albinoflea! Regarding your verified Starshore Summer 1990, I have noticed that this issue gives a specific date of publication (1990-04-17) whereas the other issues in this series only give year and month. Curiously, how was that date arrived at - does that appear in the publication itself? Anyway, regardless of the source, all the title dates should be updated to match the pub date unless you know that any title was previously published before this issue of Starshore. Just a couple of other things - On page 10 there should be artwork associated for the story "Spaceships in the Desert". If this is so, then the story title page should also be page 10 and not 11 as currently stated in its record. Also, for John Grey's poem "The Fish on Molybdeum", there's an outside chance that it might be spelled as 'Molybdenum' (n added). Can you verify that? Thanks for checking on these issues. - Syzygy 17:46, 4 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, that takes me back... it may have been the first magazine I entered into ISFDB. So, to answer your questions:

a) I had a hard time figuring out where I got that date from as well, but it turns out my copy is a review copy that includes a letter dated 3/7/90 saying that the issue was going on sale on 4/17/90. The only month listed on the issue itself is in the masthead, which mentions April 1990. I will update the records accordingly.

b) Yes, my pagination is off for the beginning of Spaceships in the Desert. I have updated that as well.

c) As for the poem, it is spelled that way both on the page and in the table of contents. The word doesn't appear in the poem itself other than the title, but it sure seems like a typo.

Thanks, Albinoflea 02:53, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Whether it's a typo or not we may never know; title stays as is. Thanks for updating the rest of it. - Syzygy 17:27, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Science Fiction Chronicle

Hi, Albinoflea! As a contributor in adding isues of the above, you might be interested in this discussion. Thanks, Doug / Vornoff 06:00, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Missing data in primary verified records

Please add the publication format/binding data missing from the records of publications which you have verified. The publication records are linked in this clean-up report under your user name. Thanks. Mhhutchins|talk 19:36, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, updates submitted. Albinoflea 20:24, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Nowa Fantastyka, #158 Listopad 1995

Re this publication: Is the piece by Bujold on page 25 correctly typed as a serial? If so, it should be titled in this format: "Title (Part X of Y)". Also, don't forget to variant it (and others in this publication) to the original language title records if applicable. Thanks. Mhhutchins|talk 00:00, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

A little Googling shows that the piece is part 3 of a 6-part serialization of Falling Free. I will make the necessary changes to the record and variant it to the original title. Mhhutchins|talk 00:03, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of this; I hadn't gotten around to the varianting but wasn't aware of the Part X of Y part for Serializations. Still have some work to do on the reviews too. Albinoflea 01:16, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Escape from Kathmandu - Pub. date note

Just a line to let you know that I added a short Pub. note to this book [1], to give the Locus1 confirmation of the month of publication. Astrodan 22:27, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, appreciated. Albinoflea 02:22, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Moderator?

Would you be interested in becoming a moderator? Even if you choose to be one just to handle your own submissions, I believe you're more than capable of doing that. You're won't have to moderate other editors' submissions unless, or until, you're ready to do so.

Here are the qualifications in becoming a moderator, and I believe you're very well qualified to be one. Mhhutchins|talk 23:41, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the vote of confidence; I would be happy to be nominated, and if approved, start learning the ropes. Albinoflea 02:20, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

The moderator flag has been set. Congratulations! :-) Help:Screen:Moderator is usually a good first step. Much of it is obvious, but some sections like "AuthorMerge" and "Moderating Automated Submissions" contain information that you may not have seen before. There are certain other options that you will have access to that you didn't have in the past, e.g. the ability to change publisher names and merge publishers. Most importantly, don't hesitate to ask questions! Ahasuerus 20:22, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! I will do some reading and try my best not to do anything rash. :) Albinoflea 21:20, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations! If you have any questions, we're here to help you. Mhhutchins|talk 01:18, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Where would you recommend that I start? Albinoflea 01:49, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

The Fixer AddPubs are pretty simple to handle, so they would be a good place to start. Most of the data comes from Amazon, so it's in fairly good condition. A few things to look out for: 1) If it's an OMNIBUS or CHAPBOOK, you have to manually import the contents from another pub of the same title. Don't worry about COLLECTIONS for now. 2) Keep an eye out for Moderator Warnings (in bright yellow). Most of them are innocuous, but the one about the Date field is important. You may have to correct the date of the title if Fixer found an earlier publication of the title. You always have the option to check the records of the secondary sources that are linked in the lower section of the submission form.

