User talk:Arctorbob/Archive1

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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!.--Dirk P Broer 10:53, 4 November 2019 (EST)

Dispersion

Unfortunately, it is a bit too early to add this book. We try to add books no more than 90 days before publication (60 days preferred usually) to ensure that our data is as correct as possible (way too many books get announced and never published). This one had not been even announced by SubPress yet, let alone dated. So I had to reject your addition - but as soon as it is within acceptable range, we will add it. Thanks for the submission, even if I had to reject it.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask! Annie 23:00, 18 November 2019 (EST)

Thanks for the feedback Annie. When the work is within 60 days of publication, do I need to re-apply to add it or is it handled automatically or something? Arctorbob 08:27, 19 November 2019 (EST)

It is semi-automatic. We have a process that grabs data from Amazon which we then clean and use. It is not perfect and it can miss things. If you want to come and add it, you can. If you don’t, considering that it is from a major SF writer and coming out from a major SF publisher, someone will add it. Worst case scenario - I am buying that one for sure when it is out and I will add it when my copy is here. Annie 08:59, 19 November 2019 (EST)

The Devil's Dreamer

Thanks for adding this one. I will take a closer look at the other one we have but a couple of small notes:

• Is that a mass market paperback or a bigger book? If it is a mass market paperback, then the format should be "pb" and not "tp".

Annie, I've changed it to "pb" as indeed, it is a mass market paperback. Sorry for the confusion. Arctorbob 11:18, 22 November 2019 (EST)

Absolutely normal - the DB can be interesting. That is why I am stopping by and asking. Thanks for the quick answer! :) Annie 11:21, 22 November 2019 (EST)

• When we already have a book in the DB, instead of using New Novel (or another New link), you can go to the title here in this case and use "Add Publication to This Title" from the left menu. Less typing for you and your book will be added to the same title record (in this case I had to manually merge them after approving the book). Alternatively, you can go to the publication/book record and use "Clone" from the left menu. For novels, there is no real difference between the two. For collections and anthologies, new/add will require to add the contents later or as part of the submission (and then someone will need to merge them), clone will get you the contents included.

Let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Your book is here. Annie 13:07, 21 November 2019 (EST)

サイレントヒル

A question for this one as well :)

• You added "Konami Novels" as a publication series. That means that if the book is published by another publisher or translated, it won't be a Konami novel. Is that the case? If this is a title series (aka - this book really always belong to the Konami series), then this will be a regular series and not a pub one.

Annie, is not a title series but a series of novels (not only Silent Hill related) created by the publisher. It is similar to the SF Masterworks series from Gollancz (as in http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?289341), the Hayakawa Bunko SF (as in JP Neuromancer http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?637008) or the New Ace SF Special one (as in http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?23643). Japanese publishers seem to prefer the word "label", and "Konami Novels" is used as such. Seems to be an equivalent of "imprint". Please let me know if I should change it or if it fits the definition of Pub. Series. Arctorbob 05:52, 22 November 2019 (EST)

• About: Illustrations by 伊藤暢達 (Masahiro Itō). If these are on the cover, we add a COVERART. If they are internal ones, we add an INTERIORART record. If they re both, we add both. If you can let me know what they are, I can add them here (or you can try yourself).

The book is here. Thanks! Annie 13:21, 21 November 2019 (EST)

Same questions about the second one and the third one. Thanks! Annie 13:23, 21 November 2019 (EST)

Annie, the book has a few illustrations inside (applies to all 3 books). The cover art is made by another artist, but I didn't add it initially since I haven't find his first name correct transliteration in English (his name can be pronounced in 2 ways, not sure which is the correct one). I've added it only how it appears in Japanese since there is no transliteration field for cover/interior art.

