User talk:Dagon99

Welcome!

Hello, Dagon99, 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 11:00, 6 Dec 2007 (CST)

The Good Guy and Curse of the Claw

Thanks for submitting The Good Guy and Curse of the Claw! I have approved the submissions and made a few changes as per our Help pages:

• Our software expects all dates to be in the YYYY-MM-DD format, otherwise it changes them to "unknown"
• The abbreviations for different types of binding are "hc" for hardcover books, "pb" for mass market (i.e. small) paperbacks and "tp" for trade (i.e. large) paperbacks
• The dates of publication that you entered apparently came from Amazon.com. Unfortunately, Amazon's dates are not very reliable and although there is no harm in including them, it's probably safer to use the YYYY-MM-00 format unless we have a solid source for the publication date
• The page counts also apparently came from Amazon.com and they tend to be even less reliable than their publication dates. Basically, publishers send information about forthcoming books to Amazon.com well ahead of time, before they know how many pages the book will end up with, and Amazon employees almost never correct that number after they get the actual book. We use a variety of sources to double check Amazon's data -- see our Sources of Bibliographic Information page. In this case I used OCLC's FirstSearch engine to correct the page count for the Koontz.
• I also entered the publisher's description of Koontz's novel from the OCLC record and changed the book's type from "NOVEL" to "NONGENRE" to reflect the fact that, as far as I can tell, the book has no speculative fiction content. We do catalog non-SF books by SF writers, but we need to mark them accordingly or else our users will not be able to tell what in the author's bibliography is SF. Imagine ordering a previously unknown Silverberg novel and then discovering that it's one of his pseudonymous soft core porn novels :) Unfortunately, due to current software limitations, this isn't something that can be specified at the time of the original submission and you have to go back and change the type after the submission has been approved.
• I added Curse of the Claw to the appropriate series based on your note and then deleted the note. Again, due to current software limitations, this has to be done after the original submission.

Don't worry about the changes, they are all very common when new editors begin to contribute to the project. That's why we have the moderation process in place and this Wiki to communicate with the editors :) Thanks for editing! Ahasuerus 11:33, 6 Dec 2007 (CST)

Blackout by Guy N. Smith

I accepted your submission of this novel but had to correct the date. The ISFB recognizes dates as YEAR-MM-DD, so July 18, 2006 should be entered as 2006-07-18. Otherwise the system reverts to 0000-00-00 indicating "unknown" date. Thanks. Mhhutchins 11:14, 2 Jan 2008 (CST)

Richard Laymon's Island

Thanks for submitting Richard Laymon's Island! I have approved the submission and changed the publication date to 2002 to reflect the date when this edition was published. Also, the Amazon image didn't appear correctly, so I have deleted it for now. When you get a chance, please take a look at the result to make sure that everything looks fine. Also, please keep in mind that all submissions are reviewed by moderators and approved/rejected, so it may take some time for your submission to percolate to the top of the submission queue. Thanks! Ahasuerus 11:30, 17 Jan 2008 (CST)

The Fuel of Tender Years by Froehlich

I accepted your submission of this new pub, but had to make corrections to comply with ISFDB standards

1. Dates should be in the form of YYYY-MM-DD, so August 1996 would be 1996-08-00. As it was entered "August 1996", the system reverts back to 0000-00-00 and shows the date as unknown.
2. Binding: A paperback edition should be entered as "pb"
3. Generically titled content entries, e.g. "Introduction" should be entered as "Introduction (The Fuel of Tender Years)" so that it can be distinguished from similar titles.

Thanks for submitting. Mhhutchins 15:21, 30 Jan 2008 (CST)

Midnight Screaming

According to the magazine's website, there have only three issues of Midnight Screaming, but none of the three match the contents of your submission. Is this a forthcoming issue? If so, the date should be a part of the title and the content records. Also the number you placed in the ISBN/Catalog # field is neither. It appears to be an ISSN. If so, it can be recorded in the notes field. The submission is being held awaiting your response. Thanks for contributing. MHHutchins 06:15, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

"Toe Tags: 21 Spine-Tingling Tales..." by Brian Barnett+William Pauley III

I have approved your submission for this publication. But I have a few questions and issues of formatting.