I highly recommend that you check the secondary sources for human editors' NewPub submissions, until you get an idea of each editor's personal quirks. For NewPub submissions which are primary sourced, just a quick scan of each field should be fine.

Handling editors' submissions for title or pub updates should be fairly easy, but make sure you keep an eye on the warnings about the records being primary verified.

Author data updates shouldn't give you too much trouble. Just make sure that the fields use the proper format, especially the Legal Name field. You don't have to worry about date fields anymore since the editors get a warning for bad formatted dates. Keep an eye on the birthplace field, even though there's a clean-up report which finds invalid birthplaces.

The most important thing is to let a submission sit in the queue if you feel uncomfortable about handling it. If you're not sure, place it on hold and question the submitter or ask one of the moderators on the Moderator noticeboard. Just handle those submissions that you feel comfortable with or those that aren't "destructive" to data, i.e. editing a pub record by replacing or removing data. Mhhutchins|talk 06:44, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Congratulations! Our first new moderator in more than two years! --Willem 18:41, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Blue Mars - pub notes

I've added some detail to pub notes in your PV2'd Blue Mars, on artist accreditation and the map. Astrodan 14:08, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, looks good, I appreciate it. I've gotten a bit slack with entering the maps... Albinoflea 04:49, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

The Wild Shore - maps in Content

I added the two maps from the unnumbered pages at the start of the book to the Content section of your PV1'd The Wild Shore, and amended the 'Pages' count to allow them to have page numbers. Let me know if you would prefer otherwise. (I note your particular interest in KSR.) Thanks, Astrodan 15:26, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

See my note above about maps... :)

I went ahead and added | adjustments to the to the new map numbers so they sort before the novel content; see the last bullet point of the documentation here: PubContentFields:Page. I also merged them with the other entries for the maps in the DB, since the early UK and US editions used the same maps. Thanks! Albinoflea 05:04, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Green Earth

I have added the unnumbered pages following the end of the novel and some notes. Christian Stonecreek 15:02, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Looks good. Thanks! Albinoflea 21:49, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

K St R interview

Much to my surprise there not only are interviews with and on the usual suspects one would think of seeing the book's title, but also one with Robinson in The Gothic Imagination. It was conducted in 1993 and is appropriately put into Chapter Four (dealing with Mars). Thought you might be interested. Christian Stonecreek 19:10, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Christian! That collection turned up for me at one point while searching Amazon but I have yet to pick up a copy. Albinoflea 22:37, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Mike Glyer's MAGICON: THE 50TH WORLDCON

Hi! I've asked a question that involves one of your verified pubs here on Mhhutchins/talk page. Thanks, Doug / Vornoff 04:08, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Michael R. Whelan

The titles credited to "Michael R. Whelan" in this publication need to be varianted to the canonical credit. Mhhutchins|talk 08:06, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I had started creating variants but got interrupted. Albinoflea 03:11, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

Held submissions by Purplehousepress

Because the submissions are by a new editor, I suggest that you accept them and made the necessary changes based on current ISFDB standards. Then post a message on their talk page explaining each of the changes that you made for the records to comply. It's very likely they haven't even found their talk page yet. That's why I always email new editors to let them know that they need to check their talk page. (Here's the message I send. You can use it or modify it if you'd like.) Mhhutchins|talk 18:07, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, I see they haven't provided an email. Strange because it's required to open an account. I can never figure out how that can happen, and no explanation of how it's possible has been satisfactory. So I recommend that you accept the submissions, make the changes, and notify them on their talk page. Among the problems are that one of the titles exist and they used the wrong function to add a new publication. Also, the ISBN-13 should be ISBN-10 if the dates are right. I suspect the dates are wrong based on the Amazon listing. Also, the currency symbol is missing, the binding is incorrect, and the cover image is linked to a non-permitting website. Also, the capitalization in the titles is wrong. In other words, almost every field will need to be corrected. I suggest using secondary sources like Amazon to make the corrections. Mhhutchins|talk 18:12, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, it's a mess. I was going to use your template (thanks for having those all posted, by the way) when I encountered the missing email and just left it on their Talk page, which seemed less than ideal, but I didn't want to just charge in and start fixing things right away. Now that it's been a week, I guess it's time. I'll start digging into it tonight. Thanks, Albinoflea 21:11, 18 March 2016 (UTC)

