User talk:AndyHat

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Things to figure out:

  • Hosting my own cover art (what size, is it ok?)
  • Getting cover art from libarything?
  • Are Lone Star Stories/Strange Horizons/Farrago's ok to enter (in this year's YFBH)?
For now, I think I'll hold off on webzines and watch http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB_talk:Policy for renewed debate on the subject. --AndyHat 20:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)


Welcome!

Hello, AndyHat, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

Note: Image uploading isn't entirely automated. You're uploading the files to the wiki which will then have to be linked to the database by editing the publication record.

Please be careful in editing publications that have been primary verified by other editors. See Help:How to verify data#Making changes to verified pubs. But if you have a copy of an unverified publication, verifying it can be quite helpful. See Help:How to verify data for detailed information.

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! 20:44, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Some answers

"Hosting my own cover art (what size, is it ok?)"

You can host your own scans of course. We'll let you link to them too if they're not huge. We'd prefer a known stable source we're allowed to link to - for instance, most of my covers are uploaded to Amazon. Size: well, 500 pixels high max seems a good guideline, and I've rarely needed a file bigger than 200-300K. BLongley 20:50, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

"Getting cover art from libarything?"

Probably not OK, I don't think we've established their fair usage policy. BLongley 20:50, 17 April 2008 (UTC)
Neat, I get answers to questions I hadn't even written up beyond a note to myself yet :) As I've been cataloging my books, I've been uploading the scans to librarything, so I'll check with them and see if they would mind links in from isfdb where they have user-provided scans. If they won't allow it, then I guess the images will have to live on my server (I have my own domain registered, so that would be fairly stable). For various reasons, I don't see uploading to amazon as an acceptable option. --AndyHat 03:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, you put the questions on your talk page so I presumed you wouldn't mind talking about them! One thing to check is whether LibraryThing mind deep-linking to just the image - several sites (e.g. Flickr) encourage sharing but only if we use their approved links which go to the page the image is displayed on rather than the images alone. Of course, if you construct the full HyperLink in Notes this will work and link to to a page rather than an image, with whatever alt tag you like: but be VERY careful, malformed HTML in there can cause major display problems for following content. It's even possible to break a submission so badly that it can't be approved OR rejected normally, so please test first. We're constantly looking for good sites we can use acceptably, and are slowly gathering permissions for such, although really we want our own image store. I'm letting Al recover from all the work done moving the ISFDB recently before I push him about this again though. BLongley 18:16, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Dead Reckonings, Spring 2007

I approved this submission, but could you look at some of the book reviewers? In particular, the later reviewers are STJ and JMH, which are suspiciously similar to the editors names S. T. Joshi and Jack M. Haringa. Alvonruff 11:38, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

They're credited that way in brackets at the end of the reviews, obviously indicating that S. T. Joshi or Jack M. Haringa wrote them. As I read the rules, the credit is supposed to be entered exactly as it appears, and then add a variant to link it to the real author, which I will now need to figure out how to do. Or is it acceptable to just expand the initials in this case? --AndyHat 13:51, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I'd expand the initials but leave notes about the expansions. The problem with Initials-Only is that they are going to clash even more easily than full names: e.g. go search for author 'David Alexander' or 'Steve Jackson'. We've already got two or more of each of them, imagine how many more problems we'd have if every two or three letter abbreviation was entered that way? There's also the issue of regularization - if all we know is the initials we may have to accept it that way, but maybe "S. T. J." and "J. M. H." are the proper forms? BLongley 18:26, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I notice now that you've submitted some edits relating to this, so I've held them till you've had a chance to respond. Any other moderator willing to take over, feel free to override my hold. One comment is that "Editorial" should probably be expanded to include the name of the magazine - the "exactly as printed" rule doesn't apply if it would lead to thousands of duplicates. The last isn't held as it may be OK, but I'm a book specialist that doesn't keep up with magazine standards. The held edits are:
960028 	ON HOLD (BLongley) 	MakePseudonym 	2008-04-18 10:24:52 	AndyHat 	STJ
960029 	ON HOLD (BLongley) 	MakePseudonym 	2008-04-18 10:25:16 	AndyHat 	JMH
960030 	ON HOLD (BLongley) 	MakeVariant 	2008-04-18 10:28:52 	AndyHat 	Editorial
960032 	N 	PubUpdate 	2008-04-18 10:40:22 	AndyHat 	Dead Reckonings, Spring 2007

