Difference between revisions of "ISFDB:Community Portal"

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(→‎Alison Scott disambiguation: why "(US author)" or any "(author)"?)
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: These have now been split up. [[User:ErsatzCulture|ErsatzCulture]] ([[User talk:ErsatzCulture|talk]]) 09:45, 21 September 2022 (EDT)
 
: These have now been split up. [[User:ErsatzCulture|ErsatzCulture]] ([[User talk:ErsatzCulture|talk]]) 09:45, 21 September 2022 (EDT)
 +
 +
:: Why not "Alison Scott (US)"?
 +
:: I suggest that we avoid using "author" in parenthetical disambiguation; that is, strain to avoid using it. I prefer "writer" but suggest we avoid that too.
 +
:: With a glance at all our Author names that contain "author)", I suggest "(NZ)" rather than "(New Zealand Author)"; similarly for "(1990's author)" and "(US author)". [Alison Scott is now the only "(US author)" where we have about thirty "(US)".]
 +
:: Our {{a|Pete Alexander (author)}} might be Pete Alexander (US). [I visited all our Pete Alexanders in order to validate this suggestion. The others are "(UK)" and an illustrator without parenthetical disambiguation.] --[[User:Pwendt|Pwendt]]|[[User talk:Pwendt|talk]] 16:00, 6 October 2022 (EDT)
  
 
== Ivan T.'s Ghosts ==
 
== Ivan T.'s Ghosts ==

Revision as of 15:00, 6 October 2022


ISFDB Discussion Pages and Noticeboards
Before posting to this page, consider whether one of the other discussion pages or noticeboards might suit your needs better.
Help desk
Questions about doing a specific task, or how to correct information when the solution is not immediately obvious.
• New post • Archives
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Help with bibliographic, image credit, and other questions which require a physical check of the work in question.
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Rules and standards
Discussions about the rules and standards, as well as questions about interpretation and application of those rules.
• New post • Rules changelog • Archives
Community Portal
General discussion about anything not covered by the more specialized noticeboards to the left.
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Moderator noticeboard
Get the attention of moderators regarding submission questions.
 
• New post • Archives • Cancel submission
Roadmap: For the original discussion of Roadmap 2017 see this archived section. For the current implementation status, see What's New#Roadmap 2017.



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Archives of old discussions from the Community Portal.


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David St. Clair

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?4619; He wrote a lot of dopey non-fiction books in the 70s and 80s about psychic powers and exorcisms and whatnot, but the etsy.com page I just found for his 1989 book Bloodline says he's turning his hand to fiction. Mine to Kill's Corgi ed., https://www.ebay.co.uk/p/91790613, says "true account" on the cover and the cover of The Devil Rocked Her Cradle on ISFDB also says "account". They're non-fiction (although the Bart ed. of Mine To Kill on ISFDB has different copy on the cover that tries to make it look like a novel) and so probably should be deleted; he's certainly not above-the-threshold. --Username 08:55, 1 July 2022 (EDT)

Reviews by Dave Langford (alternate name)

The summary bibliography for alternate name Dave Langford lists more than 100 Reviews.

And it does not display the note "Alternate Name. See: David Langford (or view all titles published using this alternate name)" that I expect to see.

Meanwhile, for David Langford, I see no way to "toggle" from the default view to one that lists only works we know to be published under that canonical name. Is that a feature we have lost? or (more likely, yes, of course) a phantom memory of some years-ago wishful thought? --Pwendt|talk 13:18, 1 July 2022 (EDT)

When all titles under a pseudonym are already varianted to the canonical name, the page remains empty of titles and the software will display "Alternate Name. See: David Langford (or view all titles published using this alternate name)". If there are still titles not yet varianted, as with all these White Dwarf reviews, it will display only "Used As Alternate Name By: David Langford", so all these reviews will need to be varianted to David Langford. AFAICR I think it has always been this way. ;) PeteYoung 09:23, 2 July 2022 (EDT)
That's right. Spot checking some of the "Dave Langford" reviews, I see that they come from recently entered "White Dwarf" issues, e.g. White Dwarf, December 1984, which was entered on 2022-05-08. They just need to be varianted. Ahasuerus 12:04, 2 July 2022 (EDT)

Science Fiction Encyclopedia Links

I have been working on this project, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/edit/sfe3_authors.cgi. About half of the original task is done but many of the remaining entries are matches on pseudonyms and I am not sure what is the best way to process them, if at all. swfritter 16:15, 1 July 2022 (EDT)

SFE's pseudonym stubs can still be useful as sources of pseudonym attribution, so I would link them on our side. If we have the same pseudonym on file, then I would add its SFE link under the pseudonym record. If we don't have the pseudonym -- which can happen for non-genre pseudonyms -- I would add it to the canonical name. Ahasuerus 12:19, 2 July 2022 (EDT)
That was my inclination. It is kind of nice to see items disappear from the list after they have been processed.--swfritter 16:15, 3 July 2022 (EDT)
Keep in mind that, as the report header says, "this report lets moderators ignore SFE author URLs." Once you have a list of SFE author pages which we don't need to link to, please feel free to post it here and a moderator will "ignore" them. Ahasuerus 21:47, 3 July 2022 (EDT)

Meanwhile, I am taking a little Covid break. Not severe, but I definitely have a little Covid fog.--swfritter 16:15, 1 July 2022 (EDT)

Sorry to hear that! Hopefully things will get better soon and it won't have any side effects. Ahasuerus 12:19, 2 July 2022 (EDT)
Just on the subject of that report, could it be extended to look for SFE links associated with records other than authors? This link is currently at #1633 in the list, and I'd added it to the relevant series page ages ago, but it still shows up in the report. I guess non-author SFE pages are less important to get in the database, but it would seem preferable to add them where relevant, rather than mark them as ignored, I'd have thought?
(Although I do note that the SFE link on this series page - which I'd previously moved from an author page to the series, as the author/editor in question now has a proper SFE page - doesn't show on the report, so maybe things are more complicated than I thought? ErsatzCulture 13:02, 2 July 2022 (EDT)
There are a couple of things to consider here.
First, the ISFDB/SFE reconciliation report is supposed to be rebuilt nightly by scanning the SFE categories listed on this SFE page of "people" categories: artist, author, critic, etc. Their full list of categories includes awards, comics, fandom-related entries, films, games, etc. Once we catch up with the "people" categories, we can explore other categories. "Award" looks particularly promising. "Game" may also be of interest since we have quite a few fiction series based on game worlds.
Second, SFE's recent (October 2021) migration from HTTP to HTTPS required certain software changes on our side. Some were easy to implement, but others can't be put into effect until we upgrade our server. This means that we are working with an out of date version of SFE's data. (We'll be able to catch up once our server migration is finished.) Since I don't see https://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/star_trek_picard listed as part of a "people category", I assume that it comes from an older version of the SFE data. Ahasuerus 15:49, 2 July 2022 (EDT)

Red Skel(e)ton

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?326759; Someone uploaded a copy of this anthology to Archive.org in 2015; the first author's last name was misspelled, and Supernatural Index where contents were entered from by previous editor spells it properly, so I assume it was just a mistake and I fixed it. More importantly, the title page seems to suggest the title should be Red Skeleton (or maybe Red Skel(e)ton), and it is Skeleton in many places on the web; what do you think? Also, there is much (creepy) interior art; does anyone know if it's also by the cover artist? --Username 11:32, 4 July 2022 (EDT)

