User talk:Downwarden

Welcome!

Hello, Downwarden, 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
• Help:Getting Started
• What the ISFDB Wiki is for
• FAQ
• Wiki editing help - Tips on how to use the wiki-specific features when editing wiki pages.
• Wiki Conventions - How things are usually done on this wiki.
• Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki

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

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

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! --MartyD 10:41, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Diverse Tales

Hi, and welcome. I accepted your submission of Diverse Tales and made a few minor changes so that the entry would conform to ISFDB standards (notably: I swapped around the publisher credits, and switched the cover image link to one from Amazon, to which we have permission to make links). While researching, I found the contents listed in Amazon's Look Inside, so I added them. Please review and make any changes you deem appropriate. Thanks, and thanks for contributing. --MartyD 10:57, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Red Wet Dirt

Hi again. I accepted Red Wet Dirt and made some similar changes and additions. If you could help with the imprint / publisher, that would be great. I couldn't figure out how to interpret what's there. Thanks. --MartyD 11:11, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Latest submissions

I'm holding your last series of submissions and will eventually accept them. It seems you're consistently making the same errors in most of them which I will list here and ask that you keep these in mind when making future submissions. Almost all of the corrections I'll be making are explained on this help page. I will link to the specific sections below.

• Title field: Do not give an alternate title in the field. (As in the case of Tattered.) You must give the title as it appears on the book's title page, and nowhere else. If the work has been published under a different title, you can variant its title record to the other publication's title record.
• Author field: Only the author or editor is credited in this field. Translators are credited in the Note field. Introducers are credited by creating a content record for the introduction. Also, you must add a space between initials in the author field. "S.C. Hayden" should be entered as "S. C. Hayden", just as "H.G. Wells" is incorrect.
• Date field: If there is a stated date of publication in the book, giving the month, or your data is from Amazon which gives the day of publication, it should be entered in the format YYYY-MM-DD. All of your entries were dated as just 2013.
• Pub format / binding field: You should use those formats which are listed here. A trade paperback should be entered as "tp", mass market paperback as "pb", etc.
• ISBN field: You should only give the ISBN which is stated in the book. A book published in 2003 wouldn't have an ISBN-13. If you're using a secondary source and don't know which one to use, choose the ISBN-10 for pre-2007 books and the ISBN-13 for 2007 and later books.
• Price field: You have to add the currency symbol. For US dollars enter "$" before the number. Other currencies are explained here. Also, be sure to enter the retail price, not the Amazon selling price. (As in the case of Embark to Darkness.)
• Artist1 field: Only give the name of the person credited with the cover art. Do not add "(cover)" to their name. The system automatically creates a record showing it is for the cover. Do not credit an artist who contributes interior art to the book. That should be done in the content section and typed as INTERIORART.
• Image URL field: Your links are to the "Look Inside" image. The Amazon URL must be "manipulated" to get a clean image. You should remove all characters between the two periods of the URL, leaving one of them. An detailed explanation of how to do this is here under "Amazon".
• Image URL field: Do not link an ISFDB record to a cover image file on a website for which we don't have permission to link. (As in the case for the Masters of Horror anthology, Sweet Dreams, and Tattered.) There's a list of permitting sites in the previous bullet point.
• Pub type field: If a publication is a single work of less-than-novel length fiction, it is entered as a CHAPTERBOOK. You must also add a content record for the contained work as well (which is the same title and author credit as the publication 99.99% of the time). Do not use this type for a publication which contains more than one work of fiction. The Wicked Haze is a COLLECTION. Also, Flatty Cat is a CHAPTERBOOK, not a NOVEL.
• Storylength field: Unless you're certain of a story's word count, leave this field blank. See the list of word counts under "length" in this section. For example, in Read Us or Die, the story "Spider" is more than 30 pages long, which is probably closer to a novelette than a short story.
• When creating a record for a new publication of an existing title, do not use the ADD NEW work function. Go to the title and click the "Add Publication to This Title" link. (As in the case of a new edition of Halloween IV, The Invisible Man.)
• In the publications which you wrote introductions or forewords I removed you from the author field and created content records. (In one case, I changed the spelling from "Foreward" to "Foreword". If the incorrect spelling is used in the book, please change it back.) Also, the introduction Embark the Madness was entered as SHORTFICTION, which I corrected to ESSAY. You also have to disambiguate such generic titles by adding the title of the work being introduced parenthetically, as in "Introduction (Embark to Madness".