BLongley 19:40, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I know my preference would be to expand the initials and add a note as you suggest, but that does seem to contradict the help page. I'll be happy to change it or leave it as directed. --AndyHat 20:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
The Help Pages often lag behind a vague consensus reached later... there's too much democracy here at times. :-/ But pointing out failings might help, so keep doing it! BLongley 21:14, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
The fourth edit does as you suggested and adds the magazine name and date to the editorial and capsule reviews entries (I realized I should probably do that to disambugate when I enter the second issue). That edit also adds the issue number in the notes. Does the third edit (which was there to give credit to Joshi and Haringa in addition to "The Editors" as published) need to be redone since the fourth edit changed the title?
I thinking this probably wasn't the ideal item for my first publication entry on isfdb, but it's what happened to be on top of the stack :) But hopefully if I can get this one right, anything else in my collection will be a cinch to enter. --AndyHat 20:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I admire your spirit! Yes, it would probably have been simpler to start with a simple additional book publication to a title we already have, or adding some details to an existing pub with no page-count or cover-artist or price or such - but if you want to dive in with a big submission we'll try and help you. Not necessarily immediately - I see other Mods are doing stuff but not all Mods are experts in everything (in fact, most aren't, but they know what they can deal with and what to leave alone). I'll leave these alone for a bit and hope a Magazine-specialist Mod takes it on. If not - well, I prefer to see things sorted, so might read the latest guidelines and venture into the Magazine side for a bit. BLongley 21:14, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
It seems that you had the intuitive conclusion about the correctness of expanding the author's name if it is abundantly clear who the author is. A common situation where this occurs is when an editor is involved. If the editor is credited on the masthead it is quite obvious who the initials belong to. It is also alright to expand the name of an artist from the initials if you are confident about the identity of the artist. As long as you document your logic it will be easier to make any appropriate changes in the future. Feel free to question any of the documentation. Trying to document every possible case has a tendency to make things even more complex and confusing.--swfritter 22:09, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I might also note this about artists. If they are only credited by last name, only use the last name. It is generally only initials that can be expanded.--swfritter 22:21, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
Per what I've seen here I'll
  • Reject the proposed Make Pseudonym for STJ -> S. T. Joshi as apparently the publication credits S. T. Joshi at the end of the article. I agree that if we followed the rules to letter that crediting STJ and adding Pseudonym would be the right way to do it.
  • Reject the proposed Make Pseudonym for JMH -> Jack M. Haringa as apparently the publication credits Jack M. Haringa at the end of the article.
  • Reject the proposed Proposed Make Variant for Editorial (Dead Reckonings, Spring 2007) by The Editors to Editorial by S. T. Joshi+Jack M. Haringa.
  • Edited the [/cgi-bin/title.cgi?873178 Editorial (Dead Reckonings, Spring 2007)] title record and changed the author from "The Editors" to S. T. Joshi+Jack M. Haringa.
  • Approved the pub-update to Dead Reckonings, Spring 2007 where the author names are changed from STJ/JMH to S. T. Joshi/Jack M. Haringa.
  • Approved the title update for Ramsey Campbell, Probably to Ramsey Campbell, Probably (Dead Reckonings, Spring 2007). I'm assuming that Ramsey Campbell, Probably is an ongoing series?
  • Approved the Make Pseudonym for Stefan_Dziemianowicz as the canonical (parent) author and Stefan_R._Dziemianowicz as the "pseudonym."
  • Approved the Make Pseudonym for Robert_Morrish as the canonical (parent) author and Bob_Morrish as the "pseudonym."