I think it should be "Skeleton". Note that LOC has it that way. Also, if you look at the scan, both the title page and the running headers spell it Skeleton with the second "e" slightly lighter and dropped a bit, but still clearly "Skeleton". --MartyD 11:52, 4 July 2022 (EDT)

Yellow Mark

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5352499; Does anyone know if that URL can be fixed in order not to display that warning? I entered the other Sunset book by Jakes, Brak, with an Amazon cover that's not so good but at least there was one, but this audiobook's cover could only be found by me on Goodreads and it does start with an Amazon URL but mod apparently doesn't agree, although there are countless cover images on ISFDB with the same warning and yet their covers still display properly. I prefer to save uploading covers to Wiki for rare books, or those with badly scanned or damaged covers, neither of which applies in this case. --Username 11:53, 4 July 2022 (EDT)

I suggest you ping Ahasuerus. It could be the validator needs a little tweaking. It probably doesn't like the periods in the "compressed.photo.goodreads.com" part -- usually periods separate Amazon's formatting directives -- but that's just a Male Answer Syndrome WAG. --MartyD 18:43, 4 July 2022 (EDT)
Our software currently recognizes one stable pattern for Amazon-hosted "S" image URLs: *.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/amzn-author-media-prod/ followed by 26 letters or digits and ending with ".gif", ".png" or ".jpg".
The "S" URL linked above is "images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327999593i/9621932.jpg", which is very different from what's expected. Do we know if this pattern is supported by Amazon? Ahasuerus 18:54, 4 July 2022 (EDT)
The link does work. I have never seen one like it. I spent a little quality Google time trying to find an alternative Amazon path for it, but I was unsuccessful. --MartyD 07:19, 5 July 2022 (EDT)
Oh, I know that it works, I am just wondering if it's officially supported. We've run into stability issues with unsupported Amazon URLs in the past -- "here today, gone tomorrow". Ahasuerus 09:00, 5 July 2022 (EDT)

"Publications with Invalid Page Numbers" updated

The cleanup report "Publications with Invalid Page Numbers" has been updated to look for invalid values after the pipe character. Once the report is rerun tomorrow morning, it should list 388 publications. Ahasuerus 12:32, 5 July 2022 (EDT)

2022-07-05 -- server problems

The ISFDB server is currently experiencing system issues and "leaking" disk space. It appears to be the same problem that we ran into a couple of months ago and that had to be fixed by the hosting company. At the rate things are going, we will run out of space within a couple of hours.

I have notified Al and hope that the issue will be resolved later today. Ahasuerus 12:35, 5 July 2022 (EDT)

The server finally ran out of disk space around 5:30am this morning. The hosting company fixed the issue a few minutes ago. Everything should be back up. Please post here if you come across any problems. Ahasuerus 10:08, 6 July 2022 (EDT)

$5.95

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Username#The_Summer_Meadows; Can someone look at this and approve my edit? I'm tired of arguing. --Username 17:01, 6 July 2022 (EDT)

It was approved very soon after I wrote this, but I think that was just in the normal run of things, not as a result of my message. I'm still curious about whether I was imagining things, or does anyone else see what I saw? There's no Delacorte PB and searching Google's copy brings up $5.95, right? --Username 12:58, 7 July 2022 (EDT)
I saw the $5.95, but I wouldn't have been able to figure out that the snippet was showing the price from a flap. FWIW, a Google shows plenty of resellers calling it a hardcover, as well as a Reginald bibliography on Google Books calling it "cloth". An entry on AbeBooks calls it hardcover, talks about the dust jacket condition, and has some pictures, although the pictures do not include anything that definitively show the format. So, given all of that, it seems likely Google Books' metadata is mistaken. --MartyD 10:39, 8 July 2022 (EDT)
I happen to agree that $5.95 is the price for the hardcover. I agree because of information provided subsequent to the edit. However, the publication note still says only 'Price found in search of Google Books copy. I find that statement incomplete at best. Note, I did not reject it, I released it so another moderator could review it. John Scifibones 11:14, 8 July 2022 (EDT)
https://www.nytimes.com/1973/10/21/archives/new-novel-by-leland-frederick-cooley-607-pp-new-york-avon-paper-175.html; https://www.nytimes.com/1973/10/01/archives/a-listing-of-recently-published-books-fiction-general.html. Yes, $5.95 IS the price of the hardcover. There's 2 mentions of it linked above. I saw those first, didn't want to enter 2 links, and found the price in the Google copy, which is preferable because I'm sure the New York Times was just as capable of wrong info as anyone else, but when you see $5.95 in print on an actual scan of a physical copy when you do a search on Google, you can't dispute that; pics don't lie. If you'd like to add those 2 Times links to the record so it's more complete, you're free to do that. --Username 11:30, 8 July 2022 (EDT)

John Farris birthdate

It was pointed out on Twitter that ISFDB has today as a birthdate for him, but Wikipedia (and also IMDB) has the 26th. I looked through the Wikipedia history and talk pages, but couldn't see anything that might explain the discrepancy, other than the possibility of confusion with a different John Farris, but that one doesn't have any DOB info on Wikipedia, so that doesn't seem an especially likely explanation.

Does anyone know any more about this author, or is it something that will just have to be acknowledged in the note, but leaving the DOB field as-is. Having a month and day-of-month of the same number makes me suspect the data here is more likely to be incorrect (e.g. typo or date format mismatch), but I don't think that's enough to justify changing the value in the field. ErsatzCulture 14:23, 7 July 2022 (EDT)

The Prezi page says "Born July seventh, 1936". Judging by the edit history, that page is likely the source for our date. See [1]. The "blackleatherrequired" site only has/had 1936. Searching on https://www.missouribirthindex.com/ for Farris between 1935 and 1937 give "JOHN LEE FARRIS 07/26/1936". While that's not an official Missouri government site, it looks fairly authoritative to me. --MartyD 10:23, 8 July 2022 (EDT)
Thanks for doing way more detective work than I could even have considered! I've updated the author record, adding a note about the contrary date in the Prezi. ErsatzCulture 16:52, 11 July 2022 (EDT)

Long Dash

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?24550; Not merged like they should be because of that dumb dash being entered 2 different ways. --Username 15:21, 7 July 2022 (EDT)

Why Don't They Just Use Words?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?119003; So it turns out this dude, Brian Ames, wrote a ton of fiction including much that's not on ISFDB because it was published in literary/online zines, and had a weird old site, tendollardog.com, with a huge list (last archived link in 2009) of his works, so I'm going to add it here soon. I added links to 2 stories from mytholog.com, apparently a popular site once that ended in 2007 but is still archived online, but I just couldn't find that reprint of his All Hallows story "Several Appearances of Stuart" in Whispering Spirits, another once-popular online site that published PDF's of each issue, it seems, but changed their bloody URL so many times (Ralan says their old defunct site was whisperingghosts.com, which is weird because that's NOT THE TITLE OF THE MAGAZINE), including a Geocities site and a domain called dragynspice.com (*puke*). If anyone can extract any stories beyond the scant couple I found on Archive.org and can locate Ames' story, that would be great. The issue here, though, is that 1 of his stories was written using the old "write the title using graphics" BS, and in this case his 2002 story with the random symbols for a title was reprinted in his 2004 collection, but whoever entered it here decided to title it "grey blob". Now, I was going to variant, but changed my mind. So would anyone like to decide which title is more suitable and merge or whatever is needed? If you hover over the 2002 title it says "Circle with Vertical Fill". --Username 19:07, 8 July 2022 (EDT)

