User talk:Vintage Season

Welcome!

Hello, Vintage Season, and welcome to the ISFDB Wiki! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

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

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

I hope you enjoy editing here! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will insert your name and the date. If you need help, check out the community portal, or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome! -DES ^Talk 00:58, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the warm welcome, DESiegel60! I signed up and added a first entry to ISFDB this afternoon (because one of my own stories appears within that anthology), and attempted to follow the recommended procedures. If I inadvertently committed any errors please feel free to point them out, so that I can fix them, and also avoid similar mistakes in the future. Vintage Season 01:09, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I have done so below. Don't be worried or upset, the ISFDB is rather complex, and some of its procedures are not as intuitive as we would like. You should see the comments I got on my first submissions. Please do let us know what you found confusing or unhelpful -- we always want to improve things as and when we can. Again, welcome. -DES ^Talk 02:46, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

STUPEFYING STORIES Volume 1

Hello, I have your submission for STUPEFYING STORIES Volume 1 and there are some problems with it. Most of these I can correct, but there is at least one I need more information from you for.

Here are the problems I can fix, for your future reference:

• The ISFDB enters titles in normalized case, hence: Stupefying Stories Volume 1: "It Came From The Slushpile" or possibly just It Came From The Slushpile, as series indicators are often not used as part of the title.
• The code the iSFDB uses for "Trade paperback" is "tp"
• A "Publication series" is a set of books generally by different authors but presented by the publisher is related in some way. The classic example is the "Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series". The various issues of a magazine do not form a Publication series, nor do successive anthologies like the various Hugo Winners anthologies. This concept is new to many, and can be confusing.
• The Synopsis is supposed to be a summery of the plot of a book, or of its nature, not a blurb.
• The Image URL should point to a site which the ISFDB has permission to link to, or to the ISAFB itself. See ISFDB:Image linking permissions and Help:How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki.
• "From the editor's desk" should be "From the Editor's Desk" or possibly "From the Editor's Desk (Stupefying Stories 1)" If there are at all likely to be other "From the Editor's Desk" entries with which it could be confused.

Now for the information I need from you.

• You listed several people in the "Artist" field. The "artist" field is intended to capture the name of the cover artist, and multiple names should be entered when two or more people co-created the cover art. Nut in this case I suspect these are the various artists whose work is included inside the book. The ISFDB records these credits using INTERIORART records. (See Help:Screen:EditPub#EntryType for more details.) I need to know which of these people created the cover art, adn which did interior art, and for what stories.
• Is the title on the title page (not the cover, not the spine) Stupefying Stories Volume 1: "It Came From The Slushpile" or something else? In particular, are the quotes presnt on the title page. (The ISFDB goes by the title page).
• Are further volumes of Stupefying Stories in existence, or planned?

I have your submission "on hold" awaiting your answers to these queries. -DES ^Talk 02:42, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification, and I will certainly try to adhere to these guidelines in the future.

Regarding the proper attribution of artwork:

