User talk:Clarkmci/Archive 1

This is Archive 1 - through 2010

... is here

Welcome!

Hello, Clarkmci/Archive 1, 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:

• Help pages
• What the ISFDB Wiki is for
• ISFDB FAQ
• Help:Screen:EditPub#General contents - Warning and a note on how to update a publication's contents

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! Ahasuerus 19:34, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

P.S. Finally! A living breathing Australian editor who may be able to help us sort out some of the thornier antipodean issues!! :) Ahasuerus 19:34, 21 May 2007 (CDT)

Machinations

Do you have any additional info on this publication? ISBN, perhaps. I was able to locate your previous submission ("Nor of Human...") and add more info, but can't find anything on this one. Mhhutchins 20:24, 7 Jun 2007 (CDT)

A Google search and a Wikipedia entry gave me the ISBN. If you have the book, the contents would be appreciated. Thanks for the submissions. Mhhutchins 20:28, 7 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I don't have the book, but have found the contents on the publisher's web site. Is this OK as a source? j_clark 22:26, 7 Jun 2007 (CDT)

That's fine. You can attribute the souce in the notes field. Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:35, 7 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Rowena Cory Lindquist

I've approved your update but changed the Legal name to "Lindquist, Rowena Cory" - that field is the only one in the database that goes in "Lastname, Firstname" format. Thanks for editing! BLongley 12:09, 15 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Missing Omnibus submission

This morning i was approving submissions and in the middle of an approval i was disconected from the server and your submission seem to vanish. Not in the pending, approvals or rejects. If you recall what it was can you check to see if it turned up or resubmit it. I also lost the Trudy Canavan submission(not sure why that happened?). That seems to have been fixed. Sorry about the screwup.:-)Kraang 19:18, 15 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I think I approved the Trudy/Trudi submissions, although one disappeared as the typo-correction went through before the author-merge, so there was nothing left to merge and I had to reject it. If it doesn't look right now, feel free to blame me. BLongley 19:28, 15 Jun 2007 (CDT)

The Trudy/Trudi looks fine but what happened to the Omnibus submission did it go to the Twilight Zone to visit Rod?Kraang 20:39, 15 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I see this Omnibus got through, was it the contents for that that went missing? BLongley 07:31, 16 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I can't quite remember re the Omnibus. If it's the Cory Daniells one, I'll get back to it in time... I only own the 1st one of the T'En trilogy & I'm still trying to work out the rest from other sources. The books have different titles in Oz & US and I'd like to put the Oz versions as canonical 'cos she's an Australian author, The problem is that so far I've only found indirect reference to the Oz title of the 3rd one. (The National Library of Australia catalogue has it as being in the Omnibus, but I've found no direct reference to the book of the title _Warrior Code_.) I'm in correspondence with the author. j_clark 00:58, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I checked WorldCat, but they only had the US version of the 3rd volume, so I entered it as the master title for now. We can always change it if and when we find the Oz original :) Ahasuerus 01:47, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Thanks. The author has replied to my email & says the 3rd book is only in the omnibus in Oz; only the US has a standalone 3rd book (_Desperate Alliances_) j_clark 02:30, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Ah, I see! I have merged and massaged the omnibus contents and the series entries, hopefully it looks OK now. Ahasuerus 09:51, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Australian Amazon?

Your addition of Blackout by Michael_Pryor caught my attention as ISBN 0733611818 is not on Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, nor Amazon.ca. Google finds the ISBN seems to exist but it brings up a question I had been wondering about. Are there any web sites that you would consider to be the Australian version of Amazon? Marc Kupper (talk) 13:52, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

The National Library of Australia's catalogue web site is the best site I've found so far for Oz books not found on Amazon. (Other than the missing The/A in some entries.) http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&PAGE=First j_clark 15:54, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Thank you - I'll be adding that one to the list of sites I use when checking ISBNs. Marc Kupper (talk) 18:44, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Multiple Prices

You submitted 200149 Vaneglory with a price of ₤2.25 / A$5.95. Generally if a publication has multiple prices you enter one of them in the price field and the other(s) in the notes. Another issue with doing this is the price field must be 10 characters as it got cut off to "₤2.25 / A$". The complication is that Template:PublicationFields:Price states "books published in both the USA and Canada, only the USA price should be noted" but it does not give advice on UK/ANZO pricing. My first thought would be to figure out where the book was published/printed and to make that the main price. I suspect for now it's ok to just enter the Australian price as the main price and down the road we'll need to add some sort of support for multiple prices otherwise we could end up with multiple publication records for the same publication based on people's opinion of which price should be the main one. I've already fixed Vaneglory to be A$5.95. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:48, 18 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Hmmm.... if it's Sphere (UK) I'd have thought the 2.25 was the main one. However, there's two other things to note:

1. the character you entered for the pound sign is not the same I, as a UK user, would use: "₤" from you, "£" from me. I know that the only character working properly for the Amazon UK links is actually "L" but it may be that there's more problems with UK prices than I was aware of. (Still, "A$" has no real meaning yet to the programs either.)
2. The other thing is that for a long time, the Net Book Agreement meant that the UK price was fixed, the Australian one was a suggestion. Even since that practice ended the UK price quoted is the usual one in bookshops except for "chart-topping" books. I'm not sure how the "suggestion" works for "actual" Australian prices?

I'm not arguing for supremacy of the Pound over the Oz Dollar, I actually quite like the price for the country of origin: but there do appear to be UK books printed for export only. And I'm not sure which prices should be captured - just some significant ones, or all? I don't want the last, many of my books are priced for the UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and sometimes South Africa - fortunately, for unspecified copyright reasons, almost never the USA. OK, one plus point is that when my UK price has been obscured the foreign ones are likely to be still there: one minus point is that we'd have to figure out how to represent 1/2p for the Irish prices in particular. (An upside of the price-gouging that went on during decimalisation in the UK was that we didn't have exact conversion of normal 2/6 and 3/6 paperback prices to 12 1/2p and 17 1/2p - they just raised the prices to 5/ and converted to 25p. :-/ ) BLongley 13:07, 19 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Good eye as ₤ is a Lire and I had mis-read that as £. Clarkmci, was this book published for sale in Italy and Australia? Bill, I too have wondered about those books that have a yard long list prices from South Africa to Hong Kong but skip over the USA. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:32, 19 Jun 2007 (CDT)

The way the publishing world used to work, you typically sold US rights to one (US) company and Commonwealth rights to another (UK) company. Canada was up for grabs. That's why UK published books often have a long list of prices while US published books are priced in US (and often Canadian) dollars. However, things have changed a great deal in the last couple of decades and are not as straightforward as they used to be. Ahasuerus 23:15, 19 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Thank you - I remember when all we had was vacuum tubes and life was simple. Marc Kupper (talk) 01:34, 20 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Oops, was meant to be UK £. United Kingdom: £2.25 is the first price listed. As to one of the other points above: Aust'n prices are recommended. These days, I notice that few SF&F books I buy, that are published in Australia, have a printed price. The bookshop puts their own price sticker on. j_clark 03:32, 22 Jun 2007 (CDT)

If I Were an Evil Overlord by Greenberg

I am hesitant to overwrite information when someone else has "Verified" a publication. In the case of this pub however, I feel justified in doing so. This publication is an Anthology, instead of Verifying the publication, you should have added the contents. While there are no current written rules for Verification, the general rule that I use is, if it is anthology, don't verify it if the contents aren't listed. I am going to start entering the contents for this pub, and in so doing, I am going to have to remove your Verification, as the contents will not have been verified by anyone. CoachPaul 17:19, 19 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Yes, I'm curious as to what happened here as FWRNVLVRLR2007 looks Amazon.com data. I'm not sure I'd agree that we must enter the contents or even the cover artist before marking a publication as verified. The assumption though is that a verified publication has been checked against everything that is stated in the ISFDB record. In this case the ISFDB record states things like "Year: 2007-03-06" where I know DAW never puts the day of the month in their publications. Marc Kupper (talk) 22:25, 19 Jun 2007 (CDT)

I'll put adding the contents on my "to do" list. j_clark 04:23, 22 Jun 2007 (CDT)

For "Overlord" I've already done it, so you can take it off of your list. CoachPaul 08:23, 22 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Dave Luckett's Dark Victory

Your submission would change the title reference of this pub to "Dark Winter". I don't think this was your intention. The additional contents you added would apply to the "Dark Winter" title as well. I'll keep your update on hold until I hear back from you. Mhhutchins 12:37, 4 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Not having heard back from you, I wasn't able to hold your submission any longer, so it was rejected. Please resubmit if you think it was rejected in error. Thanks. Mhhutchins 15:53, 7 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Finger trouble I think. --j_clark 00:26, 24 Aug 2007 (CDT)

A Pursuit of Miracles : Eight Stories

Hi Clarkmci i had to do your update a different way becauce the above publication had two titles of A Pursuit of Miracles one for the short story and one for the publication, but both were labeled as shortfiction. The one you picked to change was the short story title. This was an easy mistake to make. It took me a while to figure out what was wrong. I will have to put your original submission into the reject though. If you could look at the above publication one of the short stories has no page number. I may have lost it in my first attempt to fix this title. Thanks!Kraang 08:29, 21 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Updated. --j_clark 23:11, 23 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Witch Bank

I've also put your unmerge submission on hold. if you unmerge the above publication from this title it will only create a new title that is identical to the last, but now one will have a publication and the other that you unmerged will be empty. What did you have in mind?Kraang 08:38, 21 Aug 2007 (CDT)

What I was trying to do was make the 1st step toward removing the reference to "Cathy Jinks". As far as I can determine, Ms Jinks has not used this name on any of her publications. The National Library of Australia catalogue doesn't have "Cathy Jinks". The only place I have seen it is on the Aurealis-awards-to-2004-web site & I'm guessing it might be because the Aurealis awards, in my understanding, accept proofs. (It is a judged award.) --j_clark 23:11, 23 Aug 2007 (CDT)

At the moment I don't think we can undo a pseudonym regarding names. The title at the moment is empty with no publication. I'll ask Ahasuerus to look at it.Kraang 20:06, 24 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Unfortunately, at this time we can't undo pseudonyms cleanly or comprehensively, but there are some workarounds. In this case I first pulled up the "Witch Bank"/"Cathy Jinks" Title record and broke its "variant title" relationship with the main "Witch Bank"/"Catherine Jinks" Title record by entering "0" in the parent title field. I then merged the two Title records and chose "Catherine Jinks" as the author, which preserved this book's award information. It also resulted in the "Cathy Jinks" Author record losing its only associated Title record, so the orphan Author record was auto-deleted behind the scenes. As noted above, it wasn't a clean process and you can see that the "Catherine Jinks" Author record still displays an empty "Used These Alternate Names:" line. Once Al is back and the processing logic is fixed, I am sure we will run a script that will identify pointers to non-existing author/pseudonym records and delete them. Ahasuerus 22:26, 24 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Thanks. ... and thanks for detailing the steps - helps my understanding of how everything fits together. --j_clark 01:24, 28 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Law of the Wolf Tower / Roderick