Blue Star

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?28465; I added a sweet Amazon cover for the Moorcock book and decided to enter publisher's address since it's in a photo; that 2021 book obviously isn't the same as the 70's books, but all I see in every edition on Amazon is Crystal Star. So if anyone can actually find a title page that says Blue Star it could be changed in some way to differ it from the old publisher; if not, it just needs changing to Crystal Star. --Username 14:00, 9 July 2022 (EDT)

Peter (Andrew) Jones

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?26793; These are orphaned because editors didn't variant titles and name to Peter Jones, but it's not a guarantee that all are by the same Peter Jones, being a very common name, so if anyone knows for sure about any of them they should be made variants. --Username 10:41, 10 July 2022 (EDT)

While Peter Jones is a common name, Peter Andrew Jones is less common. Peter Jones is our canonical name for Peter Andrew Jones so extremely likely anything under Peter Andrew Jones is the same Jones. All the covers are consistent with Jones' style as well. I have varianted them. -- JLaTondre (talk) 12:23, 10 July 2022 (EDT)

"Publications with Invalid Prices" tweaked

The cleanup report "Publications with Invalid Prices" has been tweaked to ignore legal prices like "£0.075" and "$0.125". Ahasuerus 13:16, 10 July 2022 (EDT)

2022-07-10 -- more server problems

The disk space "leak" which we ran into on July 5/6 is back. At the current rate we will run out of disk space in a few hours. I have contacted Al. Ahasuerus 13:18, 10 July 2022 (EDT)

7:15pm update. We are still leaking disk space, although slower than this morning. At this rate the server may run out of space either overnight or tomorrow morning. Ahasuerus 19:18, 10 July 2022 (EDT)
After a couple of rocky hours between 4am and 5:30am, things seem to be back to normal. Fingers crossed. Ahasuerus 05:52, 11 July 2022 (EDT)

"My Pending/Recently Approved/Rejected/Errored Out" lists tweaked

The following Web pages:

have been limited to the last 3 months for performance reasons. We may be able to lift these restrictions once we upgrade the database engine. Ahasuerus 19:16, 10 July 2022 (EDT)

For me the report "My Pending Edits" is suddenly empty --a change this hour, or nearly so-- without new listings atop "My Recent Edits".
The current number of pending edits by all editors (not held by a moderator) is 431, up from 426. --Pwendt|talk 19:20, 10 July 2022 (EDT)
Address bar displays ~/cgi-bin/myrecent.cgi?0+N (Pending) or ~/cgi-bin/myrecent.cgi?0+I (Recent). --Pwendt|talk 19:22, 10 July 2022 (EDT)
Let me take a look... Ahasuerus 19:38, 10 July 2022 (EDT)
Fixed. The 3 month limit should only apply to the "My Recent Edits" page from now on. Thanks for reporting the problem! Ahasuerus 19:49, 10 July 2022 (EDT)

Russian Warren

https://fantlab.ru/art1391; I've been adding edits for various Jim Warren-related things, and that page lists a bunch of Russian books with his art, but many of the covers I recognize from other books, or, in the case of that "pair of eyes with a woman's face on top" cover, from the poster of the G. Romero/D. Argento 1990 anthology film Two Evil Eyes. All the English-language covers are credited on ISFDB, but several edits could probably be made from the Russian ones for people fluent in that language. The 1996 cover is from Stuart Friedman's Maniac, for example, while the first 1997 cover uses the hourglass art from R. Karl Largent's Black Death, but the woman in the background isn't on that cover, so maybe they stole from multiple covers at the same time for some of these books, although she appears on the back cover, too, so maybe she was some kind of Russian horror personality or something (poor late Richard Laymon is also on the back cover, with a photo that couldn't look any less scary for a horror author). A bonus is that some of these Russian entries include American covers that aren't elsewhere on FantLab, with some including the original art used for the covers. I have no idea why the Deathwalker cover keeps appearing under Stephen King's books, though. --Username 14:10, 11 July 2022 (EDT)

FantLab editors have done a great deal of work figuring out which artists' art has been "reused without permission" by Russian publishers. For example, consider this 2003 translation of David Zindell's The Lightstone. The cover is a fusion of paintings originally produced by Mónica Pasamón, Jerry Vanderstelt and Donald Clavette. It's a headache to sort out... Ahasuerus 14:54, 11 July 2022 (EDT)

Elvis Is Alive!

"John Farris' 2004 collection from Babbage Press, [84], is rare, with only 2 copies on Worldcat. I ordered it from interlibrary loan a few years ago so it definitely exists, but I noticed it had no page #'s entered on ISFDB, and couldn't find anywhere online that shows the contents page so I could enter them. However, in searching I stumbled across the fact that it was reprinted under a different title in 2020, https://www.amazon.com/No-Sin-Unpunished-John-Farris-ebook/dp/B08G892JNN. So anyone with an Amazon account who can access the entire e-book may want to enter all the info on ISFDB; there's a few stories in there that are hard to find anywhere else. Also, if anyone owns the Babbage edition (HA!) it would be good to enter the page #'s, too." The above was cut-and-pasted from a message I left sometime last year (I knew I had written about this book before but couldn't find it until I searched for the title), and today after seeing John Farris' birth date fixed by others here I decided to do some edits for his books, which surprisingly are still missing many editions/have incorrect or missing info. While doing so I came across a single copy of Elvisland on eBay, with a welcome photo of the contents page, so I've entered the page #'s. However, in typical Babbage fashion their proofreading was crap, and the next-to-last story has a page # lower than the story preceding it. Also, WorldCat had a page count much lower than entered here, and an ancient review on sfsite.com agreed, so I fixed that, too. So now someone needs to verify from an actual copy if all the page #'s and the page count are correct. Anyone? No Sin Unpunished hasn't been entered by anyone yet, either, and I see that 1 story from 2005, "Bloody Mary Morning", was not in Elvisland and the title story seems to be original. EDIT: I saw on IMDB that Farris was involved in a movie 2 or 3 years ago titled No Sin Unpunished which was based on his story "Horrorshow", so if anyone enters the e-book they should check to see if it's mentioned anywhere that the title story is not original but simply a retitling of that old story. --Username 21:30, 11 July 2022 (EDT)

Bad Voltage

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?6372; I just made some edits moving Potter's credit over to the second entry, replaced the unstable cover image, fixed dates, etc., so there's really no need for the first entry anymore. Not sure why it was entered because other entry was done in 2007, a couple of years earlier. --Username 13:50, 12 July 2022 (EDT)

Goldsteins

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=goldstein&type=Name; Steve, Steven L. and Steven Lawrence Goldstein all seem to be the same guy. --Username 18:03, 12 July 2022 (EDT)

Return of the Living Dead

https://archive.org/search.php?query=return-of-the-living-dead%20russo&and[]=mediatype%3A%22texts%22; Someone uploaded that Hamlyn edition a few days ago, but in Hamlyn's typical fashion there's no indication of what printing it is; they just liked releasing the same book with different covers. I'm sure Brit PB experts will know. Also, that Undead book revealed the sweet cover art credit on the back cover, so I entered that in the e-book edition (TP was never entered here). More importantly, I saw here, https://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/2325/return-living-dead, the suggestion that Russo re-wrote the book after the 1985 film version came out, so that version may be a novelization, but writers at that Vault link seem confused about whether the Hamlyn edition with the cover recently uploaded was the rewritten version or whether it was the Arrow edition, and both the Hamlyn on ISFDB and the Arrow have the same page count, which seems unlikely if he re-wrote the book. So there might be some further investigation needed. --Username 19:12, 12 July 2022 (EDT)

Rewrite of submission review pages underway

The way the ISFDB software displays submission review pages is a holdover from an earlier era. The code is convoluted and inefficient, which makes it hard to add new features or fix existing problems.

