User talk:Stonecreek

Welcome to my talk page! For minor changes (such as additional information or obvious errors) you don't have to inform me (a found cover art credit does interest me, though).

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Archive 4

Troubleshooting

Here exclusive for you.--Wolfram.winkler 16:05, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

Many thanks for the hint, Wolfram! Christian Stonecreek 16:07, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

And here--Wolfram.winkler 16:11, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

Ah, that one looks okay. Maybe this is one entry that you can learn from. Christian Stonecreek 16:13, 14 September 2020 (EDT)

Oh, that one looks not okay, not a good example to learn something, but a typical example for your excellent work, please find the typo.

But I don't want to take this to extremes, it's just a hint to first recognize your own mistakes before criticizing other users' mistakes. Good luck---Wolfram.winkler 10:39, 15 September 2020 (EDT)

Well, I never stated to be perfect: in fact nobody is. Mistakes do happen, the aim should be to learn from them.

On typos: one shouldn't think that they will never happen again. They have a tendency to creep in. Christian Stonecreek 13:03, 15 September 2020 (EDT)

Still wrong, please look accurate.--Wolfram.winkler 16:55, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Feel free to correct typos. Christian Stonecreek 23:10, 1 October 2020 (EDT)

Iluustrations in Perry Rhodan #547, 4th printing

Hi Christian, I have just received the info that apparently the fourth printing of PR #547 had a fan illustraion in addition to Bruck's work, references are here. Illustration #1 on p. 27 would not be by Bruck, but the following two would the same two as in the first printing. As I don't own printing #4, perhaps you could check and make the resp. edits? Thanks, John JLochhas 06:51, 19 September 2020 (EDT)

Thanks very much, John! I really did not take the signature into account: the illustration is IMHO very near to Bruck's style, and I thought it was a illustration by him that found no place with the initial publication, which I do think has happened before with PR 308, p. 63. Christian Stonecreek 09:58, 19 September 2020 (EDT)

Peter Fischer Sternaux

Hello Christian, by adding two collections I create two entries for an artist:

• Peter Fischer Sternaux
• Peter Fischer-Sterneaux

I'm not sure, but I think both are wrong or typos. The correct name should be Peter Fischer-Sternaux. I found only three hints: wiki bb-Reihe, wiki Kompass-Bücherei and East German poster artists. Can you help me to add the hyphen to Peter Fischer Sternaux? Sterneaux will then be a variant of Sternaux. Thank you very much Henna 06:09, 30 September 2020 (EDT)

Sure! I added the hyphen. Christian Stonecreek 08:58, 30 September 2020 (EDT)

Atlan 216 -> 217?

Hi Christan, can you check Atlan 216? It looks like the number needs to change to 217, otherwise there will be two pub records with 216. Regards, MagicUnk 02:19, 29 October 2020 (EDT)

Thanks! I'll take care of my error. Christian Stonecreek 05:31, 29 October 2020 (EDT)

Perry Rhodan 18 (2.Aufl.) Note

Hi Christian, now the note has been erased completly. [1] I'm wondering about. Are you prepearing a new note? Can you please check this again? --Norman 03:33, 16 November 2020 (EST)

Hi, Norman. I just removed a now surplus note about the cover art being the same as with the novella's first edition (and the cover design, I guess) which can be seen now with your upload.

I agree that it'd be nice, though, to have some notes, but you seem to be more competent than me regarding statements made in the issue, having the issue at hand. Christian Stonecreek 03:40, 16 November 2020 (EST)

Exodus, #40

Hello Christian, I added the missing interior art, please take a look. Regards Henna 15:03, 16 November 2020 (EST)

Oh, yes! Many thanks for that! Christian Stonecreek 22:42, 16 November 2020 (EST)

Image:GRTMRCNSHR2002.jpg

I have restored Image:GRTMRCNSHR2002.jpg. It is used in a publication and "non-genre publication" is not a valid deletion reason for a book cover. By rule, only non-genre magazine covers are prohibited. Non-genre book covers are allowed and we have plenty of them. This disconnect in the rules has been discussed a number of times with no resolution. It's been awhile since the last discussion so it may be worth starting another rules and standards discussion. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:38, 26 November 2020 (EST)

Okay, but this was what was told to me when I was a beginner here. Christian Stonecreek 13:05, 26 November 2020 (EST)

Exodus, #41

Hello Christian, I have changed a few things in this magazine. Please take a look and check the changes. I think now only the collage on page 54 is missing. Thanks Henna 16:36, 3 December 2020 (EST)

Looks considerably better now! Thanks! Christian Stonecreek 16:52, 3 December 2020 (EST)

No, I made some mistakes, now we have three duplicates. I will take care of it. What you think about p. 54? Sorry for the mess Henna 14:47, 4 December 2020 (EST)

Changes by unknown

(moved to the end of my talk page) Stonecreek 05:07, 5 December 2020 (EST)

Hi Christian. I'm wondering about some changes which has be done by unknowe between my submitting and releasing by a moderator (which takes at the moment 1-3days). Example: [2]. I think a moderator is allthough confused about this circumstances. I've today cancelled myself some of my submitted tasks which should have runed into the void. As you know it's hard to wait with the procedure i has to work actually. It takes some days until a new magazine has been registrated in a propper way. But it is much more confusing if a third party doing some well-intentioned actions in the meantime. What is going on there? Is there perhaps a better way for me? I see you are working daily a you check my work, which is really perfect for me. Would it be perhaps a better way to do in the future some actions in a coordinated way together? Norman 04:06, 5 December 2020 (EST)

Well, yes! Maybe I should wait for a time with actions: the reason this happens is that I tend to deal with things the moment I run across them. Working in some areas at the same time does lead into the danger to forget about things. But if you would like to work in an area for some time on your own, we surely can bundle our actions in a more coordinated way. So, what are your plans for the nearest future (for example the coming week?) Christian Stonecreek 05:07, 5 December 2020 (EST)

Thank you for the explanation. At the moment, the long waiting time between the change request and its approval is my problem, especially if the facts have changed in between. In addition, there is a certain impatience on my part. Now I would like to complete volumes #51 to #60 in both the 2nd and 5th edition. Later also the issues 21 to 60 of the 3rd edition. The magazines are of course all in my possession. It would be of great and welcome help to me, for example, if you could briefly review my changes and perhaps if possible approve them once a day. Since you and me always have to carry out several steps into each other for a magazine and I don't want to lose the overview, I would concentrate 2-3 booklets a day. Would such a procedure be conceivable for you? Norman 03:19, 6 December 2020 (EST)

Yes, I'll wait for your doings and perhaps review and add/change a few things later, if that's okay. Christian Stonecreek 03:33, 6 December 2020 (EST)

It would be perfect! I'm always interested to learn how such few things which could be very special are handled here. But first i've to wait for the still pending edits. Norman 04:17, 6 December 2020 (EST)

It seems Dirk (P. Broer) handled all or a part of the necessary doings overnight. Please take a look which of them still need to be dealt with. Christian Stonecreek 05:54, 6 December 2020 (EST)

PR 53 5.Auflage Essay

I've just submitted this [3]. I didn't found the essay at 3|3.1 Das Perry Rhodan-Lexikon in this magazine. I found 3 Letters instead. But i found the essay in volume #51 instead. But some minutes before i submitted for #51 this. Can you please check and do the fixing, or please tell me how to proceed? Norman 04:04, 9 December 2020 (EST)

Perhaps the essay in #51 (by W. Voltz!) is not identical with the 'Werkstattbericht' by (Horst Hoffmann and Peter Terrid). I will check this! But anyway in #53 this has to be modified or deleted Norman 05:14, 9 December 2020 (EST)

Result of check: the Essay in #1154, #920(2nd) and #51(5th) are identical! And the authors are Horst Hoffmann and Peter Terrid. Norman 05:26, 9 December 2020 (EST)

Many thanks for the corrections! It seemed just logical to assume that the essay on the 'Lexikon' would also appear in this issue (#53). I updated the title per merging and also removed it from issue #53 (5. Auflage). Christian Stonecreek 06:19, 9 December 2020 (EST)

Never mind. I have to thank you for the help that accelerated this. Otherwise it would have taken days again. Norman 07:01, 9 December 2020 (EST)

It might even be faster to import titles that already exist in the database - for example illustrations. It's possible to select contents on importing, or to import specified titles (this is done by entering the title no. in the lower half of the import screen). Basically, if there's only one title to import, I use the latter option, and if there is more than one title to import from one other publication I use the first option: it just requires to remove titles from a publication if there are some imported that don't belong to it (for example in PR #52, 5. Aufl., there were only two of the original four interior pieces of art reproduced). Christian Stonecreek 07:10, 9 December 2020 (EST)

Many thanks again. This is very interesting. I'll try this next. I didn't know this function before. :-) Norman 05:58, 10 December 2020 (EST)

Raumschiff Promet and its publication dates

Hi Christian, I'll be changing the publication date of your #54. The publication date of Astro Science Fiction #53 is stated as 14 November 1973 in #49. Cheers, John. JLochhas 15:28, 13 December 2020 (EST)

Okay, many thanks for the info! Christian Stonecreek 23:03, 13 December 2020 (EST)

New Worlds 9

Cover art for this is Mike Little. Credired on p.165 of this publication. Almost certainly the same artists responsible for the cover of this as well. --Mavmaramis 08:21, 24 December 2020 (EST)

Great find! Many thanks for the detective work, and have a merry Christmas! Christian Stonecreek 08:24, 24 December 2020 (EST)

John Taylor

We have been sorting out the various John Taylors and need a little help. Can you see this discussion and let us know if Beyond This Horizon provides any biographical information about the John Taylor that has a story (p116) and essay (p44) in it? We are trying to determine if they are the same person and whether they are from the UK physicist or the US author. Contento has both by the author. But the physicist supposedly did some science fiction plays and the essay title would align with a physicist. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:15, 28 December 2020 (EST)

Sorry, there's no biographical information, but my best guess is that it's the British physicist: seems quite obvious for the essay, and the convention was something like a British showcase (with a bit of Continental Europe thrown in). Stonecreek 09:53, 29 December 2020 (EST)

Thanks. I added title notes with that information. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:42, 29 December 2020 (EST)

Driftglas in German

Driftglass cover by Barclaw Shaw Susan O'Fearna 02:57, 7 January 2021 (EST)

Thanks! (but the variant / parent is still missing). Christian

Philip K Dick

Added missing series to this as "Writers of the 21st Century Series" (as printed on front) to conform with the rest of the volumes. --Mavmaramis 02:00, 16 January 2021 (EST)

Thanks! I missed out on that one upon verifying. Stonecreek 02:55, 16 January 2021 (EST)

Question

Hello, Rtrace.

I inserted the translation to the Portuguese (#819033) but in the summary of the author (#111330) appear like a new novel, not a translation. How to fix it?

How is the right way to put translations? Its a New Novel or Add Publication to This Title or Variant?

--Paulotecario 09:48, 22 January 2021 (EST)

Hello, and welcome! You seem to have misdirected your question (since I'm not Rtrace).

But to answer: The right way to add translations usually is to enter a publication of the translation (correct title per title page of the publication, author name per title page of the publication, fitting language, translator, and other useful data), and than (after processing), variant to the canonical title. (The exception is if a translation under the exact same title already exists, than one can use the Add Publication or Clone Publication links).

For that reason the novel by N. K. Jemisin appears to be unconnected to its parent: it still needs to be varianted (the feature to use is the 'Make This Title a Variant' link). Since the entry does need some fixing (capitalization of title, price denomination, additional notes), I'll do the fixing and varianting for you. Stonecreek 10:08, 22 January 2021 (EST)

The format

Hi Christian,

Careful with formats outside of Germany: this is Dimensões : 23 x 15.6 x 1.8 cm and a 23 cm book cannot be a pb under ANY definition. :) I fixed it. Also - when you find issues as severe as the ones with this book, please try to leave notes around - in this case both the editor who added and the moderator should have been reminded of what is wrong here. Fixing it is all great but unless someone tells the editor and the moderator, we will end up with more of those (I just caught 5 more of them and cleaned them up on approval). Thanks! Annie 21:02, 22 January 2021 (EST)

Sorry about the format: that one slipped through my radar surveillance. I had seen that you reminded the moderator about issues, and the editor was informed in the item just above this one (bare that false format I didn't pay attention to). Christian Stonecreek 03:44, 23 January 2021 (EST)

Well, a day later when they came asking :) It makes it easier to do it when the change is done - that way we do not miss these. :) I think we are all good now. Hope you are doing well! :) Annie 04:08, 23 January 2021 (EST)

Yes, I cope (as you'll likely also do): waiting for things to normalize the news came in that vaccination over here in Europe for the majority of people will take longer than expected, due to organizational & production complications, but otherwise health is still good in the family: no one got seriously ill so far. So it will take some more time of clenching one's teeth and staying calm. Hope you're doing as good as circumstances allow (or better). Christian Stonecreek 04:18, 23 January 2021 (EST)

That's good to hear. :) Pretty much -- living in one of the biggest counties in this country (biggest in the state) and not being old enough means that I am stuck home for the foreseeable future - they will take awhile to get to me for the vaccines. It all shall pass - hopefully... Oh well - stay safe - people tend to get even more careless than usual if they believe the end is close and that can cause problems even for the ones who are careful :( At least I can work from home... :) Annie 04:28, 23 January 2021 (EST)

I hope you stay healthy in all the time waiting: that's the important thing, I'd think! Over here the old-aged are the first in line when it comes to the cure, then the system-sustaining persons, and pretty much later we normalized ones are thought of. Thought it would be sometime in Spring when it comes to our group, but it seems it will get hotter than that ... - just hoping the barbers will open before that, else there'll be much sweating (and much blindsight). Christian Stonecreek 08:03, 23 January 2021 (EST)

Galery of Lem's star diaries illustrations

Hello Christian, here you can see the most illustration from the Star Diaries. Regards Henna 06:12, 31 January 2021 (EST)

Thanks! That does indeed help! Christian Stonecreek 06:18, 31 January 2021 (EST)

Overcorrecting again

Hi Christian,

Please stop "correcting" things without even looking at the covers and title pages. This series is not called "Mack 'n' Me" but "Mack 'n' Me 'n' Odyssey". Because of that we cannot strip "Mack 'n' Me" from the titles unless you want to do an internal set of series but the numbering may go wrong in the future so leaving them as they are is the cleanest way. I just spent some time fixing these again. I will appreciate if in the future instead of just going and removing anything that has ":" in the title, you either do some research OR ask the editor who actually worked on these (or both) and if I do not need to spend time correcting corrections. Thanks in advance! Annie 16:47, 1 February 2021 (EST)

PS: And the fact that you again changed someone's work without bothering to consult and/or at least notify the person is as unacceptable as it always had been. Annie 16:49, 1 February 2021 (EST)

Just a reminder that all record types -- pubs, titles, series, publication series, authors, awards, etc -- support Edit History as of 2021-01-14. When planning changes to a record, you can now review record history to see who else has worked on it.

Due to the way submissions work, sometimes you need to check other submission types to see full history. In this case, the Edit History page associated with this series doesn't tell you who created it. However, you can use Edit History pages associated with the titles in the series -- like this page -- to see who added the series information.

Hopefully, this will become one of our standard operating procedures as editors become used to this functionality and help lower everybody's stress level :-) Ahasuerus 17:59, 1 February 2021 (EST)

Sorry, but I took the longe name as some kind of pub. series (yes, then it should have been put into that field - it didn't feel quite correct also). Christian Stonecreek 23:05, 1 February 2021 (EST)

Then come and discuss before changing. My edits are all over this series and all its books, I've spent enough time with it to have an idea what is what (plus this is a known pattern with some series lately...). Annie 23:25, 1 February 2021 (EST)

Etemenanki oder Die Fundamente von Himmel und Erde

Hello Christian, is this the same text like in Etemenanki? Here is the first paragraph of Etemenanki. Thanks for looking it up Henna 15:21, 3 February 2021 (EST)

Sure! I'll variant the title(s). Thanks, I just overlooked this. Christian Stonecreek 04:08, 4 February 2021 (EST)

Secondhand Charm

What was with this change? Did you even look at the publication before making this change? I don't understand why you would change the credit on the verified pub without asking the verifier, but had you looked at the pub notes, it would have been clear that there are two separate artists involved. I restored the proper credit. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:38, 6 February 2021 (EST)

Sorry for that! ... and I even don't know what it was that has driven me to that. Christian Stonecreek 02:48, 7 February 2021 (EST)

Image:PRRRHDNMZT1985.jpg

Image:PRRRHDNMZT1985.jpg was deleted by you, but it is still used in this pub. Please check whether you forget to remove the image link or if it was used in multiple pubs and it is correct/incorrect for this one. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:36, 13 February 2021 (EST)

Alan PETER Ryan

Alan Ryan started using his full name, [4], when he returned to writing in 2010. "Sexual Exploration Is a Crime" was published under his full name in 2019's Shivers VIII just like it was in Ryan's 2012 collection The Back of Beyond. It was never published as by Alan Ryan. --Username 17:35, 14 February 2021 (EST)

I'm inclined to believe you. However, the thing is that the title appears with the short name in a primary verified publication. So you have to ask the primary verifier first if this is an overlooked mistake, before we could accept this change. Thanks, Stonecreek 00:17, 15 February 2021 (EST)

Follow-up from the Moderator Noticeboard discussion

To follow up on the last Moderator Noticeboard discussion:

• As per the 2020 agreement, please limit your moderatorial activities to self-moderation until I change the software to support an explicit "self-moderation only" flag for editors
• Please do not change the data in recently added/edited records without discussing it with the moderator who approved the submission. Doing so effectively circumvents the agreement and leaves both the approving moderator and the submitting user out of the loop.

These issues have been occurring for a long time now. Please make sure that they do not re-occur or else I will have to take administrative action. Ahasuerus 14:58, 6 March 2021 (EST)

La trama celeste

Hi Christian,

Can you share your sources for your statements of "First printing" and "Apparent first Edition" which you added here today? None of the linked sources (OCLC and LTF) claim any of that (the Trantor is a later reprint and was used to verify the contents), your edit had no moderator notes and no notes identifying where these statements are coming from. Did you miss to add your sources?

On a separate note (less important but still valid) - reordering the statements in a publication notes field to fit your idea of what goes where in the notes (you moved the sources statement from the top to the bottom) is disrespectful to other editors - we all have our own styles of writing notes and we do not enforce style in this field. If you want ISFDB to start enforcing style, please go to R&S and find support. In the meantime, please respect your fellow editors (unless you are verifying of course - if you are PVing and there are no other PVs, you can change the note anyway you want). Thanks! Annie 18:06, 6 March 2021 (EST)

Sorry, but the missing information is vital for out db and follows for the edition from Wikpedia.

The printing is necessary to add for a db that goes to index different ones. Stonecreek 00:39, 7 March 2021 (EST)

Can you please point to a source that identifies this as a definitive first printing? Because what you are describing is an assumed first printing - unless it is confirmed somewhere, there is a possibility for an earlier printing run in the same year that is different. Statements of printing which lack the qualification “assumed” should have a source. Your opinion that this must be a first printing is just your opinion and not a fact unless it is supported by a source (primary or secondary). Otherwise we become the source of that specific information - and being a source of unverified information is not what this DB is supposed to be. Annie 01:51, 7 March 2021 (EST)

I think it's quite clear that it's a first edition, but for the faint possibilty that there was a previous edition within the same year, I'll update the note.

On the printing rank: unless you know that there's more than one printing of this edition within the same year it should be noted that our entry is for the first one. And if there are more printings in 1948 we should clarify it for the sake of an editor supplying a higher one. It's quite unlike you to make things more difficult for additional publications and to be content with stub notes. Stonecreek 04:31, 7 March 2021 (EST)

Re:

• unless you know that there's more than one printing of this edition within the same year it should be noted that our entry is for the first one

it's the other way around. Like other statements that we make in Notes, we add an unqualified "First printing" statement if -- and only if -- we have a source indicating that the publication is the first printing of the given edition. That source can be either the publication itself or a secondary source. Without a source, we can, at most, enter "Assumed first printing" or words to that effect. This is explained in the "Printings" section of Template:PublicationFields:PubNote, e.g.:

• If there is no printing information beyond the edition date, and no specific "first printing" statement, it is likely that this is a first printing, and you can put "Appears to be first printing of 1974 Puffin edition."

Checking the database, I see that you have created 9263 EditPub submissions with the words "First printing" in Notes. We will now have to review and, if necessary, correct all of them. I will be creating a cleanup script which will identify all affected publication records, both PV'd and unverified. The number of affected publications will be lower than 9263, but the cleanup process will still be very time consuming.

This is a major issue. Given this problem with understanding core data entry rules and the previously discussed repeated issues with adhering to the terms of the self-moderation agreement, I am suspending your moderator flag until this issue has been sorted out and software support for "self-moderation only" editors has been added. We will review and discuss where we stand once these issues have been addressed. Ahasuerus 10:31, 7 March 2021 (EST)

Sorry to disagree: when we know an entry for any possible printing (including the first) of a given edition would look the same as the one we have in the database, it is meaningful to denominate 'ours' as the first: this way we have the first printing in the db, and any further printing of that year will be listed after it, we have it clear that a possible further printing of that year will have to be added, and we have the general information visible that we go as deep as the level of printing in ISFDB. And if you refer to the possibility that the cover image might differ for a different printing: well, without a primary verifier or a dependable source for it, we don't even know if the image we display does represent the edition (or the specific printing). Stonecreek 12:46, 7 March 2021 (EST)

This specific book is sourced from OCLC and LTF. You do not invent data that is not on the record unless you can explain it. Stating First Printing with no qualifiers means that we are stating that this specific book in these sources is the first printing definitely (if we know that but we cannot verify that the sources point to our book, the IDs should not be added to it (or if added, the note should explain that they do not state first printing) and the note on the sources should explain that they are possibly for a different version of the book ). There is nothing in any source to support such unqualified claim. So “Assumed First Printing” is the best that can be used. Anything else is a fabrication and essentially creating information that then can be used by someone else and considered definitive. If we fabricate information, we cannot be trusted as a dB. If you cannot understand that, I am not sure how exactly to explain it better. Annie 13:19, 7 March 2021 (EST)

Those sources only would possibly index a first printing if it's stated in a publication (though not necessarily so). We do have a different policy: we state a publication as apparent first printing. So it'd be okay to state a first printing until we know if it's an apparent or a stated one (most likely supplied by a PV). Stonecreek 13:34, 7 March 2021 (EST)

Can you please point to me where this policy is specified? Because Ahasuerus already posted above our rules and they contradict it. And any other rule I had seen had been clear: each fact added should have a source - the book preferably, a secondary source if not possible. We do not invent data. If we have a documentation mismatch that actually allows us to invent data we should fix it so we do not confuse our editors. Annie 13:56, 7 March 2021 (EST)

I'm pretty sure you propagated it in one of the many arguments with Wolfram, I just haven't found it by now. Christian Stonecreek 23:24, 7 March 2021 (EST)

I had said that it is ok to add "First Printing" with no qualifications and no support of any source (other books or online sources) or the book? Very unlikely but sure, find it, I will be interested to see that and we can see what exactly was said there and in what context. Annie 00:21, 8 March 2021 (EST)

If my memory is correct, you stated that it'd be okay to state 'Apparent first printing.' (and we'd accordingly have to wait what is there in a yet unverified publication). Christian Stonecreek 01:34, 8 March 2021 (EST)

You realize the difference between “Apparent/Assumed First Printing” and a non qualified “First Printing”, right? Had you used the first here, we do not have a problem. You used the latter and then went on explaining how that is ok. A person browsing the site and seeing the statement with no qualifiers won’t think “oh, this says First printing but does not say stated so this may not be one”, they will think “first printing means first printing”. That is the crux of the problem here. Reread again everything I said so far and the excerpt from the rules above - adding a statement is not the issue, adding an unqualified one is. And then when you updated the note you changed the edition line leaving the unqualified printing one in place. (I cleaned it up when I fixed the sources issue). Annie 09:04, 8 March 2021 (EST)

Well, okay! I see the benefit of stating the more cautious version for people not aware of the difference between PVed and non-PVed pub.s (or PVed but not thoroughly reviewed). I guess that's a case of deep-in-blindness. Christian Stonecreek 09:15, 8 March 2021 (EST)

Most people won't realize what the PV table means when the find the page online (we had had enough new editors that did not and they were here to edit). And implying that it is ok to just add whatever to non-PVd publications is a bit offensive to all the editors who had done a lot of work through the years piecing things together from secondary sources and being very careful to chase any sources (with different levels of sloppiness sometimes but we are all human) - I am aware that this is not you meant but I hope you understand what I am saying here. That's why listing sources and qualifications are important (and listing what from the sources does not match our record and why when we have sources disagreeing) - if we made a mistake because a source was mistaken, it is not so good but we had a source and we did not create a piece of information that is untrue; if we just added a statement which was mistaken/misleading, we become the source now - and before long all other sites will use our data even from unPVd pubs and uprooting these errors later is hard (just look at the Larry Correia birthday problem - we did not originate it but someone did). Annie 09:53, 8 March 2021 (EST)

Authors difference in publications and titles

I have two of your submissions on hold because they run contrary to the basic rules of data entry on the site (this one and this one) - we do NOT change the title authors in such cases, we leave the title author as uncredited and then variant to a parent with the known authors. Our rules are very clear about that - the exact text from the help page is: "If there is a publicly available source which identifies the uncredited title's author, it will be later turned into a variant title using the author's canonical name." (please note that this is part of the TITLE author field and there is no exception for EDITOR records).

