User talk:Scifibones

Welcome!

Hello, Scifibones, 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
• Field-by-field guide to entering new publications into the database
• 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! -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:55, 1 July 2020 (EDT)

Thank you for the welcome.

I have been using the database for quite a while, feel it is time to start giving back. I have a fairly large collection and should be able to make a useful contribution. Scifibones 07:59, 7 August 2020 (EDT)

Starborn & Godsons

Your moderator note on this submission says you corrected the ISBN. However, there was no change submitted? What correction were you attempting to make? As far as your comment on the ISBN10 vs ISBN13, we enter the ISBN10 for pubs without an ISBN13 and the ISBN13 for pubs with it. The software automatically shows the converted value. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:55, 1 July 2020 (EDT)

Farmer Giles of Ham

Hello. In your submission here you asked if it was OK to update the notes. Answer: yes it is, insofar you do not remove any data/information that is valid. In other words: feel free to correct any mistakes you find, and add new information to the notes as you see fit. It is always good practice to also state when what information has been updated or added - see Pub Note help page and How to Update a Publication.

Also, if you have the book available, consider primary verifying it - this signifies that you, the PV, confirms that the recorded information is accurate as per the publication (if you have the book only temporarily in your possession, transient verify it instead). Thanks! MagicUnk 13:12, 6 August 2020 (EDT)

By the way, do not hesitate to reply here by clicking [edit] to the right of this title. MagicUnk 13:13, 6 August 2020 (EDT)

I own the book so I verified it. Thanks for your patience. Scifibones 07:52, 7 August 2020 (EDT)

More on notes

Hi, and a belated welcome. In response to your question about noting the LCCN of 00-0000, sure, any detail like that is fine to include in the notes. Sometimes subtle differences in detail can help us distinguish separate printings (e.g., suppose another one looked just like this but had a proper LCCN instead).

One other thing: The Help desk is a good place to ask best-practice and how-to questions. The entire community can help you, not just moderators, you're likely to get a response more quickly when the pending submission queue is long and the moderator pool is thin, and you won't need to make some sort of edit just to ask your question. It's fine to ask questions in your submission notes or on the Moderator noticeboard, too, if you think moderator attention is needed. I'm just making sure you're aware of the resources available. Thanks. --MartyD 08:49, 9 August 2020 (EDT)

I went ahead and added the erroneous LCCN. I'm sure I'll be using the help resources you listed. Scifibones 09:53, 9 August 2020 (EDT)

Can you please resubmit the update again? Someone submitted a delete or a merge that was approved before your update so your update had to be hard rejected - it referenced a title inside of the submission that does not exist anymore so we cannot do anything else. It is rare (~ish) but it does happen occasionally and the only remedy is to redo the submission I am afraid :( I can also update instead of you if you prefer. And when resubmitting, instead of "My copy shows LCCN of 00-0000." can you use "PV1's copy shows LCCN of 00-0000." (so it is clear who the "I" is :)). Thanks and sorry about that. Annie 16:51, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

I'll take care of it. Scifibones 17:11, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

Approved. Thanks! Annie 18:00, 12 August 2020 (EDT)

Your question

You asked: Note, LCCN is the same for all volumes in this series. Should I put that in the notes here and in Refugee which I just verified?. Answer: Yes :) Regards, MagicUnk 15:55, 13 August 2020 (EDT)

Done Scifibones 16:28, 13 August 2020 (EDT)

The Forge of God

Regarding your "I was going to leave a note on PV1's talk page but it said he is inactive. Do I need to somehow identify that this is from PV2's copy?" question in the moderator's notes. No, you typically would not have to indicate a specific verifier's comments. The only time that would be needed if it was something specific to your edition that needed to be captured. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:48, 14 August 2020 (EDT)

Thanks Scifibones 20:04, 14 August 2020 (EDT)

Asimov on Astronomy

I also have a copy of Asimov on Astronomy. Mine happens to be a 2nd printing. Is there any value in adding another primary verification?, If so, should I eliminate the 4th printing statement. Should I put 1979 in the main date field? I'm asking as you are the PV and a moderator. Scifibones 16:10, 10 August 2020 (EDT)

I moved the above from Talk:JLaTondre & deleted that page since it is invalid. User talk pages will be "User talk:USERNAME". I just happened to chance across that page.

You are welcome to add the 2nd printing, but you would do that by cloning an existing version (either my 4th printing or the first printing). You would not replace the 4th printing or verify it. We create separate records for each printing. Hopefully that answers your question. If my answer wasn't clear, let us know. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 20:25, 14 August 2020 (EDT)

Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold!

Hello. I have accepted your submission to add an additional title to Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold!. However, I am now wondering exactly how the title of this excerpt appears in the publication... Could you confirm it is written in the book exactly as 'Excerpt from The Wizard of Oz'?

Also, I've updated this title and removed the italic formatting, as using these interferes with searches. And I've updated the title type from novel to short fiction (as it's obviously not a full novel). Same Question for The Black Unicorn. Regards, MagicUnk 16:10, 20 August 2020 (EDT)

Answered on your discussion page Scifibones 17:00, 20 August 2020 (EDT)

Hi. No need to answer on my talk page :). You can simply reply here, as I am monitoring your page.

Concerning the title "L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz", I would enter it as either "L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz (excerpt)", or simply as "The Wizard of Oz (excerpt)" - the latter has my personal preference. The rules for excerpts are that you enter the title of the excerpt as shown in the pub, and then append (excerpt) to the title to clarify it is, indeed, an excerpt. Also, excerpts are registered as SHORTFICTION. Hope this clarifies. Feel free to ask further questions here or over at the help desk. Regards, MagicUnk 01:23, 21 August 2020 (EDT)

I updated all five novels in this series, where I am the primary verifier, to incorporate your suggestions. I also used the sort order pipe for the last two in the series. I think I did it correctly. Thanks for your help. Scifibones 12:36, 21 August 2020 (EDT)

The Skaar Invasion

Hello. Wanted to let you know I've accepted the addition of the interior artwork, but I changed the title to The Skaar Invasion (map) as for untitled interior art we take the pub's title, and disambiguate by appending '(map)' to it. Unless the map was really titled Shannara Map in the book?? I've also merged it with the already-existing INTERIORART record.

And another minor thing: I've also updated the notes and changed 'Data from Amazon and Locus Magazine #691 as of 2018-08-06.' to Listed in Locus Magazine #691; Publication date from Amazon.com as of 2018-08-06', this to clarify only date was obtained from Amazon and that the other information came directly from your copy of the book (which in my humble opinion is more correct doing it this way). Thanks! MagicUnk 07:59, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

Did the same for The Sorcerer's Daughter. Note that if you know that these maps are exactly the same, you can variant one to the other, so that they are linked. MagicUnk 08:03, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

The map title is "Shannara" over "The Four Lands" hence I felt Shannara map was the most appropriate name. As stated in the notes, this map is used in several different volumes. To give it a different name each time it is used seems odd. Also, the map is properly dated 2012, the Skaar Invasion was published in 2018, how could the Skaar invasion map have been published 6 years before the book?

I agree with your change regarding the Locus reference. I didn't change it because it was originally noted by one of the moderators. I will not hesitate to make this change in future updates. Scifibones 08:22, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

I went back and looked at Wards of Faerie. I think the best solution is to title the maps Shannara: The Four Lands (map) and link to the original usage. Appreciate the work you do as moderator. Scifibones 08:54, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

Yup, that's indeed a good way of doing that, as that is exactly as it is shown in the publications. Then you can always use the same title for the (identical) maps in the different volumes where it's used, linking them all together. There may be differences between the different maps though, so look out for these. Small, cosmetic, differences can be disregarded, but I'm inclined to suggest to create a new record if the differences between versions of the map are substantial (what that means exactly is for a large part a judgement call on part of the editor, so...). And you can also make a note (in the INTERIORART title record) where you explain that the map is, in effect, titled "Shannara" over "The Four Lands"... but I leave that to you if you feel like it :) Keep up the good work! Regards, MagicUnk 12:42, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

Oh and note that the way I described above (the varianting) is the standard way of linking them together. However, I'm fine with the suggested approach of using the actual title of the map. MagicUnk 12:44, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

Updated as discussed. I think I did it correctly Scifibones 15:00, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

I've approved and merged them. Looks good to me. Regards, MagicUnk 16:48, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

Thanks. Should I fix other related titles in this series, even though I didn't do the initial verification? The Black Elfstone for example. I would need to change the pages field and add the map into titles. Scifibones 17:31, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

If you have the book in hand (and thus can PV the pub record), you can improve/expand upon the existing data no problem (observing the etiquette to check with other (active) primary verifiers, of course, that they agree with the change/update). So, feel free to fix the other related titles if you have the books (and PV them,too :) MagicUnk 18:12, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

Roger that Scifibones 18:43, 27 August 2020 (EDT)

Fortress of Owls

Hello. I've accepted your edit submission of Fortress of Owls, but I updated the author of The Zeide (map) from cpdg to uncredited as we generally do not use initials for an author's name. I've also added a note explaining cpdg are initials (which is in line with current practice). Only when initials can be attributed to a specific author is the author name recorded. Have a look. Regards, MagicUnk 08:36, 6 September 2020 (EDT)
Same for Fortress of Dragons.
And by the way, it requires two merge edits to connect the identical map records you added to both 'Fortress of Owls' and 'Fortress of Dragons' (I've done that for you). Less edits would be needed if you wait for your first edit to be approved, and only then use the import function to import the two map records. Not a big deal, but I thought I mention it anyway. Good to know for next time :) -MagicUnk 08:44, 6 September 2020 (EDT)

I see the minor wording change to my note, no problem. I'm not familiar with the import function, would you mind providing a brief explanation? Scifibones 09:06, 6 September 2020 (EDT)

Of course! :) When you have a publication record open there's an import/export function at the left of the screen. If you click on 'Import Content', there are two options to import title records into the Contents section of the publication. If you choose option 1, enter the pub ID to import from, then submit (if there happen to have been too many title records that have been imported, you can afterwards remove these again by selecting 'Remove Titles From This Pub'). If you choose option 2, you can add as many titles one by one by providing the title ID of each of them (the latter option is most often used to add title records into an OMNIBUS publication). Hope this helps! Regards, MagicUnk 10:55, 6 September 2020 (EDT),

Thank you. Scifibones 12:11, 6 September 2020 (EDT)

Crusade

Hello. You had a question here in your submission whether it is acceptable to credit the fiction author as artist of interior maps whenever this art is not credited. Short answer: No. Long anwer: Data that cannot be traced back to a (perhaps transient but) verifiable source should not be entered. So in this case uncredited should be used. Of course, you could add into the notes what you wrote in the Notes to Moderators: The maps are neither signed nor credited anywhere in book or on jacket. As of 2020-09-17 they are also published on the authors website along with maps not included in the books, with no mention of artist. This may infer that the author is also the artist but is not verified to be true. Even though I would not add that latest sentence myself, this is the preferred practice is you want to communicate your assumption. I've accepted your submission but changed the artist credit to 'uncredited'. Hope this helps. Regards, MagicUnk 15:20, 18 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks for your help. If I hadn't seen the author's website, there is no question I would have marked them uncredited. I like you suggestion, I will place my note in the publication notes; without the stated inference. I will leave future users to make it themselves. Scifibones 16:58, 18 September 2020 (EDT)

In the pub notes I quoted as above, but, I left off "with no mention of artist" by accident. Do you want me to go back and change or leave as is. Sorry Scifibones 19:01, 18 September 2020 (EDT)

Cast of Characters

I accepted your publication edit submissions, but changed the "Cast of Characters" records. We generally enter these as essays (unless there is something unusual about them and they actual contain a story) and disambiguate common named, but different essays with the publication title. Hopefully that was clear, but if you look at the pubs, you should see what I mean. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:08, 19 September 2020 (EDT)

After rereading the help section regarding title field, not sure I would ever classify this as essay. To me it is fiction, it lists characters as they are portrayed in the story. I can certainly live with it either way. Apparently MagicUnk had no problem with my classification as he approved Iron Gray Sea. Scifibones 12:18, 19 September 2020 (EDT)

I'm just going with convention (see here). You or MagicUnk are welcome to initiate a discussion at ISFDB:Community Portal if you would like to see a change in that (people's opinions change with time so it can be worthwhile discussing). Personally, I would not index them as they are basically a part of the novel and I would treat them like fictional prefaces & afterwords (which we don't index as per the help). But that's just me. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:47, 19 September 2020 (EDT

While on this topic, many of the books in this series also have fictional essays by one of the characters. These range from half a page to multiple pages in length. I choose not to include them in my edit. However, I am interested in knowing whether you would call these essays or short fiction. I would have called them fiction. Scifibones 12:41, 19 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks for your reply. Appreciate the time and effort all the moderators put in. John Scifibones 13:27, 19 September 2020 (EDT)

Generally, fictional essays are treated as fiction. The help states "Some books contain fictional essays, purporting to written by a character in the book, as introductions or afterwords. There is no "FICTIONAL ESSAY" title type, so you have to choose whether the title is better described as SHORTFICTION or ESSAY" so it leaves the latitude to use essay if it makes sense. However, normally they would be entered as fiction. As for whether to include them, we generally don't enter them as separate records unless there is a reason to separate them from the work they go with (they have been republished, there are part of a collection / anthology, etc.). If they are part of a novel and would not appear separately, then they generally are not indexed.

You're welcome. There are some areas which are not clear in the help and people have different opinions. Feel free to ask for a second opinion or even recommend an alternate approach. New users are welcome to participate in and start discussions on the ISFDB:Community Portal, Rules and standards discussions, etc. pages. Your voice will have equal weight with others. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:51, 19 September 2020 (EDT)

Devil's Due

Regarding your question in this submission: No, we would not enter such a minor item in the contents. You are, however, welcome to add it to the pub notes. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:10, 19 September 2020 (EDT)

PV notifications

Hello,

It does not matter if a PV added/changed information or not - they verified that the information in the record is correct against the book - the PV is for the fact that they have access to the book itself. If all the information was already added (or was added later and verified by them), they still are owed a notification - so they can verify against their book again in case something is changed. Annie 17:14, 20 October 2020 (EDT)

I put a note on Markwood's talk page as you suggest. Scifibones 18:27, 20 October 2020 (EDT)

Merging titles

And time to learn something new. When you need to merge titles such as this case, you can use the Advanced Search so you have them in mergeable position. In this case, you want "Title is exactly Eosia (map) Title is exactly The Sapphire Rose (maps)" which leads to this. :) Figure out what needs to be merged and submit it. Let me know if you want to try. Annie 17:02, 25 October 2020 (EDT)

I only merged the hardcover records because those are the ones I own. However, I'm sure that the Del Rey pb's use the same map, but, I can't personally verify it. What should I do in that case. I have come across numerous instances of this. I also intend to do one more edit of the Sappire Rose. Change the page count to show the leading unnumbered pages and the page number of the map and start of the novel. Also, add a note that Locus1 refers to this as the 1st US edition. The main reason I started using isfdb, several years ago, was to identify true first editions. If I can help others glance at a record and see that the book is not really the first edition, despite what the publisher printed on the copyright page, that is a real service. I appreciate you and the other moderators can teach me. Scifibones 17:57, 25 October 2020 (EDT)

If you are not sure, don't merge - just add notes that they are likely the same. But your message in the submission seems to indicate that the maps are the same - in which case they need merging. The system finds more than the two because there are more than two with the same name - so just find the two that you want to merge in the list and merge them. Annie 19:05, 25 October 2020 (EDT)

I think the merge I have pending is what you are recommending. I merged them all. This has to be correct in light of my note in Domes of Fire. Scifibones 19:28, 25 October 2020 (EDT).

Yep. However - once it was approved, your latest pubEdit had to be hard rejected - the book contained one of the titles that don't exist after the merge -- so you will need to redo it. Annie 20:22, 25 October 2020 (EDT)

Resubmitted the edit. Scifibones 21:48, 25 October 2020 (EDT)

Starquake

Going to rename "Technical Appendix" http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2758432 to "Technical Appendix (Starquake)" if you have no objection. Thanks. gzuckier 00:36, 4 February 2021 (EST)

Fine Scifibones 12:00, 4 February 2021 (EST)

Head On

Added cover, artist, notes and external IDs to your PV Head On.Jim 18:59, 6 March 2021 (EST)

fineScifibones 17:45, 8 March 2021 (EST)

Elvenborn

Hello,

In Elvenborn, "First Edition: August 2020" looks like a typo... Is it in the book or just a typo when you copied it? Either way - we need an update - either to fix the 2020 to 2002 or a note explaining that this is indeed what the book says even if it is obviously the 2002 book. You may also want to add the Jacket design credit in the notes (as you note that the book has it) - we do not have a field for these now but we might one day and then having it in the notes will be useful. Thanks! Annie 19:40, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for catching that. Scifibones 11:46, 17 March 2021 (EDT)

Anytime :) Typos are the bane of a bibliographer's existence (I am more surprised when I do not see any than when I do see them) :) Annie 12:07, 17 March 202

Annie, would you like me to go back and add jacket design credit for all my pv's? I have no objection. Scifibones 15:30, 17 March 2021 (EDT)

It is not mandatory but when it is there, I like to add it - if we ever do something about designers and allow proper credits for them, having the data is better than not having it. So absolutely up to you :) Annie 16:15, 17 March 2021 (EDT)

Wellspring of Chaos

And others - are you saying that it is exactly the same set of maps in more than one book? Annie 17:52, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

Absolutely. Maps first appear in book 5 Death of Chaos (1995). There were 3 pages of maps. Starting in book 6 There were 4 pages of maps, signed and date 1995, which include the first 2 from Book 5 and 2 new pages. These 4 pages were repeated exactly in books 6,7,8,11,12,13. Signed and dated 1995,. I don't own 9 and 10 so I can't say poisitevly whether they were in those books. 18:07, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

(after conflict) So the best way to solve the maps issue I can think of:

• Book 5: Leave the existing map there to be the only map that did not go higher, named as Death of Chaos (map) unless we find a beter name. Add 2 more maps for the two maps that are later in the later book
• Import these two in Books 6-8, 11-13
• In book 6, change the existing map to be one of the new maps and add the missing one. This sorts out 6.
• In 7,8 and 11-13, import the 2 new maps from 6 and remove their original maps.

That gets the maps that match where they match. Now let's talk about naming them

• Do these map have any titles, locations, anything at all on them that can be used as titles? If not, we will need to go with generic names and that will mean a lot of notes...