Do you want to make Wolf Tower a variant of Law of the Wolf Tower?Kraang 18:29, 21 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Yes, this was step 1 in what putting Law of the Wolf Tower to be the main title & Wolf Tower to be a variant title. --j_clark 23:11, 23 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Thats what I thought you were doing but you were unmerging Wolf Tower pub from Wolf Tower title. You need to unmerge the two Law of the Wolf Tower publications from the Wolf Tower title. I'll put it in the reject and you can resubmit the new unmerge.Kraang 20:06, 24 Aug 2007 (CDT)

BTW: The Complete Roderick is a title in itself & I was going to put it under the Roderick series as an omnibus O/1-2. Regarding the first book in the series, I'm happy that Roderick stays as its canonical title, although the original hard cover (which I've just acquired & entered) has the subtitle. I don't know whether the 2nd in the series has that subtitle. --j_clark 23:11, 23 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Your two submissions for Law of the Wolf Tower were empty. It looks like you brought up the Law of the Wolf Tower publications and used the unmerge. What you need to do to unmerge them is bring up the Wolf Tower title and in the edit tools click on "Unmerge Title", then check the boxes for the Law of Wolf Tower and submit.Kraang 06:33, 28 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Their now unmerged and you'll see that its created two new title records. One for 1998 and 2000. Bring up Lee's main page and click on Duplicate Finder. Submit a merge of the two titles. When approved you can then make it a variant. Bring up the Wolf Tower title and click on the "make this a variant..." . You'll need to get the new parent number for the merged titles. On the make Variant page use the 1st submit button not the one at the bottom of the page.Kraang 06:03, 30 Aug 2007 (CDT)

The submission that was rejected would have made Wolf Tower a variant of its self. This time enter the parent # of Law of the Wolf Tower Hint its(727685). Kraang 21:10, 30 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Journey Behind the Wind

Is it your intention to make Journey Behind the Wind(1986) a variant of Behind the Wind(1981)?Kraang 22:45, 17 Sep 2007 (CDT)

It looks like one of the other mods decided to approve the submission I had on hold. Since I'll be on holidays so I'll made it a variant. If this assumption is wrong than lets someone know.Kraang 13:39, 23 Sep 2007 (CDT)

Thanks --j_clark 05:26, 9 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Trilliums

Just a heads up that I have the Trillium submissions on hold at the moment, but I will massage them tonight when I have a few more minutes :) Ahasuerus 14:53, 8 Oct 2007 (CDT)

OK, everything has been massaged and approved. There was only one minor problem with the submissions: modifying the series name one Title at a time would have resulted in the creation of a new Series record with the new Series name while the old Series record would have lost all its Titles and become an orphan. To avoid this scenario, I pulled up the Trillium Series record and changed the series name directly. I have also merged the newly created Blood Trillium Titles with the pre-existing Blood Trillium Title, so everything should be fine now. Thanks for editing! :) Ahasuerus 16:39, 8 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Grinny

The NZ price in this edition looks wrong to me - presumably $5.99 or $5.95, not $5.995? Or did NZ have a ha'penny still in use at the time? BLongley 12:57, 9 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Thanks - you are right, I've made a typo. I'll check & fix it - probably this afternoon, Oz time. --j_clark 20:15, 9 Oct 2007 (CDT)

OK, approved. Thanks! BLongley 13:33, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)

"£" versus "L"

Just a comment not a criticism: when we correct or enter "L" as "£" for British pounds, it currently means the link to the Amazon UK site won't appear. I've asked Al to fix this as it should be very simple to do, but he hasn't found time for ANY software changes for a while and I think the "tamu.edu"/"org" problem is higher priority. So you're doing the right thing, but you may prefer to leave the "L" to "£" changes for later - eventually we'll update them all via a script, I hope. Not everybody is worried about the amazon UK link though, and some of us are creating workarounds anyway - let me know if something like that would help, there's a few quick wins we could do for other sites for instance. BLongley 13:46, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Waiting for the End of the World

Sorry, me again! :-/ I've held a few edits as the detailed notes (don't get me wrong, we want all that data!) is confusing me as to which edition you're trying to enter and which you're entering it FROM. For instance, with this submission you're saying "Year 1985-00-00" but "Publisher (1988 reprint) Puffin Plus imprint of Penguin (Australia)". If you're trying to create the 1985 edition, fine, but we wouldn't want reprint notes in the publisher field, just the original publisher. It's fine to create the 1988 reprint with the OTHER (reprinting) publisher AS WELL: when there's not too many editions of a book already, I'm happy to create "stub" entries for prior ones that are mentioned when they don't exist already. This is especially common with non-US publications so Australian and NZ and English and Canadian (and theoretically South African pubs and such though I've not seen those), so please do try to add these! Just let me know what you were trying to achieve and I'll massage these entries through. BLongley 14:11, 10 Oct 2007 (CDT)

By stub entries, do you mean a publ. record with basically just the date of the first edition? What I was trying to capture, if I remember correctly, was that the same ISBN appears to have been used through several publisher name changes/takeovers/publication in different countries, without it looking like duplicate records or that someone has made a "mistake" with the publisher &/or currency. --j_clark 21:31, 15 Oct 2007 (CDT)

A stub could be for any edition that you have secondary proof of existence of, but yes the first dated one is especially useful as it justifies the title date. With 'Waiting for the End of the World' I don't know if you were, for instance, trying to enter a first 1985 publication which you could then clone to a second 1988 one that you own that mentions the first date, then have two records to tidy up and one to verify: entering the 1985 edition first would mean the title record would be created with the right date to start with and save another edit. If that's what you were trying to do, then it's best to only enter what's pretty certain for the first one: e.g. Title, Author, Publisher, Date, format - and leave adding the rest of the data till when you clone it - e.g. price, cover artist may have been different on the pub you don't own. ISBN is tricky, you really have to know what the publisher's habits are at a particular time. And price - well, putting the currency SYMBOL in, if not the exact price, can help ISFDB decide whether to link to Amazon UK or US. BLongley 14:14, 16 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Or maybe you DO own both and I'm reading too much into one submission! Generally, a stub publication would have less information than the one you own, but you may be entering it from some other far better source, e.g. an entry from Locus that hasn't been done already. So just let me know what you're working from, and we can get this sorted. BLongley 14:14, 16 Oct 2007 (CDT)

OK, I will put in the original editions based on National Library of Australia data (I can't find a better source for these, though Fantastic Fiction has a bit of corroborating info/info for the gaps). Would you please approve what I've done (so I don't lose the typing), then I'll update the title records with the earliest date & update "my" publications to make things clearer.

... but not a problem if you decide to reject - I can start from scratch with the NLA-sourced data then add my publs. (... and I'm pretty sure I do have multiple pubs of one of them ... somewhere!)--j_clark 20:36, 17 Oct 2007 (CDT)

OK, I've let them through. Let me know if you want me to have another look after you've worked on them. BLongley 12:54, 18 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Unto Leviathan/Ship of Fools

I approved the date change to this pub, and therefore this title, but a bit reluctantly as it makes the variant title seem as though it was used two years before it really was. We did start a standards discussion if you'd like to express a view. BLongley 13:38, 11 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Time Future

I have approved the deletion of the "HarperCollins Australia" version of Time Future and added price and publication month from The Locus Index for 1999. Ahasuerus 23:22, 11 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Bailey School Kids series

I've rejected your rename of the "Adventures of the Bailey School Kids Holiday Special" series, because after puzzling over it I'm pretty sure the software would end up creating two distinct series with the same name, rather than merging the series. Instead I've just edited the series field of the "Holiday Special" title (I hope this is the result you wanted in the first place!). --WimLewis 03:55, 20 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Hi. What I intended was to get the same effect as for the super special subseries at the bottom. Did I do a copy-and-paste oops with the parent series name? --j_clark 22:33, 20 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Either that or I misread the approval screen! I'm now no longer sure. Perhaps I need to slow down a bit when moderating. At any rate, I've put Leprechauns... back under its old series name & made it a sub-series. Sorry about the kerfluffle. --WimLewis 23:33, 20 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Extinction is Forever collection, dueling edits

I just approved your edit to this collection, but you hit a subtlety that trips up most editors eventually, which is that a COLLECTION pub should contain a title of type COLLECTION for the pub itself, in addition to any SORTFICTIONs, ESSAYs, or the like. (OMNIBUSes work the same way.) You converted the old NOVEL title to a SHORTFICTION, representing one of the stories in the collection, which left the pub without a record representing the overall title. I added a title record for it. It looks like you also submitted a change to convert the SHORTFICTION back to COLLECTION to fix the same problem --- I put that on hold since I think it's redundant with the change I made at the same time. Can you look at the publication and see if it's correct as it stands now? If so, I'll cancel your pending edit and everything should be good. --WimLewis 16:56, 20 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Not quite sure what I did; I thought I'd changed the NOVEL to COLLECTION before doing the stuff. Or is the problem that I changed the pub record before the title record? Or is it that the old title is one of the shortstory titles in the collections & I/it got confused which record was being acted on (by doing hte next change before the previous was approved?)?

Anyway, do whatever & then the collection title merge will go through? then the story title merge? --j_clark 22:28, 20 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Lady of the Trillium

I approved the date change but than cloned the pub. and put back the 1996 edition. This may be a later reprint of the 1995 edition. Its generally best not to change dates unless your sure it does not exist. The clone option lets you copy the existing data and then you can make any changes you like. Is it normal not to have prices on books printed in Australia?Kraang 19:05, 22 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Re prices on books printed in Australia: It varies. Depends on the publisher, but on the whole less and less have the price printed on; usually the retailer puts on their own sticker anyway. When they are printed on, it is with a rider "recommended"/"RRP" most times.