However, before I rejected them outright, I checked the German magazines (which had been your domain for years) and this had been going for a very long time so I went digging to see if there is a reason for that. Unless I missed it, there had not been an attempt to change the rules to make an exception for the German language magazines (I already spent my Sunday chasing this so I stopped somewhere ~2013). The only time this was even remotely mentioned is this Cleanup report which had been implemented in the usual way (leave the big sets for the end so a plan can be made for them; it is regrettable that the report was never completely implemented but that does not constitute a change of rules - these records are still against the rules).

Is there a policy in some obscure place that I missed (and that needs to be added to the rules) or do we need to mount yet another cleanup effort to bring all of these records to policy? Thanks in advance! Annie 00:17, 8 March 2021 (EST)

Well, that's the way they were entered at the beginning of entering the series (and it wasn't me who began that), and I just followed the example that was already there. I don't see any major problem with the way it is for those, since 'uncredited' poses no pseudonym. But we could also work through the lot, if you're there to do a lot of unmerging, merging and/or varianting. And if you prefer it: sure, we can install a cleanup report for it. Christian Stonecreek 01:31, 8 March 2021 (EST)

I read this several times now. Are you really accusing me of starting these author mismatches? You know perfectly well that when I began with the Perry Rhodan series, I used a secondary source (Perrypedia) and tried to be as complete as possible. Any use of uncredited and starting the discrepancy between publication and title author is yours! --Willem 15:03, 11 March 2021 (EST)

We already have a cleanup report for author mismatches, Publication Authors That Are Not the Title Author. When it was modified in 2015 to add EDITOR/MAGAZINE and EDITOR/FANZINE mismatches, I mentioned that it was coded to "ignore[] German magazines because we have about 1,400 Perry Rhodan mismatches on file. Once the other 126 mismatches have been resolved, we can revisit the PR issue."

Unfortunately, the issue was never revisited, so now we have 5,375 mismatches, including 1,500 non-Perry Rhodan mismatches. Some are PR-related, including 434 Atlans, while others are not. Better late than never... Ahasuerus 09:14, 8 March 2021 (EST)

It won’t be that hard I suspect - two step process (create parent with the authors that are there now and then clean the authors of the current record (and fix both dates while at it) will clear a whole year of uncredited issues. The only unmerges needed will be when there are pubs credited differently.

Yes, mostly, but there are a few elaborate title notes that shouldn't be lost (or should be transposed). Christian Stonecreek 09:26, 8 March 2021 (EST)

So a third edit. :) Still Not so bad. Annie 09:29, 8 March 2021 (EST)

As for why we must finish the cleanup - we are a DB. Differences in data structures is a problem when one writes queries to find something - inconsistencies like that should have a very good reason. Being German and uncredited is not one of those unless we change the rules officially. :)

Can I request an update of the report or should I do it over in CS? Annie 09:21, 8 March 2021 (EST)

And is there a report for the case above: i. e. the 'First printing' affair? Christian Stonecreek 09:30, 8 March 2021 (EST)

Not yet - unlike the one here, that one is not preexisting... Annie 12:40, 8 March 2021 (EST)

(unindent) OK - I approved both merges so their pubs are brought into where they belong and then fixed both of these title records to follow the way we handle uncredited publications with known authors from elsewhere. Just a gentle reminder - when you are making the yearly series, the date of it should be the year itself (so 1991-00-00) and not the date of the first issue.

PS: As you are the PV on a lot of them, we know who to ask but it will be extremely useful to add some notes on the series level (here and all the others) where the editors names are coming from. Or on the individual years although adding them up on the series level may be cleaner and clearer. Or even on the parent series. Thanks in advance! Annie 12:40, 8 March 2021 (EST)

Dmitry Glukhovsky's "Text"

A quick FYI re: this title. Back in 2019 you added the following note: "Described as a crime / techno-thriller; it may be nongenre." As per the plot summary on Wikipedia, this is a non-genre thriller. I have updated the German VT and the Russian parent title. Ahasuerus 09:28, 8 March 2021 (EST)

I can confirm it is non-genre. If I can remember where my book is (because I do not see it where it is supposed to be), I will verify a Russian version and clean the note after that. Annie 09:56, 8 March 2021 (EST)

Thanks, Ahasuerus! Christian Stonecreek 09:58, 8 March 2021 (EST)

GOMINE — Walzenraumer der Hijthi (scheme)

Hi Christian,

Did you mean to make this a short story or did you forget to switch to Interior art? :) Thanks! Annie 18:32, 8 March 2021 (EST)

It's an artwork, which I just realized upon submitting. I'll correct it with adding the cover image. Christian Stonecreek 22:53, 8 March 2021 (EST)

:) Thanks! Annie 23:11, 8 March 2021 (EST)

These variants

I rejected a few - there is no point changing the author in such cases. 30 of the 33 magazines need to stay under the title as is. 3 need to be split and varianted... Changing the author here will result in a lot more work. I think I approved a few earlier so I will clean the created mess based on that... but please look at the list of magazines before changing the authors. Thanks! 00:10, 12 March 2021 (EST)

Those issues have to be reviewed (and the credit chenged) anyway. But my idea was to first complete the (1. Auflage), and then come back to it. Christian Stonecreek 00:19, 12 March 2021 (EST)

But in the process you are moving issues from "Pub and title matches" to "they do not match" so when the report gets deployed, someone will try to fix them again and we will do the same work multiple times. If you are going to be reviewing the publications anyway, let's start with them. Fix the magazines themselves inside of a year, then fix the titles correctly. Otherwise we will be chasing these until next Christmas :) Annie 00:34, 12 March 2021 (EST)

Uhmmm, yes, your're probably right. I just have to dig these copies out of their vault. Christian Stonecreek

Wstęp (Dzienniki gwiazdowe)

About this one. Either we claim we do not know who to credit to (so unknown) (because we really have no idea it is Lem's or not) or it is Lem's... We cannot have it both ways (and even if it was rare, other people did write introductions for his books in Polish:) ) Annie 00:43, 12 March 2021 (EST)

What is unknown, I think, is if it's credited to Lem or his alter ego Professor Tarantoga. Usually the introduction should be the same as the first one here, since there the eighth and the eighteenth journey (and the ominous circumstances of their coming-to-be & inclusion) are talked about; it should also be in-universe fiction. The only somewhat irregular thing is the discussion of a 'LEM' as author of the 'Star Diaries' since the Lunar Excursion Mobile would have a far too small electronic brain for such a task - it seems somewhat pre-timed for 1966, but the 1971 should be at least a variant of the 1966 piece. Christian Stonecreek 06:51, 12 March 2021 (EST)

And your source for this please? Unless you have something better than guesses here, this stays unconnected. Annie 08:04, 12 March 2021 (EST)

According to Fantlab, there were 4 introductions to the "Ijon Tichy" collections published between 1954 and 1976. All of them were in-universe essays as by "Professor Tarantoga" (one of the characters in the series), but the text differed from edition to edition. Ahasuerus 13:41, 12 March 2021 (EST)

Beat me to it - I was planning to go digging on Russian and Polish sites today to see if I can find something. :) Feel free to makre the changes and add sources on the pub level and cleanup the notes. :) Annie 13:51, 12 March 2021 (EST)

Thank you for the research. Will do the updates. Christian Stonecreek 00:12, 13 March 2021 (EST)

Uralt, mein Feind

About this one: Rudam PVd it 4 years before you did. Are you absolutely sure that his book does not have the first edition stated? When he added it, his note read "noted stated"? I propose to wait for him to verify before we remove the stated qualifier... Annie 01:11, 12 March 2021 (EST)

Yes, I'm sure: checked it two times! Rudolf has quite often the "noted stated" misprinting (when it should read "not stated"). It's very unusual for this publisher to not state a first German edition (and at first I fell for this trap), but it's in fact what is there. As a hint see the difference between the DNB and/or OCLC entries for this one and the one for Vazkor for example (fifth line of the DNB entry). I guess the (missing) information was copied from another publication in the sub-series 'Science Fiction Classics', in which usually real classics are published (and ones that were published before in German). For the Dickson the collection's original English publication was just five years before and the single stories weren't in every case so much older. Christian Stonecreek 06:32, 12 March 2021 (EST)

You checked Rudam’s book two times? I have no concerns with your book at all (although why a day earlier you thought it says that is a bit of a mystery but mistakes happen) - my concern is not what the book you are holding says. My concern is the other PV’s copy. Would you have accepted this edit if it was not your book and you were moderating and a second editor was changing major data points in the notes (which they confirmed matching the previous day) or would you have tried to ensure first that they are holding the same edition and we do not need a clone instead? Apparently Ron read the initial status of this note as saying that the value is stated as well (that’s why he approved your changes the previous day). You are probably right that you have the same book but I’d still try to discuss that with the other PV first. :) If he is not around for awhile, then we can change that with a note explaining what the other PV had stated before (“The first PV had marked the edition as “noted stated”. It is assumed, based on the usual practices of the German publishers, that this is a misprint for “not stated” and there is only one version of this book” for example or words to that effect). That way it is clear what happened here and in case we read the weirdly phrased statement wrong, we have the paper trail for the change. What do you think?

There are 9 books with this note. I will ping him to clarify what he meant and we can easily sort them out. Annie 08:50, 12 March 2021 (EST)

Well, no, of course I didn't check Rudolf's book, just checked my copy, but mine does seem to be printed the same way as the ones catalogued at DNB and OCLC. Sure we can add the note accordingly. The examples are mostly for Goldmann & Bastei Lübbe publications in the mid-Seventies, and in these times both publishers didn't state first German editions. Christian Stonecreek 09:13, 12 March 2021 (EST)

And this should also go in the note, as it is a justification of why you read the statement the way you do. :) So let’s do that in order - leave a message to him, if he does not respond in a few days (he seems to be away just now), send another update with the note properly added. Thoughts? Meanwhile I will work with him to sort out the 9 publications with this note. Annie 09:25, 12 March 2021 (EST)

Spektrum der Wissenschaft, #3.21 cover

Where is the title and date coming from here? I do not see a note anywhere in the publication, cover record and there are no moderator notes? Thanks! Annie 16:43, 15 March 2021 (EDT)

It's from the original appearance of the piece as interior art. Will add the according note to the parent title (and correct the title type). Christian Stonecreek 00:05, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

Approved. Add this in the moderator note next time. :) Annie 00:20, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

Reinhold Kammler

Could you please clarify what the proposed note -- "Was 1981 at home in Vienna, Austria" -- in this submission means? Does it mean that he lived in Vienna, Austria as of 1981? Ahasuerus 11:06, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

Yes. Would it be better to phrase it as "Was 1981 living in Vienna, Austria"? Christian Stonecreek 11:08, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for clarifying! I have changed it to "Known to have lived in Vienna, Austria as of 1981." Ahasuerus 11:20, 16 March 2021 (EDT)

Perry Rhodan, #147: Amoklauf der Maschinen

When you have a chance: this one remained the only mismatched one in one of the years you cleared. I am not sure if it needs an update or to be split out so leaving that to you. Annie 12:28, 17 March 2021 (EDT)

Will do the update. Thanks for the hint! Christian Stonecreek 14:06, 17 March 2021 (EDT)

Wünsch dir was!

Hello again :)

Can you look at this and this? If they are the same, they need a merge. If not, we need to disambiguate or at least add notes. As you have both magazines, you are in the best place to figure out what we need to do :) Thanks! Annie 12:49, 17 March 2021 (EDT)

Ah, yes! The 2018 one was published quite a while back, so that I didn't realize that the title was used again (they might be developed into a series: I'll see if there are future instalments. For now, I'll disambiguate the two: thanks for finding them! Christian Stonecreek 14:06, 17 March 2021 (EDT)

Thanks! Annie 17:09, 17 March 2021 (EDT)

Agency

Added the second ASIN in this one and cleaned the note (the note was there because the ASIN was not working on amazon.de (misspelled a bit in the note...) and the ISBN was not leading anywhere on the German Amazon when I added it). When there are different ASINs across the Amazons for the same edition, we list all the ones we source from and add a note which belongs to which Amazon. Thankfully it does not happen too often outside of certain US/UK paired publishers (but when it happens, it can be annoying). So just heads up! :) Annie

Thanks, Annie! Christian Stonecreek 00:10, 18 March 2021 (EDT)

Zweitausendvierundachtzig: Orwells Albtraum

Hello again,

Both OCLC and DNB show this one as part of AndroSF. Not sure if you left it out intentionally or not but just heads up. If it was intentional, is there something that makes it different from the rest of the series (I add books from this series occasionally so if there are some specifics, I'd love to know them). :) Thanks! Annie 01:06, 18 March 2021 (EDT)

I'll upload the image, add more contents and the series: I forgot to add the series, but I usually review my recent edits to find typos, mistakes and omissions like this one; but thanks for keeping an open eye: there may still some faults slipping through. Christian Stonecreek 05:43, 18 March 2021 (EDT)

I would have just put on my monitor list to see if there will be an update later but as it was a series I work on now and then, I wanted to make sure it was not intentional and I do not need to look out for something in the books that have the series. :) Thanks! Annie 19:06, 18 March 2021 (EDT)

Perry Rhodan, #799: Abschied von Terra

This one needs either to be split out or have its editors fixed. :) Annie 17:03, 21 March 2021 (EDT)

Okay, thanks for finding this one. Submission under way. Christian Stonecreek 00:04, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

Old sites on author pages

Instead of removing them completely, see if archive.org will give you a snapshot we can use. Like I just did here. :) Annie 19:55, 21 March 2021 (EDT)

Thanks! Christian Stonecreek 00:05, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

Franziska Wolff

When you have a chance, add a note either here or in the parent where the pseudonym is disclosed. I take you at your word that it is in a book so I approved but let's add the note. Thanks! Annie 21:59, 21 March 2021 (EDT)

Sources needed

Can you share a source for this change and this change. Unless we have a source telling us that an English author does not get shelved under their last name, we always assume it is the last name only. Spanish and Portuguese are different but English is very straightforward in this. Annie 03:22, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

You're right, of course. For a reason unknown I thought that the rules were different for 'classic' authors. I'll cancel and resubmit. Thanks, Stonecreek 03:44, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

We use this name for the Author Directory and for sorting in searches if you chose to order by that. So having the value as someone expects it (which for English speakers will be last name) is what makes sense. So for Romilly, a quick search finds this and if a Dictionary of Biography has him under Romilly, that's where we want him :) Galactic Central has Estay under E (here but as you know the link is not stable so we cannot link it directly) - which is not as definitive as a dictionary but I would follow their lead unless I have another source somewhere. :) Annie 03:53, 22 March 2021 (EDT)

Atlan, #200: Herrscher im Mikrokosmos

"Juli 1982" and 1982-06-15 here :) I suspect a copy/paste mistake from the previous entry in the note but as these are hard to spot, heads up so you can sort it out when you add the cover. Annie 21:58, 23 March 2021 (EDT)

Will do. Thanks! Christian Stonecreek 00:00, 24 March 2021 (EDT)

Gate of Ivrel

Gate of Ivrel has the same cover art as Orbit UK PB edition Susan O'Fearna 19:50, 25 March 2021 (EDT)

Oh, yes! Many thanks! Christian Stonecreek 00:05, 26 March 2021 (EDT)

Possible Typos

Here are some possible database typos:

• millenial - Millenial Eve(s) (drama review) in Interzone, #132 June 1998
• phenomenom - English-Language SF as a Socio-Cultural Phenomenom in Science Fiction Studies, Second Series
• relevations - Deep Space, Deeper Relevations in Interzone, #157 July 2000

If you could please check and correct or add title notes, it would be appreciated. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:10, 28 March 2021 (EDT)

Will do my best, though the SF-Studies book will need some searching. Thanks for the hints, Stonecreek 10:20, 28 March 2021 (EDT)

Drachengestirn

Hi Christian,

Can you find this book and come join us here while we are trying what to do with these books. :) Thanks! Annie 19:09, 12 April 2021 (EDT)

Thanks, I have answered there. Christian Stonecreek 00:56, 13 April 2021 (EDT)

You have an answer - sounds like you need to move this translation? :) Annie 00:17, 14 April 2021 (EDT)

Self-approver testing

As I said on ISFDB:Moderator_noticeboard#Bottleneck_at_moderation_level, last week I changed the software to support "self-approval" -- see ISFDB:Community_Portal#Self-approval_support. It was a fairly significant change and you are now the first editor to test it on the live server. Self-approvers should be able to approve and reject their own submissions. Please give it a try and let me know if you run into any issues.

Also, please be extra careful when editing records which other editors have worked on. Communication is key :-) Ahasuerus 20:25, 13 April 2021 (EDT)

Thank you very much, I'll test it. And from now on I'll be very cautios with other people's work. Christian Stonecreek 05:33, 14 April 2021 (EDT)

German translations of Irma Chilton

Hi Christian, I need help with some complex editing of Irma Chilton. Right now the situation is as follows:

• She has written two short novellas: "Take Away the Flowers" and "Fuller's World".
• These have been published as a collection with the name "Take Away the Flower & Fuller's World".
• There are three German language publications by her:
  • "Weltraumpilot Tom Davies in Aktion" (Boje)
  • "1. Auftrag im All" (Pelikan Tramp-Buch), indicated as a licensed publication from Boje
  • "Schmuggel im All" (Pelikan Tramp-Buch), indicated as a licensed publication from Boje

Right now "Weltraumpilot Tom Davies in Aktion" is claimed to be the translation of "Take Away the Flowers". It is right now unknown (in the database), which are the sources of the two Tramp books.

I do not own either of the books, but from what I have read in several forums (e.g. at SF-Fan) I am 100% sure that:

• "Weltraumpilot Tom Davies in Aktion" is a translation of the entire collection "Take Away the Flower & Fuller's World".
• "1. Auftrag im All" is "Take Away the Flowers".
• "Schmuggel im All" is "Fuller's World".

In my opinion this would be the only explanation that makes sense, and it is in line with what I have seen in other publications in the Tramp series. The Tramp books are sub-licenses of Boje that is mentioned in the books. In that case all translations would be by Siegfried Schmitz (which is not mentioned there).

Also, I think that the cover artwork of "Schmuggel im All" could be by Edward Blair Wilkins but that should be checked separately.

Even if you think that these changes are too much of a risk as they are speculations without checking the original publications I wanted to document my findings here so that others do not need to start from the beginning.

Thanks! Naut 02:54, 26 April 2021 (EDT)

I think you're right in your assumptions, since both Tramp books are stated as licensed by Boje. Thanks for the informational update, I'll converge the titles accordingly. Christian Stonecreek 03:28, 26 April 2021 (EDT)

Good solution that you have found. Thanks! Naut 05:08, 26 April 2021 (EDT)

Thanks! Christian Stonecreek 08:37, 26 April 2021 (EDT)

Eschbach, Abschied von der Erde

Hello Christian, can you help me to add this story? Thanks Henna 11:56, 12 May 2021 (EDT)

Sure. Would you like to try it? Here's an analogous example (of course - or likely - we don't know much about the pages or the price). Only be sure to mark it as nongenre. I'll take a second look after the edit, if it's okay. Christian Stonecreek 12:56, 12 May 2021 (EDT)

Hello Christian, thank you for the example. Here is the result: Die Welt, Samstag, 20. April 2019. I hope everything is correct, please take a look. Thanks again Henna 09:58, 13 May 2021 (EDT)

Looks good! Maybe a note on the source of the shortfiction (author's web page) would be fine. Christian Stonecreek 13:20, 13 May 2021 (EDT)

Now with the link. Thanks again Henna 13:18, 16 May 2021 (EDT)

Nova, #30

Hello Christian, in this pub is a gap from p.101 to p.160. Should I add the contents? Regards Henna 14:19, 26 May 2021 (EDT)

If you'd like to do it you're welcome. It got somehow lost in my to-do list: wanted to read & enjoy the contents in full before entering them. Christian Stonecreek 05:02, 27 May 2021 (EDT)

Hello Christian, everything is done (I hope). Please take a look Henna 15:28, 28 May 2021 (EDT)

Great work! Thank you very much! Christian Stonecreek 17:10, 28 May 2021 (EDT)

Aligning notes

Hello Christian! What is the meaning of the phrase aligning notes as a justification, when you make changes in the notes where we are both PV? Rudolf Rudam 06:46, 7 June 2021 (EDT)

It means to have the notes as in other publications of a given series. Christian Stonecreek 06:50, 7 June 2021 (EDT)

Whereby your wording and your order of the individual notes are predetermined? Rudolf Rudam 07:25, 7 June 2021 (EDT)

Not necessarily, but with 'Titan' it seemed somehow useful for the avid reader to have one orientation. Christian Stonecreek 07:33, 7 June 2021 (EDT)

One other thing that seems more important is the role of Wolfgang Jeschke: he is credited as co-editor but doesn't appear with the parent title (and is obviously not a pseudonym used by Aldiss): would 'Wolfgang Jeschke (in error)' possibly be more appropriate? Christian Stonecreek 07:41, 7 June 2021 (EDT)

Do I understand that correctly, that the decision of what may be necessary and what is useful for an avid reader is made by you? Other PV should follow accordingly even if they are the first making a different entry in the notes? Rudam 10:55, 7 June 2021 (EDT)

Well, the more there is in the notes the more there is that a user might find useful. Christian Stonecreek 23:14, 7 June 2021 (EDT)

Well, but sometimes less is even more.But you still haven't answered my question. So I can assume that you keep changing some notes of mine that have the similar content as yours and feel the urge to change the sequence of my notes, even though I am the first PV. Also, I didn't catch that the notes of a given series have to be structurally identical. Could you please guide me to the corresponding rule. I appreciate your effort. Rudolf Rudam 09:48, 8 June 2021 (EDT)

If you feel the way that unstructured notes for publications where you are the first PV should prevail we can leave it at that. Sorry that you might feel I have stepped on your toes. Christian Stonecreek 13:40, 8 June 2021 (EDT)

Nice that you've got it. BTW, in case you haven't noticed, in practically all ISFDB pubs, the notes aren't structured. Rudolf Rudam 08:47, 9 June 2021 (EDT)

Yeah, but the majority of them generally have only stub notes; that shouldn't be a reason to not work on them. Christian Stonecreek 11:12, 9 June 2021 (EDT)

Wolfgang Jeschke isn't the editor of the original anthologies, but he is of course the editor of the entire Titan-series. We can't leave him out. Rudam 10:55, 7 June 2021 (EDT)

It's only that he didn't do editorial work other than for other translated works (anthologies among them), where he ain't credited. The contents for 'Titan' were selected by other editors, and Jeschke only organized the translations and the cover artworks; there seems to be no original content work he did. Christian Stonecreek 11:12, 9 June 2021 (EDT)

From that point of view you are right, but his name is associated with all 21 TITAN issues and is emphasized on the cover, spine and title page. It reminds me a bit of the alleged part, Isaac Asimov played as editor for the Greenberg/Waugh anthologies. His name was prominently featured on the cover. I would therefore recommend, just as with Asimov, that his name be kept. Rudolf Rudam 12:11, 9 June 2021 (EDT)

Okay, I'm fine with that point of view. Christian Stonecreek 23:24, 9 June 2021 (EDT)

Makroleben

Cover art of this is Angus McKie. Same cover art as on this book. --Mavmaramis 12:25, 11 August 2021 (EDT)

Many thanks! Christian Stonecreek 14:36, 11 August 2021 (EDT)

Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963)

Checking the edit history of the paperback edition of Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963), I see that the title was originally entered by User:Galacticjourney, one of the contributors, as "Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963)". On 2019-09-23 you moved "Rediscovery" to the "Series" field. On 2019-10-14 Annie removed "Rediscovery" from related title records.