You will be able to add the transliterations later -- for most things (author names, contents, publishers, series names and so on, you add transliterations after the approval is done - the only thing you can add transliteration to during that first submission is the book name. You do not need to have the transliteration handy - we want is as credited in the book anyway. Once it is in the DB, you or someone else will add the transliteration later - and if we do not have it for awhile, someone will need to do some digging. Don't let a lack of transliteration stop you from adding books.:) I will add the Interior art pieces to these 3 then (unless you want to try?) Or I can make it in one so you see where it goes and how, then you can do it in the others? Let me know. Annie 11:12, 22 November 2019 (EST)

Annie, I've added it for all 3 books, thanks! Arctorbob 11:22, 22 November 2019 (EST)

I will approve them and correct them a bit - we use the name of the book as the name for the interior art record if it is not specifically named in the book. This way when you go to the illustrator page, you can see the list of books it is in and not just a list of hundreds of titles called illustration :) Unlike Introduction or Epilogues essays(for example) where we will call it Introduction (Name of the book) and Epilogue (Name of the book), there is only one type of interior art - so we default that (and the cover arts names) to the name of the book. I hope this makes sense. If not, please ask. Annie 11:35, 22 November 2019 (EST)

Annie, thanks for the information. It looks good with those changes, thank you! Arctorbob 23:22, 22 November 2019 (EST)

(unindent) One more thing :) If this is indeed a novelization, we have a checkbox for that :) Press Edit on that record and look somewhere around the middle of the screen. Locate the "novelization" checkbox and click it. You may also want to add a note inside of this record mentioning what it is a novelization of - as any publication of it will also be a novelization so the note belongs to the title, not the book. Annie 11:37, 22 November 2019 (EST)

Annie, thanks for pointing this out. I've made 2 changes (separate change request) to each of the 3 titles to address this issue. Arctorbob 23:22, 22 November 2019 (EST)

About the transliterations. Once the records are created, they need to be fixed one by one. :) So if the title and the publication and the cover have the wrong one, you need three edits - they are not connected anymore. The only time when a transliteration is added in bulk is during a New publication creation - it will go to all 2 or 3 newly created records (publication, title and cover if added at the start). Anything else and any update after that is one by one. Same about the titles and the author names. Annie 23:38, 22 November 2019 (EST)

I'll keep that in mind. Thanks for the info. Arctorbob 23:45, 22 November 2019 (EST)

That applies to the dates as well. If you change a title date, the publication one may also need changing. :) Annie 02:16, 23 November 2019 (EST)

Brain Valley

When you are using NDL as a source, you can add a few things to the record:

• The source in the notes. This is always strongly recommended regardless of source
• The NDL number can be added as an External ID. As the NDL record contains also the JNB/JPNO number inside, you can also add that.

See how I did it here. As it seems you read Japanese, you should be able to get oriented on the NDL page to see which numbers we need exactly (NDL Bibliographic ID goes under NDL, including the leading zeros and the other one is the National Bibliography No. (JPNO) - not sure what are the names in the Japanese interface). This way someone can go there for more details AND if we have a typo or something else, it can be compared. Thanks! :) Annie 14:16, 23 November 2019 (EST)

PS: You also may want to add "Price does not include consumption tax." in the notes of the books you are adding and not just in the moderator notes. Annie 14:21, 23 November 2019 (EST)

ハヤカワ文庫・JA

I put this change on hold. While it will do exactly what you want it to (update the value in all the books from the pub series), if you look at the list of books here, you will see that some are verified. When changing data which involves verified publications, the policy is to discuss it with the active verifiers before we change their data. I am pretty sure you are correct but with that many books, let's follow the policy. Let me know if you need assistance on how to notify or how to find who to notify and so on. Thanks! Annie 14:28, 23 November 2019 (EST)

Thanks for pointing this out, I had no idea of this required step. I've contacted the verifier (Nihonjoe) since it was the only user on the verifiers for the related change. Arctorbob 00:07, 24 November 2019 (EST)

No worries. Verified means that the person had checked the details against their copy of the book. So if they are still around, it is better to discuss and decide together with them than to change the data and make them wonder what happened. If they are not and the change is not trivial, the post should go to the moderator board. Or you can try to make it - worst case scenario, a moderator will tell you that this needs discussion. It takes a bit longer but this way we try to make sure that the data is as correct as possible. In theory anyway. It is a lot more obvious when you are editing a publication but there are things like this edit that influence the publication directly. Thanks for sending the message! :) Annie 00:34, 24 November 2019 (EST)