Please take the time to go over the field-by-field instructions on the page I've linked to above. Give me time once I've accepted these submissions to clean them up. It may take me a while. Mhhutchins 19:59, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Here are links to the publication records which were added to the database.

• The Best of the Horror Society 2013
• Read Us or Die
• The Price of Fear
• You're Already Dead...Living in Hell
• Halloween IV
• The Invisible Man
• Flatty Kat
• Masters of Horror: Damned If You Dont'
• Tattered
• Sweet Dreams, Lady Moon
• The Wicked Haze
• Embark to Madness

Please look them over and use them as a guide for entering future publications. The records can be updated to correct any errors you may find. If you have copies of these books, please consider doing a Primary Verification of the database records. (See the link in the Welcome section about this.) Thanks for contributing. Mhhutchins 21:29, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Fixing Amazon's URL

As I mentioned above, you have to "fix" Amazon's URL in order to get a clean and larger cover image file. For example, in this record, you gave the URL as

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51N3GFj2l6L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg and it looks like this

But if you would remove all of the characters between the two dots like this:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51N3GFj2l6L.jpg and it looks like this.

Clicking on the two links will make the difference clear. If you're reading these posts, please let me know by responding. Click on the "[edit]" link to the right of the message you want to respond to. This opens the dialogue box, and you can type your response and save the page. Add a colon at the beginning to indent it from the previous message, adding a colon for each successive response. Then end the message by typing in four tildes (~~~~). This will automatically sign and date the message. Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:25, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Look at the difference between the images for this record: the one you provided and the "fixed" URL. You should go back and fix the URLs of your latest set of submissions. Mhhutchins 03:28, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I just saw your message about the URL and I understand now to eliminate the info between the periods. Thanks! Downwarden 03:34, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I just realized I made an error with some of those image URLs and linked them to thumbnails, because I noticed the images are now blurry on their pages. I know now which URLs to use. Downwarden 03:40, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Primary verifiying at the time of the submission

If you're working from a book-in-hand when adding a new record, just check the first box under "Source of the data". This will automatically do a primary verification of the record. You then only have to add a source note if there is data from a secondary source which is not stated in the primary source (the book itself.) Thanks. Mhhutchins 03:25, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Image linking to downwarden.com

Thanks for the linking permission. I've added downwarden.com to the list. --MartyD 00:37, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Cover artist and cover design

The help isn't explicit about this, but the "Artist" field is used for whoever did the cover illustration or photograph. We don't have a field for cover design credits: these should be recorded in the notes, not as an additional artist. If there's no explicit artwork credit and no signature is visible, and there is a cover design credit, it's ok to put the designer as the artist, adding a note that the credit says cover design and there's no other cover credit. I'm just a messenger -- the practice predates my time here....

So with that as background, some questions for you:

• Human Nature says Cover and art design by Nicholas Grabowsky from art contributed by ... Ewald and ... Ruwwe. And you gave Ruwwe as cover artist (plus yourself), with no mention of Ewald. Does this mean Ruwwe did the cover and Ewald did some interiorart (which we can credit with a content record, BTW)? And did you have a hand in the cover/interior illustrations or just the design aspects?
• Whispers in the Cries says Cover design by Nicholas Grabowsky with artwork by Matthew Ewald. and again the dual credit. Is it safe to assume the cover illustration is Ewald's, and this should not be a dual credit?
• The Beasts and the Walking Dead says, more clearly, Cover illustration by Jayson Boehm and cover design by Nicholas Grabowsky. So I removed the Grabowsky credit and added a note stating the cover design credit. If that's wrong, I'm happy to put it back.

Let me know what you think. I see there are many more submissions (Thank you!). I'll put any with dual artist credits on hold until you get a chance to respond to this. If there's a general rule and a few exceptions and you identify the exceptions for me, that would be ideal. Thanks! --MartyD 01:29, 31 October 2013 (UTC)