Yesterday, User:Galacticjourney indicated that "Rediscovery" is part of the title proper as opposed to a series name. As far as I can tell, there are no related books with "Rediscovery" in the title, so it would appear that he is right. Would it be OK to change the title back to Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women (1958-1963)? Ahasuerus 13:47, 17 August 2021 (EDT)

Yeah, it should stay in the title. Looks like I just fixed the extremely sloppy editing that removed it in half of the places (in preparation of cloning for the ebook) without checking if it should have been edited to start with (my bad on that). :) Annie 14:48, 17 August 2021 (EDT)

Without a second volume in the series, it is best to put 'Rediscovery:' back into the title(s) proper (which I just did; I also corrected the stated 'First edition' for the ebook). Christian Stonecreek 05:36, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

It is the first edition of the ebook, Look inside even showed it when I looked when I added it. Why would you “correct” it? Can you please share your research that led to removing data from the edition? The only cited source is Amazon and it says so. So we record it. If you have other information, please add your sources and reasoning to the edit. Otherwise, please do not edit something to contradict the cited sources.

And apparently you could not be bothered to fix the titles that take their names from the reference title (again) so I will finish your edit again. :)Annie 09:49, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

The statement for a first edition was obviously erroneous, the print edition preceded it. If it's stated, 'Stated first edition' would be right to add to the notes. Christian Stonecreek 12:26, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

It looks like there may be some minor discrepancies between what Look Inside shows and what the Amazon.com record shows. For example, Look Inside says "August 2019" while the displayed Amazon record says "September 2, 2019" (perhaps the date when the e-book became available at Amazon?). It would be helpful to document these discrepancies in Notes to avoid questions in the future. Ahasuerus 12:42, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

If the source and the book declare this as a first edition, we document that (or you add notes explaining the discrepancy). "Apparent first ebook edition" is nonsense in this case because of what the sources are saying. Annie 12:56, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

That's why 'Stated first edition' would be right, as explained above. Christian Stonecreek 13:07, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

With a single source, anything un-attributed specifically comes from that source - which in this case is Amazon and the statement "data from Amazon" makes it clear. Adding Stated is not needed here - but I added a note where exactly it comes from. None of that explains your "Apparent first ebook edition" from earlier today. :) Annie 13:25, 18 August 2021 (EDT)

Der Weg zum Mars

Just a quick note to let you know that I have adjusted the parent authors of your verified Der Weg zum Mars. Is it safe to assume that it was the only volume in the trilogy translated by Heyne? Ahasuerus 12:10, 5 September 2021 (EDT)

Many thanks for the updating! I wasn't able to find the original novel (and Хачатурьянц) at Wikipedia or at FantLab. There was a German edition of 'На астероиде', which I'm gonna to add this week, but I don't know yet if it's part of the series, at first glance the book didn't give a hint towards that. Christian Stonecreek 05:28, 6 September 2021 (EDT)

According to FantLab, it's part 2 of a trilogy:

• Путь к Марсу (first serialization 1978, first book publication 1979)
• На астероиде (first serialization 1981, first book publication 1984)
• Здравствуй, Фобос! (first serialization 1982, first book publication 1988)

Unfortunately, since FantLab's bibliographies are author-centric, finding anything published by authors who do not have "curated" bibliographies is a chore. Ahasuerus 10:49, 6 September 2021 (EDT)

Thanks!. It was (theoretically) possible to search by publisher, but the publications appeared to be not ordered chronologically, and I have to admit, that I gave up after the first twenty-something. But I'll add the 'На астероиде' to the series upon entering. Thanks again. Christian Stonecreek 10:58, 6 September 2021 (EDT)

German poetry

If you have a minute, can you check if you can find earlier editions for these poems? Thanks! Annie 20:16, 20 September 2021 (EDT)

It's seems possible that the poems were published before 1905 in a magazine or a newspaper. I have found no evidence for this, however. Christian Stonecreek 05:20, 21 September 2021 (EDT)

Yeah, I cannot find anything either. I did not put the word first in the notes exactly because I was not sure it is first so that’s the best we can do for now I guess. :) Thanks for looking. Annie 14:43, 21 September 2021 (EDT)

Your capitalization changes

Hi Christian,

Just a reminder to write moderator notes when you make extensive changes like the ones here: Changes in every story (or any changes really when other editors had worked on a record)? While it may be obvious to you, it won't be in 3 years. Also - when you do that kind of changes, don't forget to follow up on any parents that may exist (it is wrongly created and I am cleaning it up but there was a parent out there with the old capitalization. I would have also posted a reminder for the editor although Portuguese may need some reversals - European and Brazilian Portuguese capitalize differently apparently (why would anything be easy). Thanks! Annie 15:53, 28 September 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for the reminder, Annie (and for the information to the editor)! Right now, I'm working on works and publications by Lem. Nevertheless, I tend to do other things that I run across, and maybe, that's not as good a idea as it seems to be (but on the other hand, every betterment has its benefit). Christian Stonecreek 04:09, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Oh, it is always a good idea. Just get in the habit of adding moderator notes - especially when doing cleanup. I started way back when before I became a moderator and now it is a second nature. We don’t need an essay - just a reminder note - in this case I’d say “capitalization” and be done. Makes the “what happened here” easier to parse. Annie 04:14, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Okay, will do so in the future. Christian Stonecreek 04:16, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Allan Quatermain

This had a very interesting price. Can you check to make sure I picked the correct currency when fixing it? Pre-unification German currencies trip me up occasionally. :) Annie 20:04, 29 September 2021 (EDT)

Ooooops! Yes, a strange price that was indeed, thanks for the find. DM is correct. Christian Stonecreek 04:12, 30 September 2021 (EDT)

Orphan Perry Rhodans

Hi Christian,

Can you figure out in which PR series do these 3 fit:

• Perry Rhodan, #282: Die Spur führt zu Jagos Stern
• Perry Rhodan, #281: Kampf in der Tiefsee
• Perry Rhodan, #280: Die Weltraumdetektive greifen ein

They had been sitting on the board alone since March and are starting to feel a bit lonely... Thanks! Annie 13:11, 6 October 2021 (EDT)

And while you are around Perry Rhodan Sonderband also needs a series. Thanks! Annie 13:13, 6 October 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for the findings, Annie! Will do the first, but the 'Sonderband' seems to be a one-shot so far: it was published to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the series, and there may be more in five and/or ten years. Christian Stonecreek 04:12, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Editor records need to be part of series in the DB. So either it is a magazine/fanzine (and has one) or it is a different thing and needs a type change. Your choice. I’d just stick the name of the Pub itself as a series for now. Or put it directly under the master PR series - surely it must be connected to the big sprawling universe in there. Annie 04:28, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Okay, you're double right: I did some research at Perrypedia, and there were in fact two previous publications in the series, different in character, though (not entered so far). Christian Stonecreek 04:38, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Always fun when that happens, isn’t it? :) Annie 04:45, 7 October 2021 (EDT)

Tom O'Bedlam oder der arme Tom von Bethlehem

What do you mean with "The cover design should be credited to Atelier Ingrid Schütz on the copyright page." here? I am wondering about the "should be" part of the sentence :) What are you trying to convey exactly? And there is another "should be" over there - both sound like an attempt to say something which came out weirdly in English. Did you mean "most likely" or "with a certain degree of certainty even though we have no access to the book" or "based on other books, it is expected to be there"? If so, the better expression will be "most likely" plus a note about the reason for your thinking that it is the case. Or just state where you got the information from and don't try to guess what is on the copyright page if you do not have access to it.

The way it is written now is as if you are telling the printer what to put on the pages, not a format that shows what might be on the page. Thanks! Annie 22:59, 12 October 2021 (EDT)

Noted. Thanks for the help! Christian Stonecreek 23:56, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

Die Parabel vom Sämann

Hi Christian,

The review for Die Parabel vom Sämann here is connected to the English title and not the German one. Is it reviewing the English title or is that a leftover from some of the old conventions? Thanks! Annie 14:34, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

In the same book this one is connected to a short story and not the collection and a few more are going to the English titles. You may want to check them all. :) Annie 14:34, 22 October 2021 (EDT)

No, these are the German title and the anthology reviewed (didn't review the connections upon veryifying). I'll reconnect. Thanks for finding this! Christian Stonecreek 23:55, 23 October 2021 (EDT)

We have a new report for cross-language reviews: here - while we were fixing languages and splitting language versions in the last years, we forgot the reviews connections somehow. You may want to check the German ones in there - sometimes they need to stay like that so if there is a PV I will be knocking on their doors to check/verify anyway shortly. So if you have the time and inclination, some help will be appreciated. :) Annie 00:06, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

PS: Like this one. Are all of those non-German titles really used like that in the book (as the review titles) and are they reviewing the original texts? Annie 00:09, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Yes, they are; at least they are titled this way. Christian Stonecreek 00:18, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

I'll clear these from the report then later so someone does not decide to fix them. I'd add a general note in the publication as well if I were you explaining that (it is uncommon so more notes, the better). Thanks for checking! :) Annie 00:24, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Die Menagerie von Babel

Hi Christian,

Can you check if this story has 7 or 17 in the title? I would not be surprised if it got changed for German but just making sure it is not a typo in the DB. Thanks! Annie 02:25, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Yes, it has the '7' (and it even states the original title with a '7'). Christian Stonecreek 11:07, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Thanks for checking. :) Annie 15:27, 24 October 2021 (EDT)

Perry Rhodan #3137

Hi, could you please have a look at PR #3137? According to the cover, the author is Robert Corvus, but it's currently listed as Uwe Anton. According to Perrypedia, Anton was the originally scheduled author, but it looks like that changed. Thank you. TerokNor 16:11, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

Many thanks for finding this! That one just slipped through the net. Christian Stonecreek 23:13, 25 October 2021 (EDT)

Converting to chapbooks and languages.

When converting to chapbooks like here, keep in mind that ALL newly created titles will NOT have a language because the work does not have a reference title. In such cases, add the chapbook record only. Save it. Fix the language of the chapbook. Then edit again to add all the art pieces. Otherwise someone needs to manually fix the language on each of them one by one (21 of them to be exact in this case) :) Alternatively, do a single update but then fix the languages of all titles. Thanks!

Thanks, Annie. I thought I had grabbed them all.

You got the chapbooks. The 21 art pieces across English and Swedish had no language. All sorted now - just keep that in mind - these can be annoying that way. :) Annie 12:48, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Also what is the source for claiming that this is first edition? OCLC does not say so. No other sources listed. Same for the printing - OCLC does not specify first printing and there may have been differences that disqialify this record (sourced by this OCLC record) and carrying this cover and these illustrations from being the first printing. So how did you determine that this is a first edition? It may well be - but we need to show at least a source OR a justification to claim it so. And we need a source for the number of illustrations you added - OCLC does not have that either :) Annie 21:16, 2 November 2021 (EDT)

Will add the source. Christian Stonecreek 04:46, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Which Wikipedia? And which pages - the book, the author, the artist, a combination of? Contents differ per language... We need a link to the correct one in the Web Pages (or correct ones if more than one is used). Someone should be able to follow our research when done online based on our notes - saying just "Wikipedia" is like saying "Google" :)

And I do not see the 17 illustrations mentioned in either the Swedish or the English versions. Or the German one. Unless I missed it somewhere? So where did you find these mentioned? Annie 12:48, 3 November 2021 (EDT)

Christian? Can you please point to your source for the 17 illustrations? Annie 13:57, 5 November 2021 (EDT)

Yeah, well Wikipedia of course and the upcoming German edition(s). Stonecreek 09:37, 6 November 2021 (EDT)

Die Tramps von Luna

Hello Christian, I have digital copies from Das große Robert A. Heinlein Lesebuch and Die Tramps von Luna. In the first one the novel has 18 chapters (the last sentence is: Hazel öffnete die Augen. »Ist sie das?«), in the second one are 19 chapters (the last sentence is:Der Start unterbrach ihren Satz. Aber Roger Stone wußte, was sie meinte. Saturn – Uranus – Pluto …). Please take a look how the novel ends. Many thanks Henna 18:00, 4 November 2021 (EDT)

Well, the earlier translation was noted as likely abridged, I think that does explain the differences. I'll clarify the notes. Christian Stonecreek 05:27, 5 November 2021 (EDT)

One Cover

The cover I just added to Richard Bach's One is the same as the later edition; some editor entered a note for that edition that there was no credit for the cover art but there was for cover design and entered that, which is wrong, so neither of them should be there. --Username 11:45, 5 November 2021 (EDT)

This may be so, but Gzuckier was the one who added the initial credit, so please do ask him for the reasoning behind this. Stonecreek 12:54, 5 November 2021 (EDT)

Moon Quest

Hi Christian,

Just a quick reminder: If you are adding any extra titles (covers, interior art and so on) during a novel -> chapbook conversion, they are created with no language so you may want to chase them down and add a language to them while you are still working on the book. If you first add the chapbook, then set its language and THEN add the additional titles, you do not have this problem. But when you add them when you are adding the CHAPBOOK title, their languages need to be set manually. Moon Quest pinged in a report with both of its art titles being language-less. Fixed now. :) Annie 01:56, 15 November 2021 (EST)

Thanks, Annie. I'll try even harder to expand my memory cells. Christian Stonecreek 05:07, 15 November 2021 (EST)

Alternatively, keep an eye on the report when you know you did some conversions the previous day. :) Annie 05:14, 15 November 2021 (EST)

lub hnub qub tshiab - Neuer Stern 67

Hi Christian,

Can you look at this for me? Looks like the author of that single story tried to add Neuer Stern 67 but... that's one weird title on the whole magazine. And then there is this one as well - is this a fanzine or magazine? Any chance you can find something in the German blogs/publisher site/something to get these up to shape or at least to make that first one less ugly and figure out the type if nothing else? Thanks in advance! Annie 05:25, 15 November 2021 (EST)

Sorry, but I can't find anything about the correct title (the weird part might be part of the title, but our conventions would imply to have the fanzine's (!!!) title first, I'd think). One thing I was able to find is that it's really a sort of newsletter for the club, so definitely a fanzine. Christian Stonecreek 05:56, 15 November 2021 (EST)

Google translate tells me that "lub hnub qub tshiab" is "New Star" in Hmong (which may or may not be the truth - Google Translate is getting better but some languages are more challenging for it and I know nothing about Hmong to be able to do some checks). But "Neuer Stern" is the same in German. So I wonder if it was not a Hmong issue or something? But yep - under our rules magazine/fanzine generic title is always first in the title. The only thing I can find is this which confirms the story being there but does not have anything about Hmong. Thanks for checking! :) Annie 06:11, 15 November 2021 (EST)

Nice find! I'd think that the editor(s) searched for an exotic translation of New Star / Neuer Stern and put that one into the title to puzzle the readership (which worked!). Christian Stonecreek 09:13, 15 November 2021 (EST)

That would also explain why I see nothing Hmong related in the issue description/contents. I had not seen the editor who adds these around lately but I will leave them a note as well and maybe we will get to the bottom of all this. Annie 11:40, 15 November 2021 (EST)

Feinde im Weltall? und andere Novellen

Hello Christian,

Need a German eye for a second. Is the price here ℳ1.00 or is there something else happening with this - at the end (1907 will make it the Gold Mark so I am pretty sure about the currency but if that is also not it, let me know? Thanks! Annie 23:08, 16 November 2021 (EST)

Yes, it should be ℳ1.00, which was valid from 1871 until 1914. Christian Stonecreek 05:16, 17 November 2021 (EST)

Thanks! Annie 14:39, 17 November 2021 (EST)

Wiktor Piwowarow

Hi Christian,

Our Pivovarov is definitely not the sportsman but the painter. :) I fixed the link to Wiki and his legal name. Annie 20:53, 21 November 2021 (EST)

Ah, yes. Thanks Annie, it didn't occur to me that there might be two Pivovarovs (well, it might, if I'd be able to really read Russian - not only decipher most letters). I just wondered why the Wikipedia had the year of birth as 1957 and not 1937. Thanks for the correction, Christian Stonecreek 01:46, 22 November 2021 (EST)

There are actually 5 of them that were important enough to have articles - just one relevant to us though (funnily enough 3 of them are born in the same year making it even more confusing if you cannot read the descriptions). Feel free to ping me if you need someone to assist with my languages. :) Annie 01:59, 22 November 2021 (EST)

Will do! Thanks again, Christian Stonecreek 02:05, 22 November 2021 (EST)

Metropolis

https://archive.org/details/metropolis0000lang; Saw you did some Metropolis edits after my recent edits; have you seen this? Says Second Printing 1981. --Username 13:43, 27 November 2021 (EST)

Yeah, your Fritz Lang update triggered the 'Metropolis' conversion to SHORTFICTION / CHAPBOOK, a thing that I became aware of quite a while ago (but forgot about it, working on other things). I saw the second printing of 1981, but am not sure if it's the hc or the tp that is reprinted (the second seems more likely, but you never know). Stonecreek 13:52, 27 November 2021 (EST)

Currency question: Peter Schlemihl's wundersame Geschichte

About this one. Can we safely write "Taler 1.25" or is there something else going on with this currency that will require a different format? Thanks! Annie 21:01, 3 December 2021 (EST)

Ah, I see the problem of the double space. I've updated the record to Taler 1.25. Christian Stonecreek 00:44, 4 December 2021 (EST)

Ministry for the Future title & pub dates

Hi Christian, I'm curious why you've zeroed out the day-of-the-month for the title and several pubs of The Ministry for the Future? Whilst I appreciate that "street dates" often don't match the official pub dates, AFAIK policy is to use the official date, and - again AFAIK - the dates listed by Amazon, Kobo, etc for the digital pubs should definitely be accurate to when those products became available to download.

Losing this info is unhelpful for some projects I've been mulling over (but haven't actually gotten around to implementing, sigh):

• Analysing peak weeks-of-the-year for pubs - flattening everything to a 28-31 day period would make this less accurate
• Doing cross-checks between the data in ISFDB versus the data I've locally scraped from various sites, to check for errors, delays, etc
• Potentially looking for discrepancies in Tuesday vs Thursday pubs to see if stuff has been allocated to the wrong publisher (e.g. Tor US vs UK, Orbit US vs UK). In itself, this wouldn't be reliable, and would likely have lots of false positives (seems like lots of UK ebooks come out on Tuesdays to match the US), but in conjunction with other signals like currency or ISBN range, might help to prioritize the most likely to be errors.

Thanks ErsatzCulture 11:06, 11 January 2022 (EST)

The available (per Amazon's look inside) copyright statements only speak of 'October 2020', thus - as a policy - we use this as the official publication date (since it is the stated one: official statement ruling out a vendor's statement). Christian Stonecreek 11:11, 11 January 2022 (EST)

But by that logic, loads of recent UK pubs should be submitted with a yyyy-00-00 date, because the info on the copyright page doesn't go to a more granular level than the year? (I have just double checked this with a bunch of recent-ish UK books from big 5 imprints, most of which were first printings, and all just had the year listed.)

There's a difference, in that those statements mostly have a copyright statement, not a statement for a publication date. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Stonecreek (talk • contribs) .

Also, I'm not sure that details from the copyright page of one pub merit changing the details for other pubs, especially if they are from (arguably) different publishers? The UK hc doesn't have a Look Inside preview on Amazon .com, .co.uk or .de, and the UK ebook only states a year per the Amazon preview. (As an aside, the edits mean that the note on that ebook pub are no longer correct w.r.t. price) ErsatzCulture 12:13, 11 January 2022 (EST)

Well, in the hc case, the kindle edition states 'Originally published in hardcover and ebook by Orbit in October 2020'. Christian Stonecreek 13:12, 11 January 2022 (EST)

As long as they are properly sourced, removing dates based on copyright statement is IMO database vandalism. Christian, please stop doing that. We date books based on ALL sources - if we can date exactly based on publisher/seller site and we can add a note on that source, we should not remove the date because the book only mentions the month (or the year). Thanks! Annie 17:00, 11 January 2022 (EST)

PS: All dates had been restored as per the sources in their notes. Adding a note that "OCLC only lists the month" or whatever else note you want to add to specify that some other sites specify something different if you want but please stop removing data from the DB and leaving the notes in a state that does not match the data in the listed sources. Thanks! I really hope you had not been doing that on other books and thus destroying data in the DB consistently. Annie 17:13, 11 January 2022 (EST)

One more note. Look at this one. We have a PV who left the date. They even left a note explaining the source of the date (Amazon.com). And yet you changed the date leaving the note incorrect

• Should have not happened on a PV'd book at all - you don't "fix" other people's data without talking to them based on what you think the data should look like.
• Leaving the date and the note not matching makes this a really bad edit - even if the data loss was not. Annie 17:20, 11 January 2022 (EST)

(unindent) The issue of using YYYY-MM-00 date values taken from copyright pages over more precise YYYY-MM-DD date values from other sources was debated back in 2006-2007 when ISFDB 2.0 was launched. At the time, the majority of editors believed that exact publication dates used by Amazon and other online booksellers were unreliable and did not necessarily represent actual publication dates. This resulted in a convoluted process of capturing the exact (YYYY-MM-DD) pre-publication date from Amazon, using it to generate the "Select Forthcoming Books" list on the front page, then changing the date to a YYYY-MM-00 date printed in the book when the publication was verified. To the best of my recollection, this practice was abandoned in the mid-2010s and we decided to keep the more precise YYYY-MM-DD date when its source is properly documented in Notes. It's similar to the way we add and document other types of information -- like cover artist names -- from secondary sources.