Tomorrow's Eve

Are you sure that Tomorrow's Eve is really a mass market paperback (in size)? If it is bigger, it needs to be "tp". About the question here: xxv+[1]+222 will be fine although I would record that as xxvi+222, with some notes on the blank page and what is numbered exactly. Annie 14:48, 23 November 2019 (EST)

Annie, you're right, "tp" is a more accurate value. After reading more carefully the publications field format I realized the difference. I've also added a note on the blank page and followed your advice on using "xxvi+222" as page count. Thanks. Arctorbob 21:50, 23 November 2019 (EST)

Rie Nakajima

First, thanks for adding the transliteration and the other details here. When you do that, we need one more update - "Directory Entry" should contain the last name of the author name (the specific one in the record, not their actual last name - see this one for an example for English author's name in Japanese to see why I am adding the note) written in Latin letters. This way, they will be foundable in the Author Directory and we will know how to sort them in lists. Thanks! Annie 22:28, 23 November 2019 (EST)

Annie, thanks for the info. I've corrected the entry. Arctorbob 22:33, 23 November 2019 (EST)

Thanks for updating it! BTW: adding a link to a user's name does not create a ping-back or a notification. I know you are posting because I have your page in my Watchlist - so if you need to talk to someone and do not think they are monitoring your page (a moderator working with you usually will be monitoring when they post here), you need to post on their Talk page. Annie 22:49, 23 November 2019 (EST)

Understood, thanks for the information. Arctorbob 23:41, 23 November 2019 (EST)

The series change

I can approve these but it will mean that we won't be able to rename the existing series (and no merge for Pub series) later if we decide to keep the series together despite the change in appearance or if it turns out that the books show it differently (as was mentioned, the other editor is not home at the moment). As already mentioned, it is a long weekend in the States so most of the editors are not around. So how about waiting for a few days until we can figure out if we are splitting the series and how we are dealing with it? I can keep the updates on hold for a few days if you prefer not to resubmit later. Annie 02:42, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Oh, I was not aware the Pub Series entries cannot be merged. In that case, allow me to reject the request since creating a new one would complicate further operation. Although this change is the SF not the JA label but I understand the concern. No problem. Arctorbob 02:54, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Yeah, series are... funny - both types. If you look at Advanced Search and do a search that gets more than one result, the merge checkboxes are there for Authors, Publishers and Titles but not for the two types of Series or the awards. So I am trying to make sure we are not setting ourselves up for a major re-edits or for having the data all split for a long time because noone bothered to fix them. Once we figure out one of the series, we can follow a similar path for all of them :) Or not -- but let's try to close the discussion first. Thanks for the understanding! If you really insisted, I would have approved them and then probably given you a hand with any cleanup if we decide to keep them together... :)

PS: As they are your requests, you can cancel at any time even if a moderator has them on hold. :) Annie 03:03, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Translators

We create separate title records for each translation even if the title and the author name are exactly the same -- so each title has its own translator. See for example the 3 different German translations with the name "Der Wüstenplanet" of Dune. If a story is translated again by a different person, instead of merging it with the existing records from the same language, we instead leave it on its own and variant again to the original. Same applies if the same person makes a new translation - it becomes a different text so it gets a variant. Long term, these translators will get migrated to a proper place, shown on author pages when the translators also have other works and so on but for now, we just add notes and make sure the variants are separated: a variant created because of a translation is "the same text, same translator, same title, same author, same language".

Hope this makes sense and let me know if you need any additional details. Annie 03:15, 1 December 2019 (EST)

I see. Then I guess my initial request was accepted by accident and then somehow reverted, it's why I resubmitted since I was not aware of the revert. Thanks for explaining. Arctorbob 03:35, 1 December 2019 (EST)

I suspect so. When the approval (or rejection) is done by mistake (fingers are faster than the brain sometimes :) ), an edit after that can overwrite the change and restore the old data (or do the change that was rejected by mistake) - we do not have a nice "revert" button - the action simply needs to be countered (I managed to delete a pub today I should not have so I had to re-add it again for example). In such cases I would stop by on the editor's page and explain why I reverted it but sometimes people get pulled away or just forget to. Or do not realize it is a new-ish editor and that they may be misunderstanding some of the conventions.