Specifically for Lady of the T. - I think there is a Aust'n price printed, but there is a publisher's sticker on top which won't come off without damaging the book. (Possibly the sticker is because of a price rise?) --j_clark 19:18, 22 Oct 2007 (CDT)

Forever Shores / Out of Time

Clark your submission for Forever Shores will be in limbo for awhile. There is an error in the title record # and I can't approve or reject it. The only person that can fix this is Al. I'll leave him a message. As for the Out of Time your changes to the titles in the content section will change all the titles in the other publications, some of these may have the correct title already. The best way to change tiles is to add them in as new content in the content section. After submitting the addition you can then bring up the publication, click "Remove titles" in the edit box and check off the titles to be removed. I'll approve your submission but change it back to its original state. I'll leave it to you to make the changes to the titles. After that's done you'll have to make one or the other title a variant. :-)Kraang 09:43, 18 Nov 2007 (CST)

Re Out of Time - I understand. Thanks for explaining how to do this. --j_clark 02:45, 19 Nov 2007 (CST)

Linking to Fantastic Fiction

I approved a bunch of Victor Kelleher changes earlier today and noticed that in one case you had entered a comment about finding the cover art image on the Fantastic Fiction site. Keep in mind that we do have FF's permission to link to their images directly. Do you know how to extract image URLs out of a page's source code? Ahasuerus 06:08, 19 Nov 2007 (CST)

Thanks. I have just figured out a way to find the image URL. BTW - When skimming through the Help reference you gave I noted the following sentence which I don't think is now valid?? "13 digit ISBNs are not understood by the ISFDB software at this time and should be converted to 10 digit ISBNs." (unless some kind editor did a conversion for me the other day). --j_clark 15:58, 19 Nov 2007 (CST)

I've done some "kind edits" for you before, it might have been me. I use this converter and sometimes Marc Kupper's ISBN Validation utility to fix some entries as and when required. Most moderators try to be gentle when there's an easy fix available for minor errors: we'll mostly warn on dangerous stuff immediately, but quietly fix the minor errors for you at first. As you get more experienced, and/or prolific, we might ask you to improve submissions a little, but generally we don't want to DISCOURAGE editors that we may actually learn something FROM eventually. I think you're becoming our Antipodean SF expert and definitely don't want to put you off editing! But if you think we're molly-coddling you too much, please feel free to say so. BLongley 16:52, 19 Nov 2007 (CST)

Thanks. I think I'm at the stage where I'd like even the minor errors pointed out (other than obvious typos - I do "hte" a lot!). --j_clark 17:02, 23 Nov 2007 (CST)

re image URLs: I used to use Internet Explorer 6, but I've recently installed the latest Mozilla Firefox browser. Today I discovered that image URLs from Fantastic Fiction, etc., are now a breeze. "Copy Image Location" comes up in the right-click menu! Paste straight in. (That's new to me, anyway.) --j_clark 17:02, 23 Nov 2007 (CST)

Yes, that's extremely handy, Firefox is generally a nicer, safer and more customizable browser. And the price is right! :) Ahasuerus 22:38, 3 Dec 2007 (CST)

Metaworlds: Best Australian Science Fiction

The first submission that I approved had no noticeable changes to the data, and the second one on hold appears to be the same. What you have sent as a change has not turned up on the moderators end? If you can let me know what you are intending to change I can submit it. :-) Kraang 21:57, 18 Dec 2007 (CST)

What I am trying to do is to change a variant author. Someone (you?) explained how to do this, but I can't find the instructions. First step was to add another "story" with the author as it is in the anthology. The next step was to delete the original "story" from the anthology, but I couldn't remember how to do it; hence the empty edits. I've just figured it out - see queue! --j_clark 22:17, 18 Dec 2007 (CST)

Shivers series (Paul Collins - Ed.)

There seems to be something screwed up with the first two Shivers books. Their not displaying properly. I'm going to delete the two pubs and reenter them and see what happens.Kraang 22:23, 18 Dec 2007 (CST)

The (") in the tag seems to have caused some of the problems? But my fix has put some of your submissions related to this in an error state. Sorry! If you could hold off on anymore entries for a day I'll fix it as best I can. I'll put all the submissions related to this series on hold, and will work on it tomorrow. It's getting a bit late up here in Canada. Thanks :-)Kraang 22:50, 18 Dec 2007 (CST)

Thanks. For tomorrow: I have a problem with the next step, for the first in the series ... [rest of this sentence moved to the new "Margaret Clark" topic --j_clark 18:31, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)]

Your submission for Shivers: "Hell's Gully" / "Night of the Voodoo Doll" would have changed the title record to Hell's Gully by Whitehead and the anthology classification would have been change to sf. for the overall publication. For novels this type of change can be switched back but I'm unsure what would happen with an anthology. To be safe I rejected it and used the changes you submitted which were fine otherwise and did the submission, here's the result [1]. On another note do you know if all the pub titles have these quotation marks in them. If not than we may want to remove them. Sorry about the mess-up on this lot of submission, my first attempts to fix the defective tags lead to some of the problems. :-)Kraang 19:45, 19 Dec 2007 (CST)

A couple of the books in the series were already in the DB as sort-of stubs, with the quotes. I just added mine the same way, to be "consistent". Possibly the other editor put the quotes 'cos they are shortfiction. The books are dos-a-dos, with 2 "front" covers, 2 title pages (different) & duplicated copyright pages. Inside the front covers, the list of titles for the series is presented as, for example:

No. 3 -- A Real Corpse by Christine Harris

Spook Bus by Patricia Bernard

--j_clark 17:58, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Margaret Clark

[cut from a previous thread ...] The author of one of the stories in the first one is "Margaret Clark". However, "Margaret Clark" has a book already in ISFDB, but I don't think it is the same MC. The Shivers Margaret Clark is a well-known Australian mostly mainstream children's author. She also uses M. D. Clark & Margaret D. Clark. (And I have a horror one of hers as by "Lee Striker".) I was thinking of putting the author of the story as "Margaret Clark [Margaret D.]" Is this the right approach? Do you have any other suggestions?

This is a common problem, see here or here for recent examples. Date of Birth or Nationality seem to be good choices of suffix. As your Margaret Clark sounds more prolific (the other one hasn't even had her book published yet, and may in fact turn out to be an artist or editor) I'd let your one stay as Margaret Clark, unless one of the other versions is more common, and rename the other one. That would allow new works to go to the correct author more often than to the incorrect one. BLongley 14:48, 19 Dec 2007 (CST)

...and we even have a Help:How to separate two authors with the same name page that talks about this problem (although we need to add a note about the (UK)/(US) convention) Ahasuerus 17:58, 19 Dec 2007 (CST)

Thanks, I'll use Margaret Clark for "my" Margaret Clark & just leave the other as is for now (maybe make a note on the title record). (Ironically, the co-author of the projected Star Trek book may also cause us problems in the future - there seems to be 2 Mark Palmieris in the book/illustration world, too! --j_clark 18:31, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Those Who Hunt the Night

I have your Those Who Hunt the Night submission on hold at the moment. If my understanding is correct, you noticed that there were two "Those Who Hunt the Night" series in Barbara Hambly's bibliography, one listed as "Those Who Hunt the Night (James Asher)" and the other one listed as just "Those Who Hunt the Night". These two series are actually one and the same series and need to be merged and I think that's what you were trying to do.

Unfortunately, there is no way to merge Series at the moment. Changing the name of Series A to the name of Series B simply produces two series records with the same name. That, in turn, causes all kinds of problems since it confuses the display part of our software. Instead, I merged the two Immortal Blood Title records, which left "Those Who Hunt the Night (James Asher)" as an empty series. It is still lurking in the shadows -- which is what you would expect a vampire series to do! -- but at least it's fairly harmless for now. Eventually, empty series will automatically disappear the way Author records disappear when their last Title is deleted, but it's not easy to implement because of our support for multiply nested series. One of these days... :)

Please take a look at Hambly's Summary page and let me know if the result looks reasonable. If it does, then I will reject your submission. Thanks! Ahasuerus 00:46, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Yep, that's what I intended. Thanks. --j_clark 16:42, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Rejected, thanks! Ahasuerus 17:04, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern

I have approved The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern submission, but had to massage it afterwards.

The first change was from "Illustrations (The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern)" (an Interiorart title) to simply "The Dragonlover’s Guide to Pern" as per our Help pages. The second change was trickier. When you submit "New Nonfiction", the software creates a Nonfiction Title record with the same title as the Publication title that you entered. Thus, when you entered another Nonfiction Title in the Contents section, the new publication ended up with two identical Nonfiction Titles in it. I removed the second Title record from the Publication and then merged the two Nonfiction Title records, so we should be all set now :) Ahasuerus 17:14, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Thanks. If I understand you re the 2nd part, this means it's better to put nothing in the contents for non-fiction when doing New, then add interiorart later? (Unless it's a book of essays?) --j_clark 17:46, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Sorry, I may not have been very clear :( Interior art and Essay entries are OK to enter when using the "New Nonfiction" submission form. The problem is that, as our Help pages try to explain (perhaps not very well), "Like novels, the title of an omnibus, nonfiction book length work, anthology or collection is duplicated from the publication title at the time the publication is created." In other words, when submitting a new Nonfiction book like "Heinlein in Dimension", you don't need to enter to enter a separate "Heinlein in Dimension" Nonfiction Title in the contents section of the form because the software will create one for you. If you do enter it in the Contents section, then there will be two identical Nonfiction Titles in the Publication and one of them will have to be surgically removed after the fact, which is what I did in this case. Does this make sense? Ahasuerus 19:27, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Yes. Thanks --j_clark 21:23, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Perdita Phillips

I am afraid I approved your Perdita Phillips pseudonym submission first and checked second. The "P. Phillips"/"Perdita Phillips" had bee set up already, so now we have two pseudonym records for her and there is no easy way to remove the duplicate. There is an outstanding request to add the ability to remove pseudonyms from author records, but we are not sure when that may happen, so for now it's an area where we try to be extra careful. Oh well, we'll get them out of the system -- eventually :) Ahasuerus 21:00, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Sorry. I realised after I pressed the button. Is there a way to remove an pending edit of mine off the queue? --j_clark 21:32, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

You are in good company -- we have over 30 such duplicate pseudonyms. Once we have the tools to remove them, I will write a script to find the offenders and then we will zap them with extreme prejudice :) Ahasuerus 21:53, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Margaret Haddix vt

Oops, I've stuffed it. One day I'll get the hang of variant authors/same title! I think I've reversed it & I'll look up how I was told to do it, last time I had this trouble. --j_clark 21:32, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

As far as I can tell, Margaret Peterson Haddix's page looks OK at the moment. What was the problem title that you just modified? Ahasuerus 21:55, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

P.S. And to answer your question, I am afraid there is no way to recall a submission once it has been created, at least I can't think of any :( A note on the Moderator Notice or on the Community Portal is probably the best bet. Thankfully, almost any database change can be reversed -- Author pseudonyms being the most prominent exception -- but submitting Author merges for "Robert A. Heinlein" and "Isaac Asimov" is still not advisable :) Ahasuerus 22:00, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

I approved the mentioned submissions and they appeared fine. A look at the Haddix page and the pub in question Turnabout looks right. As far as I'm concerned what you did was correct. :-)Kraang 22:12, 20 Dec 2007 (CST)

Binary Star #4

Wouldn't Jack Gaughan's illustrations in "Binary Star No. 4" and James R. Frenkel's "Introduction (Binary Star #4)" use "No. 4" as opposed to "#4"? By the way, I have made the cover scan appear without a surrounding white box by eliminating everything in between the underscores (including the two underscores and one of the two periods) at the end of the URL. Ahasuerus 00:18, 3 Jan 2008 (CST)

re the URL - sorry, I did a "copy location" with Firefox & paste, without looking at the resulting string.

re #/No. - I'll change those 2 - I wasn't sure whether to, because the previous person(s) creating/editing this record used #. The whole series has # in the title records at the moment, though I thought to leave the book titles with the #. I have #/No. 5 somewhere, but can't find it at the moment (I'm sure I saw it yesterday, but massive book reorganisation is happening in my house at the moment - "musical books"!) to check re its cover & title page. --j_clark 01:56, 3 Jan 2008 (CST)

Sounds good, thanks! Ahasuerus 12:16, 3 Jan 2008 (CST)

Amazon images

When linking to some images on Amazon.com you might see the following sample URL (ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HYHHW1CPL._SS500_.jpg for Women of Other Worlds) [2] which places a white frame around the image. To remove the frame, remove "._SS500_" from the URL. And you'll get this image linked: [3]. The combination of letters and numbers between the two _'s may vary, just remember to keep the one dot before the "jpg". Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:14, 4 Jan 2008 (CST)

Generic subtitles

We ordinarily don't include non-specific subtitles, such as in this pub which you updated. (Of course, rules are made to be broken!) But in this case "A Novel of the Future" would not be considered as part of the title. Thanks for submitting. Mhhutchins 16:18, 7 Jan 2008 (CST)

No printed price

When a publication has no printed price, you can indicate it in the notes. Just leave the price field blank. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:43, 7 Jan 2008 (CST)

I put this in because everything a blank price is now getting a bibliographic warning in the listing for the title.