Let me know if that makes sense. If it does, and once we figure out the titles, I will assist you with next steps (basically socializing with the other active PVs of the books) and then we can execute. There is a lot of notes writing in the future here ;) Annie 18:47, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

Annie, this will be much easier than we thought. Book 5 has three pages of maps. First is a 2 page map titled "The World". Page 3 is merely an enlarged portion of the first map highlighting and area "Candar"(Not actually written as a title for the map). The following books up 13 have the exact same maps only the second page was enlarged to fill 2 pages. my first thought was to merge them all into one title. After looking at subsequent books, the "World" map is used, sometimes alone, sometimes with a different section enlarged on a following map. I Propose we set up one map "The World" which will be used in all the books starting with book 5. For books 5 thru 13 we have a second map which I have called "Candar". After we delete / merge these into books 5 thru 13. I will PV more of the following books and add any new map titles as needed. As far as 9 and 10 Welo who was PV on the German edition set up a variant of the book 5 "Death of Chaos" maps called Recluse (maps). He used this for all the books including 9 & 10 saying they are also the same. I can also ask SFJuggler the PV on book 10 to confirm it is the same.Scifibones 12:13, 24 March 2021 (EDT)

I would call it "The World (The Saga of Recluce)" or "The World (Recluce)" or something like that in case we have other world maps elsewhere but other from this sounds like a plan. Post the plan on the pages of the active verifiers on the books (if any), add some notes in the publications and convert everything that needs converting. Let me know if you need any assistance. Annie 12:50, 24 March 2021 (EDT)

I intend to post a link on each active PV talk page to the post below. Make any changes you see fit. Is there a way to link directly to that post as opposed to just my page? Also, should I post the link before or after all the changes.Scifibones 16:49, 24 March 2021 (EDT) P.S. I now have copies of Book 9 and 10

Before - you are seeking agreement before we change people's PVd data. If you try to submit the changes, a moderator will put them on hold pending verifiers' checks. :) I don't expect disagreement but the process is in place to ensure that verifiers have the chance to check the books before we change their data. Annie 17:41, 24 March 2021 (EDT)

Sent out links to the appropriate section on my page. Fortunately, many of the books were verified by the same few people. Some had a note on their page asking not to be notified. We'll see what happen. John Scifibones 18:49, 24 March 2021 (EDT)

Several months ago, I merged all the Sword of Truth maps with your approval( OOOPs it was the Eosia (maps)) Subsequent editors have completely ignored this merged title. I've change 180 degrees and think we really shouldn't put maps and art as additional titles. Just put in the notes what you think is relevant. In the Saga of the Recluse books, the maps were already populated even though there was no PV's. Didn't know if I could have just deleted the title.

Additional point. I read the moderator discussion re interior art. I have been includin cover design in all my new submissions . Hope you make it an entry like cover art., not an additional title. Cleaner the author listings, the better. Just my thoughts. Scifibones 18:36, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

The official policy is to index maps and internal art. We CAN use just two separate titles - 1 for book 5 (the 3 maps) and 1 for the rest (the 4 maps). Will that work better for you?

Designers for now are just in the notes BUT one day we may have a place to put them somewhere like the cover artists. Or something else. :) Annie 18:50, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

Annie, hope you are still monitoring my page. Rtrace only approved one of the edits I need in order to consolidate all the maps. still need 4948294 and 4945446 to be approved. Will you take care of this? I left a note on his page asking why he only approved one. Thanks John Scifibones 17:20, 29 March 2021 (EDT)

Dirk got 4945446 before me, 4948294 is now also approved. Annie 17:29, 29 March 2021 (EDT)

Submission 4949413 and 4949421 merge the listed maps into map1 for books 5 through 13. After approval I will import the second map . I will also PV the HC editions. Question, Some of publication entries have an inactive PV'er or no PV and don't have any of the maps listed. Should I import both maps or leave them as they are. John. Scifibones 10:55, 30 March 2021 (EDT)

You can import them. In the ones with inactive PVs, edit the publication as well and add "Maps imported on 2021-30-30 (or whatever date it is)" so it is clear that it is post-verification. In the ones with no PVs, just add "Maps based on the XXX edition" unless you are working off the edition you are importing into. I would be very careful importing into editions you had not seen as well... Annie 12:09, 30 March 2021 (EDT)

Got it, just cancelled 4949421, had a mistake in it, I will resubmit it in a minute Scifibones 12:11, 30 March 2021 (EDT) it is now 4949474 . I'M curious, how does the database decide which title number it will keep after the merge? Also, if you have time, would you mind approving these 2 submissions? I would like to start updating the relevant individual publications. Scifibones 11:51, 31 March 2021 (EDT)

Approved one of them - but rejected the other one. The German map needs to stay as a variant, not to be merged with the English ones (what your merge was doing). We variant for language change. Let me know if you want to resubmit or if you want me to do it for you. Annie 12:01, 31 March 2021 (EDT)

It will be faster if you do it, then I won't have to wait for approval. I had a feeling that was the case. thanks Scifibones 12:15, 31 March 2021 (EDT)

Here it is. See if any more merges are needed somewhere - a title got merged somewhere from the other merge so I think I am missing one. I am around so if you submit another merge I will approve fast(ish). Annie 12:23, 31 March 2021 (EDT)

I looked it over. We need the merge I have just submitted in order to end up with just one record. Whew . Scifibones 12:51, 31 March 2021 (EDT)

I noticed that this publication record [[1]] did not merge into all the others. Is it because the "Recluce (map) " (In the German editions) is a variant of the "Death of Chaos (map)" and there needs to still be an instance ? Or do we have to make "Recluce (map)" a variant of "The World (Saga of Recluce) (map)"? I really want to fix this one too because Doug responded favorably and this is one of his. Scifibones 13:11, 31 March 2021 (EDT)

As I said - look them over and see if anything else needs merging - some IDs shifted from the other merge so some may have been dropped when I did the merge to replace the faulty one. Annie 13:20, 31 March 2021 (EDT)

Annie, apparently Rtrace was only willing to accept my edit for HC's I am a PV. The 2 HC's he didn't accept are the two where I have a different printing (I have the first printing of both) so I didn't PV those. Was planning on cloning after the import was done. On the pb's I added a note when the PV was no longer active stating the date the maps were added, as you suggested. No note was left on my talk page. Did he happen to ask you about these edits? If they are not acceptable tell me and I won't waste any more time on this. I thought it would be beneficial to consolidate so many names for the same thing. Thanks, John Scifibones 12:46, 1 April 2021 (EDT)

The only rejection I am seeing is this one which has nothing to do with the maps? If you mean that he approved some while some others are still on the board unprocessed - do not read too much into it. We do not always work in order - and if something may need more time than you are sure you have now, it will just stay there for later. Patience :) Annie 13:45, 1 April 2021 (EDT)

Okay I'll chill. Patience has never been my strength. thanks Scifibones 14:07, 1 April 2021 (EDT)

Saga of Recluse maps consolidation

To those of you who have supplied a primary verification to any volumes in the Saga of Recluse series, thanks for taking a minute to read this. Maps have been included starting with book 5. Almost all the PV's have treated these as unique to whatever book and format they are verifying. What we now have, is many names and dates referring to the same map. The first 2 pages is one map titled "The World". A portion of this map is enlarged on the next page. Following volumes enlarge this second map to 2 pages. This continues on through book 13. Subsequent books use The World" map alone or with a different areas enlarge. I propose the following

1) Merge all the existing maps (not the colored endpapers by Lazlo Kubinyi) into one title "The World (Saga of Recluse)" I will indicate in the title note that the maps are signed and dated 1995. Also the maps are only credited on the copyright pages of some, not all, of the books.

2) Create a new map titled "Candar". I will import this title to books 5 through 13. I will fix up any numbering as necessary

3) A "Hamor" map will also be created for use in later books.

4) Notes in some publication records will obviosly be updated.

If you see any problems or improvements please post them here. Even criticism is welcome. Give me a little time to get all the changes complete before you judge. Thanks John Scifibones 16:42, 24 March 2021 (EDT)

Your use of "enlarge" is misleading, they are different maps containing many additional features. This has been on my list for a while (the links are now archived in 47 and 48). If you plan to do this, it sets a precedent, so even if this is only a one-off solution to this set of maps, a clear explanation for what is done and not done and why seems necessary.

One problem I can see is how someone with a new publication or new title in the series decides whether to create an INTERIORART and use the old naming scheme or use the existing entry. If they can't see the old maps they're shooting blind either way. It would be nice to have an image for comparison on a Wiki page covering the maps or the series, but whether we (ISFDB) want to is still an open question. I raise this because I have run across 'shared' maps in other series that had some small differences between volumes. And there's no

As to your specific points 1) love to see the merge, but have to assume that (Saga of Recluse) is a differentiator using our series name 2) the map is of Candar and Recluce (equal billing) and it's not really the title (no surrounding decoration) so you are assigning a name to an untitled map. Why not Recluce? Why not include the same series name? Why not include "(map)"? 3) See 2).

../Doug H 17:10, 25 March 2021 (EDT)

Hi Doug, your comments are excellent. I just posted the changes, to Fall of Angels as you responded. The name I used for the first map is "The World (Saga of Recluce) (map)" (map) was assumed. The second map I called "Candar and Recluce (map)". You are right, it is not an actual name, I originally thought Candar short and sweet but I like your suggestion better, so I used it. As far as an image, above my paygrade. I'm not doing the merges yet, waiting for more feedback. I just posted the changes to one that I'm the only PV. John Scifibones 17:58, 25 March 2021 (EDT)

I usually just went with whatever other publications of the title used. However, I can see where a similar naming convention might be useful. For example, Wellspring of Chaos has Wellspring of Chaos (maps), whereas Soarer's Choice has Map of Corus (Soarer's Choice). If you want to consolidate naming conventions, it's ok with me. AndonSage 14:05, 27 March 2021 (EDT)

Apreciaate the feedback Scifibones 15:11, 27 March 2021 (EDT)

I'm for cleaning up/consolidating the names but I don't have ready access to the books at the moment so do not have any "compare and contrast" comment here.16:34, 27 March 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for your input. Scifibones 17:56, 27 March 2021 (EDT)

Magi'i of Cyador

How is this different from the book we have? Thanks! Annie 05:29, 5 April 2021 (EDT)

Same question for this one. Annie 05:31, 5 April 2021 (EDT)

It looked like both of these were later printings. SFJuggler usually notes First Edition and printing when applicable.Death of Chaos and The White Order are two examples. If they were first's, then my two clones are not necessary. My PV and notes could just be added to the original pubs. Scifibones 06:56, 5 April 2021 (EDT)

Check with him - the books carry the first printing date so if they are not first printings, they will need to have their dates changed. :) Annie 07:09, 5 April 2021 (EDT)

Question posted on his talk page Scifibones 07:24, 5 April 2021 (EDT)

Jim confirmed they are first printings so I cancelled the 2 submissions. I will PV and add a couple notes. Also, if you would approve 4955499 and 1955512 I can complete complete all the PV and edits through book 19. Thanks, John Scifibones 18:47, 5 April 2021 (EDT)

:) If the PV is around, ask them in such cases. If you go for a clone, we will NEED to fix the other book anyway - so we may as well check beforehand. :) The merge is approved but 4955512 is hard reject - as it contained one of the titles that the merge disappeared, you will need to resubmit :) Annie 18:57, 5 April 2021 (EDT)

Since my changes were fairly substantial, I left another note on Jim's talkpage asking him to look at the changes and make sure he is happy with them.

I submitted 4955888 to redo the Forced Cancellation. That with recreate the title that I will be importing in most of the rest of the series. Thanks for sticking with me. I think this project is worth it. John Scifibones 19:25, 5 April 2021 (EDT)

Not a problem at all. :) Annie 20:31, 5 April 2021 (EDT)

Recluse maps

I'm currently PVing my recluce books, but have not bothered adding maps as it seems you're dealing with it. --GlennMcG 18:25, 9 April 2021 (EDT)

Xanth Volumes 16 through 21

Starting with Demons Don't Dream Tor took over publishing the series and began issuing hardcovers. Jael was commissioned to created a full color, two page, map of Xanth to be used as front and back endpapers. These were used for the first six hardcovers only. In addition, the verso side (left-hand) was reproduced in Black and White. This was then used as the first recto page (right-hand) after the title page. This continues through at least volume 32 (the newest one I own). I plan on significantly revising my PV of "Demons Don't Dream" and verifying and editing, as needed, all the volumes I own.

Questions:

1. Should I merge the various titles into a "Xanth (map)" dated 1993? (plan to only do this for the six hc volumes mentioned above)
2. Is "fep&bep" an allowable page reference or do they need to be split?
3. I was planning on removing the reference to the B&W map in "Demons Don't Dream" (one of my initial edits) and not mentioning it in all the rest of the volumes. What is your preference?
4. Should I create a variant for the B&W map for those who use an "Interior artwork" title. (Any necessary merges will be performed).—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Scifibones (talk • contribs) .

If they are the same, they can be merged (like as did for the others). Talk to the verifiers before that though :)

Nope. You need to add it twice. Due to a software limitation that means creating a second one for the bep (using [bep] or [2] in the title) and then varianting with the main map. Or you can just note in the notes that it is repeated in bep as well. :)

Your book, you decide. I’d at least mention it in the notes :)

if it is the same map but just in black and white, it does not need a variant, it gets merged technically unless it has a different title. Even when it is just a half map. Then we use the notes to explain what it is. Due to the same software limitation as described before, you will again need a new title so a variant will be needed if the map is listed. Annie 17:31, 11 April 2021 (EDT)

Submissions 4968193 and 4968203 are ready. The first is the map which all the others will be merged into. The second is my revised Demons Don't Dream. I've learned a little since that original PV. Hope you afre still monitoring my page. Thanks John 18:44, 18 April 2021 (EDT)

Italics in notes

They are not a problem in the notes - we do not allow them inside of titles and author names and publisher names but you can use them in publication and title notes and on synopsis pages. Annie 10:57, 12 April 2021 (EDT)

Magic, the Final Fantasy Collection

About this one. Are you dropping "Cover is black and silver lettering on a silver background" on purpose? This is the kind of thing that is very hard to see on an image (our image does not show the background as silver to me) so I would rather keep (a version of) it? Possibly "Cover has black and silver lettering on a silver background". What do you think? Annie 15:24, 12 April 2021 (EDT).

When the book is sitting here next to me, it seems superfluous. However, for others, I can see the value. Go ahead and leave it. Scifibones 15:29, 12 April 2021 (EDT)

Let me know if I am one of the high volume low quality editors. I have 1000+ HC's to go! Scifibones 15:35, 12 April 2021 (EDT)

Approved and edited. Not sure why you would even think you might be - I do not remember ever needing to tell you the same thing twice, let alone a dozen times or having any major issues with your edits. :) Annie 15:45, 12 April 2021 (EDT)

Lol, I don't really think that. I have been quite active the past 2 weeks and the post on the moderator board tickled me. Scifibones 15:55, 12 April 2021 (EDT)

Reformatting notes while adding a single line

I would usually contemplate rejecting this kind of updates. We do not enforce Notes formatting and I find it in bad taste to change the format just to add one more note. When you are the first PV or you are adding a lot of new information, that's ok but when adding a single note where there are 4 already, I'd advocate to keep the existing formatting. Not everyone is comfortable with html. :) No rule about it though so technically you are not breaking a rule. What do you think? Annie 14:58, 16 April 2021 (EDT)

I don't normally do it. I thought I saw we were trying to get rid of line break use, somewhere. reject it and I will resubmit. Scifibones 15:04, 16 April 2021 (EDT)

Which does not mean adding html :) You can just delete the br tag from every line (but the beginning of the first (which moves the contents on line 2) - or when there are two in a row - they are there to make am empty line). Way back when, you needed these to make new lines. That had not been the case for a decade or so but they still linger in old entries (and old editors' submissions) :) . So it is about removing unneeded elements without changing how things actually look. That's what we are cleaning when we can. Hope that makes sense. Annie 15:09, 16 April 2021 (EDT)

PS: You can reject your own submission from http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/myrecent.cgi?0+N :) Annie 15:09, 16 April 2021 (EDT)

Since you corrected my error giving cover art credit to the jacket designer, I have been seeing that mistake everywhere John Scifibones 15:20, 16 April 2021 (EDT)

"Consistency is NOT us" is the hidden name of the site for some things - as much as we try... :) The rules had changed a lot through the years and different people had been more or less observant on that specific issue through the years. So yeah - the records are all over the place. When you look for something, you will see a lot of it ;) Annie 15:25, 16 April 2021 (EDT)

Robots of Dawn

I approved your submission for Robots of Dawn, but you need to fix the cover scan. You used [2]. You need to eliminate the symbols between underlines to give [3]. This is often the case with Amazon cover scans, keep an eye out for it. Bob 15:13, 20 April 2021 (EDT)

Thanks Bob, John 18:09, 20 April 2021 (EDT)

Magic Kingdom of Landover map consolidation

The six volume series Magic Kingdom of Landover has only two different maps. The database has many different names for these maps.

I propose the following:

• Volumes 1-5 - Merge all the titles into "Landover (map)" - This is the logical title, it is written in large letters on an unfolding scroll. I'll put a note on its title page that is is credited on the copyright page of some, not all the volumes. Also, that it is always signed and dated
• Volume 6 - "The Magic Kingdom of Landover (map)" - Same reason for the title choice as above.

I would appreciate a comment and a yeah or nay. I don't want to change anything that a PV doesn't agree with. Thanks for taking a minute John Scifibones 19:12, 24 April 2021 (EDT)

I have no objection. The notes I put in this even already accommodate the change, albeit slightly redundantly. --MartyD 07:39, 25 April 2021 (EDT)

No longer have copies, so can only offer a Bravo for cleaning this up. ../Doug H 14:11, 25 April 2021 (EDT)

Sounds good. --GlennMcG 02:30, 26 April 2021 (EDT)

I'll have to check my copies. I'll try to remember to do that tonight after I get home. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:46, 26 April 2021 (EDT)

Also, here's a link to the series. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:47, 26 April 2021 (EDT)

A little late, but no objections here. Already done I see. Thanks! --Willem 14:49, 25 May 2021 (EDT)

I finally remembered to check my pubs and the split mentioned above is good. Thanks, Scifibones. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:16, 15 June 2021 (EDT)

Ray Bradbury Omnibus

I approved your submission of the Bradbury omnibus. I would leave the date as it is. We know it was published in 2011; my guess is that the first verifier got the date from Amazon or the publisher, but didn't note where it was from. It's unfortunate, but hardly surprising, that the original moderator didn't note the omission. Another choice is to use 2011-01-00, which is the date of publication given by the ISBN. I would accept either. Bob 15:02, 27 April 2021 (EDT)

Thanks Bob, I think I will use January 2011 since that agrees with my Amazon note.

Origin Cover

I approved you submission for Origin. You need to stop asking questions, like "do you want me to fix other pubs in this title?" Just do it and submit. You can wait until the first case is approved, then do other similar cases, or if you're willing to gamble on getting a bunch of rejections, just go ahead and do the corrections all at once. Personally, I would go for the first, but it's up to you. Bob 19:26, 3 May 2021 (EDT)

Understood John Scifibones 19:40, 3 May 2021 (EDT)

TM Symbols

Please be careful with removing TM from titles. It is one thing to remove from series or other places where it represents an actual trademark. It is another thing to remove from a story title where the author intended it to be part of the title. You seem to be tossing the baby out with the bath water. I have put all your recent edits of this type on hold. It will take some time to go through and sort them out. Also, when you change a title that is a verified pub, you should be notifying the active primary verifiers. Verifiers only receive automatic notice of publication changes, not title changes. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:26, 3 May 2021 (EDT)

I usually send notifications when submitting subjective type edits. When performing an edit to comply with a standard, removing series from a title for example, I frequently don't. I thought that was what the post on the moderator noticeboard was saying. If you want to reject all the edits in the batch, by all means, go ahead. I thought I was helping. John Scifibones 06:32, 4 May 2021 (EDT)

Foreigner Map Consolidation

Foreigner book 2 "Inheritor" and book 3 "Precursor" share a map. There are presently 5 different interior art titles for this one map.