• The cover artist is Larry Blamire. I have uploaded a reduced-resolution version of the front cover art, and used what I believe to be the appropriate template (with the ID number currently shown as "??????," since I do not yet know what the actual ID number will be), on this wiki page: http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/Image:Stupefying-stories-vol1-front.jpg
• Pages 7 ("Fitz of Distraction") and 163 ("The Last Word") are the equivalent of editorial cartoons, and the artist is Kersley Fitzgerald. As with "From the Editor's Desk," there will be similarly named items in future volumes, so it may be appropriate to append "(Stupefying Stories 1)" to the end of each title.
• K. Vetch provided interior artwork on page 10 (for "Tech Support"), which differs from the page shown for the story (shown in the contents as beginning on page 11).
• Kersley Fitzgerald provided interior artwork on page 26 (for "Lifeline").
• Larry Blamire provided interior artwork on pages 30 and 38 (for "It Came from the Slushpile").
• Bruce Bethke provided an interior photo on page 39 (for "Catechronism").
• David Yener Goodman provided interior artwork on page 56 (for "Icehawk's Ill Omen").
• David Yener Goodman provided interior artwork on page 76 (for "Armstrong").
• K. Vetch provided interior artwork on pages 84 and 99 (for "We Don't Plummet Out of the Sky Anymore").
• David Yener Goodman provided interior artwork on page 100 (for "Assault and Buttery"), which differs from the page shown for the story (shown in the contents as beginning on page 101).
• K. Vetch provided interior artwork on page 111 (for "Teaching Women to Fly").
• John Tankersley provided interior artwork on page 132 (for "The Poetry Hole"; the two poems shown on that page, both by Avery L. Maxwell, are titled "Whistle" and "Dance").
• David Yener Goodman provided interior artwork on page 137 (for "First Rule").
• David Yener Goodman provided interior artwork on page 138 (for "Then the End Cometh"), which differs from the page shown for the story (shown in the contents as beginning on page 139). For the same story, a number of 19th Century bee engravings (pages 142, 146, 152 and 154) were provided courtesy of karenswhimsy.com, and public domain bee clip-art was used for section breaks (pages 140, 141, 143, 147, 149, 150, 151, 152 and 153).
• K. Vetch provided interior artwork on page 159 (for "Heart of Dorkness").

To address your other concerns:

• The physical size of this anthology is 5.5" wide by 7.5" high (digest size), although the paper and binding are trade paperback weight, rather than magazine weight. Is "tp" still the proper classification?
• The blurb I posted as the synopsis is taken from the back cover of this publication. For future reference, is there an appropriate way to include this information, or is it better to avoid such blurbs altogether?
• The proper title of the anthology, as shown on the title page, is Stupefying Stories: "It Came From The Slushpile" ... "Volume 1" is only shown as part of the title on the contents page, although it is the proper sequential designator for this volume, and additional volumes will be forthcoming. Yes, there are intentional quotes around the "It Came From The Slushpile" portion, and since this is technically an anthology series rather than a magazine, "Stupefying Stories" is part of the title. (On the title page, "Stupefying Stories" is also shown in normalized case, although the publisher has habitually used all-caps to discuss the anthology series as a whole, and all-caps are shown for that portion of the title on the front cover.)
• "From the editor's desk" follows the capitalization shown on the contents list. For ISFDB purposes, "From the Editor's Desk (Stupefying Stories 1)" would be an appropriate solution, since there will be similarly-named articles in future volumes.

And finally:

• The physical edition of Volume 1 is currently available - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982897405 - and electronic versions (both Kindle and ePub) will be released in the near future, with separate ISBN numbers and formatting appropriate to the medium. Is there an ISFDB provision for eBook releases, and will these necessitate separate entries?

Once again, I appreciate your willingness to guide me through this first submission. If there is any additional information that I may provide, please let me know. Vintage Season 04:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the detailed information. it will be most helpful.

• I am about to approve the entry and edit it to reflect the information given above.
• On the binding (PubFormat), for books, anything larger than a standard MMPB (roughly 7 in tall) is a tp if it isn't a hardcover (hc). If we were treating this as a magazine (and it sounds as if it were borderline), we would probably call the size "Digest". See Help:Screen:EditPub#Pub Format (Binding) for more detail.
• Blurbs, particularly when so very promotional, should not normally be posted on the ISFDB. For a novel an excerpt of a publisher's blurb is sometimes used as a synopsis, but only when it functions as a plot summery in more or less neutral tone.
• The ISFDB does indeed support ebook editions, and they are usually given separate entries. See Publisher:Project Gutenberg for one particularly common case; see this publication of 1633 for a non-PG example.

Again thanks, and i hope the above is helpful. -DES ^Talk 05:20, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Publication approved and edited, the result is here. Please check it over, and correct any errors. If it is correct (or when corrections have been submitted and approved), please verify the record.

I have also edited Image:Stupefying-stories-vol1-front.jpg to add the publication tag and fix the format of the other parameters. You can see the changes I made here.