Planeta sobre a mesa, Kim Stanley Robinson

Hi, i´m primary verifying some books of the series 'Ficção Científica' from publisher 'Caminho'. I noticed you had primary verified 'Planeta sobre a mesa' fom Kim Stanley Robinson, and i would like to ask you if you agree with two changes. First: I usualy entered the titles in the database as they are printed in the books, and by this i mean that I respect the capitalizacion of the words in the title. In this case is 'Planeta sobre a mesa' and not 'Planeta sobre a Mesa'. Second: This is not a change but concerns in adding a note in the note field. In my copy, and you can verify in yours if happens the same, the title in the title page is wrong, or saying it more precisely, is shorter. Only 'Planeta' and not 'Planeta sobre a mesa' is printed. I know that usualy is the title printed in the title page that counts, but in this case is an obvious print error. So, these are the two changes that i sugest, as you are the primary verifier of this book i think i should have your agreement to make them. Thanks. Wolland 20:24, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

As to your first question: Please feel free to correct the capitalization; I am not familiar with the rules for title capitalization in Portuguese so I suspect I capitalized them according to the more typical ISFDB English rules.

Regarding the title page: I agree a note is in order. My copy says 'O Planeta' on the title page, 'O planeta sobre a mesa' in the copyright statement, and 'Planeta sobre a mesa' on the spine, front cover, and back cover. Is your copy missing the 'O' on the title page? Thanks, Albinoflea 05:44, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

My copy is exactly as you described yours, i missed the 'O' in the title page, sorry. About the capitalization there isn´t real a rule for title capitalization in portuguese, it changes from book to book, that´s why i generaly enter as it is. In this case though i´ve some doubts now, once it misses the 'O' in the cover and spine, and in the title page is only 'O Planeta'. The correct title must be as it is in the copyright statment. I saw in the number 65 of this pub series, in the list of publicated titles, and this book appears as 'O Planeta sobre a Mesa' with this exactly capitalization, and also in page 5, in the Introduction when Robinson is refering to the poem of Wallace Stevens, the same capitalization with the 'O' is used. And as this is the most correct translation of the original title, being the 'O' the equivalent to the 'The'. So my finaly sugestion would be 'O Planeta sobre a Mesa'. If you want to make the changes once you have moderator privileges, and it wiil be faster, go ahead. Thanks. Wolland 18:25, 28 March 2016 (UTC)

Okay, that's the outcome I was contemplating as well. I've gone ahead and made the change. Thanks, Albinoflea 02:19, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Green Mars, Blue Mars

In July 2015 you wrote on my talk page, asking me two questions regarding Kim Stanley Robinson's two novels "Green Mars" and "Blue Mars". Because you probably have stopped monitoring my talk page, I thought you would like to know that I now have answers for you. 1) Answer to "Green Mars" question. 2) Answer to "Blue Mars" question. Cheers, Patrick -- Herzbube ^Talk 21:17, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

Possible Typos 10-Apr

Here is a possible typo:

• appreication - Kim Stanley Robinson: An Appreication in Norwescon 30 Program Book

Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:04, 10 April 2016 (UTC)

Yep; fixed it. Thanks!Albinoflea 02:43, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

The Best Fantasy Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Found an image URL for this pub. --Zapp 12:10, 15 April 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! Albinoflea 03:25, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

The Best Fantasy Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

Added notes and cover scan to your verified The Best Fantasy Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.SFJuggler 05:29, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

Looks good, thanks! Albinoflea 03:26, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

The Lucky Strike notes

I added an LCCN link to your verified The Lucky Strike. --MartyD 11:38, 9 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks! Albinoflea 04:20, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Font normalization in Romanian

Hello ! As some Romanian characters are being normalized in this db (Ş / ş / Ţ / ţ becoming official Ș / ș / Ț / ț, as per this exchange), this affects Marian Truţă's name in your verified, which has become Marian Truță's. Thanks ! Linguist 08:16, 13 May 2016 (UTC).

Excellent, Thanks! Albinoflea 02:52, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

For the same reason, a few minor changes in some titles here and here. Thanks. Linguist 10:38, 3 June 2016 (UTC).