I don't think the old, abandoned, method is documented anywhere in Help, but, based on the discussion above, I suspect that Christian may be still using it. Does this make sense, Christian? Ahasuerus 19:38, 11 January 2022 (EST)

Having said that, changing primary-verified publications like this one without consulting the verifier and leaving records in an inconsistent state is not acceptable and something that the reviewing moderator would normally be expected to catch. Since you are a self-approver, the responsibility to enforce ISFDB conventions and keep records self-consistent falls on you. Please make sure this doesn't happen again or else it will jeopardize your self-approver status. Ahasuerus 20:30, 11 January 2022 (EST)

Yeah, I was using the consenus you refer to, and it must have been debated even after 2007 (because I wasn't around then). The verifier hasn't been around for almost a year, and had the contradictory dates (stated month within the publication vs. day stated by a vendor). The consensus still is - to the best of my knowledge - that Amazon is not a reliable bibliographical source per se, and we use the dates in those cases where we don't have a more reliable source (for example the copyright page of a given publication). Christian Stonecreek 01:56, 12 January 2022 (EST)

I ducked out of this conversation because I spent some time digging through old rules and standards archives to see if this had previously been discussed. I believe this exchange from 2012 might be what Ahasuerus is referring to? My reading of that discussion was that Christian's changes could certainly be interpreted as in line with that discussion, but also that that discussion was based on presumptions that might no longer be as valid as they were, at least in the context of new (2015+) books and/or downloaded media? I haven't yet run across any discussion that might relate to "this practice was abandoned in the mid-2010s", but my ability to go through years of R&S discussion has its limits ;-)

Re. "the contradictory dates (stated month within the publication vs. day stated by a vendor", personally I don't believe that "Published in yyyy" or "Published in monthname yyyy" in a primary source is contradicted by secondary sources that list a particular yyyy-mm-dd value - Where the yyyy and mm match up, of course - and that if we have reasonable sources for the yyyy-mm-dd, these should be used, and that these shouldn't be replaced by yyyy-mm-00 values unless there's a good reason, and if so, that reason (and the original yyyy-mm-dd value) should be documented in the title/pub note? ErsatzCulture 08:12, 12 January 2022 (EST)

Sounds a reasonable way to deal with it: I do know of some (German) publishers that do their deals first - directly - with their customers and/or special 'hardware' book shops (those that one actually can step into), and make it available only after that to online (or other) vendors. So, I recall that the date stated with Amazon was assumed to be the one that a publication was made available there (nothing more, nothing less). This has lead to the above statement that we enter this date when there's nothing better available to us (and that'd be the case for many new publications upon entering them). Christian Stonecreek 08:25, 12 January 2022 (EST)

Amazon is not reliable for dates on OLD books - as in pre-2009 maybe and books that only have listings from external vendors. Things had changed since then. Multiple times. These days Amazon.com for new US books and Amazon UK for new UK ones, especially when they are from major publishers and when the publishers don’t move the dates are pretty reliable for dates. Plus there were multiple sources listed on the UK books here - all of which you just ignored :) The US ones may not have been listed but they are easily foundable and all agree on the date. Assuming that both me and John did not verify the dates when adding these books was arrogant (and how any of that logic for hardcovers applies to Audio books and eBooks that you also changed is a mystery). Let’s not use the German practices for dating US/UK books going forward. Plus as I said - for some of those Amazon was not the only source and “I assumed so” without bothering to check the publisher site or anything else is never a good reason to delete data. If you are not sure about a practice in a different country, please ask - don’t just assume it matches Germany. As i had to correct another publication “fixed” like that by you, i have a suspicion that we are looking at another cleanup efforts to cleanup after your edits… Maybe you need to spend some time with the help pages and refresh your ideas in how the site rules had changed in the last 10 years or so? That’s not the first time you are applying rules which had been out of use for a decade (dating of variants come to mind). :)

Anything else I can assist clarifying around dating of English language books? Annie 11:15, 12 January 2022 (EST)

PS: The short version of the request here: The basic rule for blanking a date (or any other data really) should be "is there a reason not to trust the date?" and not "oh, I don't trust dates so I will always remove them" which seems to have happened here and elsewhere. More data is better than less data so unless you have a reason to think an already added date is incorrect, leave it in place, please. Especially of there is a source (or 4) corroborating. Thanks! :) Annie 12:00, 12 January 2022 (EST)

Sorry, Annie, but none of your statements refer to the consensus that seems to still hold: we use the officially stated date of publication, when we have one available. And that the one stated at Amazon (or another source) isn't the official date was made clear: nowadays it is the date of distribution (for Amazon). If you could point me (and us) to the argumentational thread where the consensus mentioned above was changed, I'd be most grateful. Christian Stonecreek 12:13, 12 January 2022 (EST)

That's not the practice OR the consensus. We date books based on all available sources and document our sources. We don't throw away sources and data because Stonecreek don't trust them (and don't want to do a search to verify them). Please stop removing dates on books where there is no suspicion on when the book was actually published. Thanks! Annie 12:32, 12 January 2022 (EST)

Yes, it is: per the discussion from 2012 referred to above this is (or was then) the consensus. Even more, the help for entering the date of publication explicitly says what to use: For books, to identify the publication date, try to find a statement (often on the verso of the title page) that says something like "Published in June 2001"; the exception referred to after that statement is only for later printings. So, what else is there as a point for deviating from that? Christian Stonecreek 12:49, 12 January 2022 (EST)

Removing valid data is never acceptable. If you change them back and delete the data again, I will restore it again as we have a valid source to corroborate the exact date. Thanks! Annie 13:35, 12 January 2022 (EST)

(unindent) Christian, if you disagree with a moderator's interpretation of the data entry rules, using your self-approver privileges to undo the moderator's edits is a completely unacceptable way to go about resolving the disagreement. It just starts an "edit war", which should never happen here. This is not what the self-approver status was created for; additional instances of this behavior or any other abuse of the privileges will result in their termination.

The right way to resolve this issue would be to post your arguments on the Moderator Noticeboard. If the subsequent discussion warrants it, we may take it to the Rules and Standards board.

BTW, to check the current practice, I have compiled a list of primary-verified publications published in January 2021. Out of 126 pubs, only 30 (14 of them are magazines) have 2021-01-00 dates. The rest have full 2021-01-DD dates.

Re: the 2012 Rules and Standards discussion, it ended with MartyD planning to come up with new Help language and post it for further discussion, which, as far as I can tell, never happened. Ahasuerus 15:02, 12 January 2022 (EST)

Well, the help page - referred to above - states it the way we overcame to in the discussion, regardless if the help was changed afterward: if not, it appears the discussion ensured the text. Christian Stonecreek 01:41, 13 January 2022 (EST)

Alte DSFP Nominierungen

Wow, Super, danke Dir für Deinen hilfreichen Links hier! (ch switche hier einfach mal ins Deutsch, wenn okay?)! Ich muss mich da echt mal einlesen und habe ja als ersten Projekt den DSFP nachzutragen, da warst du ja selber im Komitee! Paar Angaben auf der Webseite stimmen wohl nicht (copy & paste Fehler beim Übertrag der der Vorjahre) aber die ersten Preise sollten ich seit 1985 haben. Gibt es evt. irgendwo ein Archiv, wo man tatsächlich noch die alten Platzieren herausfinden kann? DANKE! --Jannis 06:18, 16 January 2022 (EST)

Hi, and welcome to my talk page!

If you don't mind, I do prefer to write in English, though you may ask in German, if you aren't sure how to phrase things. The reason is that this is a site for which the work is done in English, and other editors may have difficulties to read and understand other languages (and it may become tedious to translate things from one language into the other and back - which may be needed in case of information relevant to ISFDB).

Having said this, I will try and help you with the award if I can. Alas, there seems to be no online archive for the older nominations, but I'll try and take a look into my magazine & nonfiction stack, if there's more information to be found there (though for the very first year - 1985 - there was nothing to be found so far). Do you have any access to old issues of the magazine / fanzine "Andromeda Nachrichten"? The nominations should be listed there, if anywhere! And may I ask you about your background and how you did find out about me (because I think my being with the comitee was not communicated far and wide)? Christian Stonecreek 07:36, 16 January 2022 (EST)

Sure, switching back to English, no worries! Btw is this the way the right method to directly communicate here? And sorry, I hope it's not spoiling a secret, because it's stated on the open NOVA website: https://nova-sf.de/eine-site and sadly no access to "Andromeda" :( Next task: I must add some info about my<elf on my page here :) Jannis 11:42, 16 January 2022 (EST)

Yes, this is the right way to communicate with the single members / editors of ISFDB. One more quite important page may be the Help Desk where you can ask anything that you may find puzzling about entering or ensuring data.

If you like you may also want to add information to your summary page. How to? Just click 'Edit Author Data' on the left tool bar, listed under 'Editing Tools'. Christian Stonecreek 13:25, 16 January 2022 (EST)

Hi Christian, thanks for your support for "Wetzlar". I added in the last days the 2023 DSFP & KLP winners (still in the moderation list to be approved). Then I wanted to look out for the old DSFP winners. BR Jannis (talk) 08:35, 12 November 2023 (EST)

Moderator Noticeboard discussion of the Perry Rhodan changes

Could you please review this discussion on the Moderator Noticeboard, which is related to these Perry Rhodan changes? Ahasuerus 16:11, 22 January 2022 (EST)

2001: Uma odisseia no espaço

I see that you have edited 2001: Uma odisseia no espaço, a primary-verified publication, after asking the primary verifier on 2022-01-27 and also asking for feedback on the Community Portal. Seeking consensus is always good a thing, but let me remind you what I wrote on AlainLeBris's Talk page on 2022-01-21:

Christian, it's been less than 24 hours since your original questions were posted. Please do not edit publications primary-verified by active editors without their consent. If you believe that a verifier has made a mistake, e.g. a name was misspelled, and the verifier does not respond to your inquiry after a week, post your findings on the Moderator Noticeboard. To quote the ISFDB FAQ:

• If you want to change or remove information, please ask the verifier first. If the verifier doesn't respond in a week or so, post a note on the Moderator noticeboard and someone will help you.

This is the standard procedure and all editors are expected to follow it. Ahasuerus 13:15, 21 January 2022 (EST)

Again, this is the standard process and all editors are expected to follow it, yet your edits have repeatedly gone against the process over the last few weeks. If you do not follow the process again, your self-approver privileges will be revoked. Ahasuerus 14:29, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Okay, thanks, I'll do my very best! I hope I'll not be carried away again trying to help things making better. Christian Stonecreek 15:40, 28 January 2022 (EST)

Cover art credit for Science-Fiction-Stories 79

Christian, I've added the cover credit for Rich Sternbach to Science-Fiction-Stories 79 as it's a variant of a Galaxy cover of his. I modified the comment about the indecipherable signature to note that the art has been flipped. Martin--MOHearn 10:21, 3 February 2022 (EST)

Many thanks, Martin! Great find! Christian Stonecreek 10:44, 3 February 2022 (EST)

Bruder der Gorgonen

Hello Christian, on the cover is a signature, maybe you can read them. Regards Henna 14:01, 15 February 2022 (EST)

Sorry, Henna, but I remember having spent some time to identify this artwork upon verifying the publication but couldn't decipher it either. The artist's style also didn't ring a bell. Christian Stonecreek 01:35, 16 February 2022 (EST)

Als der Weihnachtsmann vom Himmel fiel

Can you check the ISBN here? It is a bit too late for ISBN-10 and if it is indeed the only one printed (being a reprint and all), a note explaining that should be added. :) Thanks! Annie 18:36, 15 February 2022 (EST)

With this being only a transient verification, I do assume that this is most likely a cloning error. I'll update the ISBN. Thanks for finding this, Annie! Christian Stonecreek 01:31, 16 February 2022 (EST)

Bardioc

After your latest edits, the link in the notes here is not valid anymore. Can you find out where it is supposed to link now? Thanks! Annie 14:25, 17 February 2022 (EST)

It must have been defunct before, since I didn't do anything with it. Fixed. Christian Stonecreek 02:00, 18 February 2022 (EST)

Possibly. :) But it needed fixing and you had been around the title so had a better chance to figure it out than me starting from scratch :) Thanks for fixing it. Annie 03:02, 18 February 2022 (EST)

The Ring of Thoth

Regarding 1094940: Variants are dated based on the first appearance under that title and author credit. 1890 was the original appearance of the story, not the original appearance of this variant. Doyle was knighted in 1902 so any credit with Sir has to be after that date. I have restored the prior date. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:06, 27 February 2022 (EST)

Juvenile flags

Hi Christian,

A gentle reminder that if a story is marked as juvenile, you also need to mark all chapbooks which contain it as juvenile (and vice versa). A few of your additions and updates in the last weeks showed up on the discrepancy report (and are now fixed) but please keep that in mind. Thanks! Annie 18:11, 2 March 2022 (EST)

Thanks, Annie, will try to think of it in the future! Christian Stonecreek 01:37, 3 March 2022 (EST)

Fabeln aus künftigen Jahren, in denen die Menschen in unterirdischen Bunkern leben werden

Hello Christian, is this the same text like in Zeitschleifen?

Ein Ingenieur hat geschrieben, daß sich die Felsen in der Umgebung von Prag zum Bau von unterirdischen Bunkern für die Prager Bevölkerung eignen.

Im Zeitalter der unterirdischen Bunker

Wenn man überlegt, daß die frühere Menschheit ihre Behausungen über der Erde gebaut hat! Welch primitive Zeiten das doch waren!

Thanks for looking it up Henna 12:54, 8 March 2022 (EST)

Yes, it is: it is even stated as taken from the anthology Zeitschleifen. Thanks! Christian

Thanks again Henna 08:25, 9 March 2022 (EST)

7. & 8. Reise

Hello Christian, I think in 7. & 8. Reise the date 1961 for the two stories is wrong. Regards Henna 11:22, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Sure! I do wonder how I got to this date. Strange things seem to happen... Thanks for finding this! Christian Stonecreek 11:51, 9 March 2022 (EST)

Das Killer-Ding

Cover art for this is by Angus McKie. It's a mirror image of Manalone. --Mavmaramis 12:41, 11 March 2022 (EST)

Thanks! Great find! I'll add the information. Christian Stonecreek 13:28, 11 March 2022 (EST)

Welcome template

Hello,

If you are going to be posting these, please do that properly: it is {{subst:welcome}} and not just {{welcome}} as the page for it very clearly states. Otherwise you make it VERY hard for an editor to answer or figure our why their page appears to be locked (as the direct call opens the template, NOT the local version). Thanks! Annie 15:09, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Aera: The Return of the Ancient Gods (part 7)

As you did this edit, can you please clarify where you got this title ("Aera: The Return of the Ancient Gods (part 7)" from?

• The "Look Inside" shows "Episode 7" clearly.
• The cover has just "7" - which is technically irrelevant due to the title page being available.
• Our rules for naming of serials are very clear: "If the title of a SERIAL installment is unique, e.g. "Butterflies in the Kremlin, Part Eight: As the Bear Turns" or "Ciężki bój (cz. 1)", then use the full form of the title."
• Even if the title page did not contain a unique title, the rules would not have created your title: "If, on the other hand, the title is shared by at least one other SERIAL installment of the work, append a space and a parenthetical statement such as "(Part 1 of 3)" to the title."

So where is your title coming from? Changing titles from valid titles to invalid ones (which you may prefer) is not a good idea. The lack of notification to the editors that had worked on that title is also a bad idea (and you had been reminded of the common courtesy expectations before - although this being an oldish edit, it probably was before that). Thanks! Annie 16:45, 17 March 2022 (EDT)

Guess I had only the rule for the parenthetical statement in mind as valid. Sorry! Christian Stonecreek 02:47, 18 March 2022 (EDT)

Variant title dates

Hi Christian, I see you're still changing variant title dates to the date of the original, see here. Please try to remember the date should be that of the first appearance of the variant. Also, do you have any idea where the 1972 date of the original comes from? There's no note explaining this. Thanks, --Willem 16:55, 20 March 2022 (EDT)

I'll add the corresponding publication this week. Christian Stonecreek 02:38, 21 March 2022 (EDT)

It is always a good idea to add notes on dates provenances (or any other pieces of data but dates in titles are often disconnected from books like here) if you are not adding the book supporting it immediately. If that title with this date had been submitted for moderation, you would have been asked for the source so a note can be added. As Self-approver, the expectation is the same. We all have plans but life happens and things get missed and forgotten so let’s try not to have any data added without notes on its provenance? Can you add a quick note explaining that date? You can remove it when/if you add the book later. Thanks in advance. :) Annie 04:58, 21 March 2022 (EDT)

Die Riesenvögel kommen

Ho there, Christian! Can you tell me what this is about? Does it say what the original article was? Thanks.--Rosab618 20:10, 7 April 2022 (EDT)

I'm afraid it doesn't. It's about a new generation of giant airplanes. I can't find a corresponding title with that meaning with the Bob Woods page, but I guess it doesn't have to have appeared necessarily in "Future" / "Future Life". (We don't have the initial publications of Chaffee's artwork - depicting two to-be-developed airplanes - either; it's even possible that this is a first publication). Christian Stonecreek 06:47, 8 April 2022 (EDT)

Geheimprojekt Venus

Hello Christian, I have a problem with this pub Geheimprojekt Venus. In the notes is a wrong parent title and the digest should have this copyright text:

„Abenteuer im Weltenraum“ – erscheint 14täglich im Alfons Semrau Verlag, Hamburg 4, Heiligengeistfeld, Hochhaus 2. Fernruf 3120 76. Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Alleinauslieferung: Alfons Semrau Verlag, Hamburg 4. Printed in West-Germany 1958. Für unverlangt eingesandte Manuskripte wird keine Gewähr übernommen. Rücksendung nur gegen Rückporto. Gesamtherstellung: Nordland-Druck GmbH., Lüneburg.

Please take a look. Many thanks Henna 14:31, 13 April 2022 (EDT)

Rencontre avec Ovaron

Hi Christian. Concerning this edit that made the publication show up on the "Title Dates after Publication Dates" cleanup report. I asked Linguist to check, see here. First, you should not have changed the date without asking/informing the primary verifier. Second, his answer makes it clear that your "correction" was wrong. Do we need another cleanup report? --Willem 10:10, 18 April 2022 (EDT) Ps, see also the cleanup report Publication Authors That Are Not the Title Author. --Willem 11:24, 18 April 2022 (EDT)

Well, Perrypedia has the date as March, this is why I changed the date. (I planned to order a copy, but didn't do that before the beginning of my holidays - I now have). I do assume that this source is more dependable than taking the date of printing. I'll bring this to Linguist's attention. Thanks, Christian Stonecreek

Die Schwerter von Zinjaban

Did I err in approving the author change, I was just about to change the pub and write a note to the verifier. John Scifibones 09:02, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Hi, already answered on your talk page. Christian Stonecreek 09:05, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Any thoughts why the English language editions credit both, but not the German? (Amazon Look inside available on UK edition). 09:10, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Likely because Catherine Crook de Camp was at the time almost unknown to German readers, and because all other titles in the series were published as by Lyon Sprague alone. Christian Stonecreek 09:17, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for your help, John Scifibones 09:18, 2 May 2022 (EDT)

Golem 100

Hello Christian. Cover artist for this is not Oliviero Berni as the publication credits but Terry Oakes. The artwork is depicted in Steven Eisler's The Alien Worlds and credited to Oakes in the Acknowledgement on p.96 of that book. I'm going to make the change and note it. --Mavmaramis 07:47, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

Yes, do so, please. During the first half of the 1980s this publisher had real difficulties to give the right credits for the respective cover art. Christian Stonecreek 07:57, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

I've made the changes and edited the notes. I pretty much had a feeling it was Terry Oakes. I just had to find the book it was illustrated in and check the credits. --Mavmaramis 14:08, 6 May 2022 (EDT)

Yeah: it could have been by Berni but is nevertheless somewhat different from his usual style. Thanks again, Christian Stonecreek 07:26, 7 May 2022 (EDT)

Variant title dates. Again and again

Was this edit really necessary? As has been told to you a number of times, the date of a variant title should be that of the first appearance of the variant. In this case, interior art is not the same as cover art. --Willem 04:07, 24 May 2022 (EDT)

Well, it is exactly the same artwork (title & language) as the cover art, and it does look more strange that both works are dated differently. Christian Stonecreek 05:25, 24 May 2022 (EDT)

Again Christian? Re-read this discussion where in the end you promised to follow the consensus. --Willem 07:31, 24 May 2022 (EDT)

I did. Dealt with: of course, the pre-dating to 1981 was correct. Christian Stonecreek 01:44, 25 May 2022 (EDT)

So nothing is changed. You still read only what you want to read. Explain to me why we have this cleanup report exactly for this kind of error. I will not have the same discussion with you over and over again. You were wrong, and you still are wrong. --Willem 02:31, 25 May 2022 (EDT)

It would help if you do read the notes for a title. Christian Stonecreek 02:42, 25 May 2022 (EDT)

I did. Again, interior art is not the same as cover art. The variant (interior art) must not have the date of the parent (coverart). And again, if you want to change the consensus, discuss it on the rules & standards page, do not impose your private rules on others. Remember the last time you were so stubborn cost you the moderator flag. Do you want to lose the self approver status too? --Willem 02:52, 25 May 2022 (EDT)

Sorry, but it appears you want to change the consensus: the note refers to the first known publication as interior art (there may have been a previous one, and even more contemporary publications). Christian Stonecreek 11:31, 25 May 2022 (EDT)

You're totally confusing now. Do you mean you forgot to add the interior art to this publication, or is there another 1981 pub not yet in the database or do you see an invisible 1981 pub under [this title]? Is it october or december? and where did you find (please, a link to that discussion) consensus to add an earlier date to a variant title? --Willem 14:12, 25 May 2022 (EDT)

I do mean a separate publication not in the database: virtually all publishers issued regular catalogues of available & new (= soon to be published) titles, wherein the older titles usually just got listed but the new ones were prominently featured with their cover images; Heyne did publish those twice a year (in April and October), immediately predating their new Winter and new Summer program. Christian Stonecreek 09:12, 26 May 2022 (EDT)

So that's your new excuse? Didn't think about discussing the idea first did you? May I draw your attention to the rules of acquisition under advertising? I don't think such a catalog counts as a publication. If you want that, discuss it first.

To recapitulate, first you change the date to december 1981 with no note in this edit, and when I challenge the validity of that edit you change it to october 1981 with a cryptic note here I.m.o. against the rules of acquisition. --Willem 03:41, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

They're quite obviously pieces of nonfiction that would have to be put into this series, though it's debatable if the publications are eligible (with the departments on sf taking about one seventh to one sixth): I do intend to use them as such, since they do provide information on publication history. But if you do like to change our rules of notation of first publications of titles when published within nongenre titles, please do open a discussion: there are masses of nongenre essays published within newspapers by above-the-threshold authors that would need a recalibration of notes and dates. Christian Stonecreek 03:59, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Let me rephrase the question then. Do you want to use a publisher's advertisement of a publication to date a piece of interiorart when the rules state "No advertising of any kind is indexed". A simple yes or no please. --Willem 07:13, 27 May 2022 (EDT)

Let me repeat my answer: those are pieces of nonfiction, not advertisements: there are some ads to be found inside, for example for the next (expected) bestselling book or featuring the works of a certain bestselling author (say, Colleen McCullough), but these works were also to be found inside the alphabetical listing, which was a listing of (soon-to-be) available book titles. (We are speaking of catalogues, i. e. works of reference, also known as special types of nonfiction).

(Let me add that it's not okay to come up with nibbling at long-established series when the consequences don't serve one own's preferences.) Christian Stonecreek 10:30, 29 May 2022 (EDT)

(unindent) I give up on you. You can't even answer a simple yes or no question. You're incapable of admitting you're wrong in anything (see your first answer "it does look more strange that both works are dated differently" is totally against the consensus). I won't bother you anymore with things like this and take it directly to the community. --Willem 05:19, 31 May 2022 (EDT)

Let me remark that you would just have needed to read the answer directly before your question and you wouldn't had have to ask.

'You're incapable of admitting you're wrong in anything': it does seem there is also somebody else writing here in this thread ;-). Christian Stonecreek 04:48, 1 June 2022 (EDT)

Amok

Boskar has confirmed that Atelier Ingrid Schütz is only credited with cover design. Do you have additional information that caused you to credit cover art on the three unverified publications? Let me know if you prefer to make the changes or I will do it. 08:11, 29 May 2022 (EDT). This was me. John Scifibones 11:48, 29 May 2022 (EDT)

Who's writing this (please don't forget to sign your comments / questions) and what publications are you referring to? If this has to do with the latest additions to 'Richard Bachman' books published by Heyne: I have seen the credits with printings other than those already in the database. If you prefer I'll do a transient verification for those and fill in the missing notes later when I can lay my hands on the publicatiuons again. Christian Stonecreek 10:24, 29 May 2022 (EDT)

Ryan North's How to Invent Everything - nonfiction vs novel

Hi, I see you changed this title from non-fiction to novel a couple of years ago [5]. I've just finished reading this, and whilst I don't think it's 100% unambiguous, I'd definitely consider it to be non-fiction rather than a novel. The time-travel aspect is just a framing conceit for the non-fiction elements that comprise the core content - although without that framing, I guess this book would be ineligible for inclusion here, so it's not irrelevant.

The closest thing I could think of to try to find a precedent for how to characterise this was in-universe fact books such as The Dune Encyclopedia, and I see that is also classed as non-fiction.

Also, I think you added the synopsis for the title record? At least for the British edition, that description isn't quite right - it's presented as a manufacturer's manual for a time machine to cover the event the time machine breaks down in the past, and the foreword implies it was written by an alternate-timeline version of the author working in the position of technical writer, not as a stranded time traveller.