I am currently in the middle of a rewrite which will require multiple patches to complete. If you see submission review pages behaving in wrong or unusual ways, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus 10:08, 13 July 2022 (EDT)

I just tried to edit the DAW publisher page (see item below) and on clicking submit on the edit page, I'm linked to [https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/mod/submission_review.cgi?5363605 which just says "Moderator privileges are required for this option". (NB: this is just to submit an edit, not to self-approve it.) Sidebar says I'm logged in as me. (This was around 15:45 BST (GMT+1) if you need to trace any logs) ErsatzCulture 10:49, 13 July 2022 (EDT)
EDIT: I see that my 2 attempts to submit this (5363603 & 5363605) do appear in my Pending Edits page, so the edits have been accepted, and (presumably) submission_review.cgi is bombing out after that point. If I click on one of those edits, I can see the detail (view_submission.cgi), but when I click on the self-approver view link, I go to submission_review.cgi and the same error as previously mentioned. ErsatzCulture 11:03, 13 July 2022 (EDT)
Thanks, investigating... Ahasuerus 11:23, 13 July 2022 (EDT)
I have patched the code. Could you please give it another try and see if it fixed the problem? Ahasuerus 11:44, 13 July 2022 (EDT)
I've just submitted a new version of the edit to the DAW page, and was able to accept it as part of the regular self-approver workflow.
Something that I only just noticed, is that there seems/seemed to be some weirdness with the diffing logic on view_submission.cgi. If you go to https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5363605 , it doesn't show any changes. DON'T CLICK ON THE XML LINK FOR THAT EDIT!! If you look at my slightly earlier attempt at that edit https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5363603 it was also not showing any changes. However, I clicked on the XML view to see if that had my edits, which it did, but when I went back to the submission view, those changes were now showing in the diff. I assume there's something behind-the-scenes that explains that, and presumably the lack of anyone else reporting problems means this hasn't had wide impact, but editors, especially self-approvers, might want to double check their edits have been properly processed? ErsatzCulture 11:58, 13 July 2022 (EDT)
This is odd. Submission review pages and "Raw XML dump" pages are not supposed to affect each other; they load data directly from the database. I have looked at the linked submissions and couldn't see the differences between the view_submission.cgi representation of the data and the dumpxml.cgi representation. I am not sure what could be responsible for the behavior that you described :-( Ahasuerus 12:11, 13 July 2022 (EDT)
It looks like my second submission lost my edits (due to somewhat-known back button behaviour on edit pages), which would explain how things look right now. Hopefully this is all solved - I've done a couple of AddPubs in the mean time, and they were both fine. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ErsatzCulture (talkcontribs) .

DAW ownership

DAW has just been bought out by a Chinese publisher - paywalled PW story PR statement in Twitter thread. Whilst reading up on the background behind this, I note that the publisher note states "DAW is currently a division of Penguin Group (USA)". Whilst I might have edited that to switch to the past tense, as far as I can tell, that's isn't/wasn't a true statement?

  • Wikipedia says "Although it has a distribution relationship with Penguin Group and is headquartered in Penguin USA's offices in New York City, DAW is editorially independent and closely held by its current publishers, Betsy Wollheim (Donald's daughter) and Sheila E. Gilbert."
  • The acquisition statement linked above also says they were a private company & were "partnered with and distributed by PRH"

Anyone care to edit that note accordingly? (As someone on the other side of the Atlantic from where DAW operates, I don't feel knowledgeable enough about them to change things.) FWIW The bit about them being a division of Penguin seems to have been in since before 2010/the edit history records. ErsatzCulture 10:33, 13 July 2022 (EDT)

I suspect that "partnered with" can cover a variety of arrangements. I also note that the press release quoted by Tor says:
  • ...we will be the sole SFF imprint of their company (a first for DAW).
which seems to suggest that they considered themselves a Penguin "imprint" prior to being purchased by Astra Publishing.
Given this ambiguous language, I think we'll want to quote the sources of our information about the prior ownership structure explicitly. Ahasuerus 12:01, 13 July 2022 (EDT)
I've now expanded the note in the DAW entry to reword the stuff about the Penguin relationship, and to add that Betsy Wollheim & Sheila Gilbert had been running it after the senior Wollheims, and to note the Astra buyout. More than happy if someone else wants to take a crack at tweaking it further. ErsatzCulture 12:27, 16 July 2022 (EDT)

Bill Gates

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?150983; I remember adding that appropriate photo a long time ago, but today came across this randomly and the name seems weird. Why is there a period after the III, and shouldn't III be after the other names? --Username 13:02, 13 July 2022 (EDT)

Richard Powers Portuguese Cover?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titlecovers.cgi?16229; I imported the Galaxy edition's cover art to the 2 Wildside editions, but that Regresso edition clearly uses some of it while adding a stupid-looking green bird or whatever that is. So I don't know if Powers' credit belongs in that, too. --Username 17:47, 13 July 2022 (EDT)

Psychos Page Count

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?35077; I've been replacing unstable covers for Robert Bloch books and the HC edition of this has just been replaced with a cover that actually looks a lot better, but I think I recall asking about the page count some time ago; is the HC really much lower than the Pocket editions or is HC the same and someone got the wrong info from some website? Someone here may own a copy. --Username 13:51, 14 July 2022 (EDT)

PLEASE upgrade ISFDB to SSL meaning https:

Hi... I don't know where else to post this... I'm John T. Cullen (John Argo, Jean Cullen) and I have been active on the Web since 1996. I have had a number of websites up for more than 20 years. In the past few years, I finally figured out how to apply SSL (Secure Socket Layer) to my websites. That changes the domain names from http: to https: and it is a major, important upgrade. I am shocked that the ISFDB domain name address (https://www.isfdb.org/) has not yet been upgraded. PLEASE! it is so easy to do, and so important. ISFDB is a tremendously important resource to all of us in this business, including authors, editors, and webmasters to name just a few. PLEASE somebody start working on this issue... it will only take a few hours to install & make active. Thank you! JTC anchor site: https://www.johntcullen.com

Yes, it is important, because of all the intellectual property theft from China and elsewhere, to make even the most casual site protected, much less a major site like this one. I'm not a mod, but I'm sure someone will heed your advice soon. Also, your author photo was blurry and a hat covered part of your face, so I replaced it (pending approval) with a "John Argo" Amazon photo of you, hatless, wearing a colorful shirt and holding a glass of champagne outdoors. Where was that taken? It looks lovely; I wish I was there now. P.S. Don't forget to sign your messages here by clicking the next-to-last symbol on the row above. --Username 08:39, 15 July 2022 (EDT)
Glad to hear that you find the ISFDB database to be an important resource! The site administrators are very much aware of the need to upgrade to HTTPS and have been working on it since late 2021. Unfortunately, it's not a straightforward process since our site uses complex software. It took months of work to upgrade everything and we are now testing the results on our public-facing test server, isfdb2.org. There is no ETA at this time. Ahasuerus 11:02, 15 July 2022 (EDT)