A lot of my / Australian books don't have printed prices, they don't make it to Locus, they aren't on the publisher's website (or if they are, it could be a more recent printing) & the National Library of Aust. catalogue doesn't show prices. My thought was to put something in the Price field, so as to to get rid of bibliographic warnings that aren't due to oversights or aren't due to data being compiled from secondary sources. --j_clark 17:14, 7 Jan 2008 (CST)

This is one of Al's recent introductions, and it isn't exactly one of the favourite fixes he's made. (Don't get me wrong Al, I love a lot of them!) As we've done a lot of workarounds when he WASN'T here to fix stuff, a new convention might be in order - I'd suggest "N/A" ("Not Applicable") as a price for books that have no Recommended Retail Price, and that should help with Fanzine entries too. Other suggested abbreviations welcome though!

One that caught me out when Al introduced these extra warnings was that indicating audio book bindings (cassette, CD, MP3 CD, etc) rather than "unk" didn't stop the warnings about missing page-counts. But adding "0" for number of pages is the official workaround for that, it seems. Unofficial workarounds for the rest - that's up to us, I guess. BLongley 17:40, 7 Jan 2008 (CST)

My thought for books without a price printed on them is "npp". "N/A" feels to me like it was free, though "N/A" might be appropriate for Fanzines and free internet sources (some short stories?). "unk" is another thought, though sometimes there's a publisher's sticker that I would be reasonably confident showed the original price, or other evidence that's not quite strong enough to go in the Price field, but might be in the Note. --j_clark 17:54, 7 Jan 2008 (CST)

Yeah, there does seem to be a few kinks in the new bibliographic warning feature, but I can live with a few warnings on a title record when I know they're not that important. Such as no ISBN / Catalog # for periodicals. I recently entered an import of Geoff Ryman's The King's Last Song and noted that there was no printed price on the book. Is this a relatively recent practice in the UK? Something to do with fair trade, the free market and suggesting that retail prices lead to non-competitive pricing policies? Mhhutchins 18:08, 7 Jan 2008 (CST)

I've never yet seen a UK book with no printed price on. Since the restricted price agreement expired, I guess there are no reasons WHY they can't appear without a price - but as the people that then COULD sell books below RRP wanted to prove they were doing so, RRP on books is still normal. Just so you can add a sticker saying "50% off!" or whatever. BLongley 19:17, 7 Jan 2008 (CST)

I like the "npp" with a mention in notes better. The "N/A" may be interpreted as not available or not applicable. There is no misinterpreting if the price box indicates that the book has no printed price.Kraang 18:19, 7 Jan 2008 (CST)

Mistakenly rejected submission

Sorry, I mistakenly rejected your submission to make a variant of "She Undoes" by Greer Iline Gilman. I failed to notice the difference in the middle name (Ilene/Iline). Since I screwed up, I'll fix it. I also rejected a couple more where I could not see any difference between the two records. If there were differences, please resubmit, and I'll be more careful about checking the two records. Mhhutchins 13:13, 8 Jan 2008 (CST)

I rechecked the two submissions that I rejected and saw the difference in one of them: "Romance in a Twenty-First Century Used-Car Lot" by Robert F. Young (had an extra dash in there.) I'll fix that one. But in the other one, "Killdozer" by Theodore Sturgeon, there was no difference that I could see. Were you attempting to make "Killdozer" a variant of "Killdozer!" (with an exclamation point)?

Do you have a copy of this anthology and can verify that the Sturgeon story has no exclamation point and that the Young story has the extra dash? If so, please check the title page, and not the table of contents. Thanks. Mhhutchins 13:26, 8 Jan 2008 (CST)

Yes I do. From title pages of the 2 stories: Killdozer - no exclamation point; 3 hyphens altogether in Romance in a Twenty-First-Century Used-Car Lot. Yes, I was trying to do vts. --j_clark 01:31, 18 Jan 2008 (CST)

Mainly Moonlight by Nicholas Stuart Gray

The addition of two stories to a new edition of this collection doesn't necessarily mean that a variant should be created. I'm holding the two submissions until I can get further clarification. Thanks. Mhhutchins 13:15, 8 Jan 2008 (CST)

Research revealed that the edition you added is an exact reprint of the original 1965 Faber edition which had all twelve stories. The US edition dropped two stories and added the subtitle ("Ten Stories of Sorcery and the Supernatural"). I created a record of the 1965 edition, placed all pubs under the same title record (without creating a variant), and added a note about the difference in the US and UK editions. Thanks. Mhhutchins 20:57, 8 Jan 2008 (CST)

"She Undoes"

I have approved the variant title addition for "She Undoes", but I wonder if Gilman's name may have been misspelled. At the moment we have "Greer Iline Gilman", "Greer Ilene Gilman" and "Greer Gilman". Is that right? Ahasuerus 13:19, 8 Jan 2008 (CST)

The Iline was a typo on my part, trying to do a vt. I think I started to fix it, but have been doing other things the past weeks. (Helping at/spending money at a giant 8 day secondhand book sale run by a charity. Heaven!). --j_clark 01:36, 18 Jan 2008 (CST)

Women of Other Worlds

I had to forcibly reject your change to this pub as the HTML you inserted in notes was invalid (you missed a closing quote at the end of the URL). As it was forced, it may not show up like a normal reject. I think I've made the edit you intended though, please check. BLongley 13:41, 8 Jan 2008 (CST)

Stated or working ISBN

I've held one of your submissions that changed a 'Fixed' ISBN back to the actual (but nonfunctional) stated ISBN. I'm not keen on that myself, but I've put it up for discussion here - feel free to state your preference. I'm not sure who made the original 'Fix', but I'll see if I can track it down from the edit history on that page and give them a heads-up too. BLongley 14:14, 8 Jan 2008 (CST)

Marianne de Pierres

Just a reminder that the system doesn't like the YYYY format, so your change to Marianne de Pierres's Crash Deluxe came across as "0000-00-00". No worries, though, I have changed it to 2005-06-00 to match the first Orbit edition :) Ahasuerus 07:43, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

Ian Irvine (2)

I have approved the changes to the second Ian Irvine's works, but then I changed Facing the Demon of Noontide from Non-genre to Collection at the title level. The problem here is that the Publication display logic searches all Titles in that Publication for a matching Title type and if it doesn't find a "Collection" Title, then it won't display a link back to the parent Title record. Besides, for all we know, that book of poetry may have contained some speculative fiction :)

As far as "Ian Hobson"'s Dream-Dust Parasites goes, I don't see anything in OCLC or other usual suspects. I will check 68 Australian libraries later today when I have access to my search engines. Thanks! Ahasuerus 08:02, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

I have now searched all online catalogs based in the UK, Oz and NZ (as well as all the major US catalogs for full measure) and none listed anything under Dream-Dust Parasites. I couldn't find anything remotely related under "name includes Hobson and title includes Parasites" either. After poking around, I found that it was an "iUniverse" title, so I entered it based on what Amazon UK had. Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:46, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

I'm not sure what the problem you were trying to resolve was, but it was easily findable at iUniverse itself, and the image at Google Books is ALMOST clear enough to confirm the ISBN... BLongley 06:34, 3 Feb 2008 (CST)

Once it occurred to me that it could be a self-published title, I stopped searching library catalogs and did a simple Google search instead, which immediately found the title. I had been spending so much time running library searches lately that I had completely forgotten about self-published books :) Ahasuerus 13:48, 3 Feb 2008 (CST)

The Elastic-Sided Spaceship

I approved this submission a few minutes ago and then ran a few searches to see what was going on with the ISBN. 0723806624 is listed as the correct ISBN by the National Library of Scotland, University of Oxford and the "Union Catalogue of UK University Libraries" (wonder where they got it from?), so I went ahead and added it with a corresponding Note. Also, they listed the publisher as "North Cheam: Young World Productions", so I changed that as well -- could you please check what the title page says? Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:37, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

"npp"

We discussed the issue of "npp" a while back and the consensus seemed to be that it's sufficient to state that there is no printed price in the Note field and there is no need to enter "npp" in the price note. Would you like to reopen this topic in the Wiki? Ahasuerus 23:52, 28 Jan 2008 (CST)

Science Fiction Adventures Classics

I have placed on hold the submissions for the changes in the editor records of this periodical. In the first two, you wish to change the title of the pub from Science Fiction Adventures to Science Fiction Adventures Classics. The ISFDB wiki page for this periodical gives the title of the March 1973 issue as Science Fiction Adventures and the March 1974 as Science Fiction Adventures: Classics (note the colon in the title). I created the original pub records for this periodical and can't figure out how the colon was dropped from the editor records. Do you have copies of these pubs and are you able to verify the placement of the colon? The records were created from several reliable sources.

Three more submissions place editor records into a series "Science Fiction Adventures Classics". If we create an editor series for these records, I think we should go with one title for the entire run of the periodical, perhaps creating one series with a canonical title that matches the current wiki page listing as "Science Fiction Classics". I'll keep your submissions on hold until I receive your input into the matter. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:08, 2 Feb 2008 (CST)

As I've received no response from my inquiry, I have to clean up the submission list by deleting these edits. Please feel free to resubmit. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:23, 7 Feb 2008 (CST)

Incompleat Enchanter

I have a couple of your Incompleat Enchanter submissions on hold since I am not sure what the intent is. In the first one, you would like to change the date of Incompleat Enchanter from 1979-00-00 to 1975-00-00. As far as I know, 1975 is the copyright date of the 1979 British edition because the constituent stories had been reprinted (and the copyright presumably renewed) in 1975 in the Ballantine edition of The Compleat Enchanter, but the 1979 edition was the first appearance of this title. Would you happen to know otherwise?