Are you OK if I change the title type and synopsis accordingly? Thanks ErsatzCulture 10:24, 4 June 2022 (EDT)

My changes were based on the three German reviews, but mainly on the one by Kathrin Passig & Aleks Scholz, which was the most extensive one (I haven't read the book itself).

But if there's a framing story please do consider it being a novel: we have other titles judged for inclusion just on the framing (for example this one, which has Death as telling the otherwise non-speculative story). But in the end: please change to your insight. Christian Stonecreek 06:35, 5 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. I have switched the types of the titles and pubs, and expanded the title synopsis and note to (hopefully) explain why the book is categorized as it is. Something I should have been clearer on in my comment above, is that there aren't any characters, plot or other elements that (conventionally) are part of a story, hence me wanting to classify it as non-fic.

Cheers ErsatzCulture 16:34, 8 June 2022 (EDT)

Okay. It's just that I understand the rules (and the meaning) for non-fiction to be non-fictional. We have masses of texts that also don't have any of those elements, but are classified (rightly so) as fiction; here are some examples: Space Mail (an anthology of fictional letters), synopsises & fictional biographies, and the likely most extreme, The Index, for which the title describes the form exactly, but is nonetheless a piece of fiction. Christian Stonecreek 01:52, 9 June 2022 (EDT)

Caldwell

https://www.amazon.co.uk/TM-Caldwell/e/B00T0RFEG4/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_11; I suspected these much later stories were by a different Caldwell, and they were; this Caldwell's a woman. --Username 10:12, 12 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks! I'll adapt accordingly. Christian Stonecreek 11:42, 12 June 2022 (EDT)

Falcons of Narabedla and the self-approver status

Please see the outcome of the Falcons of Narabedla discussion on the Community portal. Ahasuerus 20:48, 14 June 2022 (EDT)

Die Falken von Narabedla / Die Späher

Please check the final sentence of Die Falken von Narabedla in Terra Nova 181 and Die Späher. Are they a translation of the 1957 Other Worlds version or the 1964 expanded version. The notes of both publication state ©1964, so the second is most likely. The final sentence of both versions are in the respective notefields. Thanks, --Willem 14:59, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the idea, but I asked Mavmaramis‎ to have a go at an independent word count estimate, which will help to determine the length of the later version. If both versions turn out to be novellas it has to be discussed if they shouldn't be merged anyway. Christian Stonecreek 15:14, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

Christian, if you want to keep frustrating things, I'll just assume they are both the 1964 expanded edition, confirmed in your pub notes. --Willem 15:40, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

Hello Willem! The last sentence of Terra Nova 181 is Ich holte tief Atem und legte meinen Arm um Cynaras Schultern. Dann rief ich Adric, auf das er das Glück mit mir teile. and translated I drew a deep breath and put my arm around Cynara's shoulders. Then I called Adric to share the happiness with me. Rudolf Rudam 17:56, 15 June 2022 (EDT)

Yes, Rudolf's right and the ending for the version in "Die Späher" also fits the 1964 version. It's just that it still seems to be a novella, see my comments at the Community Portal and at Mavmaramis'. Christian Stonecreek 01:09, 16 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks. I'll move both to the 1964 edition. For you Christian, it is established that the two versions are very different. See the notes from Ahasuerus. Even if the expanded edition were a novella, the two should never be merged. --Willem 14:58, 16 June 2022 (EDT)

Okay, maybe i thought in the beginning that the texts were (almost) identical. Sorry for that. I also tend to think that we shouldn't have two texts with the same title type that tell the same story. We have established that for many novels, I think, in adding notes. Christian Stonecreek 00:40, 17 June 2022 (EDT)

FYI

Hello Christian! We disagree about this title DAS GROSSE SPIEL and I don't fancy an edit war. Therefore I‘ll introduce our difference in the Rules and Standards portal and open for discussion. Regards Rudolf Rudam 05:11, 16 June 2022 (EDT)

Thanks, Rudolf! I'll reply there. Christian Stonecreek 13:05, 16 June 2022 (EDT)

Die Puppe Maggie Moneyeyes

I'm just clearing my own DB and linking to ISFDB. I got a problem with Chapter 2
"13 • Vorwort: Wie Science Fiction mich vor einem Verbrecherleben bewahrte • essay by Harlan Ellison (trans. of Foreword: How Science Fiction Saved Me from a Life of Crime 1967)",
Author Harlan Ellison; Nevertheless, at the end of the chapter it is signed by
Ellison Wonderland
Hollywood, California
September 1966
I'm aware of the book/title "Ellison Wonderland", and I'aware of the fact, that Harlan writes about himself.
Should "Ellison Wonderland" beeing introduced as a pseudonym of Harlan Ellison?

Hi! I don't think so, the author for collections is typically only stated on the spine, the cover and the title page, and we use the credit on the title page for all of the contents written by the respective author. Plus: "Ellison Wonderland" seems to me more likely to be the name of a place, like "Graceland" was the name Elvis Presley had chosen for his mansion. Hope that helps. Christian Stonecreek 11:33, 18 June 2022 (EDT)

To Say Nothing of the Dog duplicate records

Please see this conversation. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 10:54, 9 July 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the hint, I have unverified mine and will delete it: it was in fact verified later than the other one (on 2011-05-05). Christian Stonecreek 15:30, 9 July 2022 (EDT)

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?907277

Hello,

You dropped "Editor: Stefan Bauer." from the notes in this one. Was that on purpose or did it go by mistake while clearing the previous line? Annie 21:56, 22 July 2022 (EDT)

This was on purpose, it was a relic from the first edition and is not stated within the new one. Christian Stonecreek 15:08, 30 July 2022 (EDT)

OK then :) A moderator note mentioning that is always helpful when this happens - otherwise you may be getting a lot of notes making sure that a line was not removed by mistake. Annie 15:22, 1 August 2022 (EDT)

Notes, notes, notes

Hello again :)

Can you please at least add a note on the source when adding new publications such as this one - even if you are not adding the complete set of notes yet. I know you will get back to it BUT a new editor will see that and assume no notes on non-verified new publications is ok and life can get a bit tricky sometimes so these may stay like that for a long time. I approved the ones on the board but... please remember to add just a rudimentary note on the sources (even if it ends up being a throwaway later when you expand) or verify on addition. Thanks for the understanding! Annie 20:30, 2 August 2022 (EDT)

Will do (at least add something rudimaentary): In this case I wasn't sure if there's a 'Report' in it or not, so I decided to add the complete notes upon the dawning of knowledge. Christian Stonecreek 10:15, 3 August 2022 (EDT)

Figured that there is something like that happening. But at the very least "data from source" or "issue added based on advertisement in issue X" or something like that is helpful. Thanks! :) Annie 13:18, 3 August 2022 (EDT)

Photos and Interiorart

Hello Christian! I have a query. You want to add two photos in this pub Die Guerillas von Terrania as new regular titles and labeled them as interiorart. I don't remember that photos are classified as interiorart. Where did you found this rule? Thanks in advance for your assistance. Rudolf Rudam 11:54, 8 August 2022 (EDT)

Well, I've seen plenty of them added lately (for example for The New York Times / The New York Times Book Review (which isn't even a genre magazine), so I do think it's okay to add them for genre publications.

Like the inclusion of excerpts meant as ads for upcoming novels (which weren't regularly included when we began), this policy also seems to have changed over time. Christian Stonecreek 07:53, 9 August 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for pointing out that it has already been accepted. Now, I' m surprised, despite the fact that the guidelines don't specify it that way. It states that photographs of authors are not included. If so, the policy need to be rewritten. I'll put this up for discussion. Thanks again for your reference. Rudolf Rudam 09:05, 9 August 2022 (EDT)

It seems that according to the previous rules, the PV alone can decide if he labels photographs as interiorart. Sorry for the belate approve.Rudolf Rudam 11:17, 11 August 2022 (EDT)

No problem at all, Rudolf! I'd also wish that the rules would be more explicit for photos. I decided to include them in this case since they were taken by Hubert Haensel, an above-the -threshold author. Christian Stonecreek 11:24, 11 August 2022 (EDT)

Titanic Magazine

I question this submission changing the date of the rollup from 2022-00-00. The year only date is standard practice. John Scifibones 17:27, 8 August 2022 (EDT)

It doesn't seem to be: this only seems to be standard practice if there's only one editorial credit for a given year, otherwise it's meaningful to achieve a chronological order to have the dates ordered, for example by month. Please take a look at these examples, found without major effort: MFSF, ditto, Omni, and Perry Rhodan. Christian Stonecreek 07:38, 9 August 2022 (EDT)

Andreas Eschbach Essay

Greetings Stonecreek, would you mind checking to see if these two are the same? [6] & [7] Tnaks, John Scifibones 15:55, 13 August 2022 (EDT)

Hello, John! No, they aren't; the first takes the author's contributions to the Perry Rhodan franchise into its focus, the second gives an overview of Eschbach's role in German sf. I'll add a note to the second one. Thanks for the hint to the seeming doublette. Christian Stonecreek 05:44, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

Hop Aboard Kids, We're Going to 1984: Seven Children's Books and Illustration, Art, or Cosmic Kitsch? Six SF Art Books

Genre Fiction: The Roaring Years contains Hop Aboard Kids, We're Going to 1984: Seven Children's Books and Illustration, Art, or Cosmic Kitsch? Six SF Art Books. It states both of these originally appeared in Foundation, #10 June 1976. There is no such essays listed in that pub. However, there are seven Peter Nicholls book reviews on page 82 and six Peter Nicholls art book reviews on pages 114-119. I am assuming these are what are being referenced. Do either of these review groupings have a overall title in Foundation, #10? Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:04, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

No, it just lists the books reviewed at its heading. Christian Stonecreek 11:45, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

Okay, I will make the appropriate notes. Thanks for checking. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:00, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

Dave Langford, who put Genre Fiction: The Roaring Years together, has sent me an email about this issue. Here is what he says:

• Foundation in that era added overall titles to reviews and groups of reviews: the coverage of the seven children's books and the six sf art books each formed a continuous block of text with the lower-case headings "hop aboard kids, we're going to 1984" and "illustration, art or cosmic kitsch?" However, these titles don't appear in the Foundation contents list.

Does this match what's in your copy? Ahasuerus 10:04, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

David Langford is right: it'd pay to actually take a look into the issue. This practice only was conducted in the issues of 'Foundation' that were edited by Nicholls (and I think he wrote in one of the editorials that they were added by him, and not by the review editor). IMO they don't make the reviews into essays: they otherwise don't differ from reviews in earlier & later issues and are all part of the respecive reviews sections. Christian Stonecreek 12:45, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

Publisher's Pantheons & Consumer's Guide to Recent Writing on SF

Foundation, #11 and 12 has Publisher's Pantheons on page 101 and Consumer's Guide to Recent Writing on SF on page 168. Genre Fiction: The Roaring Years reprints these respectively as Publishers' and Consumers'. Before I variant, I wanted to check these were not database errors. Would you mind double checking? Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 11:19, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

They were indeed entered erroneously. It'd be right to merge those two (that is, four) titles. Christian Stonecreek 11:58, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

Merged. Thanks! -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:00, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

Perry Rhodan Sonderband change submission

~ Hi. This submission had a title it used disappear, so I cannot do anything with it and you will have to redo it. I do not remember what is accessible after a hard reject, so I left it there for now. When you are done referring to it, if you cannot cancel it yourself let me know and I will do the hard reject. Thanks. --MartyD (talk) 18:21, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Thanks for the info, Marty! (But I think this shouldn't have happened - importing into and editing a publication are independent from one another, or so I thought: is this perhaps a new bug?). I'll edit anew. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 03:38, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

I think the update must have changed something about one of the content records, perhaps a page number, and the title associated with that record got deleted (most likely merged) after your edit was submitted. Whatever that submission was must have been approved first. I do not know of a way for me to tell what happened. --MartyD (talk) 10:07, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

Well, this title was merged, maybe this was the cause? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:31, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

Imperium

Christian, I have the following three submissions on hold. Second, Third, and Fourth printings of Imperium. The publication date for the second printing as stated in the notes reads "The month of publication was chosen to put this printing after the first one". The other two have similar notes. I'm not familiar with this practice. It appears to contract our standards, both in general and specifically with the Date: field. A quick search shows that this is not the first time you have used this methodology. Thanks, John Scifibones 10:29, 15 September 2022 (EDT)

Excuse me for interrupting but I am familiar with this situation. I have come across many pub records where the notes state that Month has been set arbitrarily in order to sort multiple printings in the same year. So, very early in my editing career, I tried to do the same thing... and Annie told me off (very nicely)! Apparently, this practice has happened in the past but it is no longer tolerated. You can see the discussion here: Part 1 and Part 2. Unfortunately, we are left with a legacy issue of all the historic cases. You will find a lot more if you run an advanced search on publication where the Notes field contains both the words "month" and "arbitrary". Teallach (talk) 18:06, 15 September 2022 (EDT)

What would be better or right to do? We know that a later printing can't have appeared before an earlier one. Would we set all later printings of one year to the date of the first? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:16, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

I know you agree we have an obligation to ensure the record accurately reflects the underlying publication. When information is obtained from a secondary source, we document the source. Your submissions, particularly 'Perry Rhodan' are among the best I've seen. What you are doing here with the date field is turning it into nothing more than a sort field. Not only does it distort the underlying publication, but it also undermines confidence in the field across the entire database. Where does that leave us. We definitely do not set the date to the first printing. The help section is clear. If we can find a recognized secondary source, partial or full, we use that. Without such, we are forced to use 'unknown'. I know you find this distasteful. If further information surfaces, the record can be edited. I remember an extensive discussion regarding implementation of sort field(s). Hopefully this can be done at some point. John Scifibones 12:09, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Okay! Would you please approve of the submissions and either let me correct the dating (or, if you prefer correct it)? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:14, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Approved, I'll approve the date changes as soon as they hit the queue. John Scifibones 12:23, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Thanks! Submitted. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:29, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

I thought we were going with 'unknown'. Maybe I'm missing something, how do we know the subsequent printings were released in 2012? John Scifibones 12:48, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Approved. I went brain dead for a minute. Ignore the previous sentance. John Scifibones 13:05, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Will you commit to correcting all the publications where you have used an arbitrary date and abandoning this practice? If so, I will support your request. John Scifibones 10:01, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

Perry Rhodan, #3186: Alraska

Christian, I'm holding this submission. In light of your note, I think crediting 'Swen Papenbrock (in error)' and then varianting to 'Arndt Drechsler' would be more accurate. What do you think? John Scifibones 11:46, 15 September 2022 (EDT)

Yes, that would be even better. I'll cancel and resubmit. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:17, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

I saw this edit. Did you decide not to change the cover art credit as suggested or did you want me to do it? John Scifibones 10:06, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

Blanking spammers' Talk pages

I appreciate what you are trying to do with spammers' Talk pages, but it makes it more time-consuming for moderators to get to the original text, confirm that it's spam, delete the page and block the spammer. Please don't do it going forward. Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:13, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Okay, just thought that sometimes the text may be not recognized and gets a base in our wiki. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 02:10, 17 September 2022 (EDT)

Kiepenheuer & Witsch

Hello,

Saying "Now located in" is not a very useful thing - what happens 3 years down the road when they had moved but noone updated the entry? Not everyone knows to look at the History and try to figure out when that was valid (and not-logged people cannot even look at that). Instead use something like "As of September 2022" or whatever date you know they were there - that way even if they move, the entry is still correct. :) I fixed it here. Annie (talk) 13:04, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

Okay, that's even better, though this is one of the publishers I keep an eye on: any change of place will be noted. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 15:07, 24 September 2022 (EDT)

Notes (again)

Hello again,

I assume that for edits such as this one, you are planning to import the newly created parents into a book somewhere OR add notes into the originals which were not imported (for a date provenance). That should have been in the moderator notes (or even in the proper notes on the original) so that someone looking at the title before they get imported/noted, can trace why they have these dates... Annie (talk) 17:58, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

The Elephant

I approved this one too fast so I deleted it. The author name for this book is not Sławomir Mrożek but Slawomir Mrozek (unlike the accented characters, these two names actually can coexist on the server so these are two separate names in the DB). I deleted the book so you need to redo that one - but with the correct name for the author and all his stories. And yes, it is a pain with the Polish authors who have ł and ż and their names but we catalog based on the books, not based on how we wish the English publishing industry had printed the name, right? :) Thanks! Annie (talk) 18:12, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

And while I am around - we have an {{incomplete}} template for cases where you want to say "More contents to be added!". I replaced it here. Annie (talk) 18:15, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

I do think we actually don't know what version of name is stated on the title page, OCLC and the cover point towards Slawomir Mrozek, the reprint towards Sławomir Mrożek. But maybe it is better to wait for someone to take actually a look into the publication: it would be somewhat too tedious to enter all the titles possibly in vain. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 15:32, 24 September 2022 (EDT)

Let me add that this addition was initialized by the SFE3 entry, which notes no distinction; do you think that this source may not be dependaple in that regard? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 07:11, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

Unless you have a source contradicting the cover, I’d use what is on the cover for these and note that in the notes. Older English books are notorious for dropping any non-standard characters and I highly doubt that they used a different versions on the cover and on the title page. Online sources tend to overlook these and consider the age of the books as an explanation - we record as used on the book. Annie (talk) 13:19, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

Unintentional deletion

Hello Christian! I have completely unintentionally deleted a comment for your request. I was not familiar with this "rollback" and I did not know what it evokes. Fortunately Ahasuerus noticed it and corrected it. So please accept my apology. Rudam (talk) 11:36, 24 September 2022 (EDT)

Sure, no problem! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 15:32, 24 September 2022 (EDT)

Zyklus series and Series with Duplicate Numbers

Hello Christian,

Quite a lot of the Zyklus series had acquired repeated numbers based on your updates in the last months. The DB is not designed for that so we have a report to look for these so they can be corrected. Can you please look at the report here and clear these? If you would like to propose a change in the rules/conventions/practices which will allow these to stand as they are, please head to R&S and so on :) If you cannot see the report, let me know and I will post the list here. Thanks in advance! Annie (talk) 18:09, 26 September 2022 (EDT)

Annie, can you please give an example, because 'Only moderators can access the specified cleanup report'? I do suspect that titles like 'Perry Rhodan (1. Aufl.) - 1984' as by uncredited are meant, which appears six times, each time varianted to a different parent title (!?) Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:33, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

Looking more closely, it's more likely that titles like Vorstoß nach Arkon vs. the same-numbered (and in this case same-titled) Vorstoß nach Arkon cause the problem (!?)

It is the latter case - two titles with the same number in the same series. This is not a common scenario - the only other case we have that in the DB is a short story/interior art mixed series and I already pinged the editor who worked on it about it. And as usual, if this is not used that way in the DB, there may be underlying software issues when it is done (and having two separate different texts makes the series impossible to order properly.

I wondered if the report is moderator only. Here is the complete list (series first, number that is repeated second, ignore the leading number (it is the report line):

231 PR Zyklus 18: Chronofossilien — Vironauten 1271.1 232 PR Zyklus 18: Chronofossilien — Vironauten 1216.1 233 PR Zyklus 15: Die Kosmischen Burgen 938.1 234 PR Zyklus 16: Die Kosmische Hanse 1053.1 235 PR Zyklus 5: Die Meister der Insel 214.1 236 PR Zyklus 5: Die Meister der Insel 224.9 237 PR Zyklus 4: Das Zweite Imperium 184.1 238 PR Zyklus 4: Das Zweite Imperium 189.1 239 PR Zyklus 4: Das Zweite Imperium 167.1 240 PR Zyklus 4: Das Zweite Imperium 199.1 241 PR Zyklus 3: Die Posbis 111.1 242 PR Zyklus 2: Atlan und Arkon 77.1 243 PR Zyklus 2: Atlan und Arkon 92.1 244 PR Zyklus 2: Atlan und Arkon 56.1 245 PR Zyklus 2: Atlan und Arkon 71.1 246 PR Zyklus 2: Atlan und Arkon 69.1 247 PR Zyklus 2: Atlan und Arkon 84.1 248 PR Zyklus 2: Atlan und Arkon 86.1 249 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 6.1 250 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 11.1 251 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 19.1 252 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 30.1 253 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 39.1 254 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 8.1 255 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 26.1 256 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 2.1 257 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 33.1 258 PR Zyklus 1: Die Dritte Macht 4.1

Because they are all .1 I wonder if you were trying to do something somewhat creative but dumping them at the same number is not a good idea IMO. sorry for the formatting - these read better in edit mode - on my phone and formatting is hard from it. Any help you can provide clearing these will be very welcome :) Annie (talk) 02:14, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

Well, for the doubled numbers (like the above #39.1 'Vorstoß nach Arkon'): these titles all end at the same point in the respective internal chronology, they only were adapted in different ways. That's why I took to this solution. Christan Stonecreek (talk) 04:12, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

But the DB is not really designed to allow that, neither is that a practice we use and this is not the only series with books running in parallel… so they need to get untangled and get different numbers. Using the publication order to order them inside of the decimals is the usual solution with notes that the stories take place at the same time. Plus you may know why you did that but no one else looking at the series would know. Annie (talk) 11:49, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

Okay! On re-thinking this issue most of the titles will have the respective ending of the final novella anyway (for 39.1 the ending of 39), though some will have some changed or added ending. The idea was just to sort out the original novellas from their adaptations. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:04, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

A subseries or set of a them maybe? We have a few other series where the original books were reworked/changed enough to require new title records and in these cases we make a subseries, add notes in the main series and in the subseries explaining the relationship (when known) and whatever number schemes there are. That way the series are also a lot more readable on the screen. Just throwing another idea your way while you are thinking on the best way to organize these. In all cases, write some notes on the series level explaining the special numbering - you know why you wanted to split them and why they belong where they belong, someone finding our records from internet who is not well versed at the Zyklus practices will get lost. :) Annie (talk) 12:46, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

I've thought about that, too. But since some the novellas were just translated, and the same ones were incorporated into fix-ups this would also lead to a (greater) mess.

And for the French titles: they would then end up in different series (first they presented translations of the novellas, organized either in anthologies or collections; then changed to translations of the fix-ups).

