Difference between revisions of "What's New"

Revision as of 10:52, 15 February 2008

Updated the download page with the latest database file. The goal is to have the file updated weekly.
Exceeded 250,000 Title records not counting variant titles.
Bug fixes and software changes on hold pending Al's return.

Ahasuerus 14:50, 13 Nov 2007 (CST)

Updated the download pages with the latest database file. Otherwise, just wandering around to see what's changed or broken. Alvonruff 19:10, 11 Aug 2007 (CDT)

Reading: Neal_Asher - Hilldiggers.

Tried to upgrade the wiki to 1.10.0 this morning, but found that it will not run on php 4. Upgrading the host to php 5 is beyond my current permissions and access, so we'll have to wait on TAMU for help.
Started moving bug reports over to SourceForge, but got distracted by the WebBot attack and the MediaWiki upgrade.
I've been doing some testing of the site with the Windows version of Safari. Aside from ugly fonts and abysmally slow rendering times, it has different semantics associated with the back button than other browsers. If you approve a submission, for instance, and then use "back" to get to the moderation list, it actually tries to approve the submission again as you go through that page. Similarly, if I'm editing in the Wiki, and want to follow a link in the preview for accuracy, it requires responding to 2 popups to get back to the wiki again. No other browser behaves like this. Alvonruff 07:48, 1 Jul 2007 (CDT)

Reading: Richard_Morgan - Woken Furies.

Things have been unstable at work since the beginning of the year, culminating in the layoff of 12 members of my team in March, and now the complete closure of the Champaign site. In response, I will be moving to the Austin facility by the end of August. I have to sell and buy a house, move our belongings, help find jobs for the laid off personnel, and still make progress on my assigned responsibilities. As such, my contributions here may be light between now and the end of August.
I've gotten an ISFDB project approved at SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/isfdb/), and will be moving the bug reports there over the next week. After that I will CM the Python source code there, which should help with the problem of having multiple people working on the code. Alvonruff 21:34, 25 Jun 2007 (CDT)

Reading: Richard_Morgan - Broken Angels.

So I drop out of sight for about 5 weeks and what happens? Well... a lot.
We gained three moderators: BLongley, Mhhutchins, and JVjr. Congratulations all, and thank you for helping out here.
We exceeded 190,000, 195,000, and 200,000 titles in that time period, which indicates that a lot of data is getting integrated.
We've integrated about 39,000 data submissions since the first of the year, or about 370 a day. There are now 100 people who have made edits.
About 5.5% of the publications are now verified. Holy crap! We were at 1 percent last time I checked. At this rate we'll be fully verified in about 4 years, but the verification rate is still climbing.
The best part of the story is that people can drop out of sight for over a month, and the website not only continues on, but thrives and grows and improves. Kudos to everyone.
I should be able to contribute for the next couple of weeks before I drop out again. I'll try to catch up on some of the coding bugs and features that have accumulated. Alvonruff 19:52, 13 Apr 2007 (CDT)

Reading: Peter_Watts - Blindsight.

Have started a massive refactoring of the editing and moderating code. Many bugs are associated with errors that have been fixed in one place but not another, or with behavior inconsistancies between different applications. Much of this is due to the slow evolution of the code, and now we have multiple different versions of routines that need to be modified whenever a fix is made.
We integrated about 7600 data submissions in January (about 250 a day). There are now 62 people who have made edits.
A little over 1 percent (1.15) of the publications are now verified. We're verifying about 500 publications per month. While that rate is higher than I expected this early into the feature, it will still take about 15 years to verify all of the publications at that rate. (I'm sure the rate will pick up as the data matures).
Updated the download pages with the latest source and database files. The source files include the refactored editing and moderating files, so they are not a direct reflection of what is currently online.
In response to the discussion on moving author biographies from Wikipedia to the ISFDB (see Talk:ISFDB_FAQ), I added link support for biographies to the author bibliographies, but have otherwise taken no action.
Addressed the following bugs: 10064, 10085, 10087, 10088, 10089
Addressed the following features: 90114

Reading: John_C._Wright - The Golden Transcendence.

Rudimentary award editing tools are now online (for select individuals only), and we're now starting to catch up on missing awards from the last 2 years.
Addressed the following bugs: 10061, 10067, 10068, 10074, 10075, 10076, 10077, 10078, 10079, 10080, 10081, 10082, 20081.

Reading: John_C._Wright - The Phoenix Exultant.

2006 Summary: 2006 was almost certainly the most active year for the ISFDB since its early days in 1995/1996:
- The most obvious change to the ISFDB in 2006 was the ability for the public to perform edits. About 29,000 edits have been integrated since April. Thanks to Ahasuerus, Grendelkhan, Mike Christie, and Marc Kupper for most of those edits, as well as a ton of feedback on the editing system.
- The wiki changed from a skeletal structure for holding the old ISFDB static HTML pages to a central facility for recording bibliographic notes, extensive help pages, bugs, magazine information, as well as requirements and design data. Thanks to the moderators for the ton of work poured into the wiki.
- Numerous bugs were fixed and lots of new features were suggested and implemented.
- We started to get public edits in the last week of the year, and we're already getting magazine and book information which has not been indexed elsewhere.
- In 2007 we expect to ramp up the number of moderators and people making edits, and we'll add more community-related features.
Addressed the following bugs: 10069, 10070, 10072, 20004, 20010, 20011, 20015, 20019, 20020, 20021, 20026, 20029, 20035, 20036, 20047, 20059, 20061, 20062, 20064, 20065, 20066, 20067. 20070.
Addressed the following features: 90068, 90077
Updated the download pages with the latest source and database files.

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 ==History==
+* [[What's New from 2007]]
 * [[What's New from 2006]]
 * [[What's New from 2005]]