The second submission would make the 1979 The Incompleat Enchanter into a variant tile of the 1941 The Incomplete Enchanter, but they currently have different title types: one is a novel and the other is a collection. I think it would be best to first determine whether we want to consider this work a fixup novel or a collection of two novellas and then create a variant title relationship. The Notes field currently says "This story, in a somewhat different form, appeared in the May,1940, and August,1940, issues of "Unknown"", which suggests a fixup, but I vaguely recall that the differences between the magazine versions and the book publication were minimal. I can't check at the moment since I don't have access to my collection, but perhaps somebody else could. Let me post this question over on the Verification board and see if anybody may be in a position to help us. Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:16, 5 Feb 2008 (CST)

Based on what we know today, I have approved the Variant Title relationship between the 1979 UK collection and the 1941 US one. I also rejected the change of the UK title's date from 1979 to 1975. Once we have decided whether The Incomplete/Incompleat Enchanter is a Novel or a Collection, we will need to correct one of the Title records. At least it's not as bad as the Kuttner/Moore bibliography :) Ahasuerus 00:07, 12 Feb 2008 (CST)

Keith Taylor's Bard series

I have cleaned up Keith Taylor's Bard series a bit, but I don't have any of his books except for the Cormac Mac Art collaborations, so I have no way of telling if I did it right. OCLC is not being very helpful (and some records are clearly wrong), so if you have the books, it would be a good reality check. If not, I can run a bunch of Bookwhere searches as a fallback position :) Ahasuerus 01:18, 10 Feb 2008 (CST)

Thanks for finishing it off. I have all the UK Headline edns, but not the original Ace edns.

The only minor doubt I have is book IV. I wasn't sure if the Ravens' vs Raven's was a UK-ism, and didn't trust the Amazon cover for the Ace since it is the same as my Headline and all the Headlines are this style, but the first 3 Aces aren't according to various web sites. However, poking around further on the web makes me a bit more confident that a lot of sites have incorrectly put the apostrophe in the wrong place. Also, my MUP Encyc. of Aust'n Science Fict & Fantasy has Ravens' and the editor of the MUP Enc (Paul Collins) published one of Keith Taylor's other books. Should I put it on the Verification page, anyway, in case someone else has the Ace edn? ...--j_clark 01:36, 10 Feb 2008 (CST)

Sure, safety first! Besides, Locus lists them as "Raven’s" and "Ravens’" respectively, so we had better make double sure before we e-mail Contento with the correction :) Ahasuerus 01:46, 10 Feb 2008 (CST)

Night Gate

Your submission would have made Night Gate a variant of itself. I believe you meant to make it a variant of Billy Thunder And the Night Gate. If this assumption is wrong let me know. Thanks :-)Kraang 08:04, 10 Feb 2008 (CST)

Thanks for fixing it (Musta copied the wrong record #, or clicked the wrong submit button) & also thanks for doing The Winter Door/Winter Door split/vt which would have been a pain as I'm not a moderator & in a different time zone. ...--j_clark 19:44, 10 Feb 2008 (CST)

Scatterlings

I have approved the addition of an extended note to Scatterlings about an uncredited map, but I wonder if it may be better to create a separate Title for it, something like INTERIORART, "Scatterlings (map)" by "uncredited"?

My reasoning was that there are lots of uncredited's in the DB and for a map I didn't think having yet another record by "uncredited" was useful. ... but if you think otherwise, I can do future uncredited maps as INTERIORART by uncredited. --j_clark 20:21, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

On an unrelated note, did you notice Michael's comment above re: Science Fiction Adventures Classics? Is there anything that still needs to be done with these issues? Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:55, 11 Feb 2008 (CST)

I've unearthed my one issue of this and will revisit some time soon. --j_clark 20:21, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

Thanks! :) Ahasuerus 21:55, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

Firebirds : An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction

I have approved Firebirds : An Anthology of Original Fantasy and Science Fiction, but then I changed "Illustrations (The Black Fox)" to simply "The Black Fox". The fact that the title type is INTERIORART is generally sufficient to identify illustrations as such, so we don't have to spell it out in the title. Ans makes it look better on the artist's summary page :) Ahasuerus 18:47, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

I understand. Thanks. --j_clark 22:05, 13 Feb 2008 (CST)

Bad title

What is the purpose of the Bad title page? Is it a series? Marc Kupper (talk) 18:12, 2 Mar 2008 (CST)

If you click on this series Series:Spinouts (1st Set)[4] it links to Bad title? in the Wiki. Click on Discussion and you have the above page. Maybe the brackets are causing the problem?Kraang 22:02, 26 Mar 2008 (CDT)

Thank you, this is an ISFDB bug which I've added to the bug list. The bug is that the characters '[' and ']' are not allowed in MediaWiki article titles and ISFDB failed to account for this when converting the series name "Spinouts [1st set]" into a MediaWiki link. For now, I changed the series name from to "Spinouts (1st set)". Marc Kupper (talk) 05:10, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Shaun Tan's "The Arrival"

Just to let you know that I have approved the "The Arrival" submission and then changed the Title type from Anthology to Shortfiction. I assume that you used "New Novel" for the original submission and changed the type from "NOVEL" to "CHAPTERBOOK", which caused a problem during the filing process when both the Publication type and the Title type were set to "CHAPTERBOOK". The former was correct, but the latter was incorrect and should have been SHORTFICTION since CHAPTERBOOK is not a valid Title type. Then, when you pulled up the Title record for editing, the software didn't recognize the Title type and defaulted to the first title type, which happened to be ANTHOLOGY. Confusing, isn't it? :) Ahasuerus 11:26, 4 Mar 2008 (CST)

Yes, I was going to ask about this, 'cos I had noticed it. Interestingly, before I editted the title record, the item showed up in the author's summary page under a separate heading "CHAPTERBOOK" or similar.

A related problem I have with chapterbooks is that you can't put them in a series (unless one of the series is a novel) - well, you can, but it doesn't show on the author's summary page. I have many kids spec. fiction items that I think should be classed as chapterbooks ('cos they are shorter than "kids' length novel" even), and many are in series. --j_clark 20:41, 6 Apr 2008 (CDT)

I get really frustrated by chapterbooks as they don't appear in the right place in author display for me. E.g. Yesterday I added The Highway Men which is a BOOK I can buy. It doesn't show up in the section I look at for considering Books to buy though - after I go past the Series, Novels, Collections and Anthologies (I think of these as Books) and get into Shortfiction and Essays (stuff I will only look at for REALLY completist reasons) I'm not going to check every one of those titles to see if I'm missing a book. There are whole categories of books I miss as they're just too short: children's books are OK by me to be left as Novels, unless they're just abridged versions of an adult one. And some adult books too - e.g. the World Book Day titles tend to be short as they're sold for One Pound here and have to be slim - but that's the only way I'll complete a J. K. Rowling or Neil Gaiman or Tom Holt set. If you're up for a standards discussion on Chapterbooks I've got a few things to add too! BLongley 15:34, 7 Apr 2008 (CDT)

While the Gate Is Open and "Cold Sleep, Cold Dreams"

Re: While the Gate Is Open vs. While the Gate is Open, as far as I can tell, the two Title records are nearly identical and the only difference is the capitalization. Wouldn't we want to merge them instead of creating a variant title?

Re: unmerging "Cold Sleep, Cold Dreams", I am not entirely sure what the intent may be. As far as I can tell, Alien Shores : An Anthology of Australian Science Fiction is the only publication that contains this story and our data matches what the Locus Index has. Did the story actually appear as by "Sean Williams" and not as by "E. W. Story", perchance? Or is there something even more nefarious going on? :) Ahasuerus 23:19, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

re ... Gate ...: Merge is fine with me, but "is" or "Is"? What is the convention for capitalisation of "is"?

Admittedly, the capitalized form of "is" looks a little silly, but some publishers use it and for now our "lower case" list is limited to "and", "the", "a", "an", "for", "of", "in", "on", "by", "at", "from", and "to" as per Help:Screen:NewNovel. It's not a big deal, though, we can always run a script that will change all instances of "Is" to "is" if we ever decide to change our policy. I'll go ahead and merge the titles for now. Ahasuerus 06:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

re Cold ...: What I am trying to do is add an ellipsis at the end of the title. I added . . . in the Alien Shores publ. but it didn't "take" fully, presumably 'cos of the existing vt record re the authors. (The author is "E. W. Story" in the anth.); so I thought unmerge, then vt again, would do it. Is there an easier way? --j_clark 23:14, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Ah, I see what the problem is! The underlying issue here is that there are two separate Title records involved, a variant title where "E. W. Story" is credited as the author and the master title where Sean Williams is credited. If you want to change them both, then you have to edit them separately.

As an aside, once a title has been turned into a "variant title", it's not always obvious how to edit it. The easiest way to access a variant title for a pseudonymous author is to go to that pseudonym's summary page, in this case E. W. Story, then click on Titles in the navigation bar on the left, and then you can access all variant titles for this pseudonym. We really need to make them easier to get to, though... Ahasuerus 06:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. (plays a bit...) Light bulb! Now I can also merge 2 vt records in 1 step! Thanks again.--j_clark 22:45, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Excellent! :) Ahasuerus 00:11, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Beyond the Stars: Tales of Adventure in Time and Space

FYI, I have approved Beyond the Stars: Tales of Adventure in Time and Space, but there were no changes in the submission. Did it get away before you had a chance to enter anything? Ahasuerus 00:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

OK, I have found and approved the corrected submission, but just to be on the safe side, is "Baptism of Fire" attributed to "Robert Heinlein" or to "Robert A. Heinlein"? Ahasuerus 01:17, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

oops, missed that one; it's Robert A. Heinlein & I've submitted a fix. Thanks. --j_clark 00:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks good! By the way, is the editor really credited as "Anonymous"? As Help:Screen:NewNovel states:

• Anonymous or uncredited works. If a work is credited to "Anonymous", then put "Anonymous" in the author field. The same applies for any obviously similar pseudonym, such as "Noname". If the work is not credited at all, use "uncredited", with a lower case "u". This applies to editorship of anthologies that are not credited.

so if there is no editor credited, we will want to change the attribution to "uncredited". Ahasuerus 01:54, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I was wondering about the Anonymous when I saw it in the existing record to which I added page numbers. I'll submit the changes. --j_clark 03:22, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, approved! Ahasuerus 04:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

"Re-Deem the Time" by David Lake

I have approved the "Quartet Books Australia" edition of Rooms of Paradise, but then I had to change "Re-deem the Time" back to "Re-Deem the Time". We currently have this story cataloged under both of these titles and if we changed the "uppercase D" one in Rooms of Paradise, the way the software currently works, it would be changed in all other Publications as well. Could you please take a look at Help:How to change a story in a collection when you have a chance for an explanation of how to handle these pesky issues? Thanks! Ahasuerus 01:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I was attempting to change them all to Re-deem. I have one publication of just about every anth. with the story in it & it seems more an issue of how capitalisation of the title has been treated by ISFDB editors. Centaurus has the story titles all upper case (RE-DEEM), tho' the acks & the blurb before the story, have Re-deem . Rooms of Paradise (1978) has Re-deem. Australian Science Fiction has Re-deem. Metaworlds has Re-deem. I don't have the Carr anth.