With more than 3,000 original novellas published so far in an ongoing chronology that was and is augmented with many additional tales, anyone hoping for readability or a fast grasping will be lost anyway, I think. But I'll add an explanatory note to the series; thanks for the idea. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:30, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

Series in ISFDB are flat so sometimes you need to make compromises and take into account how they are implemented and how they look on a screen when someone looks at them. This would be solvable a lot easier if a book can belong to two or more series :) As they cannot, we do the best we can with what we have. Annie (talk) 13:35, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

Hochzeit in Atomweiler [8]

Can you please add an author and a language to this poor title? No idea how you managed to leave it with no author but it somehow happened. I suspect it is Daniel Mróz but as you are around and it is a verified book, I prefer to check. :) It probably also need a page number (or alternatively it needs ejecting from the publication and deletion). Thanks! Annie (talk) 16:17, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

Must have been a systems hiccup since titles with no author are not allowed when submitting (and I'm sure I also added the page). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:42, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

It's very ominous that there's no record of my latest update when I added the additional pieces of art last week in the pub. edit history. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:49, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Actually, that missing submission in the history explains what happened: the submission errored out midway through its run: submission. It happens occasionally (rarely but happens) and yes, that would produce a weird result. Check anything after that image though - as it seems it errored on it, anything after that may not have made it. Annie (talk) 02:01, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Der Botschafter

What is the source for the date of the parent here. Thanks! Annie (talk) 19:24, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

A note on first publications in "Zabawa: Satire in lustloser Zeit". Sorry that the Polish chapbook was dated erroneously to 1981: there's no publication of it to be found at WordCat. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:49, 28 September 2022 (EDT)

Approved and note added. Please make sure that ALL titles which have no publications attached confirming the date (and are not parents existing just to move the title to the canonical author) have notes explaining their dates' (and if needed - their titles') provenance. You already did the research if you are setting the date, just document it. Thanks! Annie (talk) 14:01, 28 September 2022 (EDT)

Self-approver flag set on the account

As per the outcome of the Community Portal discussion, the self-approver flag has been set on your account. Please use it wisely :-) Ahasuerus (talk) 14:05, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Will do. And more careful than before, too! Chrstian Stonecreek (talk) 02:10, 30 September 2022 (EDT)

I Am Alive and You Are Dead

https://archive.org/details/iamaliveyouarede0000carr; Recently uploaded to Archive, notes here say date source unknown but it says the date on the copyright page, I added link and changed 01 to 00 in date, you may want to add info to notes. --Username (talk) 08:55, 11 October 2022 (EDT)

Zurück in die Steinzeit

The cover artist of this is not Boris Vallejo, but Tony Roberts, see Survivor. Horzel (talk) 17:48, 12 October 2022 (EDT)

Thanks! I was in doubt that Vallejo was the artist: there was no original English parent to be found. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:58, 15 October 2022 (EDT)

Cartoon: Rüsselmops, der Außerirdische (Perry Rhodan Report Nr. 198)

Please see this edit which impacts your verified pubs. Are these the same? Or should the second one actually be a different number? -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:54, 24 October 2022 (EDT)

Please reject, the later one should in fact bear the number of Report #199. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:10, 24 October 2022 (EDT)

Rejected. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 10:38, 24 October 2022 (EDT)

Ping-Pong mutations

Please stop f#@$%ing around or I'll make a request to revoke your self-approval rights. This is my last and final warning, I have clearly explained why you can't have it your way.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 16:24, 6 November 2022 (EST)

I don't know if you're aware of this, but since 2020 someone's uploaded many of these books, https://archive.org/search.php?query=scheer+darlton&sort=-addeddate, including the 1 in question, which I've added a link to in a pending edit. If I may give you some advice, after that lengthy argument recently about the page count of some old M.Z. Bradley work, Falcons of ?, and now this, there are clearly several people here who have a long-standing grudge against you, and after having several strikes already they would love to prevent you from ever being a self-moderator again. There are countless things to be done here, even after more than 15 years of regular folks being allowed to edit (as my 37,000 edits in less than 2 years can attest to), so if somebody says something should be a certain way, just let it go and move on to something else. The alternative is losing your self-mod status and having to wait endlessly for a mod to get around to approving your edits, which has been getting much worse lately. Believe me, you don't want that. --Username (talk) 17:12, 6 November 2022 (EST)

Please do make a request, Dirk, if you think it's up to a moderator's qualification to change verified publications without requesting (or even an information of) the verifier; this is quite below our standard, and you seem have taken to this habit lately. If you'd have asked, you would have been informed that the definition as CHAPBOOK is perfectly okay in light of this discussion. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:45, 7 November 2022 (EST)

Okay, posted the problems you have at the moderator noticeboard. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:23, 8 November 2022 (EST)

@Username: these additions/transformations were done in joined accordance, see here and the contemporary discussions: initially, the volumes were entered as novels, whereas they (from a certain point in time on and up to #199 of the French incarnation) contained translations of the original novellas, and thus need to be transformed accordingly. (This is one of the many things to do you mention). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:20, 8 November 2022 (EST)

Posting and the Watchlists and histories

Hi Christian,

A small request: when editing your posts, please leave the title of the post in the "Summary:" field under the post. Look at this history. See how ALL updates (minor or not) but yours have the post name in front of them? When you delete that part when you are writing your own summary in that field, someone needs to go through comparisons to see what post you had edited and chase down the change making working through the board with multiple changes almost impossible to deal with (and almost ensuring that your edits may be lost if there are a lot of traffic - if someone does not have a reason to, they won't reread a post they do not realize has a new/changed message. So can you please leave the title of the post in the summary at all times? Thanks! 13:44, 9 November 2022 (EST)

Okay, will do so in the future. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 02:51, 10 November 2022 (EST)

Mitkey Astromouse

Hi Christian,

If this is an adaptation for young readers, then it is not the same story and needs to be unvarianted and to be left on its own and connected only via the notes. We connect translations, we do not connect adaptations which change the story drastically. Let me know if your note is incorrect thus making it a proper variant. Annie (talk) 18:46, 14 November 2022 (EST)

I'd say the adaptational part is only in the use of a somewhat less 'strong' language (more fit for children), and the story itself is represented completely. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:48, 15 November 2022 (EST)

Then it cannot be juvenile if the original is not. If if is adapted for children, it cannot be a variant. If it is a translation, it cannot be juvenile. You decide based on the text. If it is specifically adapted for children, I would never call it a variant personally. Annie (talk) 02:04, 15 November 2022 (EST)

I haven't been aware that an editor changed it to juvenile, I'll change it back.

On translations vs. variant titles: there do exist translations that change the meaning of sentences, chapters or whole works into something different than the author had written. In this case I'd think there's not enough to validate a not-varianting. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 02:18, 15 November 2022 (EST)

Perry Rhodan, #209: Im Banne der Scheintöter

Both Dirk Geiling's titles here should be Interior art I suspect? Annie (talk) 18:48, 14 November 2022 (EST)

Of course! Corrected, thanks for finding this! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:49, 15 November 2022 (EST)

Das Hexenschiff - dating issues again

Hello Christian,

Can you please explain where did you get this date from? When the date of a title is different from its first publication we have on the list, we either need a note explaining the provenance of the date OR that very first edition to be added. Same question for its parent and the chapbook it is in. Annie (talk) 18:53, 14 November 2022 (EST)

Same question for the dates here. Annie (talk) 18:55, 14 November 2022 (EST)

And Deadwood — Stadt der Särge, Der Jetset-Dämon, Die Grabräuber, Die Kreuzweg-Legende, Die Vampir-Polizei, Drei Gräber bis Atlantis, Dämonenfalle Rom, Geisterdämmerung, Der Jetset-Dämon and all their associated titles (short stories, covers and chapbooks and the parents where they exist). Unless you are adding the older version of the book(s) immediately, writing notes when you change the dates are mandatory. Some of these had been changed in March and had been just sitting unsupported for 8 months... Can you please go and fix these? Thanks! Annie (talk) 19:00, 14 November 2022 (EST)

And I found more... Can you see this report? If you can, please get all the titles where you got weird dates on and fix them - either add the missing edition or add notes on every title where the date does not match the publications we have. If you cannot see the report, I will be happy to pull a complete list (in addition to the ones already listed above). Thanks! Annie (talk) 19:03, 14 November 2022 (EST)

All these associated titles were published initially in this series and should have been dated accordingly upon entering the respective later publications (which I didn't do). But for the sake of it, I'll work through the list. Thanks for bringing this up. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:44, 15 November 2022 (EST)

That’s great that you know where the dates come from but someone else finding them won’t know what they are looking at and if someone is working this report, they may not be nice enough to come ask you and instead will just reset the dates to what the publications show this losing your work and some of the data. As a basic rule, unless you are adding the first editions as well, each title needs notes explaining the date’s provenance. That’s not “good to have” - it is a “must have”. Thanks for working on them. :) Annie (talk) 02:02, 15 November 2022 (EST)

Stanislaw-Lem-Bibliographie

Hi Christian, this title appears on the cleanup report for 'Variant Title Dates Before Canonical Title Dates'. I.m.o. the earlier version should be the parent, not the variant. Was this on purpose? --Willem (talk) 04:18, 16 November 2022 (EST)

Yes. I did this because the later one was more complete (adding new and formerly missed out publications & titles), and also because Klaus Staemmler was involved in the later one (and he seems to have added much of his knowledge). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:48, 16 November 2022 (EST)

Thanks. Ignored, and thus removed from the report. --Willem (talk) 11:09, 16 November 2022 (EST)

Can Such Things Be?

Hi. Please, if you have time, to approve this submission (5493926). It's a lot of work. Many thanks. --Florin (talk) 02:20, 24 November 2022 (EST)

Sorry! I only am a self-approver right now; I'll post your request at JLaTondre's talk page. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 08:42, 24 November 2022 (EST)

Edit has been approved. Florin, please add the variants to the original works. As the original was not all speculative fiction, if you find any contents that do not belong, they should be removed and deleted. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:46, 24 November 2022 (EST)

Only the fantastic stories were translated in this book. Once again, many thanks. --Florin (talk) 14:32, 24 November 2022 (EST)

New Worlds 3

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?23795; Archive.org copy, https://archive.org/details/newworlds00garn, is 223 pages, not 219, in case you can check your copy and change if needed. I added a link in an edit to their copy. --Username (talk) 14:37, 29 November 2022 (EST)

Prager Ghettosagen

Hello Christian,

When you have a chance, can you see if you can find more about this book in German sources - cover, format (hardcover or paperback) and the actual year or an explanation of the discrepancy as the two sources have different values). Thanks! Annie (talk) 12:38, 1 December 2022 (EST)

Sorry, nothing really dependable to be found. A hardcover publication seems to be the most likely one, though, and the Czech source is displayed courtesy of Charles University in Prague, and is properly sourced, so 1896 seems to be the year. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:55, 1 December 2022 (EST)

Yeah, I figured 1896 was the more likely and I lean towards hc as well but as I am not very well versed in German-language Prague books from the end of the 19th century, I figured I should come and ask to see if you can find something else. The Czech sources don't have much more (besides confirming the year actually). Thanks for checking! Annie (talk) 14:07, 1 December 2022 (EST)

Einige werden überleben

Hello Christian, I've credited the cover of Einige werden überleben to Sanjulian and noted the original appearance, where it was identified as his work. Hubert Peregrin (talk) 11:52, 2 December 2022 (EST)

Thank you! One more riddle of this sometimes improperly credited covers solved! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:01, 2 December 2022 (EST)

World Cup Anthologies

https://archive.org/details/agonyecstasyneww0000unse; Excellent work on A Book of Two Halves. Royle edited another anthology about football (soccer); 1 story is on ISFDB, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2382281. Other genre authors are in the contents; judging by the intro it sounds like at least a couple of the stories are futuristic, although there's also some non-fiction in this one. --Username (talk) 13:02, 19 December 2022 (EST)

Thanks! I'll see if I can get hold of a copy of that one. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:20, 19 December 2022 (EST)

It's on Archive.org at the link I provided. --Username (talk) 13:25, 19 December 2022 (EST)

I've seen that, but in this case I prefer to have a copy for reading (and hopefully enjoying). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:27, 19 December 2022 (EST)

You had an actual print copy of Two Halves already or you bought one? Also, the archived copy of Agony is missing title page and copyright page and I don't see anywhere online that shows them. --Username (talk) 15:58, 19 December 2022 (EST)

I bought one: the line-up of authors got me interested (and it seems that Nicholas Royle is even better as editor than as author). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:41, 20 December 2022 (EST)

Treffpunkt Knossos

Please see this submission that impacts your verified pub. Should the change (Baranek to Beranek) be accepted? If so, the publication record also needs to be updated. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:58, 23 December 2022 (EST)

Yes, please: I'll update the pub. record accordingly. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:03, 23 December 2022 (EST)

In Laurins Blick: Das Buch deutscher Phantasten

Christian, I added the contents to the existing hc record here and created the pb record here. If you have time, will you look up the original publication dates for any new titles. Clearly it can't be 1982 since many of the authors died long before. Thanks for the help. John Scifibones 11:58, 8 January 2023 (EST) int

You're right, this is a reprint anthology; some of the titles enclosed may have attributed with new titles, though. But I'll see what I can find out. Thanks for the link, Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:02, 8 January 2023 (EST)

Correction: the last three pieces (by Franke, Frischmuth & Ende) seem to be original to this antholgy. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:12, 8 January 2023 (EST)

Die Unterdrückten

Cover art credit for this is wrong. It isn't Alan Daniels but Tim WHite. I have had confirmation from Tim's daughter who stated "Yes it is one of Tim's" --Mavmaramis (talk) 15:03, 18 January 2023 (EST)

Thank you very much! That's good to know. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:28, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams: Volume One

Hi Christian, I'm looking at this set of titles. You and I are the only verifiers extant - yours here and mine here. For mine, I've entered the book title (as on the title page), and all the introductions as they appear at the head of each essay.

Could you check yours to see if yours are the same?

I've put a call for info on the Help Desk in case anyone has a copy of the unverified pubs. That said, and if no further information is forthcoming, would you as a Moderator have any objections to me changing the titling on the unverified pubs?

If you agree that that is all correct, I'll make all the changes necessary and post you the results back here. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 10:10, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Yes, please proceed. You don't have to post the results, though, I'll take a look when the publicazion has been changed. Thanks in advance, Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:41, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Thanks for that :) I'll wait a bit to see if there're any responses on the Help desk. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 21:47, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Nova, #31

Hello Christian, in this pub the page count doesn't fit.

• The last numbered page is p. 326 -> ok
• followed by a page with an uncredited photo portrait of Helmut Wenske -> p. 327
• one page with a small ad for the publisher -> p. 328
• the inside backcover featuring an ad -> p. 329 or not counted
• page 331 (the inside back cover) -> it should p. 329 or not counted
• Total page count 332 -> I think p. 328 without covers and inside covers

Please take a look. Many thanks Henna (talk) 15:33, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Chiming in with the relevant help page: Magazines page rules are different. :) You count ALL pages PLUS the 4 covers - so if the magazine has 328 pages without the covers, it is recorded as 332. See the help page: "For magazines, the rule is to use the actual page count - including the cover. For example, early issues of Fantastic Universe numbered the interior pages from 1 to 192, not counting the front or back covers. This would be entered into the ISFDB record as "196"." Annie (talk) 17:47, 19 January 2023 (EST)

Hello Annie and Christian, strange rules. Good Night. Henna (talk) 18:37, 19 January 2023 (EST)

German Science Fiction Times Nr. 118/19

Hi Christian, I have managed to get my hands on the Feb/March edition and on p. 39 it states that (a) with the beginning of February 1971 Moewig has changed its day of publication from Wednesday to Friday and (b) that Perry Rhodan Nr. 500 would be published on 26 March 1971. This means that our theory of the 'missing week' occurring in 1972 is wrong. Instead Moewig must have changed its day of publication at least twice, i.e from Friday to Wednesday sometime in the late 1960s and the back to Friday in 1971. Actually this is very similar to what Pabel-Moewig did in December 2003, when the day switched from Tuesday (PR 2206 / 2 Dec 2003) to Friday (PR 2207 / 5 dec 2003). I am still looking for older editions of SFT to pinpoint the first change. What to do: My suggestion is that we

• change the dates starting Feb 1971
• this places PR 493 / TN 163 on 5 February
• The preceding numbers, i.e. PR492 / TN 162 would be moved from Friday, 5 February to Wednesday, 3 February with corresponding notes.

Do you concur? Anybody else that we should involve before going ahead? Best, John JLochhas (talk) 05:13, 23 January 2023 (EST)

Yes, that sounds absolutely reasonable. I don't know of anybody else as PV for this period of time (1971-1973). Let's go ahead. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 05:23, 23 January 2023 (EST)

You must now be swamped with changes... It's done, please do me a favour cross-check the series' notes - just in case I got lost in detail. Many thanks! Best, John JLochhas (talk) 03:34, 24 January 2023 (EST)

Thank you for doing this load of work, John! Will take a look into the notes, but on first glanve it looks well done. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:10, 24 January 2023 (EST)

Clive Barker Image

Hi Christian -

Could you please take a look at [[ISFDB:Community Portal#Clive Barker Author Photo|this discussion]. There has been a third edit to change the author image and I think we need to reach a consensus rather than continue to churn the image. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 10:27, 23 January 2023 (EST)

Glukhovsky - Metro — Die Trilogie

Hi Christian, there's no PV for this pub but you have edited it previously. There's a missing length for 'Das Ende der Straße'. Could you sort it please. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 10:52, 7 February 2023 (EST)

I'm not entirely sure if it's a novelette or a novella, but the first is more likely, so I'll change it accordingly and insert a cautionary note. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:01, 7 February 2023 (EST)

Thanks for doing that. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 11:06, 7 February 2023 (EST)

Valentine

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?25420; I just did a bunch of edits for books from that publisher, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5583283, ...5583285, ...5583289, and ...5583290, which should be approved sometime soon, and I suggest that the publisher should be changed to Fragments West / The Valentine Press like it says in the books (or at least the ones I saw). --Username (talk) 11:19, 15 February 2023 (EST)

No problem with that. I'll do the change for the publication I have a copy of. Thanks, Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:37, 15 February 2023 (EST)

Tinted edges in PR pubs

Hello Christian. I have just verified this pub, and noticed the tinted edges. Have you ever come across others like it ? Thanks, Linguist (talk) 10:54, 16 February 2023 (EST).

Yes, a few have those. Shall I note that for the ones I verify/-ied? Maybe it was done for a certain period of time, I'll take a look. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:06, 16 February 2023 (EST)

For now it does seem that this may have been a feature of this bunch of publications, #s 13-24 (though #29 may also count: either its edges were bleached by time or tinted with a very light yellow). I only have a few of those and will add more to the publications next week. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:51, 17 February 2023 (EST)

OK, thanks. I noted it because from my point of view, it is rather exceptional in Fleuve Noir publications (but rather common in early Livre de Poche, for instance). Linguist (talk) 04:14, 17 February 2023 (EST).

Queen of the Country Problem

I need a favor. This was rejected, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5583237, and there is absolutely no way that I'm entering all that info again. Prime Books has been one of the most vexing publishers I've done edits for, and in this case the copy of Goldberg's posthumous collection on Archive.org which I entered 2 years ago, when I didn't know very well what I was doing, was come across again recently by me and the above edit was made. I think I've done all I can do with this book, but the WorldCat verification by you seems to point to this, https://books.google.com/books?id=fkTx3mYODQAC, which looks the same on the back cover but has a different ISBN for God only knows what reason. There's some confusion with one of these ISBN linking up with a P.K. Dick book or something and I don't know what to say about that, but I think Prime just messed up as usual. So can you enter a new record cloning this book, entering the different ISBN, and moving your verification over to that so this mod can un-reject my edit? Thanks in advance. --Username (talk) 10:08, 17 February 2023 (EST)

I think your submission was rejected because of the change of the ISBN, right? This ISBN does fit the entry at WorldCat and it leads you to the Goldberg book at Amazon; whereas the other ISBN is connected to a PKD collection at WorldCat. Is the latter one stated anywhere in the Goldberg book? (But even if so, the other one likely has to be also in there, I think). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:22, 17 February 2023 (EST)

The scan on Archive.org has the ISBN-13 on its copyright page that's in my rejected edit while its back cover barcode has an ISBN-10, 0-8095-5636-7, and the ISBN-13 below that. Confusion sets in because as can be seen in my edit the scan URL is for a P.K. Dick book. I can only surmise that they issued a new printing with the correct ISBN because the scan on Google Books has a higher number, ISBN-10 978-0-8095-7308-0 on its copyright page and ISBN-13 0-8095-7308-3 on its back cover with the ISBN-13 below that. So I think the edition I entered is the first and WorldCat ISBN is second, so a new record needs creating for the second and ID moved so my edit can be un-rejected. In a weird coincidence, I was looking at the old Eternity Online site at pulpeternity.com for story links I could add to ISFDB and while it was mostly fruitless because they either only gave extracts from stories they published in their print magazine or broke full stories up into parts, some of which are dead making adding the links pointless, right there amid all that mess was a story from 1998 by Goldberg, "One More Vietnam Story", which was reprinted in Queen of the Country as "Another Vietnam Story" and supposedly original even though it was published nearly 10 years earlier. Have I ever mentioned how much I dislike Prime Books? --Username (talk) 11:57, 17 February 2023 (EST)

Yes, I tend toward appreciating that I don't own any of their books (hope so). But for the problem we face: I think it's best to assume there is a later edition with the ISBN documented at WorldCat (at least, it only states the copyright year of 2008), and to set this edition to 'unknown'. What do you think? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:38, 17 February 2023 (EST)

I agree. --Username (talk) 15:30, 17 February 2023 (EST)

Okay, done. I think I also have put in the changes & additions you submitted. Before you clone this: may it be worth a thought that the issuing with the other ISBN occurred after the 'right' one? (After all, the PKD collection seems to have been published only in the following year, 2009). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 02:00, 18 February 2023 (EST)

This isn't what I asked you to do. My edit shouldn't have been rejected by the mod in the first place, they should have asked on my message board why I changed the ISBN and I would have explained as I did above here, and then you were supposed to clone it and move your WorldCat ID over to that and enter the ISBN as it is on WorldCat and the copy on Google Books. What you did here is add the alternate ISBN to the existing record. I give up. You guys take care of it. --Username (talk) 08:21, 18 February 2023 (EST)

It's debatable if your submission should have been rejected: at least it countered the existing OCLC and the Amazon entries. And I did just what we agreed upon above. There really seem to exist at least two editions (or printings), each of them with a different ISBN. One of the remaining questions is: which of them came first? Since there doesn't seem to be an answer right now: maybe it'd be best to set both of them to 'unknown'. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 08:29, 18 February 2023 (EST)

No, because I asked you above, "So can you enter a new record cloning this book"; you didn't clone it and move over your ID and ISBN, you just added "date unknown" to the existing record that I created a few years ago, it doesn't make sense to clone that because the edition on Google/WorldCat is likely the later one; I see now that you also changed the cover artist and added a dash to her name, which is wrong because there's no dash in her name on the back cover of the Archive.org copy or the Google copy; it should have been made a variant. This book was confusing enough to work on, now everything here is confused and I really don't feel like doing anything else with it so you and the mod and whoever else can clean it up. --Username (talk) 08:52, 18 February 2023 (EST)

If your submission would have been approved the ISBN would had to be reinstalled: there was a secondary verification for that specific ISBN; that is just plain ISFDB policy. If there does pop up another publication of a title with a different ISBN we do add a new publication record for it, according to our etiquette. The publication I added a secondary verification for is likely the later one, but that is not entirely sure: Amazon still gives a January 2008 date for it (but it's possible that this is erroneous). Alas, we seem to not have a date for the copy to be found at archive.org. That ain't nice, but seems to reflect our state of knowledge. If you can come up with hard facts about the dates or the chronological order of the publications: that would be appreciated. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 15:28, 18 February 2023 (EST)

Unintended link

Christian, Consider disabling the template here, it's linking your archive page to here, here and here. I happened to be looking at Category:Author images and noticed it. John Scifibones 12:55, 26 February 2023 (EST)

Hi! Thanks for the hint. I think I have worked upon the disconnection. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:14, 26 February 2023 (EST)

Submissions still pending

Hi Stonecreek,

I have made 2 submissions on January 27: 5560464 and 5560612. I got a welcome message from MagicUnk on February 13, but because my submissions are still pending, I have asked him, how long it could take until it's approved (or rejected). He told me that he is not able to make these approvals due to not enough knowledge about the Perry Rhodan and Atlan series. He told me also that there are already entries, albeit with a different date. It's because there were different editions. In the case of Atlan 154 it's the second editon and in the case of Perry Rhodan 215 it's the fourth edition, which are still missing in ISFDB. He gave me the advice to contact you. So, here I am. These submissions are important for me, because they contain some of my old works. And I want to use (the complete) bibliography as a reference for a possible new publication. So, I hope you can help me. If there should be anything wrong with my submission, please tell me.

Pinudeycos (talk) 07:57, 2 March 2023 (EST)

If it would be okay that the dates, credits, notes and contents might be adjusted to the existing overall scheme (like here for the 1981 publications of Atlan (2. Aufl.)), I see no problem of approving them: I'll ping MagicUnk.