And no worries - if it was indeed an oversight or somehow a second edit overwrote it by mistake, the resubmit was the correct approach. :) Annie 03:52, 1 December 2019 (EST)

Essays with common names

Essays with names such as Introduction, Editor's Afterword and so on should get the title of the book in brackets after them so they are distinguishable from each other. So instead of 編者あとがき, it should be 編者あとがき (人間以前) for example. I fixed it in the books I approved from you today but keep that in mind. Annie 21:53, 14 December 2019 (EST)

Thanks for the feedback, will keep that in mind on any further edits. I've made that change on one of the entry I submitted which was missing the book in parentheses as well. Arctorbob 05:19, 15 December 2019 (EST)

Transliterations and all that

Thanks for adding these. One thing to keep in mind - these are there to assist with searching (plus allowing someone who does not know how to romanize the letters can now have an idea of what the letter are). So as a basic rule, at least one of these should have no special characters at all, preferably not including ū for example - in case you want to use that, adding a second line that clears that one as well is a preferred option. The DB uses Latin-1 and not Unicode so think of "how will someone who has a keyboard that can make special characters search for this". Which is why in some cases you will see multiple transliterations, some of which do not follow any formal rules. We also do not enforce romanization rules - modern or revised Hepburn or the ISO 3602 varieties or anything else is acceptable - and a user using one of them can just add theirs. That's why adding a Kana only version for the ones with Kanji is a good idea -- Japanese users will search that way if they can use a keyboard with Kana; non-Japanese users will use one of the standard romanization schemes to search. Fixing obvious mistakes is welcome but keep in mind that if it is a viable transliteration under any system, you should just add a new one. :) Annie 14:18, 15 December 2019 (EST)

I was not aware of the DB limitation, is also not mentioned in the help icon on the edit form, but thanks for pointing it out.

So, is it better to use for example "shou" instead of "shō"? if that's so, would you recommend to replace transliterations using special characters with ones that use only Latin-1? I don't mind going through all my submissions to fix them, it's just I was not aware Transliterations were searchable or that it would make it hard for a user to search for a title on the DB.

Similarly, is there any difference between Transliteration 1 being Latin-1 and Transliteration 2 being kana characters or vice-versa? (difference in how it's searchable, discoverability or something), if there is no difference I'm thinking on using the kana first (since has less variations), followed by romanization(s) so kana is not left in the middle or similar. Arctorbob 06:16, 16 December 2019 (EST)

The order does not matter :) As For shou - just have both. It is a multi field for a reason. :) Annie 07:53, 16 December 2019 (EST)

デカルトの密室

Hi, I've put the submission for this on hold as there is no explanation for the change of the publication date. Stonecreek 12:11, 23 February 2020 (EST)

Hi Stonecreek, I own the publication and the publication date appears as 2008-06-01 in the copyright page of the book. Before marking it as primary verified my intention was to just update the minor differences I found in the entry and the actual book. Arctorbob 21:58, 23 February 2020 (EST)

Okay, thanks! I'll immediately approve of the submission! Stonecreek 03:12, 24 February 2020 (EST)

アジャストメント

This is a side effect of how our pseudonym works. Titles cannot be on pseudonym pages. So this entry cannot have titles staying under it. So we need to create a parent to move that collection to the page of the actual author. If the collection is a translation of an existing one, that existing one becomes the parent. If it is not, we create the "empty" parent as here which is used just to push the collection where it belongs. Hope that makes sense. Annie 15:56, 26 February 2020 (EST)

Annie, thanks for explaining, I understand now why there was that duplication. I found a help page on the topic above, is this the related source? http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Help:How_to_record_a_variant_title#A_Single_Entry_Under_an_Alternate_Name Arctorbob 10:36, 27 February 2020 (EST)

Yep. There are some intricacies of the DB like this one which are a side effect of design decision taken a long time ago - you just get used to them :) Annie 12:22, 27 February 2020 (EST)

SF aus Japan

Hello Bob, can you help me with the variants and authors of these anthology? The toc is also printed in Japanese part 1 and part 2. There is also a transliteration:

• MOUHITOTSU NO NIPPON
• UCHŪ ZARU NO TE
• ORE NI KANSURU UWASA
• TOKI NO UZU
• SAKE
• ZANZŌ
• PASUTORARU
• MIA NI OKURU SHINJU
• SEIKŌSHA
• CHI NI WA HEIWA O

Many thanks Henna 16:10, 29 February 2020 (EST)

Henna, I don't fully understand your request, could you elaborate? I went through the entry for SF aus Japan you mentioned, checked some of the titles/authors and submitted some fixes and added missing transliterations though. Arctorbob 09:50, 9 March 2020 (EDT)

Henna, I've added some missing parent titles to the ones of the SF aus Japan publication, not sure if this is what you meant in your request (?)

Lastly, I left the parent entry http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2699470 intact, the reason is the first screenshot you shared and the entry's title are different, I'm not sure if I should just change the title of 2699470 being a PV entry. If the title was input incorrectly, you should probably ask the verifier Stonecreek to change the part that says "いまひとつ" to "もうひとつ" (Mouhitotsu). I don't own that book and cannot provide further confirmation on that title. Hope that helps. Arctorbob 10:20, 9 March 2020 (EDT)

Hello Bob, perfect, many thanks for your help. You did exactly what I requested of you. Thanks again. The question about the different title would be passed on to Nihonjoe to double check. Thanks again Henna 16:38, 11 March 2020 (EDT)

Nevertheless She Persisted

Hi Arctorbob, I've put the contents of our verified ebook Nevertheless She Persisted in the correct order (the Kameron Hurley story comes first), however two other things need addressing: first, the ebook has a publication date of "February 2020" on the last page (not 2020-03-08 as is current) and we prefer to record the date of publication in the publication itself over any other source; second, Jo Walton's contribution 'The Jump Rope Rhyme' is a prose poem and not a short story. Seeking your permission as Primary Verifier before these can be changed. Cheers. PeteYoung 17:25, 17 April 2020 (EDT)

PeteYoung, thanks for adding the correct order. Seems that I also didn't add the "|1", "|2" values. I'll be careful to add those on further submissions.

Regarding the publication date, I added "2020-02-00" right before primary verifying it as you can see: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?4594564

However, on the Edit History I see someone else change it from "2020-02-00" to "2020-03-08" which is indeed not accurate. Ref: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?4595013

Sure, let's change the publication date back to "2020-02-00"; and perhaps adding this date difference to the Note field might dissipate any confusion (pub date vs sale start date).

Lastly, indeed Jo Walton's "The Jump Rope Rhyme" is a poem and I didn't properly check POEM was an available option in "Title Type", my apologies. Of course, let's fix this as well and thanks for pointing this out. Arctorbob 03:29, 18 April 2020 (EDT)

Thanks. I'll change the pub date, just waiting for a reply from Vasha77 re. the poem. Cheers. PeteYoung 07:24, 21 April 2020 (EDT)

Magazine dating

We have different rules for dating magazines compared to books (as you had noted). Unless the date is printed in the magazine or can be derived from a schedule (and in this case a note for that needs to be added), we date magazines based on their cover date -- so a magazine from February 2020 will have a date of 2020-02-00 regardless if it went on sale on 2019-11-10 or on 2020-05-01. Is the date printed in this one? If not, the date of 2020-02-00 will be the correct date for it. Annie 01:38, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Annie, the date 2020-02-01 appears in the top right of the cover itself as I pointed out in the notes for moderator field, it appears in Japanese in the form 2020年2月1日印刷・発行 which translates to "Printed and issued on February 1st 2020" (hence why I added 2020-02-01). Arctorbob 02:18, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Ah, I missed the "1" in the corner - I saw the month and year but missed the day somehow. :) I approved that one and added a note to point to the cover. Thanks! Annie 03:19, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Later printing

I had to reject this one. Based on its date, it is a presumed first printing - even when it does not say so. If you change the date on it, we will lose the record for the first printing. Instead, when you are holding a later printing, clone the publication and create a new record for the later (4th in this case) printing. We treat each printing as a separate publication. Feel free to edit any other details you are sure about but please do not convert a first (or only book we have) into a later printing that cannot have the same date. The 4th printing will need to have either the date of 0000-00-00 if you cannot determine a date or whatever date that printing had. Thanks! Annie 01:38, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