Macrae Smith

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?577858; I did some edits for Macrae-Smith Company books, and there was one Co. entry, the one linked above, which I added Archive link to and fixed the publisher's name, but there's no dash between the words so I entered it that way. Online photos of title pages of the other books by them online suggest that someone saw dots between the words in publisher's name and thought it was a dash. So if anyone can verify that all half-dozen Macrae-Smith books on ISFDB have no dash then they, plus book linked above, will all be under the same publisher. --Username 10:27, 15 July 2022 (EDT)

Marie Belloc Lowndes Titles

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?19896; Her collection is actually titled IN Terror across all editions so I fixed that, but 1 of her novels contains no Out in the original Brit ed. (title page on Google) so changing that would require unmerging and such, in case anyone wants to do that. The Timmy novel seems to have the same title in all editions, because there's a not-on-ISFDB Doran American ed. on Archive.org with the same title. --Username 00:55, 16 July 2022 (EDT)

Leisure Trade Paperback?!?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?50607; This book didn't have a cover until I added it and got it approved today, but the mod then made their own edit changing format to TP. Leisure was a low-rent paperback publisher, they didn't do trade paperbacks. I just did an advanced search for Leisure Books and TP format and out of nearly 700 books by the publisher a grand total of 2 books came up, this one that was just changed and a $1.50 Charles Berlitz Atlantis non-fiction book, which is also likely not a TP. --Username 15:00, 16 July 2022 (EDT)

"Adult" Book Notes

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pub_history.cgi?651649; So some time ago I added price to this book with a note, then added Wikipedia page, then added at least one of those external ID, and recently I added a note about the face on the cover not being some random art but rather the male star of the film, and then made another edit about there being 2 film photos on the back cover. From past experience ISFDB can't handle entering new info in an edit if the same field had info entered in a previous edit that hasn't been approved yet, as can be inferred from the fact that a mod approved the edit with the face info but then the photo info edit was left hanging for a while, with whoever looked at it probably wondering why this guy wanted to erase the info he previously wrote, which of course I had no intention of doing. I even tried to trick ISFDB this time because when I entered the first edit I did so on a separate line in the note box, but for the second edit I placed the info on the same line as my price info done some time ago. It didn't work. So now I've had to enter another edit adding back the erased info about the face. Is there a way to enter info without it erasing previous info? I sometimes find new info to enter while a previous edit is still in the queue, and don't like to wait for the first edit to be approved because it often takes so long to get to it in my usually very long list of edits that by the time it's approved I forget to enter the next set of info. --Username 19:28, 16 July 2022 (EDT)

Submissions operate on a "field-by-field" basis. Only changed field values are recorded when submissions are created. For example, suppose I create two Edit Publication submissions for the same publication record. We'll call them Submission A and Submission B. Submission A changes the price value from "$5.99" to "$7.99". Submission B changes the Catalog ID value from "D-272" to "D-273". Since only these two changed values will be stored in the submission records, the two submissions won't overlap and can be approved in any order.
On the other hand, if Submission A changes the price value from "$5.99" to "$7.99" and Submission B changes it from "$5.99" to "$8.99", the approval order becomes important. Whichever submission is approved last will trump the other submission.
The same logic applies to Note fields. Whichever submission is approved last is the one that takes effect. If you create a submission which adds a sentence to the Note field of some record and then create another submission affecting the same Note field, the last approved submission will take effect. It would be safer to cancel the first submission, which can be done on "My Pending Edits" page, and create a new one. Ahasuerus 08:13, 17 July 2022 (EDT)

Flies on the Wall

This Alex Hamilton collection, which seems not to have been published in America unlike his earlier collection Beam of Malice (although that edition isn't on ISFDB), is rare and I did a lot of edits months ago piecing together the contents from searching the Google Books copy, discovering a contents listing online was missing 1 of the stories, finding a single copy on eBay so I could enter the price, uploading the full cover, etc. Today I randomly saw it on Archive.org (https://archive.org/details/fliesonwall0000hami); turns out someone uploaded it last month. Damn it. Anyway, most of the stories were collected in his bumper collection from Ash-Tree in 2007, but for some reason it seems his 1966 story "End of the Road" wasn't included and the original story "Fall" wasn't, either. So there's a couple of reasons this book is still valuable. Also, it's a good thing the eBay copy was complete because this copy is price-clipped, with an adorable little cut on the bottom of the front flap. --Username 11:03, 17 July 2022 (EDT)

French Vincent O'Sullivan

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1818259; Anyone know why this story, which is "When I Was Dead" in English, isn't a variant of that story, and why the anthologist is listed as a co-author? --Username 20:47, 17 July 2022 (EDT)

See Here

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?88940; "See" note may not be needed now that I've added the full cover, but there's so much tag stuff I don't know what to delete. --Username 10:41, 18 July 2022 (EDT)

Thirty Seconds Over New York

https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19266963W/Thirty_Seconds_Over_New_York; Anyone know what edition this is? I don't see this cover on eBay or in Google Images. The Collins edition which has no cover on ISFDB is online and it looks nothing like this. --Username 14:38, 18 July 2022 (EDT)

Orchids for Doc

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?196373; Supposedly unpublished, but there is a WorldCat page that has a cover unrelated to the title, https://www.worldcat.org/title/orchids-for-doc-the-literary-adventures-and-autobiography-of-robert-aw-doc-lowndes/oclc/27728655, in case any old SF experts can do anything with this info. --Username 19:51, 18 July 2022 (EDT)

Birthing Person

A British author named Rodney Hyde-Thompson (can't get more British than that) wrote a 1972 HC novel called The Alternative about A MAN WHO GETS PREGNANT, and it was quickly released in America as a cheap Warner PB with sweet cover art and the usual comparison to Rosemary's Baby, followed (preceded?) by a British Sphere PB retitled Black Marriage, with a photo cover showing a man sitting in a rocking chair, wearing makeup and a dress, holding a baby doll in his arms. The Warner PB was on Archive.org so I entered that, the Sphere has an Amazon page and a WorldCat record so I entered as much info as I could from those, but the HC really needs a print copy handy to enter info from; the Warner PB doesn't even mention it was previously published in England. Anyone have a copy? Also, if any mods read this, can you approve those 2 edits before my hundreds of others, because I saw on eBay that the ISBN is on the spine, which of course can't be seen on the Archive.org copy. I'd like to enter that info before I forget. EDIT: Approved, and it only took 3 days. Thanks for the quick response; I really appreciate it. The ISBN has now been added so I can finally delete my bookmark of the eBay photo with the spine. --Username 11:29, 19 July 2022 (EDT)

The Collected Stories of Philip *D*. Dick

Looking at the edit history, this one has had 4 different editors/mods eyes on it, including a seemingly-inactive PVer, so I'm a tad wary of unilaterally fixing the apparent typo in the title without getting any second opinions.