Thanks for contributing! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:57, 2 March 2023 (EST)

Thank you very much! Pinudeycos (talk) 11:10, 2 March 2023 (EST)

My submissions are online now. I really appreciate your quick help! Keep continuing this great work with ISFDB. Pinudeycos (talk) 18:13, 2 March 2023 (EST)

Thanks for the kind words, and if there's anything you think should be added to our little database, please contribute and/or ask for help with adding. Also, please let me know when the republication of your works comes into the hot stage. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:20, 5 March 2023 (EST)

Plan D

Hi Christian,

When adding Bulgarian books from German and/or English sources which do not show Cyrillic letters, please keep in mind that Bulgarian uses the Cyrillic alphabet exclusively. With a few notable exceptions, that includes the author name, the publisher name and the title itself. If you cannot find the information as it is shown on a title page/cover or cannot work in the alphabet, please either leave a note on my page so I can clean up the record after you add it or just leave me a note so I can add the book and I will be happy to assist. Even checking Goodreads would have given you the correct title for this book although a local source is always preferred. I will be happy to assist with any other European languages where you cannot get the correct spelling of titles/authors/publishers as well. Thanks! Annie (talk) 15:31, 18 April 2023 (EDT)

Unfortunately, Annie is right: it's hard to get the spelling and other subtleties like inflections right when working with languages -- and especially alphabets/scripts -- that you are not familiar with. I have entered a lot of English translations of Japanese "light novels" as well as their Japanese language parent titles (mostly using Amazon JP), but my attempts to create publication records for Japanese pubs have been less than successful. Luckily, we have editors who are familiar with Japanese, Bulgarian, Russian and a number of other languages. Please don't hesitate to ask for help when you come across them. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:31, 18 April 2023 (EDT)

Okay. I thought that when OCLC uses the Latin alphabet this would ensure that the book was published using that. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 04:47, 19 April 2023 (EDT)

OCLC/Worldcat get their data from member libraries. Different libraries have used different data entry standards over the years, just like we have used different data entry standards. The result is that OCLC's data can be messy, especially for languages which do not use Latin characters. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:08, 19 April 2023 (EDT)

Boken om Pippi Långstrump

We have the parent collection of three Pippi novellas as 2015 Boken om Pippi Långstrump T2937288 with your title note "There may (quite likely) have been earlier editions". Does this parent COLLECTION represent a 2015 Swedish-language publication that you identified but chose not to add to the database? --Pwendt|talk 14:39, 24 April 2023 (EDT)

That's right. I found at Amazon only a 2015 publication but do strongly assume that there was a previous one in Swedish (and I personally would like to enter that first). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 14:42, 24 April 2023 (EDT)

British Library record BL 002174012 reports 232-page Rabén & Sjögren 1952.

I don't find that edition at WorldCat[*]; only these two as earlier than 2015:

OCLC 255600782 as 1969 4th ed?

OCLC 728651122 as 1982, series Från Pippi till Ronja ... which must be SE LIBRIS 7235299.

* WorldCat search ti:"Boken om Pippi" ; sort by Title A-Z

--Pwendt|talk 14:26, 29 April 2023 (EDT)

Would you think that the British Library record is trustworthy enough to date the title to 1952? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 16:26, 29 April 2023 (EDT)

I see now that KB.se is the national library of Sweden. I will trust that.

search LIBRIS.kb.se: shows editions 1 to 4 illustrated by Ingrid Vang Nyman 1952, 1962, 1966, 1969 (232, 232, 240, 240 pages) and "5., omarb. uppl." 1978, 246 pp, "Vang-Nyman". There I stop.

Now I redate the parent COLLECTION as 1952. No SV publications, which I leave to you. --Pwendt|talk 20:17, 30 April 2023 (EDT)

Thank you. It will take a little bit of time to catch up with those Swedish publications, though: other projects demand quite a bit of work. But I will eventually get to them. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 07:04, 1 May 2023 (EDT)

Series title - Introductions, afterwords and notes for Isaac Asimov’s own work

Hello Christian, as I'll be adding to the series, I'm of the opinion that this title is too long, overly prescriptive and intrusive at pub level. In keeping with other essay series (for instance "Asimov's Essays: F&SF", "Letters: Isaac Asimov"), I propose changing it to "Asimov's Essays: own work". This would also suggest a subsequent series title "Asimov's Essays: other's work". If you're in agreement, could you process this submission or hold it if not. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 18:41, 26 April 2023 (EDT)

I have no problem with this change. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:20, 27 April 2023 (EDT)

Can we use proper capitalization for series names please? :) I've fixed this one when I approved it. Annie (talk) 12:01, 27 April 2023 (EDT)

Will do :) Thanks for fixing that Annie. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 17:14, 27 April 2023 (EDT)

Inge Holm

Hello Christian!

Can you look on this submission [8].It seems that you had made this specific record at that time. Rudolf Rudam (talk) 13:09, 27 April 2023 (EDT)

Sorry, Rudolf, can't look into the submission. Can you tell what's the intended change? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:57, 27 April 2023 (EDT)

As I am around and not sure Rudolf is still around: No change, just a note "Inge Holm and Inge Heym are not identical. Inge Holm is Inge Holm and the wife of author Malte Heim. She is younger than Malte Heim, who was born in 1940." Annie (talk) 14:21, 27 April 2023 (EDT)

I'm still sceptical without a note on the source for this. If you take a look at the Wikipedia entry: it states that Inge Heym was born as Inge Holm, and it seems to be a bit of a coincidence that Inge Heim (as Malte Heim's wife) also would have an alternate name of Inge Holm. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 15:11, 27 April 2023 (EDT)

On the other hand, it seems possible that such things happen, somehow that also depends on who supplied the information. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 04:54, 28 April 2023 (EDT)

Hello Christian!

1. Sorry, but I didn't know you couldn't open the link.

2. In the Wiki entry of Inge Heym is no hint to detect, that she is involved with SF.

3. All ISFDB entries of Inge Holm have the copyright for Inge Holm.

4. FYI the submitter is Ronald Hahn! Maybe he is right with his statement. Rudolf Rudam (talk) 09:53, 28 April 2023 (EDT)

Ad 2): Right, there's no hint for her, but Inge Heym's husband Stefan Heym did write some titles of sf interest around the same time when Inge Holm was active in the scene.

Ad 4): Anyway, I'd trust Ronald M. Hahn anytime: he likely knows most German language people active in the 1970s & 1980s in person, and is as author of dependable reference works trustworthy.

Thus, I adapted the author entry accordingly: if there's anything to add, please do so. Thanks for the informational update! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 15:51, 29 April 2023 (EDT)

I look exactly like that and have therefore approved the submission. Thanks for the modification. Rudolf Rudam (talk) 05:07, 30 April 2023 (EDT)

Accents

It doesn't seem to be necessary to transliterate names or titles with a single accent as á, é, ó, ú or à, è, ò, ù because the search function will find the elements even if they are spelled as a, e, o , u. Try "Rebelion en la galaxia". --Zapp (talk) 01:30, 11 May 2023 (EDT)

Well, it should, I do think. Transliteration was thought of for "non-Latin alphabet/script", and the Latin alphabet doesn't know of accents. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 02:10, 11 May 2023 (EDT)

If I may step in... try "Was machen wir bloß mit Ragland Park?". An interesting point you've raised Zapp. I wonder what the search function's full capabilities are, there's nothing much in the help that I can find. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 18:58, 11 May 2023 (EDT)

Ahah, there's this How does the ISFDB deal with Unicode and accented characters?. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 19:16, 11 May 2023 (EDT)

Well 'ß' is an unknown letter (except for German), the accents are something different, but both possibilties stand for non-Latin letters. (Though "Was machen wir bloß mit Ragland Park?" does work with the simple (not the advanced) search). Christian 07:55, 12 May 2023 (EDT)

Just to chime in as one of the users in the non-Latin-based languages - the problem is not the search for bloß, the problem is that people who cannot produce ß should be able to type ss instead - and that won't be found unless we have a variant dropping the Eszett. Thus the requirement for the transliteration. The search can find any text that matches exactly - known letters or not.

The accents are slightly different. Technically, latin-1 (which is what we use) treats them as the same character as their main letter - that's why we cannot have the author name as variant with and without them for example - for the DB they are the same letter. As such, they really do not need transliteration. But they do not harm anything so I am not going to remove them if someone adds them. And they should not be used in directory entries (the directory name on the author page). Hope that clarifies things a bit. Annie (talk) 12:50, 12 May 2023 (EDT)

As I've been submitting a lot of transliteration edits, could you clarify whether Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended-B or Latin Extended Additional characters should be transliterated? Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 13:38, 12 May 2023 (EDT)

I personally do think so: if a directory name needs to be transliterated, the author's name and the legal name should be so; and if those are transliterated it seems logical to apply the same to titles. (But if you don't want to go into this with accents, you don't need to).

There are some more specialities: ø, ö, ä, ü, œ etc. etc. need to be transliterated, I think. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:46, 12 May 2023 (EDT)

ø, ö, ä, ü, œ and other critters like that should always be transliterated because if you cannot type them, you cannot find the book. With accented letters, as the search will find them anyway, it does not matter but it does not harm. The easiest way to decide? Search for the title without any of the accents in our standard search. If it can be found with no transliteration, you are good. If it cannot be found? We need a transliteration. Alternatively, let the cleanup reports regenerate on these and only add to the ones it complains about for the ones you are not sure about. :) Annie (talk) 13:54, 12 May 2023 (EDT)

German Artist Martin H.

[9]; I suspect either they spelled his name differently or someone entered it differently here. Same artist? I think you're PV for all of them. --Username (talk) 14:04, 13 May 2023 (EDT)

I verified two of the three publications. But both names are oftenly used in German (not too far away from Andreas Müller), and thus three possibilities are given: the three items are by one and the same, or they are by different people (and it is even possible that there are three different men involved). The thing to look up is if there's an address given, but I can't do that for the publication in the fanzine "Extravenös", you'll have to ask the PV for that. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 05:39, 14 May 2023 (EDT)

User:Stoecker's complaint

When you have a moment, please review User:Stoecker's post on ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard and respond. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:51, 18 May 2023 (EDT)

Gregg Mullen/Suvin Book

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5668492; I fixed first and second volumes and left Rkihara a message about that but I noticed you also PV the second one and the notes for it cut off mid-sentence, in case you were the writer and want to finish whatever they should say. --Username (talk) 20:03, 18 May 2023 (EDT)

Artist attribution correction

I see that you fixed the spelling of Jaime Jones's name on 2023-05-03 -- the original misspelling goes back to this 2021-09-04 submission by Biomassbob, which was apparently propagated via ClonePub.

Please make sure to notify the primary verifier when changing the spelling of artist names since it's always possible that the name was mangled in the publication. In some cases particularly unusual names are misspelled by the publisher in over 20% of all pubs :-( Ahasuerus (talk) 20:41, 23 May 2023 (EDT)

I looked this up with the help of Amazon's Look Inside (and it is "Cover illustration by Jaime Jones" on the copyright page): things like this misspellings do happen when names or titles get typed, there just is a quota of errors. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:51, 24 May 2023 (EDT)

Yes, I saw what Amazon's records states. However, please keep in mind that Amazon's cover images and Look Inside information can change over time. Major publishers supply Amazon with pre-publication files, which they later replace with final, corrected, files. Typically, Amazon replaces pre-publication files with post-publication files, but sometimes their data entry people make mistakes. Moreover, when publishers correct something in a subsequent printing, they usually send an updated file to Amazon, which then updates its cover scan and Look Inside data, thus erasing all traces of what the original printing looked like. (Amazon records used be more stable, but their policies have changed over the last decade.)

I maintain our English translations of Japanese "light novels" and I run into this issue quite often. Sometimes the US publisher changes the spelling of the author's Romanized name, e.g. "Necoco" to "Nekoko". Other times the publisher reverses the order of the first and the last name (the family name is given first in Japanese), and so on. Amazon typically overwrites the original version with the latest version, so I have to use other sources to determine what the first printing said.

This pervasive instability of online records is one of the reasons why the system of "primary verifications" was created in the mid/late-2000s and why it's important to state our sources in the Note field. Primary verifications are supposed to be stable and serve as our "gold standard" for verifiability. Please make sure that you notify primary verifiers when correcting their verified records. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:15, 24 May 2023 (EDT)

Okay, I'll do that in the future. Thanks for the explanation. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:23, 24 May 2023 (EDT)

Publication Authors That Are Not the Title Author

Can you please resolve the mismatch between the canonical title and the publication title authors in the following: So

• Enigmes du passé
• L'invasion des invisibles
• La flotte fantôme

They all originated because of you changing just one of the records when you added (French) to the names of K.-H. Scheer and Clark Darlton. Just as a note, it is never a good idea to change an author name on a title/pub and not to clean up the other one. :) Thanks! Annie (talk) 14:18, 25 May 2023 (EDT)

Thanks for the hints to these: for these French Perry Rhodans there is always a whole bunch of things to do: adding the novellas & other missing contents & varianting them, adjusting the title type (typically for variant & parent), the month of publication & the notes, adding links, and also correcting the credits.

I'll try to avoid omissions like those pointed at above, but it might happen again occasionally: distractions do happen to pop up, even if one doesn't ask for them. ;-(

Yep. I tend to open all that needs editing in separate tabs on a separate browser window so I do not miss/forget them when I go for large-scale changes. And then look over everything when I am done - especially when I am shifting authors and titles around. Much more likely to remember what I was doing at this point and finish it than a few weeks later when I spot it incomplete. :) Annie (talk) 14:39, 26 May 2023 (EDT)

Monsterfrösche aus Atlantis

Hello,

The number you added here is the same as the number of this story. Can you figure out which one is wrong and fix it? Thanks! Annie (talk) 17:11, 25 May 2023 (EDT)

Thanks, Annie. This one has slipped through under John's and mine's radar: because there were 50 novellas featuring the ghosthunter published before he got his own magazine, the number of 50 has to be added to the novellas published in the latter. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 05:44, 26 May 2023 (EDT)

That is why I don't even try to resolve these - I just point them to you or John (whoever edited the one that is weird) and let you figure out what happened. :)

PS: I find it useful to add notes on the series level for this kind of shifting numbers - then someone coming into the series blind may be able to figure out what may have happened (and not undo all the work you had done because they think they know better). Annie (talk) 14:42, 26 May 2023 (EDT)

Good idea, will do! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:14, 27 May 2023 (EDT)

Robotspion

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5683407; 143 pages. --Username (talk) 00:18, 5 June 2023 (EDT)

Mother Was a Lovely Beast

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?23009; Added LCCN, they say xiii in pages, Archive.org copy agrees, should xiv be changed to xiii? --Username (talk) 21:23, 24 June 2023 (EDT)

Sorry, can't judge on this as I'm on vacation and don't have access to the book right now. From here I'd judge that there should be an even number of Roman numbered pages. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:46, 27 June 2023 (EDT)

Midas

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?334458; https://fantlab.ru/images/editions/plus/big/389298_14; Photo includes a price. Is it not in your copy? --Username (talk) 01:39, 29 June 2023 (EDT)

As I remember my copy there was no price printed on it. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 04:17, 30 June 2023 (EDT)

Herrscher über dreizehn Welten

Hi, I found a curious thing in Your pv pub here. On the cover and in all external IDs the title is "Herrscher der 13 [dreizehn] Welten". Maybe there is a difference on title page? --Zapp (talk) 09:07, 2 July 2023 (EDT)

Thanks for the hint. I'll look this up when I'm back home. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:08, 2 July 2023 (EDT)

ßs transliteration

Hello Christian, could you tell me if Süßschwesterlein is transliterated as Suesschwesterlein or Suessschwesterlein. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:26, 16 July 2023 (EDT)

Sure! ß is transliterated into the Latin double s, so it is the latter. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:56, 17 July 2023 (EDT)

Thanks! Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 12:05, 17 July 2023 (EDT)

Ganze Mensch

https://archive.org/search?query=ganze-mensch+john&sort=-addeddate; I've been adding a lot of mostly English-language John Brunner books today and I came across this which is not English. You PV earlier edition so I thought you might like to enter this one which is from 1991, I think, with a much higher price (9.80?). --Username (talk) 13:14, 11 August 2023 (EDT)

Yes, thank you! I'll look up what I can find about the month of publication and then add it. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:19, 11 August 2023 (EDT)

Smith - Phönix

Hi Christian, looking at this title record I see it dated as 1970-00-00, but the 1970 translation (actually 1970-03-00) was titled Prometheus. Although they were both translated by Bergner, and are likely the same work, they have different titles. Perhaps yours should be a 1985-05-00 variant of Phoenix 1954-04-00 instead? Please check. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 20:17, 12 August 2023 (EDT)

Also Tödliche Flaute - should this be 1984-07-00? Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 22:39, 12 August 2023 (EDT)

The first should actually be dated to 1985, the second was correct: I edited both, correcting the first & adding a note to the second. Thanks for the hint! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:48, 13 August 2023 (EDT)

Egan - Vergegenständlichungstour

Hello Christian, you've got a weird date here :) Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 18:34, 16 August 2023 (EDT)

Well, it is intentional! (to order the anthologies edited by Jeschke). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:12, 17 August 2023 (EDT)

I thought it was something like that - I just couldn't find it :) Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 07:57, 17 August 2023 (EDT)

Das Mädchen am Abhang

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5752209; I added FantLab link last December but didn't enter contents' # for some reason so I did today and noticed 1 story on ISFDB isn't on the contents page, in case you know why and want to remove it if necessary. --Username (talk) 12:51, 25 August 2023 (EDT)

Well, I don't own this publication, which is a selection of the short fiction pieces published in "Polaris 2". So, I'd guess you're right about the addition. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:02, 27 August 2023 (EDT)

John Sinclair Editor

Hi Christian, you may be pleased to know that Britta Künkel quit working for Bastei Lübbe with the end of August - and as per Facebook she has been the JS editor all along and for something over ten years. JLochhas (talk) 13:08, 2 September 2023 (EDT)

Thanks, John! Good to know something like this. It'd be nice if Bastei Lübbe would be as informative as Pabel-Moewig: it'd make things so much easier for us. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:24, 2 September 2023 (EDT)

Blache and Macdonald's Prophet - UK hc(s)

Hi, you added this pub just over a week ago. Thanks for catching a UK pub (and title) that I missed, but I've just made an update, as it turns out that this is an export edition, according to Blackwell's. The "regular" UK hc is 9781787334298, which I will add in a second.

(I'm not sure what the point of an export HC is - I think I've only seen large-format tps, before, and I assumed that they did that because the slightly lower weight makes the shipping easier/cheaper?)

Weirdly, when I visit Amazon UK from a UK IP address, it only shows me the "regular" UK hc, not the pub you added. If I search on the latter's ISBN, it just shows me the other pubs. Strange...

In my experience, Blackwell's is quite good at listing UK export editions, but none of the other vendor or publisher sites reliably list them. If you do come across a UK pub that isn't already in the database, please let me know, if only so that I can scrape some data for any other formats like ebook or audios. Hopefully I am catching most of the pubs from UK genre imprints prior to publication, but I definitely miss a lot of the "literary" and children's/YA titles :-(

Thanks! ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:09, 8 September 2023 (EDT)

Will do! Thinking about it, here is another book I added lately that may fall into the same category. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 16:19, 8 September 2023 (EDT)

Thanks - that one wasn't on my radar at all, so I've start scraping info for it from the UK sites, and will start adding the other pubs. ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:26, 8 September 2023 (EDT)

Eccentric Orbits: An Anthology of Scienc

Christian, what are you doing? I approved this submission adding the new publication at 10:21:05. While I was creating the submission to correct errors and bring it in line with standards, you started editing the publication. Your first edit was at 10:29:23. Eight minutes after first approval. Imagine my surprise when I approved my submission at-12 10:40:15 and saw you hade made four edits. I now have to re review and then write my note to the submitter. I want an answer. John Scifibones 10:53, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Well, the exact date was missing, and the spelling of the title was not to the regularity standards; also an image was missing. All this I added after waiting some minutes: I had the impression that you had left it for later and just wanted to help. Sorry if I interferred. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:00, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Not good enough, John Scifibones 11:03, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?66690; First book, PV by Wendy Van Camp, has Dimentionfold as publisher, unlike others which have Dimensionfold. PV only has 1 message on their page so unlikely to get a response from her; probably a simple typing mistake that needs correcting. https://www.scribd.com/read/455301930/Eccentric-Orbits-Eccentric-Orbits-1. --Username (talk) 11:04, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Next time, I'll wait somewhat longer upon improving entries (and the entry was improved). It really was a erroneous impression I fell to; again: sorry for that. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:21, 12 September 2023 (EDT)

Eclipse Series

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?20149; I added links to all 4 volumes in PENDING edits (#2 and #4 are OL-only no-borrow copies) and noticed that the subtitle for #1 was not added to its editions like it was for the others. Should it be added or should it be removed from the others since they all say the same thing and it's not a unique subtitle? --Username (talk) 11:27, 27 September 2023 (EDT)

Thanks for finding this: the subtitle should be included & I'll do it. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:31, 27 September 2023 (EDT)

R. D. Laing Epigraph

Hello Christian, I'm drawing your attention to this title. Translations may occur in all three publications given here if you'd like to check; Planet der Frauen. Btw, I've submitted date change 2010-11-11 to 1975-02-00, and modified the note. Thanks, Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 16:11, 8 October 2023 (EDT)

In the earlier publications with Knaur / Droemer Knaur this piece only seemed to be a motto. I'll see if I can get hold of a copy of the 2000 publication and see if it's in any way extended for that later edition. Thanks for pointing towards this! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:02, 14 October 2023 (EDT)

The essay is only a short piece but I think it's a cut above the usual oblique references that authors include - and it gives a good grounding for the main novel. Kev. --BanjoKev (talk) 15:10, 14 October 2023 (EDT)

Le roi au masque d'or et autres nouvelles

You found an OCLC entry for this pub, but OCLC says it is in English, also the subtitle is. --Zapp (talk) 16:48, 16 October 2023 (EDT)

That there's an erroneous language assigned with entries at OCLC does happen quite frequently. Usually (as with this publication) the reason is that the source library is in a different country than that the publictaion was issued in. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 05:06, 17 October 2023 (EDT)

Ring of Thoth

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?194121; I added 2 Archive.org links in a PENDING edit and noticed the alternate title doesn't have the colon. --Username (talk) 17:54, 16 October 2023 (EDT)

Das zerrissene Land

Recently got Das zerrissene Land at a library sale, and I added some content to the already existing record. Could you check it out and see if I got it right, as you verified a later printing. MLB (talk) 02:41, 18 October 2023 (EDT)

Looks good so far. I'll see if I can find some information on the month of publication and add it then. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:21, 18 October 2023 (EDT)

Thanks. MLB (talk) 12:15, 18 October 2023 (EDT)

I added OL ID in a PENDING edit. --Username (talk) 12:41, 18 October 2023 (EDT)

Foundation #83 - Cover Art

You have PVd Foundation, #83 Autumn 2001. Would you mind taking a look at this discussion and advising whether you have any objection to removing the coverart record from Foundation #83. Thanks. Teallach (talk) 18:37, 26 October 2023 (EDT)

It's absolutely okay for me to remove the credit (in fact I just did so): the credit really was derived from the novel entry. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 08:49, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

Christian Steinbacher

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?283688; Is that you? If so, you may want to add your day of birth. --Username (talk) 09:08, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

Well, my point of view is that we are a db for fiction, and I tend to think we basically should keep detailed life dates for the authors of those works (and associated artists, of course). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:22, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

OK. I came across this, https://www.stifterhaus.at/stichwoerter/christian-steinbacher, but it may not be you because the birth year is different. --Username (talk) 10:16, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

No, this isn't me: some years ago, I got a book (a collection of poems) by this Austrian author as a tongue-in-cheek birthday present (but he is basically nongenre). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:50, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

Gedankennetz

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?648007; An archived link was uploaded last year so I added a link in a PENDING edit; I couldn't quite get a handle on the page count but I don't think it's 184 so can you check, https://archive.org/search?query=gedankennetz, and fix if needed? I also added cover artist Thomas Franke's photo from FantLab in another edit. --Username (talk) 10:11, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

The page count is based on the publisher's web site (which is ususally reliable): the last page of the text may be unnumbered.