I just saw that you after that submitted a clone for the first edition. It is preferable that you do not change one edition into another just to submit a record for the first. There are links to our publications in different places and having the editions changed is not a good idea. So how about you cancel that clone, edit the one we have to indeed become that first printing and then clone for the 4th you were trying to convert the original into? Thanks! Annie 01:41, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Annie, sure, I've made the requested changes. Thanks. Arctorbob 02:47, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Thanks and sorry for the hassle. And thanks for adding both printings! :) Annie 03:25, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Annie, regarding this change, I also wondered how to input the data, so I inputted the 2005 Publish Date (instead of Printing Date) in the Date of Publication field. Some background to clarify: the copyright page has 2 dates, they're labeled as Published/Issued Date and the Printed/Printing Date. This is very common with the publisher in question. On the 1st printing (2005) of the book from this publisher, the printing date (labeled as 印刷) is always earlier to the published date (labeled as 発行). You can refer to the notes here as well. So for the 4th printing of the book, the publisher also leaves the published date to be the same as the publish date of the 1st printing, and on the print date field (which appears as 四刷, indicating 4th) it shows the 2010 date. I have to note that there is no mention whatsoever about "Edition" or "Reissue" on the book, but just a 発行 (Publish, as in the 1st publish date of the work) and a 四刷 (4th Printing) dates. I found the docs to be unclear on this matter. If there's any suggestion on how to record this? Arctorbob 04:00, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

For later printings: we want the "4th printing date" even if the publisher had also printed the original date of the first publication. This is pretty common in reprints (having the original date and either a note on later printing on a print line (in US books for example) - we always want the date of the printing (as this is what makes this book different from the first printing one). If the date is unknown (you know it is 4th printing based on the copyright page but it is undated), we use 0000-00-00. Otherwise you end up with a book printed in 2020 but with a date of 2005 for example (for a much later printing). Unless the later printing was literally on the same date (it can happen albeit very rarely), it cannot carry the date of an earlier one.

The publishing vs printed dates is interesting if they are printed on every first printing. I would go with "publishing date" I think as it is the official date of the book being published, add the printing one in the notes. But if you want, you can start a conversation on that over at the Community board. The sentence in the help is inclear because this does not happen in US books - which were what the DB started with. :) I have a similar problem with Russian books (they have "signed for printing" dates which are considered the dates in some places) and French books have DL date (legal deposition dates) which are considered their official dates here if we do not have more exact ones from somewhere. Hope that makes sense. Annie 04:11, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Annie, thanks for the info. After some thought, I've submitted 2 changes (one, two) in which the Notes would be more clear of what it is stated on the copyright page on each copy. I will go with the date of publication as it is what actually appears in the copyright page of the 4th printing. Perhaps the devs of isfdb could add an optional "Printing Date" field in the future. Arctorbob 04:43, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Sorry but no, the later printing cannot be dated with the date of a previous one. This is against the dating principles of the DB. It can be 0000-00-00 or it can be its own date but it cannot be the date of the first printing. Annie 04:50, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Oh, then maybe I misunderstood what you said earlier, quote: I would go with "publishing date" I think as it is the official date of the book being published, add the printing one in the notes.

I will resubmit with the clarification on the Notes only then (leaving 4th printing as the date of publication as per your change). Arctorbob 04:56, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Annie, I see you leaved the clarification Notes I added, thanks. Arctorbob 04:58, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Sorry - I did not make it very clear that this second paragraph and the pub over printing date was for the first printing. Apologies for the confusion. And no worries - I redid the notes - you did them, I had to reject because of the date so I just added them back. :) Annie 05:19, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

クリスタルの夜

What are you trying to do here? I cannot see a difference between the existing title and the one you are proposing as a parent. Thanks! Annie 03:22, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Annie, seems I used the wrong ID, I've canceled it and resubmitted the correct one here: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?4650956 Arctorbob 03:24, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

I suspect you just pressed the wrong button - the variant page has two of them. I've done that before - you add an ID at the top but then press the one at the bottom which creates a request for a brand new parent instead of connecting to the ID you want it to. :) Annie 03:27, 17 May 2020 (EDT)

Series and international names

Hello,

When a translation/variant is added to a parent title, the child record cannot have its own series - it will inherit from the parent. So I had to remove the Japanese spelling of the series name from here (I also connected to the parent while I was there) :).