I propose the following

• Merge all the titles into "Mospheira and the Aishi'ditat (map)" dated at time of first publication
• Insert language in the title notes stating this map appears in both the above books, but, is credited in only "Inheritor"
• I am not going to import the map into any pub which doesn't already have one of the titles, unless specifically asked by a pubs verifier

John Scifibones 15:25, 13 May 2021 (EDT)

Sounds good to me. Thanks for doing this. Jack Sjmathis 08:47, 14 May 2021 (EDT)

Canadian Prices

You really should put a C in front of Canadian prices, like "C$39.95 in Canada". Common error. Bob 21:24, 13 May 2021 (EDT)

I never even enter the Canadian price, but, I'll start paying attention. I'll correct it in all my future verifications. Thanks for the alert, John Scifibones 21:39, 13 May 2021 (EDT)

Inheritor

Regarding this submission: You removed "DAW Collector’s #1018" from the notes. Was that intentional (it is not listed in your change description)? If so, is this not the correct number? -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:07, 14 May 2021 (EDT)

Since the information is in the Pub Series and Pub Series # cans, isn't it redundant? I guess if you are stating where in the book it is found, that might be different, but, that wasn't the case. BiomassBob pointed this out to me yesterday. That is why all the subsequent submissions have this change. What would you like me to do? John Scifibones 15:13, 14 May 2021 (EDT)

For that particular pub, it was not in the pub series fields. It should be, but the pub series field was added after many of these pubs were already in the database. Many have been moved, but not all. If you remove it from the notes, you need to double check it is in the pub series. I will approve the submission and then add the information to the pub series. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:18, 14 May 2021 (EDT)

The rest of the submissions for that series should be okay. The proper information is in the cans. John Scifibones 15:23, 14 May 2021 (EDT)

Terminal clone

Hello. I have your submission on hold, as I believe you should not have cloned the record but should have updated the already-existing 1st printing pub record here instead. Or am I missing something? Can you check? (and cancel your submission if I'm correct). Thanks! MagicUnk 11:04, 28 May 2021 (EDT)

If you look at the following discussion Terminal, I think you will see we agree. Looks like you found it! What would you like me to do? John Scifibones 12:13, 28 May 2021 (EDT)

OK, I've approved your submission, but I'd suggest to clearly indicate the other pub record is likely a (SF)BCE. And also, in your PV'd pub record I'd state that there's no (BCE) code on the back cover to be found. Regards, MagicUnk 11:48, 30 May 2021 (EDT)

This submisssion 4995243 takes care of my pub record. As far as the other publication record, is this what you are asking for? I'm a little unclear what you want. Appreciate your patience. John Scifibones 12:28, 30 May 2021 (EDT)

Lord of the Isles Series

John, I changed the publisher for these pubs back to Tor. Tor Fantasy is NOT a publisher. I see where you got it, but look at the copyright pages. Even the title page says the books are published by Tom Doherty Associates or Tor. If you wish, you can make Tor Fantasy a pub series for these books, but it is a series, not a publisher. I honestly would not unless there are other Tor books that are in that series, but have no objection if you wish to enter that series just for these Drake pubs. Bob 12:15, 2 June 2021 (EDT)

Bob, I disagree. The publisher page says "Tor" (over) "fantasy (over) the Tor fantasy shield logo (over) "Tom Doherty Associates Book". as opposed to the regular Tor logo (over) "Tor" (over) "Tom Doherty Associates Book". I specifically asked this question Here, to avoid this situation. I hope you are monitoring this page and will respond. John Scifibones 14:39, 2 June 2021 (EDT) P.S. You will note in the referenced question, I agreed with your present position.

Looking at Lord of the Isles, the only place Tor Fantasy appears is on the title page (I assume you mean the title page when you say publisher's page). That is a label for the pub series, not the publisher. The publisher is Tom Doherty Associates, it says so right below that silly shield. Look at the copyright page. "A Tor Book / Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc". And "Tor© is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc." Not "Tor Fantasy is a trademark of Tom Doherty Associates". Then on the back flap of the dust jacket "A Tor Hardcover", not "A Tor Fantasy Hardcover". The publisher is Tor (or Tom Doherty Associates if you prefer). I guess I'm old school. I don't like Del Rey / Ballentine either. Sure, Ballentine owns Del Rey, but some idiot working for Ballentine insists on putting their name down as publisher. This new Tor.com or Tordotcom is another silliness. Somebody insists their little fiefdom gets credit in the big corporation. In those cases, an argument can be made to use the silly publisher name. But not in this one. Tor Fantasy is a Tor series, not a publisher.Bob 16:09, 3 June 2021 (EDT)

You are correct, I was referring to the title page. Thanks for taking the time to reply. No hard feelings. John Scifibones 16:27, 3 June 2021 (EDT)

Nothing wrong with reasoned disagreements. I like working with you. Bob 12:18, 4 June 2021 (EDT)

Appreciate that John Scifibones 14:59, 4 June 2021 (EDT)

Apparition Literary Magazine, July 2020

I accepted Apparition Literary Magazine, July 2020, but had to make a couple of changes:

• Title Case: We normalize title case. See "Case" at Template:TitleFields:Title.
• Author Suffixes: We always use a comma between the author's last name and his/her suffix. See "Ranks, suffixes, prefixes" at Template:TitleFields:Author.

I also had a question on the interview. This is for an artist that didn't exist in the database. Is this an artist whose work appears in published genre publications? We only record interviews as interviews if their works are eligible for the database. Otherwise, it would be converted to an essay. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:34, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

Ah, I see, she was the cover artist. I have added her credit to the publication. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:41, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

I was trying to post an answer while you were editing my page. The cover artist is always the subject of an interview by Rebecca Bennett. Apparently I forgot to populate the cover art can. I would have caught it on my review after the submission was accepted. Yes I accidentally capitalized the and from, it happens John Scifibones 11:52, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

Rejection Letters

Regarding this submission: This sounds like a quote. If it is, it needs to be sourced. Similar to our policy on synopsis, we cannot just plagiarize text. If it is yours, however, then it needs to be more neutral. Let me know and I will approve and update. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:54, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

This is the description off the "about page" on the magazine website. You want me to add "per website"?John Scifibones 11:59, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

I took care of it, See updated text. But yes, if you are quoting text, please indicate it is a quote and include the source. I updated here and here also. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:04, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

I started putting these descriptions in to help determine if these are alternate names of existing authors. I'll source any I use, but will probably only put websites from now on. John Scifibones 12:12, 11 July 2021 (EDT)

Titania in Yellow

A quick question about this submission: is the award level really "No Winner -- Insufficient Votes" or is it a typo? It seems to be listed as one of the 19 nominees in this category on the Elgin page. Ahasuerus 21:51, 16 July 2021 (EDT)

Clearly a typo. s/b finalist. John Scifibones 21:58, 16 July 2021 (EDT)

Approved and updated. Thanks! Ahasuerus 23:55, 16 July 2021 (EDT)

"Poems That Could End the World"

I am afraid that this submission which would have added an award to "Poems That Could End the World" is no longer approvable since the title record doesn't exist any more. Ahasuerus 18:32, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

Haven't seen this before. The publication Poems That Could End the World still exists. Any hints on how to recover the title or at least see what happened?John Scifibones 21:25, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

It looks like it happened during the database crash earlier today. One of the affected database tables was updated and the other one wasn't. I had to fix the database manually and I also added the missing COLLECTION title to the publication record. Hopefully things are back to normal <fingers crossed> Ahasuerus 23:36, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for restoring the title record. I did have to go in and change the author 5037933, you inadvertently entered the cover artist as the author. John Scifibones 07:31, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Approved -- thanks for fixing the author! Ahasuerus 14:08, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

"Algorithmic Shapeshifting"

I have approved the addition of Contents items to "Algorithmic Shapeshifting". The Duplicate Finder identified 4 titles which may be duplicates of pre-existing records. In three cases there is a mismatch between titles types: POEM vs. SHORTFICTION. Most of the time it means that one of the title records has the wrong title type, but occasionally the same author has written a poem and a story with the same title, which requires a bit more digging. You may be already familiar with this issue, but I figured a heads-up wouldn't hurt :-) Ahasuerus 18:40, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for bringing these to my attention

• "A Self-Contained Riot of Lights" should have been imported along with the other seven titles which were. I have submitted this merge to get rid of the duplicate [4]
• "The Tiny English-Hungarian Phrasebook for Visiting Extraterrestrials" classified as short fiction Here is incorrect. I found and earlier publication dated February 2013 Stone Telling 9 which clearly identifies it as a poem. I have submitted a merge [5] and will edit the date to 2013-02-00 after the merge is processed.
• The title record for The Oracle of DARPA supplies a link to an issue of Jabberwocky. Looking at the work, I think it is poetry. The original submitter called it fiction. While there is room for debate, I have submitted this merge [6]
• The Third Extension which appears in " Grievous Angel, September 19, 2017" is clearly identified as flash fiction. "Algorithmic Shapeshifting" is a collection of all poetry. Same title, two different forms. No change submitted.

John Scifibones 20:22, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for checking! I have approved the linked submissions and added a note to "The Oracle of DARPA" record to indicate that the text is on the border between poetry and prose fiction. Hopefully it will be of use to future bibliographers if and when it gets reprinted in another publication.

Re: the two "The Third Extension" titles, I agree that it would be best to leave them as two separate records for now. It's conceivable that it's a borderline text like "The Oracle of DARPA", but we can't be sure until we find the source. I have added notes. Ahasuerus 20:53, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

I agree with the notes. After my admission that "The Oracle of DARPA" was borderline, I should have put that note in myself. John Scifibones 21:00, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

Deaf Republic

A quick question about Deaf Republic: the poem "Question" appears on page 28, then again on page 48. Then there is "Question (2)" on page 66. Is that intentional? Ahasuerus 19:25, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

No excuse, I missed one. Great catch! I submitted corrections so that the second occurrence is "Question (2)" and the last "Question (3)" John Scifibones 20:27, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

Approved -- thanks for checking! Ahasuerus 20:39, 20 July 2021 (EDT)

"Ten Things You Need to Know About My Imaginary Friend"

After approving a few of your submissions, I discovered that we have 2 versions of "Ten Things You Need to Know About My Imaginary Friend" by Allen Ashley, one a story and the other one a poem. Would you happen to know about them? Ahasuerus 17:30, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

I can say with 100% confidence that Ten Things You Need to Know About My Imaginary Friend is properly classified as poetry. In fact "Poetry by Allan Ashley" is noted on the title page. Looks like this title record, classified as a short story in BFS #5 comes from FictionMags per the note. No reason to think the editor (Chris J) did any other research. I have seen situations where FictionMags has erroneously classified poetry as prose, however, I have no basis to say that is the case here. I could not find the issue on the BFS website. I'm curious to see how you want to handle this. John Scifibones 18:17, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Well, all we know about the SHORTFICTION title is what the secondary source is telling us, so there is no way to be sure. We can either:

1. keep them as two separate records and mention that it's likely (but not certain) that the two records are for the same text; or
2. merge the records and mention that it's possible (although unlikely) that the merged record covers two different texts

Whichever way we decide to handle it, we will want to explain where our data comes from and why we think that it's likely (but not certain) that the two texts are the same. Given the apparent probabilities involved, I think option 2 would be a better fit. What do you think? Ahasuerus 18:35, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

I submitted the merge you suggested in option two. Note to be added, thanks for your help John Scifibones 19:00, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Sounds good. I have approved the first submission. Ahasuerus 19:07, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Take a look at my title note edit. It won't hurt my feelings if you want to rework it. John Scifibones 19:31, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks! I have made a few changes -- hopefully they make sense :) Ahasuerus 20:23, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Looks good.. John Scifibones 20:25, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Terrie Leigh Relf

A few questions about Terrie Leigh Relf since you seem to be at least somewhat familiar with this author's work:

1. Do the three "Sijo" poems constitute a series?

Apparently Sijo is a form of stylized Korean poetry, 3 lines in length, averaging 14-16 syllables per line (for a poem total of 44-46 syllables). Somewhat similar to Haiku. These three poems are from Minimalism A Handbook of Minimalist Genre Poetic Forms. basically 3 examples of Sijo poetry. I would have titled them individually by their first phrase, in quotes. So my answer is no, not a series.

1. Are "Sister of the Blood Moon" and "Sisters of the Blood Moon" related?

I can't offer much help on this one. You have the poetry vs. prose question we had before, plus a possible typo in one or the other title. The one thing we know for sure is Sister of the Blood Moon is poetry based on the the publication and the PV should be able to confirm the spelling. With so many unknowns, I would leave them as separate titles , but add notes to each referencing the possible connection to the other.

1. Are "Ode to Yon Glizan Orbs, or No?" and "Ode to Yon Gliesan Orbs, or No?" related?

Absolutely. This title is merely a typo from when "The 2015 Rhysling Anthology" was entered. It was spelled correctly in the SFPA archive. This merge will correct it.

Ahasuerus 21:29, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Hope this helps. John Scifibones 23:20, 21 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for looking into this! Checking Edit History, I see that the Contents titles were added to "The 2015 Rhysling Anthology" by the primary verifier, User:Hkauderer, in 2018. He is currently active, so I am going to ask him to check the spelling of the title. Ahasuerus 11:57, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

Your Welcome!, ask anytime. I've learned something every time. John Scifibones 12:26, 22 July 2021 (EDT)

Unfortunately, User:Hkauderer, the primary verifier of The 2015 Rhysling Anthology: The Best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Poetry of 2014, hasn't logged in since mid-July. Hopefully, he will come back soon-ish and respond, but for now I am going to set up these two titles are variants and reject the original submission. Better safe than sorry :-) Ahasuerus 11:24, 26 August 2021 (EDT)

I'm glad to have them off my queue. However, It still seems illogical for the previously stated reason. Doesn't this imply that typos by inactive users cannot be corrected? John Scifibones 11:36, 26 August 2021 (EDT)

Well, the big question here is whether it was a typo on the title page of the book -- in which case we create a variant -- or whether it was our editor's data entry error, in which case it needs to be corrected. In most cases, it's the latter, but we have also seen (literally) thousands of typos in published books. In some of the cheaper pulps, up to 50% (sic!) of the stories require notes about the "interesting" ways in which the editors misspelled author names and/or titles on the title page, on the cover and/or in the table of contents. Here is a randomly picked example -- Dynamic Science Stories, April-May 1939.

In this particular case, Amazon's Look Inside shows the "Acknowledgments" page, which spells this title "Ode to Yon Gliesan Orbs, or No?", so it looks like the typo was in the 2015 Rhysling Anthology. Ahasuerus 12:17, 26 August 2021 (EDT)

Ahasuerus, thanks for responding, I hope you don't mind continuing this for a little longer. First, I don't disagree that you have handled it according to present standards. Interesting in this case, the SFPA publication disagrees with their own website which purports to show the anthology's TOC. I'm curious, have there been past discussions on alternative methods of handling minor spelling or punctuation errors? I have become fond of title notes, in part from working with you. My preference would be a title note highlighting the spelling or punctuation error and a similar note in the specific publication. Translations, title wording changes in subsequent publications, alternate name usage seem more significant than the omission of a comma, misplaced apostrophe, or a slight misspelling. John Scifibones 15:30, 26 August 2021 (EDT)

Oh, sure, we have had many discussions of our data entry standards -- Rules and standards discussions and its archived sub-pages are full of them. Typically, there are two competing priorities:

• Capturing information exactly as it appears in publications, which facilitates database searches. In this case, if we were to merge the two records, a search on "Gliesan" would fail, which would make no sense to an ISFDB user with a copy of the 2015 Rhysling Anthology in his or her hands.
• "Regularizing" certain aspects of our data like capitalization.

These two priorities are ever in conflict. For titles and author names, we use the "Variant Title"/"Alternate Name" system to accommodate both of them at the same time: we capture the data "as is" and then link records in a way that ensures that our users know that we are talking about the same work/author. For other record types -- series, publishers, publication series, etc -- we don't have similar systems, so we are forced to adopt admittedly complicated data entry conventions. Ideally, we would have software-based solutions for all of these issues, but they would require a significant amount of development work :-( Ahasuerus 19:09, 26 August 2021 (EDT)

Witch Doctrine

Thanks for submitting the Contents items for Witch Doctrine! I have approved the submission and changed a couple of things as per Look Inside:

• "On Summer Southern Ghosts" changed to "On Southern Summer Ghosts"
• "Ghost Coming to Trms" to "Ghost Coming to Terms"

I have also capitalized the word "as" in "Witch As Healer" and "Ghost As Housekeeper" as per Help:Screen:NewPub#Title.

Re: your note about importing existing titles separately, are you aware that the "Import/Export Contents" option lets you import existing titles and add new ones at the same time? It can save quite a bit of time since you can do everything in one submission. In the meantime, I have added "The House Says I Love You" to this pub. Thanks again! Ahasuerus 12:23, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for the corrections. I did know you can add manual merges while importing existing titles. You have to admit transposing whole words is much more impressive than just a two letter transposition! John Scifibones 16:20, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

heliophobia

I have your "heliophobia"/"Heliophobia" submissions on hold. Help:Screen:NewPub#Title says:

• Titles should have case regularized according to language-specific rules unless there is some specific evidence that the author intended certain letters to be in a specific case.

In this case the publisher-provided description at Amazon.com as well as this collection's publisher page use an all-lowercase version of the title. Would you agree? Ahasuerus 12:30, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

I don't have a problem either way. I did see where the Elgin Award editor chair "Josh Brown" regularized it. Here. John Scifibones 12:42, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

OK, I have left it all-lowercase and added notes to the title record and the publication record. "When in doubt -- add Notes" :-) Ahasuerus 16:24, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

Hopefully, someone will have access to a copy and can verify what is actually on the title page. John Scifibones 16:28, 26 July 2021 (EDT)

Dark Parchments: Midnight Curses and Verses

I have approved the addition of Contents items to this pub and changed "Raven-Lass On Patrol" to "Raven-Lass on Patrol". A quick question about "Imprisioned" -- is it spelled that way in the book or is it spelled "Imprisoned"? Finally, I have approved the date change for this poem, but could you please add a note explaining where it first appeared? TIA! Ahasuerus 18:14, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

"Imprisoned" was a mistake on my part. Not only am I adding a note on "Mother Daemon", but on all the titles which were previously published and which we do not have a record in the db. You might have noted the manual dates I added . There are other titles which are getting notes as well. I needed to have the titles created in order to add the notes. Thanks for approving. John Scifibones 18:23, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

All the intended edits have been submitted, 5044664 thru 5044650 & 5044671. Take another look at Mother Daemon, I'm not sure we need a note. I can put one that says the poem was first published in "Dark Parchments: Midnight Curses and Verses", but the pub is listed right there. What do you think? John Scifibones 18:53, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Oh, the title date and the publication date match now. Never mind then :-)

Re: "La Baignade Dans L'ombre", I approved the submission and then changed "Although this title is in French, this author writes in English" to "Although this title is in French, the text is in English". We have a number of author who primarily use one language but occasionally write stories using another language, so the "working language" of the author is not dispositive.