Thanks for the Franke image: so far, I couldn't find one. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:48, 27 October 2023 (EDT)

Katja Brandis

Hi Christian,

If you are bored, Katja Brandis's page can use a German editor (we are missing a lot of books and she seems to be getting translated so they keep popping up). I have it somewhere on my list to work through them but it will take awhile to get to her so figured I may as well ping you and see if you are interested. :) Annie (talk) 11:01, 8 November 2023 (EST)

HA! No, I'm not really bored, but I'll look up (and add) some interesting books to the list, for example the missing second volume in the Woodwalkers series. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:08, 8 November 2023 (EST)

The first and the third need German editions as well :) Thanks! Annie (talk) 11:40, 8 November 2023 (EST)

I'm at it! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:43, 8 November 2023 (EST)

Quotation marks

Hi, I'm still unsure about the correct use of quotation marks in the ISFDB. The problem you see here. Do quotation marks need to be standardized? Then » « changes to " " and the title »Es« must be corrected to "Es". Otherwise, if the book title must be entered exactly as indicated in the pub the title "Es" has to be adapted because all German editions use the » « quotes. Boskar (talk) 04:13, 18 November 2023 (EST)

Hi! The help page on entering titles gives the advice "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 I guess in this case it should be the latter (") (I wouldn't want to use single quotes here). Hope that helps, Christian Stonecreek (talk) 07:20, 18 November 2023 (EST)

Yes, this is very helpful! Thank you! I know this help page but searched for 'quotation' instead of 'quote', my fault! I will make sure that the »Es« title is adjusted to the rule. Boskar (talk) 05:42, 19 November 2023 (EST)

Islanders

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?358496; https://archive.org/search?query=9780575078192; I was correcting 9 instances of the word "paperback" being misspelled in notes and this one has something else that may need looking at; archived copy's back cover has US sticker overlaying original UK info and since it's an export, as you noted, shouldn't it have US price entered? --Username (talk) 21:01, 25 November 2023 (EST)

Well, it is only a sticker, and the original UK price is visible with that archive.org copy. If I remember correctly, I obtained my copy in a German bookshop that used to have a BIG English language section. So 'export edition' seems to stand for export into (at least) quite a handful of countries, and the UK price seems thus to be the only reliable stated one. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 07:38, 26 November 2023 (EST)

New Worlds 2

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?23794; I added Archive.org link in a PENDING edit and there are 291 numbered pages, not 293; the last 2 are a comics (?) ad and an address page. So it should probably be 291 or 291+[2] or something similar. --Username (talk) 17:43, 6 December 2023 (EST)

Plan 7 From ...

Plan 7 from L.A. has always and only been published as "Plan 7 from Sin City" - the confusion is that in the copyright indicia for Wind Through the Fence it's listed as "from L.A" but the T.O.C and the first page of the story both say, plainly "from Sin City". How to get rid of the "from L.A." title? Susan O'Fearna (talk) 17:07, 11 December 2023 (EST)

Done! (I removed the double 'Plan 7 from L. A.' from "Strange Worlds", and then merged the two titles.). Hope that's all okay now. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:28, 12 December 2023 (EST)

Discussion of German audio books

Could you please join this discussion of deleted German audio books? Thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:03, 13 December 2023 (EST)

New Taboos

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?411302; I think format should be TP, not PB. --Username (talk) 13:34, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Right you are. Corrected. Thanks! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:37, 14 December 2023 (EST)

My Life, My Body

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?536236; I think format should be TP, not PB. --Username (talk) 13:38, 14 December 2023 (EST)

And again: Thanks! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:40, 14 December 2023 (EST)

Rumo & His Miraculous Adventures

This title has four unverified editions. In 2015, you modified the title's author from Walter Moers to Optimus Yarnspinner. I have a copy of the second edition and the cover and title page give the author as Walter Moers. I can change the author on my edition only, or on the title. Is there any reason to believe that Optimus Yarnspinner is listed as the author on the other three editions? .../Doug H (talk) 22:48, 14 December 2023 (EST)

The reason was that the original edition was issued as by Hildegunst von Mythenmetz (and Optimus Yarnspinner seems to be a pseudonym of this eminent historian, if you look at the respective photos), and that others like The City of Dreaming Books were issued as by Yarnspinner in English (though Moers is stated as author on the cover). It finally depends on the title page: if the credit on it for Moers is only that it is a translation of a text by Yarnspinner the credit should be for the latter. If that is not the case, I can revert the credit. Please take a second look that we may be able to find the right credit. Thanks! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:58, 15 December 2023 (EST)

Title page: Walter Moers [over] Rumo [over] & His Miraculous Adventures [over] A novel in two books [over] illustrated by the author [over] translated by [over] John Brownjohn [way over] Vintage Books [over] London. ../Doug H (talk) 17:33, 15 December 2023 (EST)

Thanks! I'll adapt the title and the other three publications that we have in the database. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 04:59, 16 December 2023 (EST)

Danke. ../Doug H (talk) 13:48, 16 December 2023 (EST)

Climate Masters

https://archive.org/search?query=climate-masters; Copy uploaded in 2018; artist is under his alt name Pat Rac so I'm sure you can fix that and other stuff using this copy. --Username (talk) 09:03, 27 December 2023 (EST)

Thanks, done! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 16:15, 28 December 2023 (EST)

Cosmo le dodo

Why do remove the publication series that is printed on the covers? --Zapp (talk) 16:07, 28 December 2023 (EST)

Because it is the title series: this does often happen. 'Star Trek' and others are also printed on the covers, but are in fact title series. 'Cosmo, le Dodo' and 'Notre héros de l'environnement' both fall into the title series category (with the latter seemingly to be some kind of subtitle for the first).

For example 'Heyne Science Fiction & Fantasy' did publish diverse title series (like 'Star Trek' or 'Dune' / 'Der Wüstenplanet'), and that is typical for publication series (to publish a variety of titles [series]). Hope that helps, Christian Stonecreek (talk) 16:14, 28 December 2023 (EST)

First I had the same idea. Then I recognized that there are translated titles with different series names. See La recherche du joyau in French "Le Dodo de l'espace" and in English "Our Hero of the Environment". Or La rencontre the same. Also the publisher has different collections: L'île de Cosmo, Cosmo le dodo (albums), Cosmo le dodo (miniromans) and BD de Cosmo le dodo (assumed comic strips). All have different series titles on cover. So now I guess these ares pub series names of the series "Cosmo le dodo". --Zapp (talk) 03:08, 31 December 2023 (EST)

Insofar as theses are different (French) titles that are published, they would constitute different title series (which would be subsumed under a common parent title series, somewhat in the vein of the Star Trek Universe that is made out of different sub-series like 'Star Trek: The Original Series', 'The Next Generation', and so on).

We don't take a translation of a title series as a different series: the titles of Tolkien's 'The Lord of the Rings' stay in the series, even if it is 'Der Herr der Ringe' in German (and thus, the English translations should stay within the series of its parent).

I'd think 'Cosmo, le Dodo' would be the parent series, with 'Les aventures de Cosmo, le dodo de l'espace' and the others constituting the respective subseries (or maybe something like 'Cosmo, le Dodo universe' being the parent. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 07:27, 31 December 2023 (EST)

Great Illusion

https://archive.org/search?query=tundra+great-illusion; I saw this, uploader didn't include any authors after the title so it's easy to miss. In case you want to add a link and/or enter anything from it. --Username (talk) 17:39, 28 December 2023 (EST)

The authors are credited in OCLC/WorldCat and LCCN as "writig team". --Zapp (talk) 03:21, 31 December 2023 (EST)

Covergestaltung

Google translates covergestaltung as cover designer. Is that accurate or can it mean cover artist as well? I recently processed some German additions of a new editor and I noticed the Amazon Samples had covergestaltung for the value the editor put in the Cover Artist field. I wanted to double check the translation before moving the credits to the pub notes. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:57, 29 December 2023 (EST)

The unfortunate thing is that it depends on the publisher (or even on the publication): most of them use it in the translated meaning (as cover design), but some give a credit for 'Covergestaltung' when they mean the artist, for example here, where Piatti is credited for it, but is in fact the cover artist (the artwork was signed by him). The biggest German house for speculative fiction published in book format, Heyne, usually states both the artist(s) and the designer, but in a few cases only the latter (and there are some pieces that were obviously done by the same hand, in which cases it seemed to be meaningful to give credit for the 'cover designer', like for this art studio).

Maybe I'd be able to help for the publications in question !? Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:32, 29 December 2023 (EST)

Sure, take a look at the 4 mentioned here. Thanks! -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:42, 29 December 2023 (EST)

I do think the credits for 'Das Illustrat' are okay. This is an art agency, who works for this & other publishers, but often is found to be the only credited source for artwork. These works are similar in style to this, for example.

Presumably they use stock images but usually those are not documented. Hope that helps, Christian Stonecreek (talk) 06:22, 30 December 2023 (EST)

Sounds good. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 08:40, 30 December 2023 (EST)

Ursula K. Le Guin

Hey Stonecreek, I'm keenly interested in Ursula's work and I'd like to participate here with regard to some of that. I have uploaded three books and covers but they are not processed yet. I would be happy to get advice and training where relevant. I would also be happy to communicate with you about these matters via chat of some kind, if you're amenable, since it's more immediate. We might exchange details via e-mail. Evertype (talk) 09:36, 3 January 2024 (EST)

Sure! Please e-mail me at steinbachersca(at)t-online.de, if you like (though all things relating to ISFDB are better communicated on our wiki, i. e. on these pages: that way others also may benefit or will be able to help more easily). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:51, 3 January 2024 (EST)

I can e-mail you. If you rather hash it out here... well this is basic stuff, but the help files do not give the sort of recipe I can follow easily, evidently. Evertype (talk) 07:21, 30 January 2024 (EST)

It's really better to ask & discuss such things here: from time to time there are problems where others do know better (and here they can quite easily contribute: basically this is what this Wiki was made for - apart from giving information on planned or done changes). We even do have a help desk where you can ask when running into problems or difficulties. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 08:55, 30 January 2024 (EST)

OK, but I do not know what to do. I proposed three titles (two Estonian, one Bulgarian) and uploaded three images. Only two of the books are listed in the UKL bibliography. I tried to link to one of those images and got an incomprehensible error message. I sent you an e-mail with a screen shot. I don't suppose I can post an image here. I'm a seasoned Wikipedia editor but here I am confused. Evertype (talk) 10:16, 30 January 2024 (EST)

Basically, that problem is quite easy to solve. But first: for cover images, please use the 'Upload (new) cover scan' link that is displayed at the bottom of the general information of a given publication (that is in the second to last line of it): that way a template with a legal disclaimer and some general information is automatically generated (and we do need the first one).

Now, what you added is the address of Wiki page for that template, not the one for the image. You have to add the address of the image, and you get there by clicking on the link displayed below of the image on that page: For example, I recently uploaded an image for a publication of 'The Long Cosmos' (here). I clicked on the 'THLNGCSMSJ2016.jpg' link and added the URL address "https: // isfdb.org / wiki / images / c / cc / THLNGCSMSJ2016.jpg" to the publication's image field.

(And - as you see - you can upload other images directly: here on the left tool bar is a tool link 'Upload file'). Hope that helps, Christian Stonecreek (talk) 11:11, 30 January 2024 (EST)

Gravitatonswellen-Sender für Fortgeschrittene

● Hi Christian, I feel that I owe you an explanation. I've made no secret of my periodically poor health. I've had a good look about here for the Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September-October 2019 issue and I can't immediately find it. Long story short, but no less boring, during one of my stays in the hospital my home was given a thorough reorganizing, so that issue might be in storage where I can't get it. I'll continue to look for it, but it will probably take a bit of time. Ironically I did a review of this issue for Amazon, see here, and this article was published, see the posted illustration, as by Gregory Benford and Albert Jackson not Gregory Benford and Albert A. Jackson. Of course, when I find the issue in question, I'll double check that also. Again, sorry for my incompetence in this matter.

● As a side matter, is it even possible to have a complete collection of the Perry Rhodan series? MLB (talk) 22:00, 5 January 2024 (EST)

Isn't the link I provided on MLB page the article you're looking for? It's illustrated. --Username (talk) 22:15, 5 January 2024 (EST)

Thanks to you both! Mark, there's no problem with that: from time to time I'm searching seriously for a certain verified copy in the catacombs of Steinbacher castle and then I'm not able to find it, though I do have a system in storing publications.

To both of you: the illustration I have verified is not one of the three displayed with your link, Username (though there may be more, or the essay published in 'Analog' may have been adapted from one published in a science magazine, and the illustration may have been part of that). I'll install a parent title with a date of 'unknown', hoping the original illustration will pop up sometime later. Thanks again!

On the Perry Rhodan series: This is indeed a difficult task. We are lucky that we now have the original series (i.e. '1. Auflage') and the officially published side series complete. But there were later editions of the original novellas ('2. - 5. Auflage') that need to be completed.

And there is a mass of translations that aren't added yet (or were added with erroneus data enclosed), and many, many associated fanzines that sometimes have some relevant material. On the whole it is a task that needs joined efforts. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:48, 6 January 2024 (EST)

https://archive.org/search?query=perry-rhodan&page=2&sort=title&and%5B%5D=mediatype%3A%22texts%22; 73 archived Perry Rhodan texts, most in English. --Username (talk) 10:06, 6 January 2024 (EST)

Thanks! I do think PR in English is fairly complete, though. The bigger chunks missing are the continuation of the Dutch series (which has reached at least #2436), and the majority of Brazilian & Japanese publications (for the latter I'm still not sure if this is to be viewed as a magazine or a series of anthologies/collections). All languages the series was translated into can be seen here. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:21, 6 January 2024 (EST)

Partir pour édena

Hello Christian,

Do you confirm the spelling “Partir pour édena”, with a lower case “é”, in this pub ? TIA, Dominique (talk) 05:15, 10 January 2024 (EST).

Hello Dominique, thanks for this find, corrected. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:19, 10 January 2024 (EST)

One of the contents has no length and some of the others should probably be novelettes, not short stories. --Username (talk) 09:30, 10 January 2024 (EST)

The others seem to be okay to me (below 7,500 words), but I'll add the missing length. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 09:37, 10 January 2024 (EST)

Camille Gomera-Tavarez

Hello,

Not sure why you set the language here to Spanish but I changed it back to English - she writes and publishes in English which means that for our DB, her language is English, even if she is a Spanish speaker otherwise. Just heads up :) Annie (talk) 17:36, 23 January 2024 (EST)

Thanks for finding this error: I guess I just oriented myself on the name. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 01:30, 24 January 2024 (EST)

Das große Star-Gate-Buch

Hi CHristian, thanks for adding the external references. I've amended the publication date; December 2003 is indeed from other Hary pubs and I've added this to the notes. Cheers, John. JLochhas (talk) 15:39, 6 February 2024 (EST)

Queer*Welten, #8

Hello,

I have a much more complete version of this one on hold. I can edit your record, move all from the one on hold in and reject it or I can approve the one coming in the queue, move your notes and IDs and delete the old record. Due to the number of entries, I kinda prefer the second options. Let me know if you have issues with this approach! Thanks. Annie (talk) 13:23, 13 February 2024 (EST)

No problem at all. I tried to get some grip on this and further issues of the magazine, but it's totally fine with me if someone does the job (or part of it). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:32, 13 February 2024 (EST)

It is one of the very long standing ones in the queue - between being German and a magazine, people apparently tiptoed around it. I will approve and move things around in a bit. Thanks! Annie (talk) 13:58, 13 February 2024 (EST)

Adding "Assumed first edition"

Christian,

Can you please stop editing books added by other editors just to add "Assumed first edition". This statement has no value and it can be misleading unless you spell out why you assume it is a first edition (And "I think so" is not a good enough reason). If we know it is a first edition, we say so. If we don't, we don't speculate. Thanks! Annie (talk) 15:04, 21 February 2024 (EST)

It certainly has value: there are people who specialize or are keenly interested in first editions: This statements are researched as good as seems possible. But for the sake of it, I'll add explanations in the future. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:43, 22 February 2024 (EST)

Without an explanation, there is no way for anyone with any interest to know if it is an assumption that is in the line of "I cannot see an older one here so let's call it "Assumed first edition" until someone finds another one" (which is not very useful) or if some more digging had been done. Which is what my point is - an explanation to qualify it makes it meaningful (kinda like "No number line. Assumed first printing" is materially different from "Assumed first printing" with no details on why). Thanks :) Annie (talk) 11:08, 22 February 2024 (EST)

Terry Castle

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?118934; Two different people; one has a Wiki page where it mentions that she shouldn't be confused with the other. --Username (talk) 10:30, 22 February 2024 (EST)

Hey, thanks for finding (and pointing out) this. I have differentiated the two. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:53, 22 February 2024 (EST)

Dark Lord of the Farmstead: Part Two

Hi Christian,

Can you please be more careful when "correcting" other editors' work? Look Inside here shows a very different formatting and style which makes the "Part Two" part of the title a very clear subtitle. However, as this decision is subjective (the governing part of the help page is "It is sometimes a judgement call as to whether a change of font or a colon indicates a subtitle or just some creative license on the part of the typesetter. If in doubt, take your best guess and document the guess in the publication's notes."), if you disagree with the original editor on the subtitle vs. part of the title determination, please communicate with them and do not just enforce your own ideas on how this should look on the site (and I will point out that if you do make a judgement call, a note is mandatory per the rules). In this case this is a clear case of a subtitle IMO and I cannot imagine why you would not consider this a subtitle - and if you do, that needs to be explained in the notes.

In addition, if you had even glanced at that title page, you would have seen that it uses "Two" and not "2". :) I've corrected all relevant titles and restored "Part Two" as a subtitle. Thanks! Annie (talk) 14:29, 26 February 2024 (EST)

No Time to Spare

Hi Christian

You recently updated one of my verified publications, No Time to Spare adding a subtitle with a note that you were "title aligning". My first concern is that this a verified publication and you did not consult with me before making this change. My other concern is that the change is not correct. While that subtitle does appear on the cover, it does not appear in the audio book itself. I'm going to back out this change. I'd also request that you not change the title field of verified publications without consulting with the verifiers first. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 18:40, 18 March 2024 (EDT)

Will do! This was done because as to my experience audio books regularly don't have a title page (and thus, the cover would count as such, I do think. If that is in fact not the case with your verified, please take my apologies.

Plus: it was listed under the parent title "No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters" (which shouldn't be the case, as the titles are different). I have done the necessary unmerging and varianting. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 07:50, 19 March 2024 (EDT)

That's all right. I wouldn't have added the subtitle to the title record or made variants as I was advised to do things that way back in 2009. I've started a a Rules and Standards discussion to figure out what folks think the correct practice is. Thanks. --Ron ~ Rtrace^Talk 20:47, 19 March 2024 (EDT)

Corey Fah Does Social Mobility

Hi Christian,

Again, unless you actually do extensive research, please stop adding "Assumed first print edition: no earlier one to be found." to books. Case in point: this one - it definitely has an earlier print edition see here. If you insist on adding this statement, please make sure you check ALL English language markets before you declare something to be a first print edition - US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa and the lesser ones like Malaysia and others in Asia. If you are unwilling or unable to do that, please let's not add it. Thanks! Annie (talk) 14:59, 19 March 2024 (EDT)

Christian, please note that this is a serious issue. Stating that a book is an "assumed first print edition" is not something that we want to do without solid evidence. There was a time when SF books typically had a small number of editions, often just one, which made it easier to research their history. Things are very different now and even less well-known books can have a number of editions in different countries, on Kickstarter, etc. Please don't add statements that we can't substantiate. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:29, 19 March 2024 (EDT)

The Spider Vs. the Empire State: The Complete Black Police Trilogy

Hi Christian,

Can you please be a bit more careful in removing data from publications you edit, i.e. you removed the price here. If you have a valid reason to remove information (and "I cannot find it at the time of edit" is not a valid reason especially if you are looking only at Amazon which can show different things based on the country of the editor; if you cannot find a piece of information, discuss with the original editor instead of just deleting), please add a note (if applicable) or a moderator note (if it makes more sense). If that was just an oversight, I'd strongly advice you to look over at a publication after you edit it to ensure that the data is not lost (and to look at what is changed more carefully BEFORE you approve. In this case another editor (the original one who added the book) had to come after you and fix your fix which is counterproductive. Thanks! Annie (talk) 16:24, 20 March 2024 (EDT)

If you check Amazon.com's Look Inside and flip to the back cover, you will see a 13-digit ISBN and "51699" printed on the bar code label. "51699" is the list price. "5" is the currency code, in this case US dollars, while "1699" is the price in cents. Not all publishers, especially self-publishers, use this system, but it's fairly common.

Perhaps this is something that we could document in Help. Perhaps also add a suggestion to state the source in the Notes field. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:39, 20 March 2024 (EDT)

P.S. As a general observation, now that we have Edit History for publications, there is no reason not to ask editors about their sources of information. More likely than not, they had a source and didn't document it in Notes for some reason. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:41, 20 March 2024 (EDT)

I will start a discussion for adding the barcode reading to the help page.

The original note in the publication stated "Data from Amazon.com." which implies that all the data was taken from there. As the Amazon.com page shows the price, the original editor did state the source of the price. Christian's changes removed the original source in addition to losing the price (Amazon.com includes Look Inside but just crediting Look Inside does not include Amazon.com itself). Thanks for making me look at this again.

Christian, while editing, please stop removing the sources other editors had used for the data even if you disagree or do not like them or prefer not to use them. Add more sources but do not remove the original sources from the Notes field. Thanks! Annie (talk) 17:04, 20 March 2024 (EDT)

This has nothing to do with things I don't like: it's only a point for making extensive notes (i. e. sources) when adding publications. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 03:20, 21 March 2024 (EDT)

Dating rules for novels

Hello Christian,

Just a quick reminder of a few of our dating and naming/type rules :

• When a complete novel is added in a magazine, it is added as a serial. SERIAL section.
• We do not date novels based on their serials dates. Serialization section

Which means that this novel and its parent should be dated as 2022-02-04 unless you have a BOOK publication in 1938-08-00 as the 1938 original publication was in a magazine and as the text is a novel (at least recorded as one), the novel record does not take its date from its serial publication. I restored the date. If you find a proof that it needs to be a novella, that will change the dates but for as long as it is a novel, it follows the novel dating rules. the If you had changed any more of these, please fix them back and please before fixing any more dates, re-familirize yourself with how we date novels (or any other type of records you are about to change). Thanks! Annie (talk) 16:48, 20 March 2024 (EDT)

Well, it was in line with the bulk of other titles of the series (for example this one, which you, Annie, didn't seem to find the dating debatable when you edited the 1993 publication): if the majority of them is dated to the 1930s it does not make sense to have the others dated to the 21st Century. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 03:33, 21 March 2024 (EDT)

The fact that many titles in a series are not dated according to what Help says is an argument in favor of either:

• changing their dates to match what Help says, or
• asking the editor who has just entered the data what she thinks about the Help rule and whether the preponderance of evidence suggests that we should start a Rules and Standards discussion to change Help

It is not an argument in favowhichr of editing a record that another editor has just entered according to Help and changing it to be against Help without consulting the other editor. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:25, 21 March 2024 (EDT)

Well, I do think that this series is one consisting of novellas (this wouldn't be the first case where the publisher advertises or speaks of novels but does supply texts of considerable shorter length - in fact, the complete "Perry Rhodan" series is advertised as to present novels), which would make different dates obsolete, anyway: since I've ordered a copy with titles of the series, let's see what does come out of it. It will take a few weeks to arrive, though. So far, nobody sems to have bothered to do a word count or an estimate for it (but it should be quite mandatory before adding such publications). Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:02, 21 March 2024 (EDT)

Self-Approver Status

Your self-approver privileges have been revoked -- please see this Moderator Noticeboard topic for details. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:13, 21 March 2024 (EDT)

Zap

Please note that I have restored the juvenile flag associated with Zap. As per your discussion with TerokNor, you both agree that it's a young adult novel and Template:TitleFields:Juvenile says:

• Juvenile - Check this check-box if this work is targeted at the juvenile or Young Adult market.

Ahasuerus (talk) 18:25, 21 March 2024 (EDT)

Worlds of If, February 2024

As the verifier of Worlds of If, February 2024, please see this conversation. Thanks. -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:54, 10 April 2024 (EDT)

Phantastich 89

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?3163184; I fixed 4 of 5 "mismatched parentheses" cases from the cleanup report but I'm not sure about this one so you may know whether there should be none or two in this essay title. --Username (talk) 11:37, 12 April 2024 (EDT)

Well, this is how the title is stated within the magazine (it is meant to mirror the often idiosyncratic orthography the author Arno Schmidt used), but thinking about it, the <, > likely each stand for a ' within our used orthography. I submitted an according change. Thanks for pointing me toward this! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 13:05, 12 April 2024 (EDT)