ISFDB guidelines say it should be Re-Deem, if I recall correctly. So it seems to me Re-deem ... & Re-Deem ... aren't variations. I was attempting to go for Re-deem, 'cos most the pubs have it that way. What do you advise? Thanks --j_clark 03:18, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Hm, yes, that's a good point. The relevant paragraph in Help:Screen:NewNovel states:

• Case. Titles should have case regularized unless there is some specific evidence that the author intended certain letters to be in a specific case. For example, if the title is "EXTRO" in all caps, the title should be entered as "Extro". This applies to the titles of short stories as well as books. Typesetting style is not important; for example, Fantastic Universe typically printed story titles in lower case, but these titles are regularized for the ISFDB. Regularized case means that the first word is capitalized, and all later words are also capitalized except for "and", "the", "a", "an", "for", "of", "in", "on", "by", "at", "from", and "to". Hyphenated words have the first letter after the hyphen capitalized.

I suppose that means that we should use "Re-Deem", although I agree that "Re-deem" looks better. In either case, there is no reason to have two separate Title records. (And I need to write a script that will find all variant titles which are the same as their parent Titles except for capitalization.)

It sounds like the first thing to do is to merge the two Titles. This is a little tricky in the case of Variant Titles since first we need to break their "variant title relationship", which is described in Help:How to reverse a variant title relationship. Once the two titles are unlinked, you can merge them either via the "Titles" page accessible from the author's Summary page or using Advanced Search. Would you like to give it a try or would you prefer me to do it for you? Thanks! Ahasuerus 04:15, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I've started to do the merges, etc. --j_clark 04:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Looks good -- I should have realized that the two affected Titles are both Variants of the "David J. Lake" title and can be merged directly. Good to see that you are becoming very comfortable with the database design! Ahasuerus 16:38, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction

Unfortunately, it so happens that you submitted a merge of one of the Titles in The Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction before submitting changes to this Publication. I approved the merge first, so now one of the Title records in the second submission no longer exists. Consequently, the submission errors out and can't be approved :( I am afraid it will have to be resubmitted; here are the changes that can be seen in the (moderator-only) approval screen:

:Column 	Current [Record #25515] 	Proposed Changes
Title 	Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction 	The Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction
Authors 	John Baxter 	-
Tag 	PCFCFCTN8B1968 	-
Year 	1968-00-00 	-
Publisher 	Sydney: Angus & Robertson 	-
Pages 	180 	ix+180
Binding 	pb 	-
PubType 	ANTHOLOGY 	-
Isbn 	- 	#Pacific Books 92
Price 	A$1.00 	-
Artists 	- 	-
Image 	- 	-
Note 	- 	

    * The cover just has "Pacific Book of Australian Science Fiction", whereas the title page has "The Pacific ..."
    * A date is not given for the Frank Roberts' story "It Could Be You"; the source is stated to be The Bulletin (an Australian weekly).
    * The blurb before the Lee Harding story "The Evidence" states that this story "has not previously been published in this form".
    * The source of the Broderick story is stated to be the collection A Man Returned (1965); however, other sources indicate that that was a reprint, and that the story was originally published in 1964.
    * The author of the story "For Men Must Work" is given as Frank Bryning in the TOC and Frank G. Bryning on the story's title page. 

Modified Content
	Current 	Proposed
Title 	All My Yesterdays 	-
Authors 	Damien Broderick 	-
Year 	1964-05-00 	-
Type 	SHORTFICTION 	-
Length 	ss 	-
Page 	- 	59
	Current 	Proposed
Title 	An Ounce of Dissension 	-
Authors 	Martin Loran 	-
Year 	1966-07-00 	-
Type 	SHORTFICTION 	-
Length 	nt 	-
Page 	- 	27
	Current 	Proposed
Title 	Burning Spear 	-
Authors 	Kit Denton 	-
Year 	1964-02-00 	-
Type 	SHORTFICTION 	-
Length 	ss 	-
Page 	- 	1

Thanks! Ahasuerus 16:43, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The Company of the Dead

I have approved your merge of The Company of the Dead but changed the date from 2007-00-00 to 2007-08-00 (one of the pubs had 2007-08-01, and the book's website stated The Company of the Dead was launched with full fanfare on August the 9th at Ariel Books. and Pan Macmillan Australia website confirms the August publication date. If you have information about earlier publication, please updated the record. Thanks. --Roglo 11:35, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thanks --j_clark 02:42, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Pseudonym? GASPP/G. A. S. P. P.

I had a look and each name has only one entry. If we establish a parent name now we can't break it. In this case it might be best to leave a note about the other name and if more works turn up than we may have a better idea about which one to choose. Your thoughts? Thanks.Kraang 00:57, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, best to reject it then, if it can't be undone. I'll have more of a poke around to see what seems to be used most. So far I've found that The MUP Encyc of Aust'n SF&F, has, in Rowena Cory Lindquist's entry (though she might still have been Cory when the statement applies): "In 1983 she went into partnership with Chris Johnston and Stephen Campbell in a graphic studio called GASPP." I don't think it exists anymore 'cos Rowena's web site has a different name for her graphic stuff. ... but I'm sure I've seen it with the dots more than once - but where? I still have a lot more Aust'n stuff to enter! BTW: Is there a page where we list sets of names for which we are waiting to decide the canonical name, or are probably pseudonyms? --j_clark 06:48, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

If there isn't, there probably should be, perhaps Possible pseudonyms or Proposed cannonical names or something of the sort? -DES ^Talk 13:59, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

That could get long: I'd suggest starting the GASPP and G. A. S. P. P. pages, but I'm not sure people really look at those? That whole namespace seems under-utilised recently. BLongley 18:42, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

It might be easier to find things on one long page than a lot of little pages with no useful index, perhaps. I haven't used the author pages much, except as a place to store author-specific notes, particularly including sorces for pesud assignemtns when these are non-obvious. -DES ^Talk 19:04, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

My thinking is that nobody is really going to care about GASPP or G. A. S. P. P. unless they're already looking at one or the other of them. If we add them to one long page of pairs of single-title authors with similar names I doubt anyone will look at that page once it gets past a certain size. Admittedly, when there's SEVERAL variations to consider, then it's better to have Proposed canonical names rather than try and link half-a-dozen Author pages together: but even then we probably have already GOT a Canonical name, even if it's not the one we really want - remember the [J.|Joseph] [S.|Sheridan] Le[ ]Fanu variants recently? BLongley 20:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I do indeed, that spurred me in to diggign up lots of additional works and pubs by this author, and generally putting in a lot of work on his page. Take a look at Joseph_Sheridan_Le_Fanu now -- I think you'll find it much improved. -DES ^Talk 21:30, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, this is possibly another time to reconsider Studios/Companies for Coverart entries anyway. I try and reserve the field for human beings - they're getting stored as "Authors" and we're got quite enough of those already, without adding people that have never actually written anything. Although I know I'm not consistent - I've used the field for a genuine author that sculpts items for his covers, that then get photographed, and then designed into a final cover image - but personally I'd like Authors and Artists separated (although we'd need to link some at times, such as Keith Roberts) and companies and designers can get left to notes if anyone feels them important. I don't feel that "Black Sheep UK" is worthy of being in the same table as Jack Gaughan: and great though Jack Gaughan is, I think he deserves to be in the Top Artists rather than fighting it out with the Top Writers. BLongley 20:17, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I see your point, but I tend to disagree. There are enough authors who are also illustrators that I don't think we can usefully separate the two, any more than we can separate "Authors of novels" from "Authors of shortfiction". Consider J._R._R._Tolkien for a start. William_Pene_du_Bois was probably better known as an illustrationr than as an author, but he is an author for us. Other examples are Maurice_Sendak and Mervyn_Peake -- there is a long tradition of author/ilustrators. As for "corporate artists" -- if the actual image on the cover of a book was created as a joint work and credited to "XYZ Studios", then i think that is what belongs in the "Artist" field. "Cover design" is usually a separate amtter, and generally really means "layout". But when/if we have expanded "role" fields, i think that such credits as "Book designer" "Cover designer" and particuarlly "Book editor" are worth recording when known - for the moment I tend to put them in notes. -DES ^Talk 21:30, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

We'll have to disagree on "enough" I think. We've over 48,000 "Authors" here, and I suspect that if we separated the pure "Artists" out that we'd have a LOT less, and the number of people in both categories would be quite small: even allowing for people like John Sladek and Kurt Vonnegut and Terry Pratchett sometimes having mere sketches as interior-art. It's a moot point though, I can't see us separating Artists out anytime soon (although I may create some scripts to see if my gut-feelings for the numbers are right). BLongley 22:50, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

But I REALLY don't like organizations in there - we're effectively encouraging people to put in Birth and Death dates for them, clarifying their legal surnames, etc! It's an overloaded use of the Authors table, broken beyond all reasonable use, IMO. If it's wanted, keep it in notes till we can support such - don't pollute the field for now. It's already difficult enough keeping Narrators, Translators and Illustrators out of co-author status, and I feel those are a bit more notable than someone that pasted a couple of photographs together. I take your point about "Book Editor" though - a lot of those disappear (undeservedly) from Author status if we follow current conventions, as correcting pubs to current standards often doesn't even leave them with an Introduction we can be sure of. BLongley 22:50, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Summerland by French

In this submission you list the ISBN as "020719010". As this is only 9 digits it cannot be a valid ISBN. Is that actually how it is listed on the book? If so, we of course ought to document it. Amazon.com lists "0207190100" for what looks like the same book, but amazon is not highly reliable on books from as long ago as this one. I have the submission on hold pending your response. -DES ^Talk 19:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

ISBNDB.COM also lists "0207190100" for what seems to be the same book. -DES ^Talk 19:28, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Typo. It has the extra 0. The book is on my "check" pile, so if you approve the new novel, I'll fix it. BTW: Thanks for raising ISBNDB.COM into my sights. Do you know if the prices listed are US$ or A$ for the Jackie French books? I'd tend to think A$, 'cos the publisher's website for Lady Dance has [A]$14.95. That's probably today's price not the 2000 price. A$12.95 would be possible for 2000; US$12.95 in 2000 would be a bit high, I think. --j_clark 22:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Approved. I don't know for sure. i assuemd that it was A$ for books published in australia, but that is really just a guess. They say that their info comes from multiple vendors -- they have direct links to amazon US and ABE in many cases. -DES ^Talk 23:03, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Monster Mission by Ibbotson