(unindent) AndyHat - As we are going against the established rules on this publication could you please update the Dead Reckonings, Spring 2007 to document where the initials are used and where S. T. Joshi/Jack M. Haringa are credited? It just needs to say something like "Throughout this publication the editors are credited as STJ and JMH. The editor's full names are credited on page ### and those have been used for this publication record rather than their initials." Thanks! Marc Kupper (talk) 03:28, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Demon Theory

I know I've rejected a couple of your edits, which may sound unfriendly but isn't meant to be. I THINK I've gathered your intentions and made alternate edits instead: have a look at the title record. The Title is important - it's what links to reviews, awards, etc. Different publications for the same title are important too, we want them ALL - but if it's the same author, same title, it's another publication rather than a variant title. When there's just a suffix or a prefix difference to the title it's a bit of a judgement call - but we can't accept all such variations as we'd be inundated by "Star Trek: XXXX" and "XXXX (Star Trek) and "XXXX (Star Trek The Next Generation)" and "XXXX (Star Trek:TNG)" variations of "XXXX", for instance. I'm calling the "A Novel" suffix as unimportant so merged it. You may see different moderators respond differently, as the edges of the guidelines are a bit vague: e.g. if there were variations "THE Demon Theory" and "A Demon Theory" we'd probably accept those. And if there was a "Daemon Theory" we'd probably accept that too. I know we're inconsistent - e.g. in some series people have divided "Three" and "3" titles into variants and people like me don't think it's worthwhile unless someone's gone to that effort already. And some US editors might not see the point of me making "Honor" and "Honour" variants - it's national pride for me, but probably helps differentiate US and UK editions at least. Confused? You will be! But look at the positive side - when we're THAT unsure about something, we're open to persuasion if you DO have a strong opinion! :-) BLongley 20:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Your rejections made perfect sense to me. If I'd seen an option to merge rather than create a variant, that's what I would have done, too, but while I saw a link to "unmerge titles" I couldn't find one to put them together. Playing around some more, I see that merging is an option after an advanced search, so next time I'll do it right :) --AndyHat 20:35, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
I think the simple (OK, the "NOT Advanced") Search is getting a bit misleading now - I've never yet met anybody that wants the reviews and covers and Editors included. So do play about with Advanced search, although bear with us as the last option is still a bit broken and may cause disturbing Purple errors. But you do seem to have your head screwed-on the right way and I'd rather you experiment and comment than give up. Just recognize that we're not a 24/7 Approval and Advice service and we'll occasionally leave edits to other experts, have patience, and soon you'll be advising others. BLongley 21:27, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

The River Knows Its Own

Is this the first printing for all of these stories? Any of them reprinted from other sources? I note that none of them were in the database before the collection was added so that may well be the case.--swfritter 01:28, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Based on publicity for the book, I believe some of the stories are reprints. Unfortunately, the book itself provides no information on prior publication, so I'll have to do further research to figure out which are new and which are reprint. --AndyHat 03:12, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
He does have a bibliography at his website but it looks like the last time it was updated was 2005.--swfritter 19:29, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Author merge of Donald R. Burleson, Ph.D. into Donald R. Burleson