• One author is listed as "T.J. McIntyre". We always show initials with spaces, so this should be "T. J. McIntyre".
• One author is shown as "Oonah V Joslin". W always show initials with periods, unless the author has consistantly treated the letter as a complete name, so this should probably be "Oonah V. Joslin". Do you know if this author treats "V" as a one-letter name, rather than an initial?
• The date is currently listed as "2009-09-29". Did this come from amazon, or direct from Lulu, or where? Amazon so often adds spurious day-of-th-moth figures to its dates, that I and many other editors here routinely change any amazon-derived date to YYYY-MM-00, deleting the day of the month figure. But with a Lulu published book there might be an accurately known, specific day of publication. Is there?

The listing for the pub is now here. Please double check, and verify if you are working from an actual copy of the book. Thank you for your contributions. -DES ^Talk 16:19, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Copied from User talk:DESiegel60

Yes, Oonah V Joslin is correct. There is no period after the "V".

I have no issue with changing T.J. to T. J.

The date is correct, unless you would rather change it to just the month and year. That was the exact day that it was open to be purchased to the public.

Thanks! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dagon99 (talk • contribs) 11:30, 1 October 2009 .

End content Copied from User talk:DESiegel60

• I have changed "T.J. McIntyre" to "T. J. McIntyre".
• A Google search confirms that Oonah V Joslin generally (but not always) omits a period after the V. I have therefore left this unchanged.
• Since the exact date is accurate, i have not changed it. There is no objection to exact dates -- many magazines have them, for example, particularly ones more frequent than monthly. It is just that Amazon days-of-month are so routinely wrong they are apparently assigned basically at random, and Amazon is so big that many exact dates for book publications seem to be derived from their data. This has made people here suspicious of exact dates. But when they are know to be accurate, great. I have added a note so future editors will know this date is actual.

Again, thanks for your contributions, and I hope this exchange has been helpful. -DES ^Talk 15:01, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Communication among editors and moderators

This page is your talk page. It will be used by other editors and moderators for questions, comments and other messages. When a change is made to this page, the "My Messages" link will be highlighted when you log onto the ISFDB website. Clicking on the highlighted link will lead you to this page. For more information about using this Wiki go here. MHHutchins 03:16, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Midnight Screaming again

I accepted the second submission (the duplicate), because it answered some of the questions I left in the post above. I had to remove the cover image link to the publisher website, because we need explicit permission from the website owner to deeplink to another server. You can download a copy of the image file to your home computer and then upload it the ISFDB server, using the link "Upload cover scan" on the publication record page. I also removed the message in the note field about communication which I hope I answered in the post immediately preceding this one. And I made the publisher's website address that you placed in the note field into a hyperlink. If you have any more questions about this publication, you can ask them here. Just click the (edit) link for this posting. An edit window will open. Type in your message (preceded by a colon [:] to indent the message from mine. At the end of the message type four tildes (~~~~) which will automatically sign and date your post. I have placed a watch on this page, so I will be notified immediately when you've responded to the message. Thanks for your contributions. —The preceding unsigned comment added by Mhhutchins (talk • contribs) 22:25, 1 October 2009 Signature was present, but blocked by incorrect wiki formatting. (-DES)

Thanks again for the help with this. I learn something new every time. I uploaded the cover pic from my computer. I suppose that you or someone will need to approve it? Thanks again. —The preceding unsigned comment added by Dagon99 (talk • contribs) 07:50, 2 October 2009 Signature was present, but blocked by incorrect wiki formatting. (-DES)

Uploads of cover images do not need approval. But the change to the database record that links an image (via its URL) to a publication record and thus displays the image with the pub record does need to be approved, just like any other change to a publication record. Thanks for uploading. -DES ^Talk 15:14, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Wiki stuff

Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your user name (Dagon99) (or a custom signature if you set one in your preferences) and the date. See Wiki Conventions for more on how things are generally done on the wiki. -DES ^Talk 15:08, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Midnight Screaming yet again

Since this is a magazine, and other issues exist that should be entered, I have changed the title to "Midnight Screaming, October 2009". See Help:Screen:EditPub#Title (The section on magazines) for more details on our customary practices for magazine titles. -DES ^Talk 15:28, 2 October 2009 (UTC)