The best thing you can do for now is to add the series names in in the different languages to the notes of the series. I did it for VALIS using the Japanese series name you provided. You can see a much longer list of language-based names here for example. One day, when/if series get multi-language support in some way, we can use these to populate. But for now, this is the best we can do. Annie 12:08, 18 May 2020 (EDT)

Annie, thanks for the info. I've followed-up with connecting the remaining titles in the series with their corresponding parent here and here. Arctorbob 06:22, 19 May 2020 (EDT)

Thanks for taking care of these! I just approved them :) One small reminder -- when the work is not a novel but a collection/anthology (so the translator is added when you add it in the Title note when you do that on NewPub), don't forget to add the translator to each story while varianting. As you are adding transliterations anyway, just add the translator at the same time where relevant :) Annie 13:13, 19 May 2020 (EDT)

(unindent) Just a small reminder about series names :) Please do not add the Japanese ones to the translations - they won't survive the varianting and they will require additional cleanup after that. It is effectively creating more work for you (to add them) and for whoever cleans them up after that (to delete the objects that are left over. Thanks! :)Annie 13:08, 20 May 2020 (EDT)

Annie, oh, it seems I made a similar mistake. So in the case of a (single-volume) title being translated, and the translation being a multi-volume work, all the volumes should be added as variants of the original work? Is my understanding correct? (I found this Heinlen's title to have the same situation, so I've created similar changes here and here) Arctorbob 05:29, 21 May 2020 (EDT)

Yep - the split novels rule. Annie 08:45, 21 May 2020 (EDT)

Adding missing covers

When adding a cover that is already there, instead of adding a new one (that then needs to be merged), you can import it from the existing edition. Just heads up. :) Annie 12:37, 18 May 2020 (EDT)

Annie, thanks. Arctorbob 06:23, 19 May 2020 (EDT)

Ebooks and dates

Unlike printed books, ebooks rarely have dates (or even years - even though it happens) in them. So we usually credit based on the publisher site and/or Amazon and other online stores (with attribution) instead of having thousands of them with a date of 0000-00-00. Annie 00:00, 7 June 2020 (EDT)

Annie, that sounds like an over-generalization to me. I happen to have the opposite experience: most of the ebooks that I own and the ones I had access to *do have full pub dates* (year-month-day form), and the ones that I own and don't have pub date are very rare. But I cannot speak for all the western ebooks since I own only a few. I will take note of the info you mention when I come across these situations. Thanks. Arctorbob 10:43, 12 June 2020 (EDT)

P.S.: it would be nice if experienced moderators can add those sort of useful tips on ebooks you mentioned on the docs.

You are probably right about the over-generalization - I had been working on a long string of self-published books lately and these are... different :) However - most English language books, even from the major publishers will indeed just have the year (occasionally a month), if that with a lot of them either having their paper counterpart copyright page or something like a version number only. Always something different. :) If the Japanese ebooks almost always have full dates, then up to you if you want to use 0000 for the ones that do not or Amazon's date and a note where it comes from. If you go the 0000 route, add a note on the Amazon date maybe?

And yeah... we need a FAQ but... as with a lot of things, sometimes we cannot get people to read the help pages we have so why make more of them. But yes, we do need a more "new user friendly" docs - especially for international editors where the challenges are different. Annie 20:15, 12 June 2020 (EDT)

Greg Egan

For your clone of Greg Egan, is there a reason you are cloning vs editing the existing record? There is nothing in your submission that seems like it is a different edition unless I'm missing something? -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:23, 15 June 2020 (EDT)

JLaTondre, I was not aware of that existing publication, I was just interested on the actual title in it here and didn't show the ebook version. I've canceled the clone entry and updated the existing one instead. I'm also updating the title publication date since the ebook publication had the wrong one. Arctorbob 06:28, 16 June 2020 (EDT)