I'm concerned about merging Donald_R._Burleson,_Ph.D. into Donald_R._Burleson and have put this on hold for the moment. I assume that when you entered Dead Reckonings, Fall 2007 that you entered the author's name as stated in the publication which is correct per Template:PublicationFields:Author. If the "Ph.D." was entered in error both times then we'll go ahead with the merge otherwise we should add variant titles to map the two "Ph.D." titles to Donald R. Burleson. Marc Kupper (talk) 08:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the "Ph.D." appears in the Fall 2007 issue. (Oddly, in the Spring 2007 issue, his name was given without the "Ph.D.") I'm still not 100% clear on where the line is between a merge and creating variants, so I'll defer to your opinion on the correct way to handle it. --AndyHat 16:23, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
They'd be variants. I know this causes problems, e.g. "S. P. Meek" is here both as Colonel and Captain, and sometimes without military rank: and Jerry Pournelle sometimes shows off his Ph.D. and sometimes not: but the Variants bring them all together eventually. The line is unclear, but mostly all an author name requires is regularization. (Space out the initials, contract the abbreviations (for some reasons it's "Ph.D." here rather than "Ph. D.") remember whether there's a comma before a "III" suffix, etc.) Author Merges are very dangerous - e.g. just merging "Brian Aldiss and "Brian W. Aldiss" would take hundreds of hours of rework to sort out, same for "Robert Heinlein" and "Robert A. Heinlein". BLongley 20:37, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
Normally the line is that we would create variants. The goal is that a publication record should show the names exactly as stated in the publications. As a name may be stated different ways between the table of contents, editor's introduction, title page, tail of story, etc. we have also decided to use the title page as the canonical source. When I'm entering/verifying a publication I'll check that the story titles and names are spelled/used consistently and will add a note if I see a discrepancy.
We had made an exception to the "enter exactly as stated" rule for the STJ/JMH initials but in thinking about this now I suspect what should happen is a Rules and standards discussions item to discuss if the initials should be entered as STJ, S. T. J., etc. and if we should go ahead with crediting STJ/JMH and adding variant titles. In re-reading Template:PublicationFields:Author it looks like the initial editorial should be credited to "The Editors" with a variant title to the canonical names (S. T. Joshi and Jack M. Haringa) and we'll work out if we should use STJ/JMH or some other format. Marc Kupper (talk) 21:02, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Autopsy and Other Tales

Just wondering if "Millipede Press" has changed its name to "Centipede Press". Also, I have added the full 13 digit ISBN to the ISBN field so that the book could be found by ISBN and added a note that the ISBN listed by OCLC as well as by Amazon.com. Ahasuerus 16:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, Millipede Press and Centipede Press are "sister imprints": Millipede for trade paperbacks and affordable hardcovers, Centipede for collectible hardcovers. Distribution for either appears to be done under the Millipede name (at least, my Paypal receipt for The Autopsy is from Millipede, and that's what amazon lists it as; but the book itself says "Centipede Press" and has no mention of Millipede). --AndyHat 19:12, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
That sounds like very useful info - would you care to start off the publisher pages for Publisher:Millipede_Press and Publisher:Centipede_Press? BLongley 19:22, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, sounds very useful -- and explains why OCLC had "Millipede Press" in their pre-publication record! Ahasuerus 19:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Stigmata: An Anthology of Writing and Art

I am reviewing Stigmata: An Anthology of Writing and Art (which must have taken a while to enter!) and it raises a couple of interesting questions. Are the "Untitled" pieces all credited the way they are currently entered, e.g. "Untitled, Originally appeared in Nyctalops 11/12" or "Untitled, Self-published in RIP #1"? Are the translated titles published in the book alongside with the original titles, e.g. "The Volunteers (Die Freiwillingen)"? Ahasuerus 00:27, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that did take a while. It it weren't a World Fantasy Award nominee I probably would've left it for much later :) I do want to try to figure out how its publisher is connected to Centipede/Millipede; this book is listed in their catalog (and was edited by their publisher). I'm guessing this was a one-off in 2001 before Jerard Walters started up Centipede for real in 2005.
Anyways, within the art portfolios images are credited as they would be in an art catalog, so they have the title one one line (for titled works); a few works explictly say "Untitled", but others just have no title. Then there's a line with the year, medium and size, and then a line with the original publication information, or "Previously unpublished". For the untitled works, I put in enough of this other information to create distinct titles (which is why a few of the works have the size specified, and in some cases I had to use the page number to distinguish). Anyways, I'm open to suggestions on ways to improve those titles (though I'm travelling this weekend, so it'll be next week before I can go back and edit them).
The titles with translations are exactly as printed. --AndyHat 01:38, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification! I think it's a reasonable approach to a tricky situation, so I approved the submission, added your explanation to the Notes field and massaged its format a bit. Could you please take a look at the result to see whether it makes sense when you have a chance? Once everything looks OK, we can post a comment on the "Standards" page and perhaps other editors may come up with ways to improve the way these titles are recorded. Thanks! Ahasuerus 02:31, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
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