Re: the rest of the submissions in the queue, I am afraid I am poorly positioned to work on them at the moment. It's 9 pm on the East Coast and my brains turn to mush early these days. (One of the joys of getting older...) Hopefully another moderator will get to them soon. Ahasuerus 20:59, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

I'll incorporate the change you made to "La Baignade Dans L'ombre" into the other three foreign language titles. Thank you John Scifibones 21:04, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Thanks! Ahasuerus 21:23, 30 July 2021 (EDT)

Dickson's 'Three to Dorsai' 1st printing code

Hi, John. I've just acquired a copy of http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?51238 sold by a reputable vendor as 1st printing ... but its gutter code is on a different page, and slightly different, than the ISFDB record. Instead of "39R" it's "39 R" (space between number & letter), and instead of page 532 it's on bottom of page 529. I'm checking with the other active verifier, also, to determine whether I should note mine as a variant or correct the current pub record. Please let me know if your copy matches mine or the current record. Thanks. Markwood 11:12, 11 August 2021 (EDT)

Greetings. Look again at the publication record. You will see that I am The 6th primary verifier [PV6]. Under pub notes you will see "• Known reprint codes: "R39" [verified]; "S10" and "S19" printed in 1977; "U7" [PV6] February 1978; no code and the SFBC# on the back cover [verified] at least '86". Therefore, my copy agrees in all respects except the print code is U7. Yes the code is on 532. Notice how we account for different print codes, we don't variant. Same for other minor differences, just note them. I would be suspicious of a copy with the code on the wrong page. Let me know if you have any other questions. John Scifibones 13:19, 11 August 2021 (EDT)

Bless the Lord My Soul

Can you check this one - are there two different poems titled like that on pages 9 and 10? Thanks!

PS: And one small note: we always capitalize "As". I fixed it in a few titles :) Annie 12:54, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

This submission will fix it. This is the kind of error that is easy to catch post processing, but, sometimes eludes me on entry. (I just run the duplicate checker, usually on similar mode, then investigate the differences). Thanks for correcting the lower case a in as. John Scifibones 13:42, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

Would you mind processing this submission? It seems to have been skipped earlier today. John Scifibones 13:44, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

I approved the first change. Unfortunately the second one is toast - it errored out for some reason (happens once in a blue moon - the last one we had was in 2021-04-09 - it usually means bad timing - either your connection went weird or the server was restarting or something weird like that - leaving the whole submission in limbo). Which means that we cannot process it - to reject or approve it - and if you look in your own errored out list, it will be there. It needs to be redone. Let me know if you want me to do it (basically copy it field by field) or if you would do it. Annie 14:05, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

I'll take care of it, it's my responsibility. Thanks for checking and offering to do I. John Scifibones 14:09, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

Resubmitted Now I'm worried about all the other books in the series, I-IV are in the queue. hope they don't do the same thing. John Scifibones 15:33, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

If it is going to error out this way, it happens when you post, not during approval. Basically something goes wrong while the system tries to add the book to the queue at all - so it just marks it as problem and leave it out. If it is because of something that happens after it is posted, it is the dreaded Force reject - we still cannot do anything to save it but at least you see the rejection. I do not see any others in the error list so the others are up for review. Annie 16:35, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for checking. It was in my queue from 2021-08-10 19:21:53 to at least 13:44, 12 August 2021 when I posted the link above. It died sometime after that. One of those things. John Scifibones 17:01, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

That's a new one... Annie 17:04, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

While I have your attention, I'm working on The Seven Yards of Sorrow The table of contents entries are all 'Sentence case' (lower case with proper nouns capitalized), surrounded by ()'s. I am substituting ""'s for the ()"as. Any problem? John Scifibones 17:09, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

Regularize the case - this sounds like house/editor style and not author choice - so if they get reprinted, who knows what capitalization will be there. :) We treat ' and " the same way so either way works. Annie 18:46, 12 August 2021 (EDT)

Starfarers

Added notes and external IDs to your PVd Starfarers.Jim 23:22, 22 August 2021 (EDT)

Two minor points Jim

1. "Edited by Robert Gleason." I would modify this to something like "Edited by Robert Gleason, credited in the Acknowledgments"
2. For the two stories which have been modified, note that while the Acknowledgments refer to chapters by Roman Numerals, the actual book uses regular notation.

What do you think? Good job, John Scifibones 10:24, 25 August 2021 (EDT)

Dorothy Porter

A quick note about this submission. As per Help:Screen:AuthorData:

• Use the format "Lastname, Firstname Middlenames", with all names being given in full. The reason for this format are names like "Patrick Nielsen Hayden" where you can't readily tell whether the last name is "Hayden" or "Nielsen Hayden."

I have approved the submission and changed the format of her last name to "Porter, Dorothy Featherstone". Ahasuerus 11:17, 23 August 2021 (EDT)

Sorry about that. Thanks for fixing it. John Scifibones 11:21, 23 August 2021 (EDT)

No worries -- four eyes see more than two :-) Ahasuerus 11:52, 23 August 2021 (EDT)

979 ISBNs

When adding a book with a 979 ISBN and it has an ASIN, add the ASIN as well. For 978 ISBNs, the ASIN is ISBN10 so when we use that, the Amazon links work - so we do not record these as ASINs. For 979 books, the ISBN is a random string starting with B so if we want working links, we need the string recorded as ASIN. Thanks! Annie 16:13, 23 August 2021 (EDT)

I see you also had to regularize the case for the subtitle of the pub generating the comment above. thanks.John Scifibones 16:31, 23 August 2021 (EDT)

2021 Dwarf Stars

Hello - I saw that you've been creating and/or updating the various entries about the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association's awards, which is awesome! However, I was checking out the 2021 Dwarf Stars page you've been editing and noticed there were a few omissions from the list of finalists. Is there any chance you could add them to the entry, hopefully in advance of the winners being announced (which could be later today or in the next couple of days)? The missing poems and poets are as follows (untitled poems are listed first):

"brain software warning" by Julie Bloss Kelsey; "evil comes always" by Juan Manuel Perez; "happy hour" by LeRoy Gorman; "in a cracked mirror" by Julie Bloss Kelsey; "photons in knit and purl" by Kimberley Nugent; "right at home" by LeRoy Gorman; "the winged demons come" by Greg Fewer; "wet market" by John Hawkhead; How to Tidy the Asteroids by Mary Soon Lee; Runaway Greenhouse Effect by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

Thanks for all that you are doing! Best wishes, --Explorer1000 11:46, 4 September 2021 (EDT)

Greetings Explorer1000, thanks for your interest. I am aware of which finalists are missing.

Your list above contains several which are included, I have underlined those.

"happy hour" by LeRoy Gorman and "photons in knit and purl" by Kimberley Nugent were published in the February 2020 issue of "Scifaikuest Online". You may or may not know, this was the last issue before the publisher went belly up, taking the web site with it. Fortunately "Scifaikuest online" lives and is now published by Hiraeth Publishing. I went ahead and created dummy records for these two and submitted them. You should see them in a couple of days. If they are ever reprinted, the dummies can be replaced.

I'll take another look and see what I can do for the remaining five.

I see you are new to the ISFDB, what makes you so focused on this? I'm glad you're interested, I have put a lot of time into it. John Scifibones 14:15, 4 September 2021 (EDT)

Thanks John! It's been a few years since I've used a Wiki editor - your use of a list is useful here, so I'll follow suit!

Oops! I didn't see that three of those poems were included after all. However, since the titles of those three underlined poems are first lines shouldn't they be grouped with all the other haiku forms rather than with the formally titled poems?

Yes, Scifaikuest used to be published by Alban Lake. I was just checking its URLs for last year's issues of the online version of the magazine (which I'd favorited) but now find that all of the Web pages concerned have been deleted. They used to do this on the Alban Lake site as well so that back issues can now only be found on the Way Back Machine. I don't know whether linking to the archived pages is acceptable for the ISFDB's purposes though. For example, this is the link for the February '20 issue (as it appeared in May of last year): https://web.archive.org/web/20200525235542/https://www.hiraethsffh.com/scifaikuest-online.

I am indeed new to the ISFDB! My focus on this issue is that I'm one of the finalists for the Dwarf Stars Award (although I'm pretty certain I won't place among the winners) and my piece ("the winged demons come") is one of those not listed. Incidentally, the publication in which that poem first appeared - Cough Syrup - disappeared earlier this year. I have PDFs of vol. 1, issue #2 and the poetry portion of issue #3, which I could send to you, if you like. It would be very hard (if not at all possible) to track these down online, regrettably. Greg --Explorer1000 15:41, 4 September 2021 (EDT)

Greg, good luck, maybe the results will surprise you! Notice that I went back and indented our responses. This is the recommended practice on the site. Basically add one : every time you post a response on any thread. Makes it easier to read. Bad example on my part. You are correct regarding the three titles. However, we are bibliographers, not editors. We show what is printed, right or wrong. If you look at The Math Haiku Project post, you will see standalone, case regularized titles. That is what we show for Julie Bloss Kelsey's two titles. I should have substituted quotes for the angle brackets that "Eye to the Telescope used". I have submitted a change, Good catch. I appreciate the link for the 2020-02-00 issue of "Scifaikuest Online". I'll add the issue to the database. I'd be glad to enter in the Cough Syrup 3 issue into the database. I'm having a bit of trouble getting the software to confirm my e-mail. If you have a public website, I can correspond to directly. John Scifibones 17:01, 4 September 2021 (EDT)

Thanks John! I may yet be surprised as you suggest. I note your point about indentations - I had forgotten how that was done.

OK, I see that with respect to Bloss Kelsey's two poems, they were given titles based on their first lines when they were initially published, so I can see how that would need to be conserved even though the Dwarf Stars anthology didn't retain the titles.

Glad to be able to help with the Feb 2020 online issue URL. Will you need to update the URLS for the later issues of 2020 with additional archive links now that these pages have been deleted?

Here are links to my Dropbox for the two issues of Cough Syrup (I hope it's OK to provide them here):

Cough Syrup 1(2) Summerzine 2019 [7]

Cough Syrup 1(3) Netzach Poetry Section Spring 2020 [8]

I'll need to remove these files once you have downloaded them as I'm getting low on space there. Greg --Explorer1000 20:23, 4 September 2021 (EDT)

I have downloaded them, go ahead and clear your box. I'll enter them tomorrow. It's not necessary to link existing issues. They are complete and stand as they are. I will leave the old link as they can be used to access the internet archive if someone is interested. Appreciate your help. John Scifibones 22:35, 4 September 2021 (EDT)

Thanks again, John! And you're welcome! I've removed the files from Dropbox now. I think I should point out, btw, that the Netzach poetry section of Cough Syrup #3 was complemented by separately published prose and art sections (I regret not having downloaded these as well). I mention this in case you want to add a note about this for the entry in the database - that Netzach is only one part of three for issue #3. Hopefully, in time, somebody may be able to add the missing sections to the database. I take your point that people could look up the dead links on the Archive rather than adding links to its snapshots. Best wishes, Greg --Explorer1000 11:47, 5 September 2021 (EDT)

I read the Editor's Rant when I was entering the poetry issue. I included a brief statement in the notes that issue 3 was published in three parts. No harm in pointing it out. Everything has been submitted. The only dummy record I created is for John Hawkhead. I couldn't locate anything for "The British Haiku Society 2020 Anthology". All the additions should show up in a couple days. Only thing I have left to do is enter "Cough Syrup 2". John Scifibones 12:05, 5 September 2021 (EDT)

The winners have been announced (as expected, I'm not among them - the winners had several nominations in the first place, I believe) on the SFPA's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/groups/301940019560/posts/10159410493269561/)! I was thinking that their FB group might be good for reaching out to poets/editors of hard-to-find chapbooks and magazines. I saw that some of the updates to the 2021 Dwarf Stars page have been approved and that the Feb 2020 Scifaikuest Online entry is now online.

The three missing are in the submission queue. Cough Syrup, Rune, and Hollowscream. Just waiting for them to be accepted. John Scifibones 15:45, 5 September 2021 (EDT)

I saw that all the remaining items in the submission queue have been approved. Thanks for adding all of this stuff - it's awesome to see the new and updated entries! It's clear that you were very busy in the last couple of days, according to the Recent Edits list. Just one teensy observation: shouldn't Kerouac's "the bottom of my shoes" bear a 2020 date? Best wishes, Greg--Explorer1000 20:09, 5 September 2021 (EDT)

I believe it was first published in "The Book of Haiku" by Jack Kerouac, edited by Regina Weinreich, 2003 Penguin Books. If I'm incorrect, let me know. I am adding a title note with this information. It's been great working with you. Don't be a stranger. John Scifibones 20:25, 5 September 2021 (EDT)

Oh, of course! It's a reprint in Cough Syrup, and it's just that there's no entry for The Book of Haiku as yet. Sorry for the confusion. It's been great working with you too. If I can help with anything else, let me know. I was thinking of doing some entries on issues of Tightbeam as time allows. Do I need to OK this with anyone first? Greg --Explorer1000 18:13, 6 September 2021 (EDT)

(unindent) Don't forget to sign your posts with the four tilde's. No, you don't need anyone's permission. That would be a great project, looks like we only have one issue in the db. John Scifibones 17:15, 6 September 2021 (EDT)

Oops! Signed it (although the time stamp would be inaccurate now)! Yeah, I saw that the coverage of Tightbeam is rather limited but I don't know that I'd want to work on issues dating from as far back as the '40s! But I think the last two decades merit covering initially, at least. Greg --Explorer1000 18:13, 6 September 2021 (EDT)

Three tilde's is just username allowing you to manually add a time or not as you choose . John Scifibones 18:28, 6 September 2021 (EDT)

Hi John - just thought I'd update you about Dwarf Stars (and I hope it's OK to return to a discussion that's two months' old). I submitted an entry for the 2021 anthology, which is awaiting approval at the moment. In the process, I found that the name of the poet who wrote "on a pirate ship" is actually Lana M. 'Rochel (I own a copy of the anthology so I can confirm this is how her name appears in the book), whereas you have given it as "Lana M'Rochel" in the Dwarf Stars Award page. I don't know how her name is spelled in the journal in which the poem originally appeared (The Poetry Pea Journal of Haiku and Senryu, Autumn 2020) but it is usually Lana M. 'Rochel anywhere it appears online (e.g. her twitter account).--Explorer1000 23:12, 8 November 2021 (EST)

Greg, Looks like you are correct. Thanks for catching this. If you edit the title record for "on a pirate ship", it will fix the author bibliography and the awards page automatically. Also, It's fine to post on this or any thread. Old threads never die, they only slowly unravel. John Scifibones 08:21, 9 November 2021 (EST)

LOL re: '...they only slowly unravel'. So they have a long, lingering, death without any prospect of relief or closure! :P OK. I've followed your advice about updating the title for "on a pirate ship". Greg--Explorer1000 11:22, 9 November 2021 (EST)

variant vs merge

(unindent) Hi John. Just wondering how to deal with Julie Bloss Kelsey's poems "brain software warning" and "in a cracked mirror" - as they appear in the anthology. My guess is that they should be seen as variants of the original titled poems - "Brain Software Warning" and "Cracked Mirror" - and so shouldn't be merged. If so, will the variants show the award nominations? --Explorer1000 18:34, 14 November 2021 (EST)

Hi Greg, The title "in a cracked mirror" should be made a variant of "Cracked Mirror". You merge "brain software warning" into "Brain Software Warning", we don't variant by case, as I was reminded just last week (I know you aren't going to like merging them). You won't have to do anything with the awards. In hindsight, do you see how much easier it would have been to import all the titles? You knew all but three existed. You could have entered the entire publication in two submissions. One creating the anthology and entering the three titles which didn't exist. The second, importing all the existing titles. I didn't look at your talk page, perhaps one of the moderators already mentioned it. If so, sorry for repeating. Just trying to help. John Scifibones 20:06, 14 November 2021 (EST)

Thanks, John, for the info on the different treatment for the two poems. I've only learned about importing in the last day or two from reading the relevant help page. Nobody mentioned it otherwise to me so you are the first to do so. :) It wouldn't have occurred to me to import the titles from the award entry as my reading around this was to import them from one publication to another. Even if I had imported the titles, I would still have had to sort them according to the anthology's pagination/list of contents (I guess by merely adding the respective page numbers). But I'll be using this function for different editions of a book in the future. And no problem with the help - that's why I asked. Greg --Explorer1000 21:09, 14 November 2021 (EST)

Actually "brain software warning" should be varianted to Brain Software Warning, not merged - one of them contains quotes in its name, the other does not. There is punctuation difference (the quotes) in addition to the capitalization - and that changes things. We merge if the only difference is the case (As we regularize for case); when there is punctuation difference, we variant.I hope you had not merged others based on this advice - if the quotes are in there as part of the title, they all need varianting, not merging to something without quotes. Annie 14:26, 16 November 2021 (EST)

OK. Noted. Thanks Annie. This was the only instance where I merged a title without quotes in one case and with quotes in another. The help page about [merging] does state that "the titles should match exactly" but it doesn't give examples in the case of characters like inverted commas. It talks more about the author's name and where the words in a title are different, which both require varianting. Anyway, now I know for sure what to do with a title that includes an exclamation mark in its fist publication but omits it in a subsequent publication (something that happened with one of my own stories). Greg--Explorer1000 17:17, 16 November 2021 (EST)

That's because the quotes issue is being already taken care of when adding the title. Quotes are simplified - we treat all types as being the same. See here: "Quotes can be entered either as single (') or double (") quotes. They are considered interchangeable typographical artifacts and no variant titles should be created for versions of the same story that use different types of quotes."

So regardless of what kinds of weird quotes they use in a book, pick one type and stick to it when you enter it and if another editor uses the other type, someone loses on a merge. Hope that makes sense :) Annie 17:35, 16 November 2021 (EST)

Annie, Good to know that quotes make a difference. No I haven't merged any on that advice, I didn't even merge that one. Moderator merged. In their defense, there weren't quotes in either title. However, the text was not available in either publication so who knows if there should have been.

(unindent)Using the following untitled poem as an example. I'll list some of the possible ways I have seen works recorded. (Based on quite a few works and publications)

light sunny breezes

etching lines in the red sand

dust devils on Mars

1. "light sunny breezes" - method I would use in this example
2. light sunny breezes
3. Light Sunny Breezes
4. untitled "light sunny breezes"
5. "light sunny breezes etching lines in the red sand" - I have no problem with this one either

Based on the above, we would merge 2 & 3, and variant all other combinations. Question, Wouldn't we be varianting based on the submitter rather than the actual work? What I'm really suggesting, is the need to define a standard way of recording poetry titles.