You submitted an edit to this that would replace the listed date of 2008-10-03 to 1999-00-00. However, there is an edition scheduled for release on 2008-10-03, so your edition should have been entered via the "add a publication" tool or the "clone" tool. Also, it appears that this is an alternate title for Island of the Aunts by the same author. -DES ^Talk 21:58, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

OOPS, My apologies!! The edit I rejected was a perfectly proper title update, not an incorrect pub update. I am very sorry. However, i think the actual info is now in the db correctly. -DES ^Talk 22:40, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

The Curse of the Chosen

I am holding your edit of The Curse of the Chosen by Ian Irvine. The publisher's website you link to in the notes shows the title as The Curse on the Chosen. Does the title page really show "of"? -DES ^Talk 16:18, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Oops! You are correct. Thanks for picking it up. --j_clark 04:37, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Edit approved and modified to "Curse on...". Thanks for double checking. -DES ^Talk 15:20, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

An Echo in Time : Atlantis

I have just aproved this. When you say "Data from 9th printing (as per number line) [2001]." but give the publication a date of 1997-00-00, do i correctly understand that you intend this record to represent the 1st printing, but that you only have the 9th in hand? That is a fine procedure, but in that case it might be a good idea to create an additional record for the 9th printing. -DES ^Talk 16:40, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Note that many editors do this anyway after the first edit is approved: but they wait until the first entry can be cloned. This works better than creating the later printing initially and cloning to create the first, as that means you have to adjust the title date as well. Our more prolific editors take any short-cut they can. :-) BLongley 18:34, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

The Serpent Bride

I'm not holding, but am not approving for the moment either, your new pub. It would create a new publisher "HarperVoyager, imprint of HarperCollins (Australia)". We're trying to consolidate the publishers a bit, and we already have these "Harper (something) Voyager" publishers:

• Harper Voyager, an imprint of Harper Collins
• Harper Voyager, an imprint of Harper Collins UK
• HarperCollins (Australia)/Voyager
• HarperCollins Voyager
• HarperCollins/Voyager
• HarperCollins/Voyager Classics
• HarperCollinsAustralia/Voyager
• HarperVoyager

Make it "Voyager" alone and we're up to 31 different "publishers"! Can I ask you to pick some nice standard Australian Publisher and Imprint names and let us know what they should be? I think you're currently the expert on such, I'm not willing to mess with them without advice. A few notes on the publisher record or publisher Wiki pages would help too, or you'll be pretty much on your own with all the antipodeans ! BLongley 20:32, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

And can we please avoid the language "an imprint of"? I think it is redundant and unaesthetic. You might want to look at Talk:Publishers#Publisher Naming Standards where some ideas have been discussed, but no final conclcusions come to. -DES ^Talk 20:40, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

HarperVoyager is what the book says on the copyright page; it seems to be a new imprint (or, more likely, a new name for the Voyager imprint of HarperCollins Australia). Thanks for the pointer to the publisher naming discussion. --j_clark 23:06, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Then I would be inclined to go with "HarperVoyager / HarperCollins" or "HarperVoyager/HarperCollins" if you don't like spaces arounbd the slash. -DES ^Talk 15:36, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Wings

I've updated User talk:Marc Kupper#query re a story in Collected Short Fiction of C. J. Cherryh. Thank you for the heads up! Marc Kupper (talk) 20:51, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

The Water-Dragons

Is this[5] a chapterbook length anthology?Kraang 11:20, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

This one is a bit messy now The Intruder[6] :-)Kraang 13:06, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Both of these look like "anthologies" containing only a single work of short fiction (and interior art) with a chapterbook record stuck in for good measure. I think our current "standards" would in theory call for the anthologies to be converted to (or perhaps merged with) the chapterbook records so that what we had was a shortfiction title with one or more chapterbook publications (and possibly other pubs also). But given that chapterbook handling is under discussion at the moment. i won't just convert these unless there is some agreement on the desired outcome. -DES ^Talk 15:32, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

Any edit to a "properly entered" chapbook at the moment forces a change of title type. "ANTHOLOGY", being the first other option, gets assigned as default. :-/ Still, given recent understanding of what we might actually achieve with a Chapbook container title in the long run, maybe Al will make some more changes that will help with questions like "will chapbooks help make Shortfiction series appear"? I won't know till we can try. BLongley 20:54, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

The Water Dragons is an oops; thanks for picking it up. Intention is non-genre chapter book. Now fixed.
The Intruder is odd - sopmething to do with it being an author pseudonym it seems, 'cos looking at it via author Cory Daniells rather than R. C. Lindquist shows [this] which seems OK to me, for now (novel title with chapbook publ. as temporary solution pending the outcome of the chap book discussion). Looks like I have to edit the vt record too?? --j_clark 22:51, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

One title record is novel and the other is anthology.Kraang 00:09, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

This mix of titles, novel as "Title Record" and pub as "Chapterbook" leave the pub at the moment with no "Title Reference", although there is a link in contents. It now diplays in series records, a solution but a bit imperfect.Kraang 01:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Would you be interested in Moderatorship?

Your understanding of anthologies, collections, variant titles and pseudonyms was well proven by that last set of submissions and having to approve your edits is eating up my time, so I think it's only right to nominate you for moderator. Are you interested? Here's the Moderator Qualifications page.Kraang 03:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, though my availability is rather erratic for approving other people's edits. Thanks --j_clark 05:40, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Nomination passes, you are now a moderator. Congratulations! ;-) Ahasuerus 03:22, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations, now go forth and edit!Kraang 03:45, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Congratualtions, now I'm no longer the newest moderator. -DES ^Talk 19:26, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Commiserongratulations! Make sure you read Moderator help, take it easy at first, feel free to ask for help still, and DO point out where we're still advising wrongly! BLongley 20:04, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Spellbinder

I've put your submission on hold, by making the parent name the same as the child series name it causes the series to loop in on it selves. I fixed a whole bunch of these awhile back and before I figured out how to do them the right way I caused two authors pages to endlessly loop in on themselves. The result was an authors page that would never load. The best way to do this would be make the subseries "Spellbinder 1 & 2" and then the parent series "Spellbinder" I can do this quickly or leave them on hold and in a couple of day you can fix it yourself when your a moderator. :-)Kraang 03:29, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

If you pick the second option first have a look at the held submissions and then use the reject option. If you change the target series names the first two submissions may have a problem of being approved or rejected.Kraang 03:45, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Balyet

Is the publisher of Balyet[7]"Hutchinson" as part of "Random House UK" or is it "Century Hutchinson". Thanks.Kraang 01:56, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Book says "imprint of Century Hutchinson Ltd". (Strictly speaking, the imprint is stated as "Hutchinson Children's Books".) (Quite likely to have been taken over by Random House by now??) clarkmci / --j_clark 06:44, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

This helps, I could not find any look inside for any of their books so I had no idea what the actual imprint or parent publisher was. Thanks!Kraang 00:35, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Sea and Summer

Cheers! Added some data to BKTG18615. Artist and extra prices from the back cover plus a note quoting the copyright page regarding portions of the novel having previously appeared in a short story.--Bluesman 04:36, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. ...clarkmci/--j_clark 04:37, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

The Luck of Brin's Five

I added coverart to your verified The Luck of Brin's Five, hope it matches. (I think this is the first Australian printing I've ever done here.). BLongley 22:09, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Yep, matches. Thanks. clarkmci/--j_clark 01:46, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Less Than Human

Added "First printing, full number line" to LSSTHNHMN2004. --Bluesman 19:39, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Kelleher's The Beast of Heaven

The review in Fantasy Review, September 1984 provides further details about your verified pub of this title. The month of publication was February 1984, and the price was A$10.00. MHHutchins 05:18, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

[Note to self: Action this. --j_clark 00:51, 17 March 2009 (UTC)]

Emily Rodda

I see you've been verifying some of her works recently, I wonder if you can shed any light on why several of her titles are variants of themselves? e.g.

Title1 Title2 Name
986091 23987  The Charm Bracelet
986073 28501  The Unicorn
986092 23988  The Flower Fairies
986093 23994  The Third Wish
986094 24002  The Last Fairy-Apple Tree
986095 28500  The Magic Key	

BLongley 17:31, 12 April 2009 (UTC)

Is there a way to get the variant title display on the summary page to show that the title has been published under Mary-Anne Dickinson and under Emily Rodda? It seems if you start with a title record under each author, then put the Mary-Anne Dickinson one as a vt for the Emily Rodda, the summary page (for Emily Rodda, the canonical author) "loses" the Emily Rodda variant and shows only, e.g. "The Charm Bracelet as by Mary-Anne Dickinson", but it's been published as by Emily Rodda too. That's what I was trying to overcome. (It's only the display on the summary page - the publications by the variant authors don't get lost.) ... clarkmci/--j_clark 04:17, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

OK, I can see what you mean: I'm not sure this is the way to do it though, a variant of itself is normally a sign of someone having changed one version of a title in error. Still, MartyD is apparently able to work on display changes now, a feature request might be in order? There's certainly plenty of authors this affects: Dean Koontz and Stephen Donaldson and their "R." versions, Brian Stableford and Esther Friesner and their "M. " versions, etc. It would be nice to distinguish the "only as by" and "sometimes as by". BLongley 17:43, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This is a known display issues that Al and I discussed back in 2006, but nothing has happened yet. Self-variants are generally a bad idea, but changing the display logic should be doable and we can definitely add it to the list of things to look into. Ahasuerus 18:05, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

This display problem has "bugged" me as well. One reprinting under another name and it appears on the summary page that all pubs were published under that name. MHHutchins 18:53, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

One of the reasons I haven't been correcting all the "obvious" errors found recently while reviewing Fixer's submissions is that it would exacerbate this problem. Yes, I know Stephen Donaldson has no "R." on some (many?) British publications. Where the cover clearly shows no "R." I've let the Fixer/Amazon data stand. But I haven't gone back and corrected existing entries. I do think that at some point somebody has though - adding "R."s that don't really exist. A smattering of differences might make people think a bit more before doing such, but I agree it would be better to fix the display rather than tamper with data. It's only because a "Data from Amazon" note is such a big warning that I've felt entitled to interfere with any of it at all. BLongley 19:18, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

Hurray! I can now back-out these kludges re vts. Thanks guys. ...clarkmci/--j_clark 08:47, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Less Than Human - note 2

Just a note that Bluesman has updated your verified edition of Less Than Human and changed the cover image to a locally hosted one. The changes seemed harmless enough, so I let them through. Ahasuerus 02:06, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

Month on Inherit the Stars

I added a month to the publication date of your verified Inherit the Stars from Locus1. --MartyD 11:36, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Giant Cold -- novel?