I see you have entered several works of short fiction with dates prior to 2010 ("Lifeline", "Armstrong", "First Rule", and "Heart of Dorkness") which have no previous publication records on the ISFDB. For the ISFDB, the date on a work is always a publication date, not a copyright date or creation date. if these stories were actually published in 2008 or 2009, a note of where they were published or an actual entry of that publication would be desirable. If, on the other hand, these are copyright or other dates, they should be changed to 2010 as the first pub date, and notes of the copyright dates could be entered on the individual stories' title records. Please advise.

For your future information:

• When the ebook editions are available, their entry as separate publications can be vastly eased by going to the [1] and using the "Clone this Pub" link. This creates a new record that is initially a duplicate of the existign record (including all contents), but which can be edited to change such data as the publisher, price, pub format (binding), and date, while preserving links to the proper title records, so the ebook would be shown as a different publication of the same title, and each story would be shown as having two (or more) publications.
• The NONFICTION type is used for book-length non-fiction, such as biographies, book-length critical studies, etc.
• It is often easier to wait until a publication has been entered and approved to upload a cover image, as the "Upload new cover image" link is then available. This provides a guaranteed unique image file name (based on the pub tag) and pre-fills the tempalte parameters based on the info from the pub record. One must then re-edit the pub record, however, to insert the Image URL. See Help: How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki and particularly the section Help: How to upload images to the ISFDB wiki#Semi-automated Procedure for more details.

Again thanks and welcome to the ISFDB. I hope you will be making additional entries. -DES ^Talk 06:18, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

I edited the four stories you indicated, to reflect the 2010 first publication date (as you surmised, each of these had been entered using the copyright date).

Aside from that, the only changes I made were to remove "The Poetry Hole (Stupefying Stories 1) • essay by Avery L. Maxwell" (since there is no essay... the page only contains the two poems, and the illustration), and to simultaneously change the interior artwork for that page to "The Poetry Hole (Stupefying Stories 1) • interior artwork by John Tankersley."

Thank you for the clear explanations, and the examples. This information — and being able to see a properly formatted entry for a publication with which I am familiar — will prove most useful, for any future entries I provide. Vintage Season 15:31, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

You are quite welcome. I am glad it was helpful, and that you plan future entries.

The reason for the "essay" is because the ISFDB currently does not have a "group title" feature so this is the only way to document that the poems together fall under the title "The Poetry Hole", which i suppose may be a continuing feature of the series. (A group title feature is on request, but all development is done by unpaid volunteers.) If you think the "essay" is more confusing than helpful, we can discuss the matter. By the way, you can't remove a title by blanking it on the publication edit screen, there is a special "remove titles" link in the editing tools section.

I have approved your edits. See if the pub is ready to verify now.

By the way, you can check your contribution total here. I hope top see you here often. -DES ^Talk 15:47, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you! I have now verified from the primary source, and am quite pleased to see the completed entry.

As for other entries, I am a writer (I'll try to update my Author Data soon), so the amount of time I spend adding to the database will, of necessity, be limited by my other creative output. I can, however, commit to maintaining entries relevant to my career (fingers crossed, and knock on wood!), as my own bibliography grows. I'll also commit to maintaining additions to the Stupefying Stories anthology series, regardless of whether any new volume includes a personal contribution. Other entries may creep in, from time to time, as they percolate through my reading stack... if they are not already covered by an existing ISFDB entry, of course. Vintage Season 16:11, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm certainly not suggesting that you edit the ISFDB in place of writing. Do what you care to and have time for. I hope you find the ISFDB useful yourself. Again, welcome. -DES ^Talk 16:19, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Filling in wiki templates

As it says in several of the template documentation pages:

Note: In all the above examples, when a parameter is shown in angle brackets, like:

<Parameter>

then the parameter, and the angle brackets, should be replaced by the value of the parameter. For example: Title=<TITLE> should become Title=The Name of the Book (or whatever the name might be).

Please remove the angle brackets when filling in parameters in future. Thanks. It is good to see someone who does add license tags the first time without prompting, however. -DES ^Talk 17:06, 6 September 2010 (UTC)