Open a discussion in R&S to figure out naming for unnamed poetry if you want. :) I prefer untitled (“first line goes here”) but I don’t work much with poetry so it does not come up often. But yes. If these are added that way, 2 and 3 are merged, the others are varianted. Without a rule, we don’t discount titles - not all that look like they may be will be that way because they are untitled first. So we work with how the submitter added the poem (if there is a disagreement, it needs to be solved on that level.) Annie 22:13, 16 November 2021 (EST)

Dietmar Tauchner

Hi! It does seem that the English titles should be variants of the German ones, not vice versa (the author is of German language). Stonecreek 10:25, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

Dietmar Tauchner is bilingual. A look at the actual text shows the poems are presented in pairs. The English is most often first, then the German. Sometimes the other way. This is why the contents are l.isted as they are. I made the parent whichever was shown first. If you look are the standards, (I'm sure you can find them in the help section) whichever was written first is the determinate, not the author's native language. I used the text in generating the content titles and then doubled checking as I linked the variants. Thanks for your interest. John Scifibones 10:35, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

I see you decided to change "dark matter" and incorrectly make it a variant of "Dunkle Materie". I'm glad you asked before changing more. John Scifibones 10:42, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

It does not matter how they are presented in the book, what matters is which version was written first. Are you sure that he wrote them in English and then translated them into German and not the other way around? If that is the case, his working language will need to be changed to English due to the number of titles originally in English. Annie 10:48, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

Unless the book explains that the first printed version is the original? If not, let's do some more due diligence and see if we can find out what language these were first written in. Annie 10:59, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

Annie, It is not explicitly stated which was written first. I have read Richard Gilbert's introduction at least five times. I look at the layout of the text. This is what I concluded and how I went about creating the record. Could I be wrong, of course!! Obviously, I spent a bit of time on this. If you feel it should be changed, I'm okay with it. I trust your judgement. Thanks for stepping in, again. lol John Scifibones

I will keep the variants on hold for a bit and will hit some German sites later to see if they may have more information about his writing process - maybe some of the poems were published somewhere else earlier and there are notes in there explaining what is what? I did not try to imply that you did not do your due diligence - these multi-language authors can sometimes be a pain :) So we do as much digging in both languages as we can - and when we are not sure, notes need to be added to each poem explaining WHY we connected that way - that's where the explanation for the layout of the book may need to come into play. Hope this makes sense! :) Annie 11:15, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

My best guess is that they were first published in German: Tauchner had a volume of poetry published in German in 2009, and at least some of the poem titles should be part of this. Also, he presents poems in German on his home page bregengemme.net. Stonecreek 12:10, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

Can you find the contents page (or even better - some of them pages) of the 2009 collection? Annie 12:40, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

Sorry, Annie, I wasn't able to locate the contents page: it neither is displayed at Amazon, DNB, nor the author's page. Christian Stonecreek 04:30, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

I made another pass through the text and found that I had missed the Acknowledgement

"Most poems in the book previously appeared (sometimes in a slightly revised form) in the following publications: Presence, Mayfly, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Mainichi Shimbun, Scifaikuest, Star*Line, HIA Contest, Heron’s Nest,Bones, Notes from the Gean, Roadrunner, Mu, Daily Haiku, Acorn, Paper Wasp, Bottle Rockets, A Hundred Gourds, Tinywords, Shamrock, and The Kusamakura Haiku Competition."

These are primarialy, English language publications. Perhaps the titles that were not previously published are the ones where the German was shown first. That would also align with what I have done. Thoughts? John Scifibones 13:40, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

Still does not tell us what they were written in - which is what we need, not what they were published in first (unless the two coincide) :(. Just because they were published in English does not necessarily mean they were not created in German first. Annie 13:44, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

(unindent) Looking around internet, got me the following from a book about haiku in English: "Dietmar Tauchner's first language is German. His writing exhibits much subtlety in English, even as it is marked by the circumstances of his geography." I am kinda starting to get convinced that these were in English first. I will do some more digging. If nothing changes, I will approve the variants in that direction and add some notes on the author and book level explaining the conundrum. Annie 11:18, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Should you accept my treatment, I will have to go back and correct the titles that Stonecreek changed before deciding to communicate. John Scifibones 12:25, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Once we decide what we are doing, I will take care of them. Stonecreek had been warned before to stop "fixing" things because he thinks that they are wrong without any shred of evidence OR communication to support his changes. Hopefully this thread is enough to remind him to stop doing that. Annie 12:37, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

More fun. See this review, page 3, the Olympus Mons review. That part kinda implies an original in German. Or at least that the German version is better - I can see that happening even on a translation. Grrr... :) I will keep looking. Annie 12:52, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

"Olympus Mons das Auf & Ab" is one of the titles where the German was listed first. The English "Mount Olympus men’s" is shown below it. Unfortunately, I missed entering those two and the other 2 on that page. Ouch. Should I go ahead and submit them? John Scifibones 13:07, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Two languages is nothing -- Angelica Balabanoff wrote poetry in five languages :-) Ahasuerus 13:11, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

This submission adds the missing poems in their correct place and order.

Approved. OK - so they are not always English first? I think I missed that in your early explanation. If that is the case, then I'd say to use the order as an indication of original and add notes explaining that in the publication... Meanwhile I added a note on the author page. Annie 13:56, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Overachievers. There are always overachievers. :) Annie 13:56, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Okay Annie, I have submitted the edits necessary for the 3 added works, a note for the publication, and two submissions to break the incorrect variants. After you process those and all the variants on hold, I will review to make sure everything is correct. Should I verify this pub, even though I worked from a PDF file? Looks very similar to what the publishers send authors for their use. John Scifibones 14:30, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

I would not verify based on a PDF personally. We had had that conversation a few times over in CS and different people have different opinion. For me a scan/PDF of a paper book is not enough for a verification; some people think it is. So... YMMV. I will go do some approving. Will post back when done. Annie 15:00, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Hi, i just have done that repairment a few minutes ago, so you can cancel your submissions if you like. Sorry for the crossover. Christian Stonecreek 14:51, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

(uncredited) OK. All approved. Two things remain to be done:

• Go through all pairs one more time and see if they are all in the correct order and if there are any missing
• Add the translator template to everything which is now a translation.

Have fun! :) Annie 15:11, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Need [9] and [10] processed, then I can submit all the rest . John Scifibones 16:03, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Done. Annie 16:06, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Everything necessary is in the queue. Thanks John Scifibones 17:06, 16 September 2021 (EDT)

Transliterating the German umlauts

When the title is in German, these get transliterated by adding "e" after the main letter (so ä -> ae). If you want to also add "ä ->a", then add two of them but the first one needs to always be there (because that's how a German speaking person will look for the title if they cannot find ä on whatever keyboard they are on (and if the title is on an old site somewhere that does not support ä, that's how it will be spelled there). Thanks! ;) Annie 10:58, 15 September 2021 (EDT) Stonecreek 12:07, 15 September 2021 (EDT)

Cuisine Chinoise: Five Tales of Food and Lif

Hi! This new pub has only 96 pages. It appears to be a Chapbook not a Novel. If not let me know. Thanks!Kraang 11:09, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

You're correct, go ahead and change it, add "Adam Pruett" as cover artist at the same time. Thanks for catching it. Also I appreciate you processing these so quick. John Scifibones 11:15, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

This [11] appears to be identical to your earlier submission[12].Kraang 13:58, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

Why are we adding comics books? Annie 14:01, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

I'm creating the record for the Ignyte award John Scifibones 14:06, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

Answer to Kraang, chapbooks require content title John Scifibones 14:07, 24 September 2021 (EDT)

Exact publishing dates

Let's not lose the exact publishing dates by using only Year-Month on books :) If you are verifying and you want to get the date as printed in the book on that specific publication, that's fine (although even then if I have the exact date I will use it and add a note on what is on the book). But if the source is Amazon and the book is new enough (last 10-15 years), let's use the exact date - no reason to lose information we can ave. The field has a Year-Month-Date format for a reason :) Thanks! Annie 15:31, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Okay, I see you already fixed the last two. John Scifibones 15:37, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Yep. I approve, fix and come talk to people. Rinse and repeat until I do not need the steps after "approve". :) Annie 15:45, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

If you are still watching, I have another canonical name switch. Steven Wittenberg Gordon, let me know John Scifibones 16:50, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Yeah, I paused for a second when I approved that last variant you did. Let's watch and see with this one? It seems like after 2015, he is coming without MD so if all new publications come that way, this will be the correct direction sooner or later. So keep an eye on him while adding more poetry and let's see how it will shake out. It is not just about the numbers we see at the moment - sometimes it is important to see in which direction that pair is moving. Hope this makes sense. Annie 16:57, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Unfortunately I am working backwards on "Eternal Haunted Summer", the next entries are going to make it look worse. After I have this magazine wrapped up, I'll look for some recent work of his. John Scifibones 17:01, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Then reverse it :) That's why I explained why I think we may want to wait and see instead of just saying to wait. Even if he has dropped it, the numbers will stay in the other direction anyway so... reverse it. Annie 17:06, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

All the necessary submissions are in the queue John Scifibones 17:57, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

I will get them in a minute. One small thing: Under our rules, MD is spelled as M.D. I will fix the record after I approve everything in the queue now. Keep that in mind for the next magazines you add :) Annie 18:07, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

All done. Annie 18:20, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Review of I Am a Witch's Cat

I'm holding your submission to link the review of "I Am a Witch's Cat". You're linking the review to the CHAPBOOK title. We almost always link reviews to the story contained in chapbooks. I expect that you probably want to this title instead. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 10:05, 30 September 2021 (EDT)

I cancelled the submission linking to the CHAPBOOK, and resubmitted as you suggest. Thanks for making me aware of this. John Scifibones 10:12, 30 September 2021 (EDT)

BirthPlace and UK

You may want to check this one when adding UK birthplaces - or keep it in mind anyway :) For newer dates (lost 2 centuries or so), we need "England, UK"/"Scotland, UK" and not just England/Scotland :) Annie 13:51, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for fixing Bex Pavia, John Scifibones 14:09, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

"First published in" notes

Even if they are not strictly necessary once you add the first publication to the DB, they can be useful - they tell someone that we DO have the first publication indeed and that we know for a fact that there is no previous one (or we are relatively sure anyway). I don't go around adding these notes to every piece of fiction/poetry I add but I tend to leave them in place if they are there (and I add them when the first publication may be a confusing matter). Annie 20:12, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

I'm glad you processed the rest of the submissions for Ghost Signs. I was just about to write and ask why you processed the single title and then added a note about the pub being incomplete. You had to skip over the others to get to that one. It was separate because I had to figure out how to enter the Hebrew, lol. Anyway, I am pretty big on first publication notes, but, only when we don't have the original pub. To my thinking, if there is no note, that implies the publication shown is the original publication. I know it often isn't, but, that is more a reflection on the previous editor, not the logic. I will leave them if your feel strongly about it. Personally, I'm against. John Scifibones 20:32, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

P.S. You didn't even give me a chance to merge Di Vayse Pave. John Scifibones 20:38, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

Because it was in my way on a filter I was running on the page while tracking something else. I am loading the new and upcoming books into the DB and as part of it I have hundreds of ON HOLDs on the board at the same time - and I am using the browser to find me the different versions of the same title and so on. So when a title pings on one of my searches, I tend to process it. Which is a long way to explain that sometimes I may process a weird random submission out of the blue :)

It implies to you. The problem is that not all our non-first publication titles have a note and we miss a LOT of first editions especially for stories and poems so a user browsing the DB will never know what the case is. So... notes are good. Example: I am someone who just found ISFDB. I find this. Is this a 1969 novel? Or do we miss a first edition? When we KNOW, it is helpful to say so. It implies it is but we all know that chances are, it may not be (now... 1969 and novel - probably is because we had been clearing these a few times but new editions keep popping up so... who knows). Hope that makes sense.

Hey, I am a full service moderator - I follow up on merges and the like when they are obvious, I do capitalization checks and fixes, I make sure all links and IDs work, add source notes if you don't, ensure that incomplete is added if we are missing stories/poems and there is nothing else in the queue to complete the book (and if you mess up any of these or need to do too many merges, I come and talk to you about that). Incomplete is a useful template by the way - makes sure we do not forget to finish adding content. And even if it will generate one more unneeded edit at the end, it is a trivial one and is processed in seconds so I would rather have it than not when working on a book with a lot of imports and edits to add the contents. ;) Annie 20:49, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

I'm glad you brought up the incomplete template. I think you should emphasize to the moderators to encourage it's use. You see what I'm working on. It would have helped me if it was used more in the past. It will help in the future if it is used more now. John Scifibones 21:01, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

Or I can work with the editors who work collections, magazines and poetry instead. Which I do. :) A lot. You may have realized that I tend to post a lot more than most moderators.

It is a new template - I asked for it a couple of years ago (we have a report for "empty" collections/magazines but as soon as you add one story/poem, it gets hidden. So I asked for the template to cover these cases - and had been chasing people to use it as consistently as possible (including manually reviewing months of collections and anthologies now and again to ensure they have it)). The DB is a work in progress - the older the record is, the more likely is that some of the current bells and whistles did not even exist when it was added. Annie 21:07, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

I didn't mean that the moderators should use it. My point is that moderators see the editors who are submitting empty containers, they can then instruct in its use John Scifibones 21:12, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

Different moderators have different styles of moderating...

PS: You do NOT want incomplete in empty collections. Only in the ones that have at least 1 entry but is missing some. Otherwise you are diluting the report on incomplete. The empty ones show up here and magazines here. The incomplete ones are here (with template) and here (no template - based on notes parsing). Moving the empty into the incomplete won't achieve anything (and is counterproductive - people may decide to work on the latter but may not be up to tackling a fully empty ones). So only add incomplete IF you already added a title but you are still working on the rest. Annie 21:24, 8 October 2021 (EDT)

Magazines dating

We date magazines based on cover date. So "NewMyths.Com, December 2013" will be "2013-12-00" and not "2013-12-01". If it came on the 1st, add a note in the publication notes but the magazine itself is dated per cover date. Thanks! Annie 01:33, 14 October 2021 (EDT) PS: If the magazine issue is "Something, December 1, 2015", the date of the magazine will follow the date 2015-12-01. This is for magazines with specific dates (think tor.com) or for things that come out twice a week or in another sequence based on dates and not months. I am fixing the ones as I am approving but please keep that in mind for the next batch. Magazines and books have different rules - both for naming and for dating :) Annie 02:02, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

I specifically dated them to the exact date shown on the NewMyths.com website as a result of your comment in #58 above. Yes, I know you said books on your post. If the exact day is important for an ebook release, why is it less important for a webzine? John Scifibones 08:23, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

Escape Pod, I noticed you changed the date here. It was not published on that date under that name. If you're going to do that, why not just use this record for both publications and get rid of this one? Either way, we are stating something that isn't correct. The way I showed it, originally taught me by MagicUnk here, while quirky due to the nature of the db, is at least factually correct. John Scifibones 09:08, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

Another way to handle these, is to make both the titles variants of the canonical name title. That way, the correct author name and date will show in each publication. What do you think? John Scifibones 09:38, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

Ebook is a format as is hardcover or paperback. The dating rule is based the type of publication. Books and magazines have different rules. Magazines are dated based on cover date regardless if they are eBooks, webzines or paper ones. Books are dated based on whatever information we have including exact dates. I cannot explain it clearer than that. I will look at the other question in a few minutes. Annie 11:36, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

And now about that variant. You cannot make a brand new parent because it will match one of the variants. Outside of split novels and serials (where the variant shows difference in contents), we create a variant for a difference in Title, Author, Language or translator only. Which means that if the 4 elements (the last one is optional) are the same, we merge, we do not variant. And that's where it gets a bit weird for canonical titles.

In most cases, the canonical title is the first title the text is published under. There are two exceptions to that rule:

• A different title becomes more popular.
• The first editions are under a pseudonym while the new ones are under the canonical name

Both of these cases create a situation where the canonical title's first appearance is AFTER one of its variants. As long as there are no translations involved, we then date the canonical title based on its earliest variant (translations and serializations do not count for this - just pure variants). The reason is pretty prosaic - a canonical title is not just one of the variants, it is used for ordering the titles in the bibliography. So it needs to be the first appearance of the story in the language as a whole (serializations get dated differently and do not influence the full text dating). Think of this logically. If you take MagicUnk's argument to its logical conclusion, then every time you create a parent just to move a story to the canonical name, you will need to date the parent as 8888-00-00 (unpublished) which will make a mess of all bibliographic pages that have pseudonyms. I think they got a bit confused with how we handle dating when a translation pre-dates the original. Let me know if that makes sense. Annie 13:30, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

I have come across this situation a number of times, probably because of the area I concentrate in. While the variants are correct, I'll need to change the publication date of the parent, as was done here. I hope I can find them all. John Scifibones 13:43, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

Don't worry too much about it - we have a report(Variant Title Dates Before Canonical Title Dates) for that so they will show up and get fixed (moderators can ignore the ones where it is legitimate - translations). I will see if we can update a help page somewhere to assist with that a bit - I know that some of those rules step on each other's toes. :) Annie 13:53, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

The only thing that I would add to Annie's explanation is that the rule re: "A different title becomes more popular" is typically only invoked when a later title becomes significantly more popular. For example, consider The Stars My Destination. It was first published as "Tiger! Tiger!" in 1956, but the US title, "The Stars My Destination" (1957), is much better known. If "Tiger! Tiger!" was the canonical title, it would make it harder for our users to find the book, so the benefit of using a later title as the canonical title outweighs the awkwardness of having the earlier title appear as a variant. If the two titles were fairly close in terms of popularity, swapping them might not be worth the trouble. Ahasuerus 14:04, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

Owen Kerr

source? Annie 01:47, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

And Michael L. Drummond? When information is added, a source need to be added in the notes, Web pages OR moderator notes if it should not be public (although we do not list non-public information for authors). Annie 01:52, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

And Michaelsun Knapp?