Your verified pub of Giant Cold is listed as being of type chapterbook, but the included fiction record is recorded as a novel. It is also recorded as being only 69 pages in both publications. This sounds more like a novella to me, depending on the font, page size, etc. In any case a chapterbook publication does not work properly with NOVEL contents. Eithe the tiutle record should be changed to SHORTFICTION, and a containing CHAPTERBOOK record added, or the publication should be changed to NOVEL, possibly with a note on the binding.

I would have simply changed the fiction title to SHORTFICTION, but was unwilling to do so with a verified pub. I'll be happy to make the changes, if you indicate whether you still think this should be listed as a novel.

BTW I also added OCLC and BLIC record numbers to the notes. -DES ^Talk 23:00, 24 July 2009 (UTC)

Due to the recent changes to the software re CHAPTERBOOKS, I need to revisit these. (I've had a fiddle & the title is now shows on Peter Dickinson's summary page as a CHAPTERBOOK.) ...clarkmci/--j_clark 06:47, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

You changed the title type, but not the publication type. I have now done this, so it is now a stable chapterbook. -DES ^Talk 14:33, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

As a rule, there should be at least three related records involved in any Chpaterbook: a CHAPTERBOOK title record, which will be common to all publications of the chapterbook; a CHAPTERBOOK publication record, one for each pub; and a shortfiction title record, which will be common to all chapterbook publications, and to all reprints of the same story in collections, anthologies, magazines, etc. -DES ^Talk 14:41, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

Belated thanks for this. I've just got back to this topic and am working on a series of chapter books that were also originally entered as novels. I had set them as a series ages ago (before the current changes). I part changed them to chapterbooks last month (i.e. didn't add the SF records). The CHAPTERBOOK title records had the series info & no series showed on the summary page. I've just put in the SHORT FICTION title records. Then I added the series info to just the first SHORT FICTION title record in the series (so far) and a series has appeared. However, although the SF record is in the series, all 3 of the CHAPTERBOOK records have also "automagically" joined the series, giving:

Chapterbooks

   * Jake And Pete (1995)
   * Jake and Pete and the Stray Dogs (1997)
   * Jake and Pete and the Catcrowbats (1999) 

Short Fiction Series

   * Jake and Pete
         o 1 Jake And Pete (1995) [CHAPTERBOOK]
         o 1 Jake and Pete (1995)
         o 2 Jake and Pete and the Stray Dogs (1997) [CHAPTERBOOK]
         o 3 Jake and Pete and the Catcrowbats (1999) [CHAPTERBOOK] 

which to me is rather odd. (Especially the titles appearing under Chapterbooks not in a series, then repeating under Short Fiction Series.) ... clarkmci/--j_clark 08:36, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

That they appear twice probably has the same underlying cause as Bug 2848568, reported against Serials + Short Fiction Series. In this particular case, the biblio display does not have a concept of "Chapterbook Series", so while only the CHAPTERBOOKs were in the series, it was not displayed anywhere. Adding the SHORT FICTION Jake and Pete to the series allowed the Short Fiction Series to pick it up. --MartyD 11:18, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I amended that bug report to include this example. --MartyD 11:24, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Thank you. ... and thanks for all the recent programming work. I've only been an occasional user/moderator lately, but I like what I've seen of the user interface improvements. ...clarkmci/--j_clark 11:29, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

Knave in Hand - added cover image/start page

Afternoon! This. [8]. I added a cover image, [9] and start page after matching my copy to your ver. Thanks, Harry. --Dragoondelight 21:10, 25 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Image matches ...clarkmci/--j_clark 03:32, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

CATNYP -> Catnyp

I submitted a merge of "CATNYP" from your verified The Faery Reel with "Catnyp" from a couple of other pubs, keeping the latter capitalization, as it seemed to conform to current capitalization policy/practices. I noticed Locus also uses mixed case for it, which I realize may not be meaningful. If it's an acronym (or there's another reason it should be all-caps), let me know and I will change it -- the other pubs are not verified. Thanks. --MartyD 10:36, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Sorry to take so long to get back to you Marty; my ISFDB activities are rather in infrequent bursts at the moment. I think CATNYP is meant to be an acronym for something like CATalog of the New York Public [Library], although, on a quick flip through the story, I can't confirm that exactly but that's close enough to the meaning, from memory of the story. The title above the story has it all uppercase whereas the titles of the other stories in the anthology are in title case. All references I can see within the story have CATNYP, all upper case. clarkmci/--j_clark 03:28, 20 November 2009 (UTC)

Sea & Summer

Scanned in an image and expanded the notes for [this] ~Bill, --Bluesman 21:55, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The Rogue

I don't understand your rejection on the merge of Poul Anderson's "The Rogue". Your comment was "The page for the 1963 title has no content, so perhaps the variant was first used in 1970." That's probably true, but the variant is supposed to have the publication date of the original story and not when the variant title first appeared. As such, that date on the variant should be 1963 & not 1970. Unless I'm missing something in your comment? --JLaTondre 03:12, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

I must admit I haven't revisited the Help in a while, but my recollection is that the date for a variant title is the date the variant title was first used, not the date of the original story. Hope this amplifies what I was getting at with the rejection explanation.

Later: I've tried to find where the Help says "different dates". Under "Marking a title record so that it's a variant title of, or a pseudonym for, a title that does not exist yet in ISFDB" - which seems to me to be talking more about the parent/original, it seems to say all should have the same date, but it seems to me to be no point in the pages displaying dates for variants if "all same dates" was what was originally intended by Al. --clarkmci / j_clark 10:29, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

See this discussion on my talk page. Three of your fellow moderators pointed to that help page and said that's the standard. I agree with you that it seems more logical to use the date the variant was first used (and they seemed to as well), but that's apparently not how it has been done.

Either way, you moderators need to do this all the same way. Submitters cannot very well guess which moderator is going to look at their submission. --JLaTondre 14:14, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Consistency is an admirable goal, but, as Aldous Huxley wrote "Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." Every so often there will be moderators who may not be as familiar with certain areas of the database as others. There will also be cases where the help section may be ambiguous. In this case, when it refers to title of the original publication, some may think it means that a new "title" makes it the first publication. It's actually referring to the original publication of the "story", not the first publication as this "title". It should be made more clear. If a 1955 story is retitled in a 2005 anthology and given the date of 2005, that's how it will appear in the anthology's content listing. A user of the database will assume this is a story first published in 2005. That's one of the reasons we don't give the date as the first publication of the "title". Sorry for the confusion. MHHutchins 17:46, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Okay, re-reading what I wrote, it does come off rather abrupt which was not intended. I resubmitted the change. Thanks. --JLaTondre 18:14, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

Snows of Ganymede

This discussion. Luckily this one does not involve some of the problems that arise when dealing with Ace Doubles. There are few pubs involved although both are in verified pubs. I have no problem with a merge. Don't know about Kraang. The story was never published by itself in book form and it does not have any award records attached to it. It's highly unlikely that the Ace Double version of 40k words but it might be a fair bit longer than the magazine version. I wonder if a good solution in this, and other cases, would be to assign a novella length to the Ace 2b version and give it the title "Snows of Ganymede (Ace Double)" and make the magazine a variant. My own inclination in this case would be to approve the merge but maybe Mike Hutchins has an idea.--swfritter 20:41, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

The Magic Rainforest

This pub came up on the data inconsistency list (it was a chapterbook with a novel title record), so I changed the title record to chapterbook and added a shortfiction title record for the contents. Thanks. Mhhutchins 18:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Same thing for The Watchtower and Beneath the Surface. Mhhutchins 18:59, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Chapterbooks

I started working on this list (source for the above comments) and saw that there are many Australian publications. Since you appear to be Our Man Down Under, I wondered if perhaps you may have entered the records. (Many of the non-verified pubs seem to have the National Library of Australia as their source.) The problem I'm finding is that the title records for these chapterbooks are given as novels, when in most cases the books are less than 100 pages. The entry of chapterbooks has been simplified in the past year, but in the past it involved some manipulation of the record to get it into shape. Perhaps these were entered when the only way of creating a record for a chapterbook was to use the novel entry form. If you're not familiar with how to fix these records (i.e. chapterbook title records which contain a chapterbook publication record which contains a matching shortfiction title record), just ask and I can give you a step-by-step. And if you didn't enter these, please forgive my assumption. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:13, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Probably my entries, done some time back - first couple of dozen have many familiar titles. I'll look at them sometime - thanks for alerting me to your list. (Now that I've got a head of steam on cover scans, I'd been planning to focus on that, with things like novel --> chapterbook fixes happening as they come along. Still, I can use the list to pick which authors to do next.) --clarkmci / j_clark 11:23, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Golden Trillium

Added a cover image to [this] ~Bill, --Bluesman 03:35, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Keeping it Real

Found and placed an image for [this] that matched your note. Adjusted the note accordingly. ~Bill, --Bluesman 02:01, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Inherit the stars

Added a cover and note to your verified here. Hauck 12:12, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

The Miocene Arrow

Added a cover and note to your verified here and Eyes of the Calculor. Hauck 17:20, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

Repo Men

Update to [this] discussion. ~Bill, --Bluesman 03:02, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you ... --clarkmci / j_clark 03:47, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Genetic Soldier

Added a nice image to [this] --~ Bill, Bluesman 00:11, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Echoes of earth

Added a cover and note to your verified here and to here and here. Hauck 08:53, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Genetic Soldier

I added some notes to this verified pub to match my copy. Thanks, --Willem H. 19:12, 8 August 2010 (UTC)

The Stray Cat by Steven Paulsen

Your verified publication of The Stray Cat calls it a novel, but the publication is typed as a CHASPTERBOOK. The book is listed as 48 pages long, and it was nominated for the Ditmar for "Best Australian Short Fiction". That sounds like a novella to me. I ran across this in connection with the Chapterbook cleanup project.

Would you object if I were to convert The Stray Cat to a novella, and add a proper CHAPTERBOOK container title to the publication record? -DES ^Talk 15:56, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Not a problem. There are quite a few similar that I have been intending to fix now that CHAPTERBOOK works properly, but ... [time flies] ... --clarkmci / j_clark 23:04, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Done. Thanks. -DES ^Talk 00:10, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Grant Carrington

Just to let you know--my birthdate is June 4, 1938, New Haven Conn. For more info my web page is grantcarrington.freeyellow.com and my email address is gccarrington [AT] hotmail.com (grant c carrington)

grant carrington —The preceding unsigned comment added by Grantcarrington (talk • contribs) 22:25, 28 October 2010 Moved here from [[User Clarkmci] by DESiegel60