Also, the mod note on the original edit which stated This edition was on Amazon.com US for a few weeks, where I bought it, before disappearing from their site. There was no publisher listed, and no ISBN. It feels like this - with slight wording tweaks - should probably be in the pub note, unless anyone objects? (That this pub is no longer available makes it harder to verify if the typo is/was genuinely in the pub, of course.) ErsatzCulture 10:18, 20 July 2022 (EDT)

Dave is probably going to show up from somewhere soon-ish :) If you want to add the note, go ahead. See also this for a conversation on other details on the thing. I am pretty sure the D. is a DB typo based on the long discussion we had on my page about it. Annie 12:50, 20 July 2022 (EDT)
You weren't kidding about the length of that thread ;-) I'll make the tweaks I proposed if there hasn't been any other feedback/dissenting opinion here in the next few days. ErsatzCulture 16:38, 20 July 2022 (EDT)

Internet Archive

https://blog.archive.org/2022/07/08/internet-archive-seeks-summary-judgment-in-federal-lawsuit-filed-by-publishing-companies; I've warned about this a few times before on these boards, but now it seems they're really getting serious. The Archive has always had a questionable practice of allowing any and every book, including hundreds of thousands of non-public domain titles, to be on their site, similar to YouTube and other sites. So it would be a major blow to this site if all those books weren't available anymore to add info from, not to mention to people who just like to read the books. So this is something to keep an eye on. Or is this something they go through regularly and it won't amount to anything? --Username 13:00, 20 July 2022 (EDT)

Canonical Name Change KC Grifant from K. C. Grifant

Any objections to making KC Grifant the canonical name and K. C. Grifant the alternate? The four titles attributed to K. C. Grifant shouldo have been credited to KC Grifant. I'll take care of the corrections when I make the change. John Scifibones 16:37, 21 July 2022 (EDT)

Hearing none, change made. John Scifibones 10:57, 28 July 2022 (EDT)

Sorcerer's Apprentice

https://archive.org/details/sa-016; The Wold story is on ISFDB with just a 1983 date and no note about where it came from, so I added a note about that, but philsp.com only mentions that story and the Keith Taylor article. So if anyone thinks the full contents should be entered here someone uploaded it recently. Philsp.com also mentions a #17 with a Karl Edward Wagner story but as far as I can see #16 is the only issue on Archive.org. --Username 08:22, 22 July 2022 (EDT)

I added the publication with a second article and the book reviews here. I've also been fixing the FictionMags links and adding RPGGeek links. Tom 10:56, 24 July 2022 (EDT)
Thanks. I noticed a lot of Sorcerer's Apprentice entries in the edit list; you went above and beyond. One thing I've been noticing is that some of the genre magazines that were uploaded to Archive.org (an uploader named SketchTheCow was responsible for many of them years ago) are incomplete; a very recent upload of an issue of a rare zine, Amazing Experiences, is missing 2 pages, which almost caused me to think that 1 of the stories listed in the contents wasn't in the zine. I was ready to crow about finding that out when I realized that the plot of a certain story didn't match the plot on the previous page ("The Yellow Pagoda"; the plot really shows up on the second page of the story, so I'm guessing not much is missed by the first page being missing; it seems like a sappy wish-fulfillment story about a woman who can't have a baby until she enters a pagoda at a carnival and a mysterious man from the Orient grants her wish and somehow makes her pregnant, but the ending takes a dark turn into pure horror; the author wrote a horror novel around the same time, Mantis, so I guess it's not too surprising). Also, the uploaded-in-2017 first issue of Night Cry from 1984 (which just reprinted stories from early issues of Twilight Zone Magazine) is missing SIX pages. What bothers me is that when I was rabidly printing every horror magazine that was uploaded several years ago I just assumed they were complete. I have at least half-a-dozen gigantic stacks of thousands of articles, essays, short stories, etc. printed at my local library that I haven't had time to read yet, and among them are hundreds and hundreds of stories from these magazines. When I finally get around to starting to read them, I wonder how many will be incomplete. So I suggest that anyone who works on anything having to do with archived zines, check and make sure they have all their pages, and if they don't leave a note in their record so other people will know. EDIT: I just noticed that Issue 16 which started this whole discussion doesn't have the issue number entered in the notes, while all the other issues have the issue # in the title, which I think is wrong; RTrace likes to fix those when he sees them. --Username 11:29, 24 July 2022 (EDT)
I have run into the issue with incomplete scans in the past. At least the SA scan had page numbers, so that helps. I added the issue number to the notes. Unfortunately, issue 17 also came out some time in '83, so both issues will end up with the same title. I have some more edits to make to the early issues as well to fix their links. Tom 11:38, 26 July 2022 (EDT)

Award Bibliography page - sorting by award type?

The "Award Bibliography" page currently sorts awards and nominations by year. That's fine for authors with relatively few awards, but it's not that great for more popular authors. For example, if you want to know if any of Paul J. McAuley's works have been nominated for the Hugo award, you have to search his "Award Bibliography" page for the word "Hugo", skipping false positives like the 2005 Sidewise nomination for "The 2005 Hugo Award Ceremony Script".

I am thinking that it would be helpful to split the "Award Bibliography" page into two separate pages: one by year, which would be identical to the current one, and the other one by award type, which would have separate tables for each award type, sorted by type name. Would that be an improvement? Ahasuerus 15:13, 22 July 2022 (EDT)

I'd love to be able to order that page by any of the 5 pieces of data in now shows - you have a similar issue if you are trying to find all nominations for a certain book for example (and they won't always be clustered if you sort per year because of translations and retrospective awards). So yes, having a second page grouping "per award" will be useful but having one which groups per title will also be a good idea IMO (if you are planning to do reorders anyway... :) ) Annie 15:20, 22 July 2022 (EDT)
Perhaps making the table that lists them sortable by some or all of the column headers? Would that be easy to implement? I know they have sortable tables on Wikipedia, though I haven't looked into how they are done. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:39, 22 July 2022 (EDT)
Making tables sortable is doable, but it would require some changes. For example, "Year and Award" is currently one column. We would need to split it into "Year" and "Award Type" before we could sort by award type. Also, translations and other variant titles would affect sorting by "Title", which may be better handled by creating a separate table layout.
One more thing. We have a "Statistics" report for Titles Ranked by Awards and Nominations; you can limit the results by title type, decade and year. It would be nice to be able to sort author-specific titles by "award score". It would help answer questions like "What's Author X's most popular works?". Ahasuerus 15:54, 22 July 2022 (EDT)
"Work with the most awards" is not necessarily the same as "most popular work" though :) Annie 17:56, 22 July 2022 (EDT)
True, but in the absence of publishers' sales numbers awards and nominations are probably as close as we can get. We could also create a "Sorted by the number of reviews" page. (Unfortunately, our "votes" system is not as popular as Goodreads', which would make it only marginally useful.) Ahasuerus 10:02, 28 July 2022 (EDT)
How about number of pubs? For example, using that as a ranking metric (*) puts Snow Crash ahead of Neal Stephenson's other work, which matches where it appears in the Goodreads number-of-readers metric, whereas it's only his #5 work in the award table.
(* at least when just counting the English language pubs, which is all I could be bothered to implement in my own version.) ErsatzCulture 10:46, 28 July 2022 (EDT)
Sure, we can do that as well. There may be a certain bias when some of the author's works are in public domain and some aren't, but it can still be useful. Ahasuerus 13:56, 28 July 2022 (EDT)
Other from that - yes - making these available on the individual authors' awards pages sounds like a good idea.
For the title sorting - that is why I did not mention making the tables sortable (if we do, we will need to pull "Original title" in its own column and that view will get too crowded and wide I think). I like our usual way of +1,+2 and so on in the address bar that we have in some other pages to switch between views and I think it can work well here as well. But either way works. Annie 17:56, 22 July 2022 (EDT)

(unindent) Hearing no objection, the following FRs have been created:

  • FR 1521 "Allow sorting authors' award pages by different fields"
  • FR 1522 "Author bibliography sorted by the number of reviews"
  • FR 1523 "Author bibliography sorted by the number of reprints"

Ahasuerus 14:00, 1 August 2022 (EDT)

Szélesi Sándor = Sandor Szelesi

Szélesi Sándor and Sandor Szelesi both appear on the birthdays section of the homepage today. The latter only has a single title (from a short story in a German anthology), so it would seem the second author record should be made a variant of the first one, or perhaps have the story changed to use the first author, if it looks like the latter is a data entry issue?