And Shannon Waller. Thanks! Annie 02:18, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

NewMyths.com is the source. John Scifibones 07:46, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

Links for each please. Annie 11:36, 14 October 2021 (EDT)

Bewildering Stories, 30 August 2021

A few small things here:

• Excerpts never get lengths - they are "short fiction", no length. I fixed that but keep this in mind.:)
• "The Ballad of Omega Brown 3: Omega and the Sorcerer of Space Station 9" should really be Omega and the Sorcerer of Space Station 9, and then put into a series named The Ballad of Omega Brown under 3. Remember that we use simplified names when series are involved so you do not load that into a title - you pull it into the series. Annie 17:13, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

I realized my mistake, putting a length on an excerpt in a later issue. There are several fiction series I have encountered in subsequent issues. I have been leaving the series on them, since I can't enter the series until the title is created anyway. This will remind me which stories belong in which series. Appreciate making sure I'm aware. John Scifibones 17:26, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

You need to get back to the issue anyway to variant the serials so I'd use the simplified title initially and then add the series on the second pass. Otherwise an approving moderator may decide to assist you and do the move for you (which is not an issue technically but as you are coming back... they can use the time elsewhere and they will probably stop by to talk to you about it and... ). Just saying :) Plus if these get approved after you are gone for the day, someone can put the updates in the queue at the same time as you. So I try not to leave a title in a weird state knowing I will need to edit no matter what. Keeps the DB cleaner overall. :) Annie 17:31, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

And if you want to do something creative/weird (name it that way knowing you need to edit so making sure you have the data IN the story record for the second update for example), use the moderator note to tell the approving moderator what you are doing. We are not mindreaders - we assume either inexperience or a half-asleep editor. The first always end up with a post on your Talk page. The latter only when it happens a lot. So... add moderator notes. :) Annie 17:34, 15 October 2021 (EDT

Good points, I'm convinced. It's too bad there is no access to the length field when creating a parent. I will have to go back and add the length after it is created. Maybe worth a suggestion on the Community portal. What do you think? John Scifibones 17:40, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

You don't really need that and it will probably cause more issues than it will solve - people click the weirdest things and someone needs to clean it later. :)

Set the length on the child. If the child already has length during the creation of the parent, the parent will inherit the same length on creation. Same for the juvenile/novelization/non-genre/gf checkboxes. Series and series numbers will automatically move to the parent if they are already on the child. One of the places where order of submissions is important for what you get at the end. The way I work these is to make sure the child record has the correct checkboxes, lengths and so on and then variant up. Now - approvals being what they are, that can backfire if you want to do the title edit and the MakeVariant at the same time but a moderator note on MakeVariant may help. I tend to try to process TitleEdit before MakeVariant if I see them next to each other but... does not always happen. A second check once all is approved is always needed anyway and you can sort all that was missed after that. :)

If you still want to ask on CS knowing all that, be my guest :) Annie 17:52, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Since there is no length on a serial child, there is nothing to flow up to the short fiction parent, but, I'll just make sure I go back and set the field when reviewing the final product. John Scifibones 17:57, 15 October 2021 (EDT) Is this statemnt incorrect? Are lengths allowed for serials? John Scifibones 18:02, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Serials. Well... yes, that's one usecase it may be useful (nope, no length there either - length is only for Shortfiction which is not excerpt). But you should only variant one installment anyway first - you need to wait for the ID of the parent for the rest (please do not make us approve new parent for each installment...) so you can as well just add the length at that point (it is a quick edit. Plus this is when you can add a link to the full story on the site in the story record - so win/win). Feel free to post on CS but it won't be exactly trivial so... not sure if you will get it soon(ish) if ever. Annie 18:05, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Haha, No I'll just do one parent. John Scifibones 18:10, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

(unindent). Considering the existence of this story, that 3 on that series is order, not part of the series name. Fixed here. Annie 19:11, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

Okay John Scifibones 19:22, 15 October 2021 (EDT)

From Both Sides

HI! Is the parent title an essay[13]? You also entered the title twice as (part 3 of 4)[14]. ThanksKraang 22:46, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

Yes, it is a serialized essay. First one I've come across, I assumed it was allowed. Here is an edit to fix my mistake in the last serial title.

Thanks, just checking. I don't see why an essay can't be serialized.Kraang 23:09, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

Maybe someone in this thread should read the manual. I know, boring, but when not sure - it usually helps. :) It cannot be a serial by our definition of what a serial is. Serials are only for fiction, not even for poems unless we have a rule change: “ SERIAL. Use for a title that would otherwise be either SHORTFICTION or NOVEL, but which is being serialized in a magazine, a fanzine or a series of chapbooks.”. Serialized essays are entered as essays and then if you want to combine them somehow, use a series. But they cannot be treated serials and they cannot be tied to the full text in the usual way.

For example when we expanded the chapbooks to allow single serials, it was with that understanding - leaving single essays and parts of essays published on their own still as non-fiction books and not as chapbooks. Annie 01:17, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

PS: These are now fixed. Annie 02:52, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for fixing it John Scifibones 06:54, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

Anytime. Thanks for adding the magazines. Annie 07:17, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

Your welcome, I'm slowly adding ones to keep track of on my user page. John Scifibones 08:37, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

Classic Celtic Fairy Tales

For older books, Amazon uses the YYYY-MM-01 format for the books that do not have exact dates (coming from DBs that required a date but did not have one or that did not have a date and the early Amazon imports required one. So for anything older than 15-20 years (pre-2000 for sure; early 2000s can also be a problem so I would keep an eye for it), Amazon is a bad source for the Day part of the date when it is 01 - good for year, occasionally good for month but for the day portion, you want 00 unless you have a contemporary review or something else like that that mentions exact date. Even when not 01, it can be iffy the older the book gets but it has a better chance to be correct. Changed it here. Thanks for adding that one! Annie 21:03, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

I knew to watch for the January 1 dated books. I'll add this to the list. What had to be changed in the notes field? John Scifibones 21:08, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Yep - Jan 1 has both month and day suspect; Feb 1 has the month fine but... :)

The notes field change is my bad - I had added a note ("Month from Amazon.com, date uncertain.". Pulled it out pre-submitting - decided it is superfluous. Left behind the "." from my own note by mistake. Decided not to reject and redo as the note makes sense this way as well. Sorry. :) Annie 21:16, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Oh, and a trick about finding what changed in a field:

• The AddPub/NewPub/ClonePub record in the history always shows what was initially submitted so you can compare easily current with initial.
• If there is more than one edit after that, look at the history and open the edit before the last one that changed something. So for example if you look at this and want to see what exactly the last edit changed, go to the edit before the last one and read it in reverse order (+ is - and - is plus). If the Notes field show no changes in that one, go back to the previous until you find one that changed it. You can see both kinds of changes on that record - I was tinkering with the wording and the record while reading the book (with some additions after I got to the end of the ebook) - then got tired of editing and could not spot the issues so asked someone to assist with a final proof-read (thus the last update). :)

Does not work completely for old pubs where we do not have the initial creation or some of the edits; works for newer ones. And works for all fields - Notes was just an example. But helps when someone changes the data you added and does not tell you for one reason or another. With a small note - a few fields (title name, title date and title author) can be changed from two places - EditPub or EditTitle so if you are tracing a change in that, you need to look at both histories.

And yes, before you ask, I really need to write that up and put it on the wiki and after that we probably should attach the help page to the Histories pages. Annie 21:41, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Additionally, if you edit the title record from inside the publication, I believe you lose any previous edit history for the title record. You must look at the pub record in that case. Same with cover art title. I hope you realize how much I appreciate you taking the time to teach me the fine points. John Scifibones 21:56, 24 October 2021 (EDT) Or is that incorrect?

Nope, you are not losing the old edits done previously on the Title level as long as the ID does not change when you change inside of the pubRecord (and we try not to - because then you lose all things like series and notes) - it just does not have that specific edit (or 6) because it/they happened on the pubEdit. You usually do not have the creation for Title Records either - because they get created as a side effect of creating a publication or out from another title (then it is in the old title that created them). If a new ID is created - then yes, any older edits' are not linked because it is a new ID. Now - Series, Authors, Publishers and Pub Series behave differently when you edit inside of the publication/Title record - we create a new one there if needed, we do not change the existing one. The reason is that with titles, we will NOT allow you to change it inside of the book if there are two books holding it. Enforcing that for the other types of records is kinda weird - so we allow change and just create new records if needed. Think of the title inside of the pub as a link to the actual title record when we show it (so you change it, you are changing the original) while the rest are matches based on text only (so when you change it, we just link elsewhere).

And if that story was then ejected from the pub where these changes happened, the link gets lost. You do lose one side of the merged history when you merge a title as well. So not perfect by any means but helpful nevertheless. That feature was never planned to be a history - we just found out that we can reuse it (that's why it does not have an "old state") and why some of them look so ugly (if any referenced IDs is missing now)

Shrug. When people care enough to learn things, I am very happy to explain and show some tricks - the DB is huge, some of the practices are weird and because of our history, we are stuck with a lot of oddities. I may sound a bit let's say ornery when responding to suggestions but it is just because what looks easy may have a back history that makes it anything but - like the Publisher help page change proposal. I know you mean well and I do not disagree with the intention or the desire for change but... there is stuff to keep in mind and work out before we can change the rules text and practice. I love clean slates but there are very little number of them in this DB. Not to mention that for publishers there is also a second thing I did not want to bring in there -- imprints. We may need 3 fields, not 2: Parent, actual publisher canonical, "As written" - because some imprints get moved between parents, some change from imprint to publisher and back and so on. Or a way to connect via variants for example. Or something. The publisher field is a minefield. We probably should start with a "What do we want to record" and build the requirements for publishers (let me pull my wish list...), then figure out implementation and old records reconciliation (and find someone to do it) and then we can change current practice. :)

Remember when you asked me if I would support you to self-moderate and I told you that you need more practice? I had not forgotten and part of why I try to explain in detail when you hit something weird is exactly that. Not that moderators and self-approvers know everything or never make mistakes (some of my blunders are... embarrassing) - we are all people. But the more you understand the "why" behind some things, the less likely is to blunder... :) Annie 22:19, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

A Celestial Voice

I was looking at this. Because of how the note reads and our naming policies, it is unclear that we DO have Polar Borealis issue 3 and that it is not part of the credit (as opposed to the source of the credit). Maybe a better way will be: "First published in Carillon, UK (source: Polar Borealis, Issue 3, November-December 2016)".

And out of curiosity - is that the whole credit? No date/Issue number? I suspect this is Carillon. And as they seem to have published in paper (confirmed paper), they are technically eligible as non-genre periodical (so adding just their SF content as with The New Yorker) so if we find in which issue it was, we can add the issue. Does not have issue number (the link is unstable as all links at Galactic Central but will survive awhile. Rabbit holes - all magazines are rabbit holes. Annie 22:48, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

I always put the source in ()'s. I thought this was pretty clear. As far as using the date vs issue number, I can go back if you find it ambiguous. I supply issue number and or date and publisher, if a book, provided I know it. Polar Borealis was hit or miss on what they supply. Re: Galactic Central, I only use them for the cover. The complete ebook is attached to each publication, they were my sources. I'm open to suggestions John Scifibones 23:01, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

I know that you use them only for the cover - I went looking to see if they know something about the magazine the poem came from, not about your magazine. Unfortunately they seem to only have what the magazine itself has as info - sometimes they are able to connect some dots based on reprints and so on - so I tend to check.

Look at the note in the context of the whole page. There is the November-December issue under it and there is issue 3 in the notes. No connection between them. :) So I'd add the date of the issue to the note thus creating the link. As for the sources and ()s - when the source is complete (with date and/or issue number), it is somewhat obvious. Here? It literally can mean a special issue of the previously named source - you know what you mean because this is your format but what if someone stumbles on that page first? I prefer to spell out the word "source" or "based on information from" or something like that usually - making it crystal clear regardless of the format of the information. But that's just me. Annie 23:08, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

Too bad they didn't use an acknowledgements page, I always use that word. I'll make the change as you suggest. Will you process the non title updates still in my queue? Thanks John Scifibones 23:18, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

At least they provided some credits - some magazines/fanzines could not be bothered even with that (and don't get me started on translations). :) All approved and I changed one of the notes for a missing space and to date one of the issues in the note (same reason as explaining above). Feel free to change the order of the date/issue number if you prefer. Now I should really stop getting distracted and go work on my project :) Annie 23:26, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

Polar Borealis

Hi John - Glad to see that you've brought Polar Borealis up to date! :) I know that ChrisJ worked on it previously, but I was thinking of updating it further myself, especially due to its receiving an Aurora Award recently, but you beat me to it! :P Are you planning to cover its sister publication, Polar Starlight, the next issue of which is imminent?--Explorer1000 12:18, 26 October 2021 (EDT)

Actually, I just saw that you have covered the first two issues of Polar Starlight. Nice one! :) --Explorer1000 12:38, 26 October 2021 (EDT)

Thanks, I'll try to keep them current. File a complaint with customer service if I slip up. It appears you are making progress. Feel free to use me as a resource. John Scifibones 18:39, 26 October 2021 (EDT)

LOL I wasn't complaining! Thanks for the offer of help. :) And, just so you know, Polar Starlight #3 launched last night... :P --Explorer1000 10:23, 27 October 2021 (EDT)

I was just messin' with you. I know you weren't. John Scifibones 10:47, 27 October 2021 (EDT)

I had just read this, and it stuck in my mind. John Scifibones!~

Publishers

I read your posts regarding the Publisher field with some interest. It has been on my radar for a number of years, but more concrete activities have taken precedence. Coming up on my to do list was a precursor to dealing with publishers, which was scraping the various forums to create an index based on rules, procedures, techniques, history, precedence and such. One key point was discussions on various topics that left possible projects hanging, either unstarted or abandoned. Dealing with publisher's was one of the latter.

Please let me know if you do pursue this further than the forums. The note I have for myself on this topic was to dig into the imprint/publisher distinction and look to see if there was any help to be found in the legal registration aspect, i.e. copyright/trademark. I took a quick peek and found the [Ace a] trademark, but not the A one. Anyway, at the moment it's a distraction, albeit one I don't mind spending some time and thought on if there's someone else to share with. ../Doug H 09:44, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for reaching out. I'm willing to invest time and effort into this project. My interest is less on the academic side, more on standardization and implementation. Documenting publisher and/or imprint should not be a subjective process. The real publishers and their imprints are hard enough, our system allow the entry of almost anything in the publisher field. Consider this.

Printed on the title page verso, "Token Publishing Company/ A Timewarp Book"

All these are possible

1. Token
2. Token Publishing
3. Token Publishing Company
4. Timewarp
5. Timewarp Books
6. Timewarp/Token
7. Timewarp/Token Publishing

These are not only possible ,but, comply with present standards. The only control is the moderator review system. I would add the PV system, but, that seems routinely ignored. Unacceptable. This is why I made point 1, reach agreement on what the final structure should look like. After that, there should be enough interest to work on publishers & imprints. I look forward to further discussion. John Scifibones 12:34, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

My starting point is what ISFDB generally stands on - record what is in the book. We can still quibble about how much of what's written should be kept (e.g. city), but the content should rule. The reasons offered for 'standardizing' is it seemed impossible to document the Byzantine structure of publishers and imprints over time and allow reasonable queries. My reason for wanting to index the wiki was to bring out all the old arguments and identify the concerns and examples, hopefully leading to a better solution. (In keeping with this, I also dislike the practice of recording dates found by research as the date shown in summary lists.) I look at your point 1 as a goal, not an activity, but agree with its primacy. What's the point of the field and how do we get there, given what's in the books? ../Doug H 13:09, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

I will leave you two alone if you do not want me here but just wanted to add a note - that is exactly why I think we need at least 2-fields field for Publishers (3 possibly (parent/imprint/"as is") (or a total rework of how publishers are implemented - having 2-3 fields will be a lot less work and more likely to happen than an overhaul to allow varianting and what's not). :) Using what is in the book is what we all want but we need to find a way to get Publishers bibliographies as well properly assembled or we are not a very good DB (which had always been the argument for standardization). Annie 13:45, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

Annie, not only are you welcome, I don't believe we can achieve our goal without your participation. As I stated in the R&S thread, I think you are on the right track with the multi-field approach. We have enough workarounds with the author/title variant system. In fact, you showed me a new one yesterday. However, I commit to an open mind, and perhaps there are equally good alternatives. Anyone who reads this is also welcome to participate. John Scifibones 14:26, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

Multi-field and repeatable to handle co-publishing - if you think that imprints and publishers are bad, you need to look at some of the co-published books and how they are entered (hint: unless someone made a point to clear them up, they are added every which way). And co-publishing may mean multiple ISBNs as well so that is also tied here. And co-publishing across borders means multiple prices as well (not that this requires co-publishing but it can tie into it). On the other hand, ISBNs are sometimes one of the best way to figure out publishers - not the exact one but the corporate one or who has main responsibility in co-publishing cases with single ISBNs. So... just throwing that here. Ignore it for now I guess but we cannot talk Publishers without that - not the majors anyway.

If you want a somewhat of a starting list for something - this is the list of publishers which Fixer (the robot who looks for new and forthcoming books so we can add them) looks in Amazon.com for (that's an oversimplification of how the list is used - but in short these are what we can consider "our" publishers so books by them get a human eye to decide if they are ours or not if they are picked up from a category where we expect genre books). Not a complete list and as you can see the format is a bit weird (it is for machine comparisons, not human eyes) but it should be readable (headofzeus is "Head of Zeus" for example) and keep in mind that these are kinda partials so "Ad Astra / Head of Zeus" and its variants come from the headofzeus match as well). It is nowhere near complete but it has most if not all of the major publishers (and it keeps getting updated). But may be useful for scale and for a start. And that does not go anywhere near historical imprints and other crazy things. Or non-English language publishers. Alternatively, start with the big names and work down that list -- it will contain most of the crazy iterations.