Disch's A Child's Garden of Grammar poems

I've been working on indexing Disch's A Child's Garden of Grammar, and several of the non-genre poems have been combined into single entries in various issues of Asimov's, eg. November 1991, for which you're a verifier. To match the records to their appearance in the above collection, these combined poems would need to be separated, eg. From: A Child's Garden of Grammar - The Present Tense, Epitaph for the Past Tenses, The Future Tense would need to appear separately as The Present Tense and Epitaph for the Past Tenses and The Future Tense. I'd like to add these individual records to the issue of Asimov's, if you're in agreement as a verifier – Rkihara and Hauck are OK with changes I've already made to other records for this series. Thanks. PeteYoung 13:04, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

I'm all for it. Thanks! Albinoflea 14:03, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Slovakian and Polish transliterations of KSR works

Hi, I am working on transliterations and almost all of the Slovakian and Polish titles by KSR that you had verified need transliterations. Do you want to add these or are you ok with me getting them added? Thanks Anniemod 08:44, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

I'd be happy for you to add the transliterations. Thanks! Albinoflea 15:31, 19 July 2016 (UTC)

OK - you should see these trickling down slowly as I work through the page in the next couple of days - not just these two languages but anything Eastern and Central European that may need it :) Anniemod 21:00, 20 July 2016 (UTC)

Thanks so much, I really appreciate it! Let me know if there's anything you need from me. Albinoflea

No, I think we are good with those. I think I got them all - if you see anything I missed, give me a shout. :) Anniemod 04:11, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Great... I think I have a few more Polish magazines to enter; when I get around to them I will let you know. Thanks again! Albinoflea 04:14, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

Forty Signs of Rain

i was thinking of adding
Acknowledgments (Forty Signs of Rain)
About the Author (Forty Signs of Rain)
i know items such as this are kind of grayish, what do you think? thanks. gzuckier 17:00, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks; responded on your Talk page. Albinoflea 19:14, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Science Fiction Chronicle

You have verified some issues of Science Fiction Chronicle. FYI - I've created a wiki page for general information and entry (non-)standards. It's located under magazines or here

Doug H 20:48, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take a look. I only have a couple of issues, but I think entered some of the first into ISFDB and inadvertently wound up setting precedents. Albinoflea 15:59, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

８０年代ＳＦ傑作選〔上〕

I submitted author name changes to how they are credited in Japanese so all of them will be like Zelazny's and Gibson's entries. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:14, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you! Albinoflea 03:24, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Russian translations of Kim Stanley Robinson's works

FYI, your verified Russian translations of KSR's works have been changed to comply with the new standard for non-Latin author names. The author name has been changed to "Ким Стенли Робинсон". Ahasuerus 22:39, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Great, thanks for the head's up. Albinoflea 00:43, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Solaris, Été 1989

Hello, please note that all the items in this publication that you entered are tagged as being in english (which is likely not the case) perhaps because you kept your default language. They also do not respect the french capitalization rules (Capital only on the first word and proper nouns). There is also one unlinked review (I've linked it now). Can you have a look at it? Thanks. Hauck 06:07, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Ugh... thanks for pointing out the language issue; it must have set to English as my default like you say, but the Title level record probably switched to French when I merged the Editor records. I've gotten those fixed now.

As for the capitalization, that's what I get for copy/pasting from Noosfere. :(

Hopefully those are all fixed now as well, but if you notice anything amiss please let me know.

I was also just looking at the documentation on the Wiki and I don't see anything about proper capitalization rules for any language other than English either on the Help:Screen:EditPub page or the How to enter foreign language editions page. It seems like it should be mentioned or linked from one of these pages... do you know if it is somewhere else I'm not looking?

Thanks, Albinoflea 23:32, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

"The Monster in the Mirror"

A while ago, you verified a transient book as The Monster in the Mirror: Gender and the Sentimental - Gothic Myth in Frankenstein. However, I am looking at the same edition and the title page reads "Sentimental/Gothic". All right with you if I change that? (I am also going to add the table of contents to the notes.) --Vasha77 00:30, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

That should be fine; I will have access to the book tomorrow when I get back to work, so I should be able to check on it then.