However, I noticed that both of the author records have "Legal Name: Szélesi, Sándor", which made me wonder if Hungarian uses <family name> <given name ordering> like Japanese. Wikipedia indicates that's the case, so I'm guessing the author records should be varianted (like we have for Cixin Liu and Liu Cixin), but a second opinion would be preferable before I start on edits about things that I don't have any expertise in.... ErsatzCulture 17:56, 23 July 2022 (EDT)

You' re right. In Hungary, the family name comes first, then the given name.Thanks for the discovery. I will correct this and change Sandor Szelesi into the alternative name. Rudolf Rudam 11:59, 24 July 2022 (EDT)

Triptych

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1157274; Someone uploaded some Cemetery Dance issues recently, and since William F. Nolan's work in #4, https://archive.org/details/cemetery-dance-4-spring-1990, was never collected in any of his many story collections I believe it should be made an essay, since he just talks about a few story ideas he's had but there's no actual story. --Username 19:04, 23 July 2022 (EDT)

New WorldCat?

Anyone else see a banner at the top of WorldCat which says a new WorldCat is coming? I wonder what "new" means. --Username 19:37, 25 July 2022 (EDT)

They are redesigning. The details are not fully released yet but they hinted at it earlier in the year: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=962866871258711 . As far as I know, there won't be missing features but as with any redesign, we shall see. Annie 20:18, 25 July 2022 (EDT)
Oh my God, they went and did it, and it's HORRIBLE. I only found out when I clicked an OCLC link on OL and it took me to this page, https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/16107969?tab=details, which doesn't even have the OCLC on the page anymore. Why don't these people ever learn? They totally screwed up IMDb a few years ago with their awful redesign and now this, plus Amazon seems to be changing because many pages now lead to some weird thing where they just show the cover and there's some message about an error at the top of the page. This is ridiculous. Can't any of these sites ever do a redesign that actually improves things? It all seems so pointless now. EDIT: You now have to click the "Show more information" at the top of the page to see the info that used to be on the bottom of the page without clicking anything. Jerks. --Username 23:31, 22 August 2022 (EDT)

Love Child

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1838099; Title is very confused; I discovered that the Secker variant title is actually the original title with the dash, as are Viking and Richards, so I added the dash to those 2 plus the overall title record; however, an eBay copy of Virago shows every photo except the title page but since there's no dash in any of them it's safe to assume title page has none, either, and there's a 2021 British Library edition on Amazon but not on ISFDB which also has no dash; the Bello copy on Google Books, however, has no dash and no "The", either. So when my edits are approved breaking the Secker variant and making later editions variants may be needed. --Username 10:21, 26 July 2022 (EDT)

Ralph Smith

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?8649; I see that I added the cover to Captain Vincible some time ago and also a link to an article, but does it really belong here, being comics? Also, OL only lists 2 editions, in 1984 and 1985, not 1998. If it does belong here, the 1800's Smith needs something to separate him from the later Smith. --Username 09:14, 27 July 2022 (EDT)

Where's Samuel L. Jackson When You Need Him?

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Mhhutchins#Snake.28s.29_.26_.28and.29_Ladders; This dude didn't respond to my message (I don't think he does respond here anymore) but I just saw in the edit list that he did something, but I don't think he quite got it, unless he's planning on doing more. So if anyone remembers, just check that the title in TZ (and art with same title) is changed properly and variants are OK. --Username 19:32, 27 July 2022 (EDT)

Futurians

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?838968; 1 John Day edition credits Greco while the other doesn't. Which is correct? There's a PV in common between both editions. --Username 09:54, 28 July 2022 (EDT)

New award "Ursula K. Le Guin Fiction Prize" ?

This one had presumably been announced in the past, but hadn't been on my radar until the announcement of the first set of nominees popped up in my Twitter feed just now. Off the top of my head, I know that at least 5 of 9 nominees are works that are in the database, and I suspect the others either already are, or probably should be. Looks like it's a panel judged award with just a single category - although the eligibility period looks a bit off, as there are both 2021 and 2022 works amongst those nominees. (The official site indicates it uses a May-April eligibility period.) The value of the winning prize, and a fairly high profile set of judges (for this year at least) indicate it's a fairly serious prize that should be around for a while. ErsatzCulture 11:09, 28 July 2022 (EDT)

EDIT: I've just checked the titles I wasn't sure about, and all of them are already in the database, except for one that definitely looks to be speculative. ErsatzCulture 11:18, 28 July 2022 (EDT)
I wouldn't say that an expectation of "being around for a while" is a requirement -- a "real" award should be eligible for inclusion even if it dies after a year or two. What we primarily try to exclude is promotional gimmicks run by publishers and "paid contests". This award is clearly nothing like that.
Unless there are objections, I plan to add it to the list in a couple of days. Ahasuerus 13:17, 28 July 2022 (EDT)
The new award type and a single award category have been created. Ahasuerus 12:31, 30 July 2022 (EDT)
Thanks. By chance, I just added the missing nominated title a few minutes ago, so I'll add the nominees later this evening. ErsatzCulture 12:43, 30 July 2022 (EDT)

2022-07-29 -- server problems again

We are once again experiencing server problems. At the rate the virtual machine is leaking disk space, we will have to shut down in less than an hour. Al has been notified. Ahasuerus 14:26, 29 July 2022 (EDT)

Edit: The loss of disk space is even worse than what I saw a few minutes ago. We probably have 10-15 minutes left. Ahasuerus 14:27, 29 July 2022 (EDT)
I am about to shut the server down, right before it runs out of space. Ahasuerus 15:09, 29 July 2022 (EDT)
We are back up. Ahasuerus 20:48, 29 July 2022 (EDT)
I have a suggestion. Typing isfdb.blogspot.com verbatim on Google only brings up these 5 sites, [2], which are the actual site, an ancient ISFDB message from 2008 heralding the new site, and a couple of mentions on academickids.com; the last 2 are fake spam sites. Typing "isfdb blog" verbatim brings up these, [3], which are only slightly more numerous. When there are server problems there should be an obvious link to the blog, but there's not, so maybe someone can fix that. --Username 12:15, 30 July 2022 (EDT)
There are two different downtime scenarios:
  • A complete server shutdown when browsers fail to establish a connection to the server. There isn't much we can do about that.
  • The server is up but the database is not accessible for some reason. You can tell because trying to access any ISFDB page results in a "The ISFDB database is currently undergoing maintenance. Please try again in a few minutes" message. We can modify this message to say "http://isfdb.blogspot.com/ may have more information."
Ahasuerus 12:40, 30 July 2022 (EDT)
FR 1520 has been created. Ahasuerus 15:40, 30 July 2022 (EDT)
FR 1520 has been implemented. Ahasuerus 13:40, 7 August 2022 (EDT)
Great! One suggested tweak; "if this due" to "if this is due". --Username 09:38, 8 August 2022 (EDT)
Good point. Fixed. Ahasuerus 14:05, 8 August 2022 (EDT)