I have an organizational proposal - set a Wiki page for the "Publishers Project" - not under your account but somewhere free standing. Add it to this category (which needs cleaning but... we may as well start using it again - I am considering dropping a few more things in there as well). Then its Talk page can be used to plan and discuss and so on while the page itself becomes a repository of lists and decisions and so on. That way all about the project will be in a single place, people will be able to subscribe to it and follow if they wish to and so on. One way or another, the Publishers need to get an overhaul sooner or later so we may as well organize it a bit. Not urgent but if you are starting to assemble things - it may make sense to do it now. Annie 15:20, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

For what it's worth, my db extracts the publisher componet of the ISBN and builds a dropdown list on the fly. The new page is established, should I move this thread? John Scifibones 16:35, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

If you want :) Posting the link would have been useful. :) Annie 16:50, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

All discussion re: publisher project should be continued at Publishers Project John Scifibones 17:00, 29 October 2021 (EDT)

(unindent) I've posted something to kick things off. Do you know how to put pages (project and talk) on your watchlist? ../Doug H 22:01, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Yes. I saw you started to organize things. I was actually going to ask if you would dig up some of the past discussions, I have little success searching the wiki. I'll try to read through the history this week. John Scifibones 22:08, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Doug, if I may mention something - organizing the talk page with section and subsections just looks weird. That organization should be on the main page - the talk should literally be for talks and discussions and structuring and ordering it really looks as if you do not want people to edit and respond there - there are no questions, it is just a wall of structured text, links to read and so on. And that after telling people that this kind of stuff goes on the Project page. If that's how you want to do it, fine by me. But... I think that's backwards. Annie 22:11, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Bolesław Leśmian photo

To apply a template, you don't edit the template page. Instead, copy the sample text in the Usage section of the template page (the smaller text with a gray background), add it to the image page (in this case Image:Bolesław Leśmian.jpg‎), and replace the placeholders with the actual answers (if a field is not applicable, you can delete that line). I reverted the changes to the template as that changed every image that used the template. -- JLaTondre (talk) 14:29, 30 October 2021 (EDT)

Sorry I messed things up. Don't know why I'm having trouble understanding. What is wrong here? Thanks for your helpJohn Scifibones

There is nothing wrong that I can see. Looks like the warning is overzealous software. I will ping Ahasuerus. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:42, 30 October 2021 (EDT)

I just added the author id in case that is it.John Scifibones 16:43, 30 October 2021 (EDT)

That looks like Bug 765, "Entering an author image URL can generate a spurious yellow warning". We've known about the problem for a some time, but, unfortunately, it's not trivial to fix :-( Ahasuerus 17:08, 30 October 2021 (EDT)

Samovar, 25 October 2021

Sorted out the transliteration and the original for the Russian story here (popped up on a report as a Russian story with non-Cyrillic letters in the author name so before ignoring it (as it is indeed correct that way for this publication), I fixed the author's canonical and name and all that). Feel free to ping me when you can use a hand for a thing like that. Annie 19:36, 30 October 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for the improvements. Lately I've been taking up a bit of your time, I hesitate to distract you from your own projects. John Scifibones 19:45, 30 October 2021 (EDT)

Someone will need to get them sorted anyway - better when you add them and they take a few minutes than 3 months later when there are 20 of them and need half a day. :) I am off to adding the anthology that story came from - we may as well have that as well. :)

Just post on my page - if I do not have time just now, it will be there to remind me when I do have a minute or 5. When I make a comment on needing to get back to my own projects, it is not an admonishment towards anyone else - it is a self-reminder that I was pretending to be doing something and keep getting distracted because it just requires too many steps (don't know about you but I tend to procrastinate tasks which need to be done but require too much work...). Apologies if it sounded in a different way and made you feel that you are disturbing me (or worse). And if you ever need anything I can assist with, just holler. :) Annie 20:10, 30 October 2021 (EDT)

The Cossack Review

As it is not a speculative magazine, I flipped the non-genre tag on for it. That way it is clear that we are not indexing all the contents. Not sure if you forgot to do it when you created it or did not realize you can do it at that point so heads up. Annie 02:54, 1 November 2021 (EDT)

I thought about it on initial entry, then decided I would go back and look a little closer. I recognized a couple contributor's who write speculative fiction. Jeannine Hall Gailey and Akua Lezli Hope. As sometimes happens, it slipped my mind. Even marked as non-genre, I'll try to identify ay contents wihich do qualify and add them. John Scifibones 08:18, 1 November 2021 (EDT)

Neither author references this publication on their bibliography pages, I'll let it go. John Scifibones 10:42, 1 November 2021 (EDT)

I tend to set it as soon as possible just so that a well-meaning person does not decide to fill it in with no extra research (especially now that we changed the rules and "Editors of YYYY" is not mandatory for non-genre periodicals so they are not so easy to spot without the flag). :) That does not preclude us from having a full issue sometimes when there is a speculative issue or adding any extra stories/items into it when we find them to be genre. The big challenge with these non-SF journals and magazines is finding what to add from them when you are not reading them so they almost by default are a work in progress until they are completely read by someone. :) Thanks for working on the magazines! Annie 14:16, 1 November 2021 (EDT)

Murder in New Eden, Chapter 31: City Operations Has an Upgrade Variant

HI! Submission[15] will create a variant of it's self. You can reject and resubmit. Thanks.Kraang 21:18, 1 November 2021 (EDT)

fixed, thanks John Scifibones 21:32, 1 November 2021 (EDT)

Now a Ragged Breeze

Re this submission: We don't variant based on case. By rule, all title cases are supposed to be normalized. By common convention, we allow lower case in poems. But when there are both upper and lower case versions, we normalize to one. I merged these together under the "proper" case version. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 10:03, 7 November 2021 (EST)

I started to do it, figured I would get called out, so I varianted it. I agrre it should be merged. John Scifibones 10:06, 7 November 2021 (EST)

All these title changes

Most of them are in PVd magazines (for example). Which means that you need to discuss with the PV before you make changes in the titles, especially when there is an active PV. In case if inactive one, a note in each publication explaining the post PV changes is usually asked for. Please ping Taweiss and discuss with him before I can approve these. I will keep them on hold in the meantime. Please note that this is not because I disbelieve you or think you are wrong but having a link to the magazine or even the magazine is not a reason to ignore the courtesy policies of the site and effectively invalidate the PV program by changing data with no agreement and notification. I know he is just transient but that does not mean he cannot have access to them. Thanks!

Also on a separate note - we tend to drop the series titles from titles and the main titles from serials if they have separate titles. Either way is acceptable so I will leave you and the PV to decide how you want the renaming to go. Annie 21:25, 11 November 2021 (EST)

Far Horizons, April 2014

About this: "Review of Firefly & Serenity (TV Series and Movie) omitted" - the policy is to add these when they are in Genre magazines - just not as reviews but as essays. A genre periodical makes everything inside of it eligible for inclusion in one way or another (that's the difference between genre periodicals and non-genre ones). The note is enough if so you chose to leave it but anyone after that can add that missing essay (or 2). So just heads up. Annie 22:23, 11 November 2021 (EST)

Since I had a couple typos to correct and a cover to add, went ahead and moved it to essay. While I have moved reviews from review to essay, this is the first time anyone has suggested moving from notes to essay. I understand you were just making me aware of the possibilities. Thanks John Scifibones 11:06, 12 November 2021 (EST)

Editors get a somewhat free hand in the contents they add - as long as they follow the rules, a few things can be done in different ways. The policy is in Reviews. A lot of editors prefer to just add notes and leave it at that - which works but is technically incomplete so at a later date someone may decide to fix them. As you are working off the magazine/contents somewhere, adding them now is easier than 10 years down the road when we cannot find a copy of the thing anymore. So I tend to just add them when I work magazines - that way our record is complete (we know why we skip these but someone finding the magazine online may be confused or not realize that there are missing pieces). :) Annie 23:47, 12 November 2021 (EST)

Synth 4: An Anthology of Dark SF

So let's discuss this submission: I suspect you omitted the Caselberg story because you were planning to import it. Which is fine. But you need to say that in your moderator notes: when handling there is no way for someone to know if you are planning to import it, you missed it by mistake (so it will be a good thing to add it so we do not lose it) or you skipped it because it is somehow not eligible (so a moderator needs to do the research you already did to figure out if we want this story). Otherwise you have two cases:

• A moderator spends the time to track it down so they can import (or to add it and then merge)
• A moderator puts in the incomplete template (so we do not lose track of the book now that it has contents) which then needs removal.

I've added the missing story. Plus if there is a moderator note, someone checking the updates will also know why the story was added later. :) Thanks! Annie 22:32, 11 November 2021 (EST)

It's on my to do list, don't know why I didn't import it immediately. John Scifibones 11:16, 12 November 2021 (EST)

If you get into the habit of putting a note in the moderator notes saying "import for the last story in a separate submission" or something so someone knows to look for it, it won't slip your mind either :) And that's exactly why moderators do help with follow-up actions - things slip; when two people pay attention, it is less likely for it to happen. Annie 23:37, 12 November 2021 (EST)

Classic Pan and Fontana Horror

A few things here:

• 2 typos in the same title: "Foreward; Horror's Golden Age" is really "Foreword: Horror's Golden Age" :) Careful with that word Foreword - it gets misspelled very often - both in books and here in the DB - so I always look 3 times when I see it somewhere.
• The last story is not the one you imported. The contents page says "Mr. Smyth", not "Mr. Smythe". There is no access to the pages from that story in Look Inside directly but if you search in look Inside, all references are for Smyth and not Smythe and it also allows you to click and see the title page for the story so this is not a contents page typo. It may be the same story (most likely is - but we need some more proof to connect them) but it has a new title here so we use that. Even if we could not see these search results, we still would have used the title as credited.

Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions. Annie 22:51, 11 November 2021 (EST)

Looks like the two titles should be merged. If you look at the title record for Mr. Smythe, you see 2 source publication. The Look inside for Back from the Dead 2019 edition shows "Mr. Smyth", not Mr. Smythe. When the contents were added, they were simply imported from the 2010 edition, which we don't have the ability to look inside. While it is possible the 2010 edition says Mr. Smythe, it is more likely a typo. If you don't feel comfortable merging, then we should remove the Mr. Smythe title from here, import the this one and variant to Mr. Smythe. What do you think?John Scifibones 12:14, 12 November 2021 (EST)

The original record is from 2010 so who knows. Let me look at these one more time tomorrow and will deal with them. Careful with imports though - we have typos, books have typos and sometimes things just get slightly renamed. Edits and imports are the best time to find typos usually. :) Annie 23:41, 12 November 2021 (EST)

Prologue

Hello,

Gary Roen ended up with two stories called Prologue. You may want to add some notes if they are different. :) Annie 05:47, 12 November 2021 (EST)

Cryoburn notes changes

CD-ROM info added to Cryoburn Phil 13:22, 14 November 2021 (EST)

Thanks for the improvement John Scifibones 20:23, 14 November 2021 (EST)

The Curse of Chalion

Added Canadian price to first edition hc. Phil 12:32, 19 November 2021 (EST)

Fine with me John Scifibones 12:40, 19 November 2021 (EST)

HTML in titles

We do not allow html in titles. See The Help page:

• Fonts. Sometimes a title will have one or more words in italics, or in boldface, or in an unusual font. The ISFDB software would permit representing these via embedded HTML. However, this would mean that user searches that did not include the HTML would fail in many cases where they ought to succeed. Therefore, do not use embedded HTML to show font changes. For the same reason, do not use underscores to show _italics_, nor asterisks to show *boldface*, nor other typographical methods to show font in titles. If the font seems important, it can be shown and/or described in a note.

I fixed it here. Thanks! Annie 21:08, 21 November 2021 (EST)

Thanks for fixing it John Scifibones 22:08, 21 November 2021 (EST)

Dating of excepts

Excerpts are dated as per their first appearance as such (and under that name). So this remains as 1909 unless it was printed in 1593 on its own and under that title :) Annie 02:43, 22 November 2021 (EST)

Same for Where the Bee Sucks and any others I find in the queue. I am fixing as I am approving. Thanks! :) Annie 02:45, 22 November 2021 (EST)

And a Link to the help page: "Excerpts. Use the date when an excerpt was first published in that form, not the date when the original text it is taken from was published." :) Annie 05:11, 22 November 2021 (EST)

No problem John Scifibones 07:13, 22 November 2021

Dating aside, do you agree there is value in adding specific citations to each of the works in this collection? The Shakespeare works were a test case. John Scifibones 07:51, 22 November 2021 (EST)

The more details we have, the better. :) I even add these on prose excerpts when I am verifying: for example. That way we can merge/variant excerpts when they contain the same pieces.

One thing about Shakespeare and line numbers (and even Acts in a few of the plays) - if the book has a note on which edition was used, you may want to add that as well - the Arden Shakespeare lines do not always match the Oxford ones (and so on) :) Annie 10:18, 22 November 2021 (EST)

In The Magic Casement: An Anthology of Fairy Poetry, Alfred Noyes provides no indication where any of the works are from. The Shakespeare citations are mine, from my 'Complete Works'. Just wanted to make sure the citations are something we wanted before I investigated some of the other works in the anthology. While line numbers can differ slightly, they do show how Noyes extracted lines from various acts and scenes to create a single work. In "Falstaff and the Fairies", he stopped mid-sentence added an elipsis and continued with dialoogue from 25 lines later in the scene. John Scifibones 12:29, 22 November 2021 (EST)

If the line numbers are yours, specify which edition you took them from - I have 6 editions of some of the plays; the line numbers can differ quite a bite depending on the editor (and in the double plays (with versions from both Folios), it can get even more interesting). Thus "always mention which edition your numbering refers to" is a basic rule with Shakespeare quotes. :)

And as I said - I like having information like that so if you feel like digging it out, have fun! Annie 13:21, 22 November 2021 (EST)

Take a look at this submission. It's the leatherbound edition apparantly published by several companies. The text is that of Arthur Henry Bullen for his newly founded Shakedpeare Head Press in 1904. Any suggested improvements before I add this to my other citations?

Looks good. Annie 15:02, 22 November 2021 (EST)

Awards for novellas and other shorter works

Hello,

When the award is for a novella, we link to the text (aka the novella record) and not to the chapbook (which is just a container). I moved this one where it belongs. :) Annie 17:45, 3 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks for fixing. Don't know how I made that mistake, I do know that. John Scifibones 18:52, 3 December 2021 (EST)

It happens occasionally when one does a few rewards in a row. There was another one already there as well which may have also tripped you a bit. :) Annie 20:33, 3 December 2021 (EST)

I submitted corrections for 6 more titles. Apparently I didn't learn the correct procedure till sometime after entering the 2021 Ignyte Awards! Thanks for initiating a cleanup report to spot these. John Scifibones 09:10, 4 December 2021 (EST)

Enemies of the System

Hi, John! Thanks you for your counting of words for this!

In the process of transformation I ran across the OCLC entry for the 1978 Harper & Row publication, and changed the title accordingly: the subtitle is also on the cover, but the cover has just Brian Aldiss, whereas we (and OCLC) have Brian W. Aldiss, so I let the latter stand in the entry. Are you able to take a look if that was rightly done (we don't have a primary verifier so far)? Christian Stonecreek 12:34, 5 December 2021 (EST)

Hi Christian, The title and subtitle for 1978 Harper & Row publication are correct as shown. However, the title page credits 'Brian Aldiss'. Therefore, the author should be changed. My guess is that whomever edited the OCLC record looked at the copyright page which shows "Copyright © 1978 Brian W. Aldiss'. John Scifibones 15:01, 5 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks, John! I edited the publication accordingly. If you have your hands near a copy of the publication: ever thought of primary veryfying it (it's good to have someone around to ask if questions arise). Christian Stonecreek 01:46, 6 December 2021 (EST)

Christian, you misunderstand. I don't own the book. I did the count and answered your question by checking out the digitized copy here. I showed the link in the Community Portal when I answered your initial question. Sorry if I confused you. John Scifibones 07:54, 6 December 2021 (EST)

P.S. Good work getting it all sorted out.

The Empire of Sugar, It's Rise and Fall

Can you recheck the title here? "The Empire of Sugar, It's Rise and Fall" or "The Empire of Sugar, Its Rise and Fall"? If correct as it is now, add a note to that effect or someone WILL correct it without asking one day Annie 20:59, 6 December 2021 (EST)

Submitted a correction John Scifibones 21:25, 6 December 2021 (EST)

I'd assume you are planning on adding all these pubs you are adding notes about ("First published in")? :) Annie 21:54, 6 December 2021 (EST)

No, I was not. Don't we want the first published information for titles where I show the original publication dates? How else does anyone know the date was not "made up"? John Scifibones

Adding the note is a good thing to do - that way it is known and we KNOW where to look for it - and the next editor knows not to research that specific title. Adding the books AND adding the note (even when we have the book - so it is clear that we had checked and there is no missing edition we could find) is even better because we are publication-based DB. I know it can be annoying though - so just checking on your plans (one of the long term cleaning projects that had not been even started is adding all those missing "first published in" publications). So if you get bored, feel free to add a few here and there (not mandatory, not a problem if you don't but just heads up). :) Annie 22:11, 6 December 2021 (EST)

Now I understand the point of your question. I'll be glad to add some/all of the cited publications. Some are non-genre so I will only add the genre content. I'm glad you let me know, I tend to generate quite a few 'first published' citations. I'll start adding these to my to-do list. John Scifibones 22:19, 6 December 2021 (EST)

Have fun. And yes - the non-genre ones are the ones we miss the most usually but I've found that we also miss a lot of collections and anthologies (or we have them empty) - and when we start paying attention to a magazine, sometimes we find out it is worth checking every issue because they add a story or three... It is a rabbit hole though - sometimes you end up adding 20 different books because of one story (first of this story is in a book where there are older stories so you chase THEIR first and so on). But they are ours so if you are bored... :) Annie 23:24, 6 December 2021 (EST)

Dragon and Phoenix

Would you please check your copy of Dragon and Phoenix and see if the last numbered page is actually 540? I was getting ready to add a note for the Canadian price and PV when I noticed the discrepancy. Thanks. Phil 11:01, 7 December 2021 (EST)

Yeah, the 'Aboout the Author' page is numbered 540. You can change it if you like John Scifibones 11:07, 7 December 2021 (EST)

Will do. Thanks! Phil 11:09, 7 December 2021 (EST)

Angel with the Sword

Added notes and imported missing titles from the Appendix for Angel with the Sword prior to doing a PV. Phil 08:03, 13 December 2021 (EST)

If you think individual titles for all the information in the Appendix adds value, go ahead and import them. Personally, I'm a fan of highlighting any items of interest in the notes. As long as you are adding to the notes, please add the C$20.95 Canadian price. Thanks for spending time to improve this listing. John Scifibones 08:23, 13 December 2021 (EST)

Phil, take a look at your note for the Canadian price. You are showing a price in US dollars. John Scifibones 08:27, 14 December 2021 (EST)

Fortress of Owls

Added a note for the Canadian price to Fortress of Owls before doing a PV. Phil 10:05, 13 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks John Scifibones 11:14, 13 December 2021 (EST)

The Chantry Guild

Added notes to The Chantry Guild before doing a PV. Phil 08:03, 14 December 2021 (EST)

Improvements are always appreciated. John Scifibones 08:20, 14 December 2021 (EST)

The Final Encyclopedia

Added notes, fixed page count to include unnumbered pages, added new regular title for the map to The Final Encyclopedia based on owned copy. Will PV. Phil 08:38, 14 December 2021 (EST)

What Distant Deeps

While preparing to PV What Distant Deeps, I noticed the page count was missing the unnumbered pages and the "Author's Note" on pg. ix isn't included in the regular titles. Any problem with me adding the regular title and changing the page count to x+370? Phil 10:25, 14 December 2021 (EST)

When the Tide Rises

While preparing to PV When the Tide Rises, I noticed the page count was missing the unnumbered pages and the "Author's Note" on pg. [5] isn't included in the regular titles. Any problem with me adding the regular title and changing the page count to [8]+356? Also adding notes and the LCCN. Phil 10:50, 14 December 2021 (EST)

The Way to Glory

While preparing to PV The Way to Glory, I noticed the page count was missing the unnumbered pages and the "Author's Note" on pg. [5] isn't included in the regular titles. Any problem with me adding the regular title and changing the page count to [7]+402? Also adding notes. Phil 06:25, 15 December 2021 (EST)

Lt. Leary, Commanding

While preparing to PV Lt. Leary, Commanding, I noticed the page count was missing the unnumbered pages and the "Author's Note" on pg. [5] isn't included in the regular titles. Any problem with me adding the regular title and changing the page count to [7]+432? Also adding notes. Phil 06:30, 15 December 2021 (EST)

With the Lightnings

While preparing to PV With the Lightnings, I noticed the page count was missing the unnumbered pages and "A Note on Weight and Measures" on pg. [5] isn't included in the regular titles. Any problem with me adding the regular title and changing the page count to [7]+323? Also adding notes. Phil 06:37, 15 December 2021 (EST)

Belgarath the Sorcerer

Any problem with me adding a new regular title for the endpaper maps in Belgarath the Sorcerer? Phil 08:48, 15 December 2021 (EST)

What map are you planning on adding? Appears that all maps are already accounted for. John Scifibones 08:53, 15 December 2021 (EST)

The endpaper maps by Larry Schwinger are missing as a regular title. Phil 09:03, 15 December 2021 (EST)

No problem, go ahead. John Scifibones 09:36, 15 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks. BTW, I apologize for all the request for PV approval posts in the last few days. I'm going through all my hardbacks by author and seem to have many that match ones you have PVs on. Phil 10:16, 15 December 2021 (EST)

No apology necessary. I appreciate the notifications. Just remember to monitor responses. John Scifibones 10:57, 15 December 2021 (EST)