If I recall, for this series most of the books already had stub entries, and I just scanned the covers and uploaded them. It's possible that I didn't catch the punctuation discrepancy. Albinoflea 00:40, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Finally had a chance to check in on this; the slash is correct. Thanks for catching this. Albinoflea 00:55, 8 November 2016 (UTC)

Complete Novel

Hi. I added a comment here to MOHearn's topic on The New Adventures of Frankenstein, and wanted to ask you about your comment as I'm not getting something. It looks to me like the editor has added the NOVEL Frankenstein Lives Again to the MAGAZINE New Adventures of Frankenstein. I've always been under the impression that when doing so, you treat the novel as a SERIAL and instead of appending (Part X of Y), you append (Complete Novel) to the title and type it as SERIAL. Then you variant that to the original novel. However, if the content is SHORTFICTION, it would just be entered as such with nothing appended and it would be typed for LENGTH, if known. Am I missing something here? Thanks, Doug / Vornoff 07:11, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

The Martians

I've expanded the Note for our verified The Martians to include the publication date info and the map. Cheers. PeteYoung 04:25, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Similarly with The Memory of Whiteness, covering publication info and the cover artist. PeteYoung 04:30, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Looks good; thanks! Albinoflea 03:26, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Magazines in Science Fiction Chronicle

You'd started a separate thread under the Rules and Discussion, but don't seem to be getting any traction. It looks as if you (or someone) did allow the references to the EDITOR records even without resolution to some of our points. I've more to issues with magazine reviews to enter, but don't want to push things. Is the discussion likely to get somewhere, or do I need more issues to force things along? For now, I'm going to enter the issues and skip the magazine reviews and go back to enter them later - depending on how discussions go. I have to do a second edit for the cover anyway. Doug H 15:47, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi Doug,

Yes, someone did pass those edits through before I had a chance to go back and place a hold on them after I started looking into the guidelines... from what I can see it looks like it was Dominique, but I don't think he's weighed in on the Rules & Standards discussion.

Also, my intent was not to single you out, I hadn't come across this situation in the moderator queue for some time and I was honestly a bit confused by the conflicting instructions I came across. You're correct that this particular situation runs counter to normal guidelines because of that decision long ago to group issues into editor records, and since it was implemented in the database rather than the display layer it has created some unintended consequences.

I'll see if I can nudge the conversation along a little, we'll see how that goes. Albinoflea 00:47, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Et le voila Doug H 03:56, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

And maybe not. I have the issues in hand but would like to get rid of them. Care to advise on the safest way to enter these without causing poking the bear? The discussion mentioned automation so as long as it can move forward I'm not fussy. I'm leaning towards ESSAY with a format of 'Review of magazine "Magazine, issue id" by editor'. Would that pass moderation easily and yet be clear to find and implement for a later conversion? Doug H 19:33, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Hajime Sorayama

So, the three Russian titles (the covers) here are all in your books so I am just asking for all 3 at the same time. You have a note on all 3 that the credit is in English. I would like to get that fixed (someone was a bit overzealous on changing to the Japanese names) but you have the name as Sorayama Hajime and not Hajime Sorayama. Can you verify it is indeed like that and change it to the English variant, variant them and so on? :) Thanks! Anniemod 22:37, 15 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for noticing this; I'm happy to make the change. It is listed in the book exactly like I noted in the pub record, and I always found it odd that the original credit was in English and not in Russian. Should there be two English language variants (one Western order, one Eastern order) because of the differing name order, or should I just use the existing English language Western order variant? Thanks, Albinoflea 03:11, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I would make two different ones if I was making the changes - just to keep it the same as in the book. Up to you though - but we seem to have other cases where we have double ones for languages where first and last do not get printed in the expected order (Hungarian for example) :) As for it not being in Russian -- my guess is that they made a decision to keep the name as they found it somewhere - explains the inverted name... The 90s in the Eastern block were a bit interesting in terms of copyrights - see how hard it is to even figure out where the Bulgarians stole some of the covers from. At least this one had a credit :) Annie 03:18, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I created the second variant and changes have been made. When the guidelines are vague I prefer to err on the side of recording what is listed in the book. :) Albinoflea 04:09, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Yep, I absolutely agree. Now it seems like I need to go talk to a lot of PVs because I think that most of those English probably also do not have the Japanese name in Japanese... Thanks for fixing these 3 :) Annie 04:42, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Ozone #3

Hello, I've corrected some spelling mistakes for this magazine but there is likely a word missing in this title (between "ou un" and "sauf"). Hauck 11:07, 25 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the help, I've added the missing "vaporisateur" to the title you've indicated; I've also finished entering the contents. Albinoflea 05:26, 26 December 2016 (UTC)

Books into Film: Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep? / Blade Runner