The Belgariad: Part Two

While preparing to PV The Belgariad: Part Two, I discovered a missing map on unnumbered page [2]. Any problem if I add it, adjust the page numbers, and add notes? Phil 08:03, 16 December 2021 (EST)

Okay with me John Scifibones 08:08, 16 December 2021 (EST)

The Belgariad: Part One

While preparing to PV The Belgariad: Part One, I discovered a missing frontispiece map. Any problem if I add it and add a note about the gutter code in my copy? Phil 08:21, 16 December 2021 (EST)

No problem John Scifibones 08:22, 16 December 2021 (EST)

Rage of a Demon King

Can you please look at your copy of Rage of a Demon King and see if there is a map on the endpapers? I have a first edition and there isn't one in mine. If it's not there, can I remove it from the pub? Phil 06:30, 17 December 2021 (EST)

I'm glad you brought this to my attention. My copy is a 4th printing. I don't know how I missed this. I will remove my pv from the first printing, clone it to create a 4th printing, and remove the endpaper map from the first printing. John Scifibones 15:43, 17 December 2021 (EST)

Krondor: The Betrayal

While preparing to PV Krondor: The Betrayal, I noticed that the "Author's Afterword" on page 374 is missing. Any problem with my adding it? Phil 07:01, 17 December 2021 (EST)

No Objection John Scifibones 15:30, 17 December 2021 (EST)

Polar Starlight #4 and Polar Borealis #20

Hi John, just thought I'd let you know that the latest issues of Polar Borealis (#20) and Polar Starlight (#4) have been released in the last few hours. Details and links here: http://polarborealis.ca/currentback-issues/. Greg--Explorer1000 22:47, 22 December 2021 (EST)

Thanks Greg, I'll take care of them today John Scifibones 07:23, 23 December 2021 (EST)

Hallman

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?416139; You typed Tom Halllman in notes and cover artist instead of Hallman, the name all his other ISFDB credits are listed under. See back flap: https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780399162503. --Username 23:55, 17 January 2022 (EST)

I submitted corrections, thanks for bringing this to my attention. John Scifibones 08:06, 18 January 2022 (EST)

Stone and Steel

Hello,

When adding OCLC numbers (and other links and IDs which are linked), don't forget to click on them once you had submitted them to make sure there is no typo or a copy/paste mishap (easy to happen). In this one you had 183421608 while the correct one is 1183421608 :) Fixed now. Annie 15:21, 23 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks for fixing 15:27, 23 January 2022 (EST)

Self-approving

You asked me about an opinion once and you know why I thought it was a bit too early. I said I will keep an eye on what you are doing :) If you happen to still want it, you will have my support - which may not be enough of course but FYI. What do you think? Annie 12:59, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Yes, I would like self-approval ability. It will markedly increase my productivity. My goal is still full moderator privileges. You can tell by my posts that I enjoy helping others. Thank you for your support, I won't let you down. John Scifibones 13:14, 26 January 2022 (EST)

If you will take an advice - take it slowly and don't rush it. I won't vote "no" if you go for full moderator even now but I am not sure I am ready to vote "yes" yet. Which may not matter if everyone else is ready to say "yes" so... your call to some extent :) Post over on the Moderator board the request for self-approval and the process can take it from there. Annie 13:50, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Mermaids Monthly, November 2021

Is "Ila, The Mermaid of Batticaloa" really an essay here? PS: It also had a minor capitalization issue ("Of" instead of "of") :) Annie 14:54, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Thanks for fixing, I actually saw it was an essay when I was entering it, I'm embarrassed I entered it wrong. John Scifibones 15:06, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Happens - that's the benefit of the two sets of eyes system :) Once you can self-approve, you will be checking and rechecking everything 11 times (And still mess it up). Always fun :) Annie 15:13, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Two entries on page 41? It is always a good idea to order them explicitly (41|41.1 and 41|41.2 based on how they are set on the page) :) Annie 15:58, 26 January 2022 (EST)

[16] fixes it John Scifibones 16:10, 26 January 2022 (EST)

"Ila, The Mermaid of Batticaloa" is still an essay? Is it really one? I only fixed the capitalization for it. Annie 16:42, 26 January 2022 (EST)

I misread your question initally, thought you were telling me I didn't have it as an essay. Yes, It really is an essay. Here is a link to the website showing their classification as an essay. John Scifibones 17:18, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Ha! :) PS: This is why I always ask and never change types unless I look at the source (which I looked at for the contents list but did not delve in). I think that all is sorted them here. Watch out for the capitalization though. :) Annie 17:20, 26 January 2022 (EST)

Mermaids Monthly, February 2021

Can you recheck the two "In the Sky, an Ocean" titles here? One of them is probably interior art :) Thanks! Annie 13:03, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Same question for the two "The Little Sea Maid" here. Thanks! Annie 13:05, 28 January 2022 (EST)

No question about it, the mystery is why that happened! Nevertheless, they are corrected in the edit for each pub which also loads the cover. John Scifibones 13:39, 28 January 2022 (EST)

They can be annoying to spot (short fiction being the default type when you work magazines/anthologies/collections). That is partially why we have a report for "same titles stories in the same container" - it is a common problem so I tend to look at these carefully when I add/moderate one of those. Annie 13:43, 28 January 2022 (EST)

While you are around

Missing pipe here? Unless you meant something with the number left naked (add a note in that case). Thanks! Annie 16:57, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Fixed, glad you spotted it, what brought it to your attention. (consider it a teaching opportuity) John Scifibones 17:04, 28 January 2022 (EST)

This is the same issue where the "Party" things were in. I saw those on the report I was ignoring things for you on so I buzzed you about it there. Later when you fixed them, I just looked at the publication to see if there is anything else there (in my experience, when there is one messed up thing left post moderation, chances are that the approving moderator was half-asleep/not paying attention so there may be others). It was pure chance. Plus I like checking publications post-approval, especially on title names changes and the like - to ensure that the notes are still valid, to see if there is any housekeeping to be done and so on.

Not related to how I saw this one but related to the topic: I also tend to always open any publication I was adding after it is approved (annoying back in the days when I was not self-approving but I still did it), click on every link/external ID again and make sure there are no silly mistakes. Technically the moderators should have done that post approval (or on approval) but it does not always happen. You catch a lot of things that way - call it looking at it with fresh eyes if you want. :) Annie 17:14, 28 January 2022 (EST)

This is a good tip. When I fixed the serial nomenclature, I pulled up the parent and just used that to click on the titles that needed to be fixed. I will work on making it a habit to review any publication in which I make a change. John Scifibones 17:27, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Yeah, that's why I did not see the page number thingie earlier either - I looked at the parent to see if all of them were like that and glanced at the notes of the publication just to see if you added a note explaining the naming - did not scroll down to see the rest (thus the "tend to", sometimes when in the middle of something else, I don't look). When I approved the two edits, I did look though - the link is right there so I click before I approve usually ;) Multiple sets of eyes are helpful; or the same set looking more than once. Everyone does typos and has copy/paste mishaps. Annie 17:55, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Oliver Hunter

Regarding this submission: Seems like there are two Oliver Hunter artists given some of the credits pre-date the given birthdate. Do you know anything more about the artist that would help disambiguate the non-Goblin Fruit credits? Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:56, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Only other thing I read about him was his bio here. Looks like I should disambiguate everthing Goblin Fruit related as Oliver Hunter (I) (and move the metadata). Do you agree wwith this solution, or is there a better alternative? John Scifibones 14:30, 29 January 2022 (EST)

P.S. Everything post 1997 is from 3 sources. GoblinFruit magazine, Mythic Delirium magazine (Goblin Fruit staff switched with Mythic Delirium staff for one issue), and The Honey Month (Amal El-Mohtar's collection). All would be credited to Oliver Hunter (I). John Scifibones 15:14, 29 January 2022 (EST)

If you will change Oliver Hunter to Oliver Hunter (I), I only have to edit 16 titles to get everything disambiguated properly. Thanks John Scifibones 16:05, 29 January 2022 (EST)

As there are more of the GoblinFruit artist, I would recommend he be the primary and make the earlier artist Oliver Hunter (I). If you are good with that, we can just change those 16 titles. -- JLaTondre (talk) 16:34, 29 January 2022 (EST)

I agree with your suggestion. In light of the discussion going on in Rules and Standards, I wasn't sure if changing the name of an artist in pv'd pubs would be acceptable without notifications. Hence, my suggestion. I'll go ahead and submit the changes. Thanks for catching this. John Scifibones 16:41, 29 January 2022 (EST)

Self-approver flag set

Congratulations, you are now a self-approver :-) Ahasuerus 09:57, 31 January 2022 (EST)

OCLC numbers

When we add OCLC numbers, we only add the number and not the whole string. I fixed it here. As a rule - before or after approval, always click on the links you just added to make sure you do not have a copy/paste problem. Especially now when you do not have a second set of eyes checking your work.

Also the Locus links (such as http://www.locusmag.com/index/yr2000/t10.htm#A464) are unstable - if they find a book they missed and add it to the index, the pages change and that address is not valid anymore for that book - they go strictly by the number in whatever index you are in (the 2000 alphabetical one in this case). So we do not add them as links to it in our books - it can point to a totally different book tomorrow. I pulled it out.Annie 13:47, 17 February 2022 (EST)

I'll go back and remove the Locus links from all the pubs I have put them in. Anyone will still be able to trace my source since I also state it in the notes. Thanks for pointing this out. John Scifibones 14:54, 17 February 2022 (EST)

Yep, we add a note that we had used the Locus Index but we just do not put the link itself - the things move. I usually add the link in the moderator note - it won't be valid half of the time but it will put you in the correct neighborhood and you can move a page up or down (or on the same page) if you are tracking it. But it is a bad idea in the links/notes directly - or you end up someone updating them every few weeks (or when they discover them changed) :) Annie 14:59, 17 February 2022 (EST)

While I have your attention, re: my question on the help desk earlier. Since it won't be obvious where the ISBN came from, should we create a template for a consistant note? It could say something like "ISBN derived from Audible ASIN." Similar to the incomplete template.

Not really. It is pretty obvious: it is the Audible policy to use the ISBN10 (when they use non Bxx ASINs). It is a housekeeping task - I don't add a note on where it is coming from for Audible books which have the Audible ID any more than I add that it is from the backcover/copyright page for paper books. It is not really derived per se - it is a question of using the correct form (as we would do if a source has only ISBN10 for any 2020 book). The reason the report was added now (and the rest of these) is simply because I was tired of fixing these adhoc (and we have more people adding them now). And most of these are foundable on the publisher sites and/or catalogs anyway. So if you want to help it it, convert, add to the field, approve, move on. :)

The incomplete template is needed because we need a way to differentiate between books which have only partial contents (so someone still need to work on them) and complete ones. Annie 15:18, 17 February 2022 (EST)

Award updates

You know that you can just reLink the awards, right? You do not need to do a delete+add. Go to an award page such as this one. Click on "Link Award" which opens here. Swap the ID. That way you do not lose the history of the award (which may or may not have something interesting but I don't like losing histories - in the very least it tells us who added the award - aka knows the source for them).

If you cannot figure out how to do something without deleting and recreating, checking before you start deleting is always a good idea - someone MAY know a way. Annie 23:21, 22 February 2022 (EST)

You are correct, I rarely delete a record. In this case, I know that awards are their own title records. Many of the records had no edit history. It didn't seem that there was anything of value to loose. I'm sorry, I will relink in the future. John Scifibones 07:23, 23 February 2022 (EST)

It also minimizes the chance for a typo, selecting the wrong category and so on. I know you are careful but a finger can slip and after 10 awards in a row, mistakes do happen. Plus every time you delete a record, you are running the risk of a link to our DB outside of it becoming obsolete (or even in our DB - we do link in notes occasionally) -- which is inevitable for things like review -> essay conversions or when we merge but when possible, keeping the same IDs is always a good idea. :) Annie 13:06, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Something else that came up. Some awards are for both the writer and the illustrator, 'Best Art Book' for example. (Not the awards which are clearly for the illustrator). We can only attach one title record to each award record. Looking at many of the exising records, the awards are attached to the writer. I followed the same procedure (15). One solution is to add a duplicate award record for the artist. I've seen this in a few instances. Using my recent edit list I could do this for the applicable records. Other editors have created 'dummy' title records with both credited as authors. (yuck). Or, we can leave as is, hoping that sometime in the future, the ability to add a second record to one award will be implemented. I will hold pending further input. John Scifibones 08:19, 23 February 2022 (EST)

We attach to the title, usually the non-fiction record. We are a publication based DB - our author records are a side effect of that. That's why we have no awards which are solely for authors. So no - the award is not for the author and illustrator, it is for their book - which we link. I know that you are thinking of the awards tab on author pages but you do not solve a visualization problem with messing up the data. If the art is added as 100 separate records to the art book, which one do you propose to link? :) If you want to change the policy on what is linked for artbooks, open a discussion, get support and change the way we do things but don't just come up with a weird idea and implement based on that. Now - if the artist is as important for the book as the author, which is often the case for artbooks, they probably should be co-authors to start with - which will solve that problem better... Annie 13:06, 23 February 2022 (EST)

I'm not trying to change anything. As I said, I followed what appeared to be the predominant method. (I agree, I should have relinked not replaced.) I merely pointed out a couple other methods I saw while doing this. Here was the example that surprised me. I have a list of those that are linked to the fiction title, if that should be changed, let me know. John Scifibones 14:26, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Different editors have different ideas and occasionally make up rules on the fly. Sometimes these get codified, sometimes they just exist out there until someone brings them back to policy :) Plus the DB is old enough to have so many different policies on top of each other from different times that it takes awhile to get all to policy. Every time we get a new report, we discover things like that (and sometimes reports are created because we discover these). It's the nature of a long running volunteer project - we do the best we can to keep it consistent and when it slips, we find a way to reconcile. I'll look at that one in a bit. Annie 14:36, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Here is one I haven't moved yet. John Scifibones 14:47, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Leave these in the report as they are for now so we can see how many we have like that and eventually have a discussion on how to handle? Annie 14:49, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Okay to finish the non problematic? John Scifibones 14:50, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Absolutely. Just leave anything which looks... too weird - especially if you see repeatable patterns and someone doing things on purpose like here. Thanks for working on this report! :) Annie 14:56, 23 February 2022 (EST)

An advanced search of titles looking for "dummy " in the title note results in 20 titles, all by a former moderator Clarkmci. It is more difficullt to find the instances where a duplicate award record was created to show both recipients. A report looking for duplicate records of the same award with the same recipient will find unintentional errors, it will not identifiy what we are looking for (probably should add it just for cleanup purposes). Short of plowing through the whole award database manually, not sure what else we can do. Any ideas? John Scifibones 08:53, 24 February 2022 (EST)

Let me think a bit about that. Annie 13:06, 24 February 2022 (EST)

(unindent)Annie, Upon futher consideration, I think some of the awards were moved in error. I followed what I percieved to be the practice. Chapbooks should be treated as regular publication titles for any award category which is publication specific. Best Art Book, Children's (8-12 years) Illustrated Work / Picture Book, etc. These awards should be left in the Chapbook title record. It makes no sense for those to travel with a content title. If there is no flag option to clear them from the cleanup report, one could be added. Forgive my ignorance if this is already the policy. If it is not, I would argue it should be. I know you are busy, there is no rush. I won't change anything until you have had a chance to consider. John Scifibones 15:27, 24 February 2022 (EST)

Nah, I said I need to think above because I literally need to wrap my head around what I think about these :) I mean - I am busy but that's normal :) I am around if I can help.

Chapbooks are a bit of a red-haired child around the DB if you had not realized that yet. They are an artificial construct to allow us to have single stories recorded when they are published on their own. Incidentally, they ended up catching a lot of the children fiction because these are rarely long enough to be novels. If these were long enough, the reviews and awards will be on the novel level. As they are not, we usually put them on the title level - because had they been long enough, you won't have the double layer. The problematic awards are the ones where the award is not just for the text but for the combination of text and art (what would you do for these if they are novels or non-fiction anyway? There the award will stay on the text entry - same way as it does here when put on the short fiction). Our DB is not really well-suited for that kind of records because of how we handle our art titles as separate entities. So the question really comes down to what we want to do with these. I don't think we really have a good policy on that (which is why you are finding all kinds of creative solutions all over the place). Hope that makes some sense.

Write up your concerns and ideas with a few examples and bring them up in R&S - and let's see if we can come up with a policy.

On a separate note - that is an Exhibit A on why the cleanup reports should be treated as "hey, look at this, something needs fixing - and it may actually be a policy and NOT the record or if it is the record, it may not be in the most obvious way" and not as "do something to get it off the report" kind of thing. Most of the reports which can cause real harm are moderator only but even the ones available to all can cause issues if one is not careful. If you are only doing a change to clear something off a report but you do not understand why it is needed OR it does not feel right, stop and think (or ask) -- clearing the report should be the secondary goal. Just thinking aloud on the topic - you did not do anything wrong here but new ability and so on - so just a cautious warning (because there is no approving moderator to stop you now) :) Annie 15:48, 24 February 2022 (EST)

Jim Butcher / Small Favor

I am PVing Small Favor. I will add pub notes and the Author's Note to the Contents. No changes to the existing information. I will add the Author's Note (where applicable) to all succeeding 1st ed hc's of the Dresden Files series. Teallach 11:52, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Any improvements are always welcome John Scifibones 13:43, 23 February 2022 (EST)

Duplicate poems

Hi John,

In case you miss my response here. The only reason not to merge/variant titles is that they have different contents. If it is the same contents, we always merge or variant - whatever is appropriate. In cases such as this, we rename one of them and variant them - software limitations don't allow us to have the same title twice. But that is not a reason to disregard how the DB works - same text means that the titles are always connected. I left the note in the title for now so you can see if you had done more of these - if so, they need fixing. Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions and/or concerns. :) Annie 18:55, 7 March 2022 (EST)

I'm glad you gave me this nudge. I saw Herb's answer and removed the disambiguation. I had forgotten that I should have just varianted the disambiguation to the original. Thanks for reminding me. John Scifibones 19:11, 7 March 2022 (EST)

You work magazines and poetry and these things happen mainly there - so figured I should make sure you are aware :) Annie 19:34, 7 March 2022 (EST)

Magazine titles

Unless this is an issue of a magazine called "Care", this is even worse title than we initially had and is out of policy for both a book or a magazine. Some more notes here. Just heads up in case you are not keeping an eye on the discussion anymore :) Annie 17:05, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Moderator status

The nomination was a success. Congratulations, you are now a moderator! As I always say when editors become moderators, please be extra careful when dealing with submissions in areas that you are not familiar with and don't hesitate to ask questions :-) Ahasuerus 10:35, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Thank you. Don't worry, I wont let you down. John Scifibones 10:39, 30 April 2022 (EDT)

Congrats from me, also: well deserved, John!

(One thing to remark, though: I reversed this edit: we go by the title page, not by the copyright page (likely the copyright was assigned there to both: that's why I note this for publications); also, the book was primary verified.) Thanks, Christian Stonecreek 09:03, 2 May 2022 (EDT)