Would you please double check the spelling of "andriods" in Books into Film: Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep? / Blade Runner (from your verified Firsts: The Book Collector's Magazine (October, 1999))? If the typo is only in the database, it should be corrected. If the typo is also in the pub, a note should be added. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 03:46, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Typo on my part; it has been corrected. Thanks for catching! Albinoflea 02:03, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Language check

Hello,

Can you please confirm that Alaya Dawn Johnson's third story in Metamorphosis is indeed in Spanish? If so, maybe a pub note is in order. If not, what is its English name and so on (so I can variant and fix that). Thanks! Annie 20:00, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

The story is in Spanish, and there is no indication that it is a translation from English, or any note in the pub indicating it was published elsewhere... I'll add a note to the Pub. Albinoflea 06:07, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for checking! Annie 17:59, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Corrections in Drowned Worlds

I have changed the length of several stories in your verified publication Drowned Worlds in accordance with the information given by the editor here --Vasha 15:26, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

February 1994 Asimov's

I've corrected the page numbers the illustrated stories in the February 1994 issue of Asimov's. In all cases except the first story, we incorrectly had had the story starting on the page where the text begins as opposed to the title page which also has the illustration. The first story was already listed on the correct page. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 02:54, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, appreciate it. Albinoflea 03:12, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

ISBN-10s vs. ISBN-13s

When you get a chance, could you please review this discussion starting with "associated with warning flags at the moderating phase"? It contains a discussion of ISBN-10s vs. ISBN-13s as well as certain title type/pub type mismatches. Ahasuerus 18:22, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Initials as names

Hello, in this issue you created two "new" authors by using the initials of the authors, I suppose that you used the signature at the end of the reviews/essays. IIRC we usually enter the full author's name to avoid creating a multiplicity of aliases (and imagine the number of different RS!). I've stumbled on this because "VH" was not linked to the canonical author. I've taken the liberty to change them. Hauck 06:55, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks; I'll keep that in mind. My inclination is to always record what's there in/on the publication itself, but I know there are lots of exceptions here to this guiding principle. Albinoflea 18:42, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Bibliographical life here wouldn't be fun without exceptions (and possibly exceptions to exceptions). Hauck 18:51, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Sequence of URL in Webpages field (Julie/Eloisa)

Hi, I noticed some problems with the webpages for Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (and notice you are on duty there, so I write to you). For one, the English-language variant Title webpages are not in sequence stated vols I to IV. Although I cut and paste the URLs in correct sequence, the software is too smart for my purpose. Presumably because there is no change in the set of 4 URLs, this view shows no Proposed Changes in the Webpages field, Submission 3357744.

The other problem is a big one and my Note makes it clear. But the 4 URL are in sequence III I II IV. (I quit this now.) --Pwendt|talk 22:32, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Fantastyka 9(72) wrzesień 1988

In your verified Fantastyka 9(72) wrzesień 1988, you have a "Review of nongenre nonfiction Czarne dziury: koniec wszechświata?Question mark by John Taylor". The words Question mark are usually a copy/paste artifact if you copy from a work with one of our transliteration question marks so I submitted a change to remove it. If you really want the words there, feel free to revert it back. Annie 17:50, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

ugh. Thanks for catching (and fixing) that! Albinoflea 03:39, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

The Memory of Whiteness

Hello, a new contributor (Ratioprosperous) found the artist for your verified here. Hauck 01:36, 1 July 2017 (EDT)

Thanks for the note, been trying to track that one down for a while. Albinoflea 19:49, 2 July 2017 (EDT)

Future Sports

Changed date from June to July according to the copyright page. --Vasha 00:38, 4 July 2017 (EDT)

Excellent, thanks! Albinoflea 17:03, 4 July 2017 (EDT)

B. W. Clough

In accordance with discussion on Moderator Board, I changed the canonical name of B. W. Clough to Brenda W. Clough, which affected this verified publication of yours. --Vasha 02:03, 12 August 2017 (EDT)

Die Marsianer

Hello Albinoflea, in this publication are different titles of a story

• Ein Argument für den Einsatz hundertprozentig sicherer Terraformungstechniken (in the toc)
• Ein Argument für den Einsatz hundertprozentig sicherer Terraformierungstechnologien (at the title page of the story)

I will add a note. Ok? Regards Henna 08:07, 22 December 2017 (EST)

Sounds good. Thanks! Albinoflea 23:50, 27 December 2017 (EST)