Pentacle

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?38644; The preview copy on Google has an essay by Ken Abner, who edited Terminal Fright where most of the stories appeared, but there's no 1999 edition on ISFDB, just the 1995 and the much later e-books. Anyone know where it originated? --Username 12:06, 30 July 2022 (EDT)

Samuel R. Delany / The Einstein Intersection - Cut / Restored Chapter

Various editions of The Einstein Intersection have a cut or restored chapter. I will shortly edit and PV five pub records: one and two and three and four and five which will be a new pub record. I will add a general note about the cut / restored chapter to the title record and a specific note to each of these five pub records. Whilst researching this, I noticed that the Ace fourth printing states "First Ace printing March 1967". The pub record for the Ace first printing currently has a date of 1967-00-00 so I will add the month, add a pub note stating the source and add the month to all the associated records. There are far too many PVs to notify individually hence this posting on the Community Portal. I will wait a few days in case there are comments before submitting all these edits. Teallach 13:56, 30 July 2022 (EDT)

I have submitted the edits. There are eight in the queue. Teallach 11:42, 2 August 2022 (EDT)

Meyrink Cover

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?138313; The 1992 Dedalus ISBN links, on OL, to a 2004 Dedalus cover while on Amazon it shows the Ariadne cover. So is Ariadne Dedalus under a different name, and is it correct for the cover to be dated 1936, when it was painted, instead of the book's date? --Username 20:22, 30 July 2022 (EDT)

She's Dead, Jim

Well, Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek's Lt. Uhura, has died at the age of almost 90, and from the info on her Wikipedia page it looks like the last 5+ years of her life were pretty sad. Anyway, I added a better cover and an OL link to the Archive copy of her autobiography Beyond Uhura (the British Boxtree HC, which is the only non-PV edition), but her novel Saturna's Quest is a bit puzzling, being from some obscure publisher, Planet X, unlike the first book in the series which was mainstream. It turns out the publisher's name has been wrong here for years, being Publishing and not Publications, which caused it to be lumped in with a Planet X that published books many years later. I fixed the name and imported a nice cover to the Wiki because Amazon and other ISFDB-friendly sites either have no cover or weirdly show the title page instead. Info is scarce, so if anyone owns a copy they may want to verify page count, etc. Only Takei (85), Koenig (85) and Shatner (91) are left (although Shatner will probably refuse to die when Death comes for him). --Username 19:35, 31 July 2022 (EDT)

Height Intro

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?39382; I recently added a newly-uploaded Archive copy of the Arkham, and just now added page #'s to the Millington because contents were all out of order, but I noticed the introduction is missing from the Star; page count is lower so maybe it's not in there, but maybe it is, so if anyone owns that edition they can say for sure and, if it is, it can be imported. --Username 10:21, 1 August 2022 (EDT)

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Elder Race

We currently have Adrian Tchaikovsky's Elder Race listed as a novella. The Note field reads:

Per a tweet from the author, this is a novella. Kobo reports a word count of 40k words. A conservative word count of 250 words per page, and 165 pages (blank pages are excluded) give 41,250 words, above the NOVEL threshold.

I have a copy of the ebook and the lowest possible word count -- once you delete the copyright page, the dedication, etc -- is 40,347. As per Help:Screen:NewPub, a novella must be "less than or equal to 40,000 words". Any objections to changing the title type to NOVEL? Ahasuerus 17:00, 1 August 2022 (EDT)

I did an estimated word count from my print copy using the tool (I think it was the one Mhutchins created?) and got 39,384. It's definitely right on the border, and there's a page of smaller text with two columns, so it may well bump over to 40k. There are a lot of blank pages scattered throughout the book. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:40, 1 August 2022 (EDT)
FWIW: "Editing this novella back and forth over the 40k word limit like I'm God and the Devil fighting over its soul." The dating of that tweet would suggest it refers to either Eldar Race or Ogres, the latter of which also has a 40k word count reported by Kobo. ErsatzCulture 19:31, 1 August 2022 (EDT)
The Hugo admins also consider it a novella. While they can make a mistake, I cannot find anyone online challenging the type - and the SF community is not exactly silent with such things... Annie 19:43, 1 August 2022 (EDT)
Hugo FAQ says "Also note that there are similar principles involved with the relocation of works in the four written-fiction categories, which also have a +/- 20% gray zone around their respective category boundary lengths." I dunno if any other awards have a similar fudge factor; if not, that might explain why getting under 40k is still the target for novellas? ErsatzCulture 20:06, 1 August 2022 (EDT)
I know they can fudge a bit - but even when they do, someone does complain :) Especially the fans (and occasionally authors) of the novella(s) that did not make the cut... And unless my google-fu is broken, I cannot find anything (and I don't remember anyone complaining). It is possible that this one slipped and went a bit higher. If Ahasuerus is sure in his count, I am fine converting it with notes - it is just way too close for estimates :( Annie 20:35, 1 August 2022 (EDT)
Are you sure it is not counting some extras (pages numbers, chapters titles, single words split into two lines and so on)? If you are sure of the count, then we just need to document and change the type I think but I will be very surprised if it did not got edited down to fit a category (because it was never going to get a novel nomination). Not that it cannot happen of course :) Annie 19:43, 1 August 2022 (EDT)
Well, it's an e-book, so there are no page numbers or split words.
I am using TextPad to count words in an ASCII version of the file. TextPad is pretty good at it since it's part of its core functionality. For example, the e-book uses "* * *" as chapter/scene separators, but TextPad doesn't count them as separate words.
There are no chapter titles per se, but POV changes are marked with the name of the POV character. It could arguably subtract a few dozen words from the "official" count, but it would still be well over the 40,000 word limit. Ahasuerus 21:33, 1 August 2022 (EDT)
Sounds like it did not get under the wire then... :) Depending on how they made the ebook, split words can be an issue (surprisingly enough that happens now and again even in new books from major publishers...) - thus the question :) Same for page numbers and the like - although these show up more often in OCR messes than in new books. As I said, if you are sure in the count, I do not object a conversion. Annie 22:36, 1 August 2022 (EDT)

(unindent) Thanks, folks. I have updated the title and publication records, including Notes. Ahasuerus 12:38, 3 August 2022 (EDT)

Russian Interference

Uh-oh; I mentioned this some time back, but FantLab seems to have gone through some changes recently because today I had to replace Thomas Monteleone's author photo from FantLab because the old one was broken, and now I was looking at Star Book of Horror 1 and that FantLab cover is also broken. I noticed the replacement photo I added was the same URL except there wasn't the word "data" at the beginning, if that helps. I'll be damned if I'm going to replace anything besides that photo, so I assume when mods get everything sorted out there will be a general fix for all broken links, right? Please? --Username 10:19, 2 August 2022 (EDT)

Checking their security certificate, I see that it expired earlier today. Let's wait a day or two and see if their administrators renew it. Ahasuerus 11:35, 2 August 2022 (EDT)
They have updated their security certificate, which should remain valid for the next 90 days. Everything seems to be working again -- see Star Book of Horror No. 1. Ahasuerus 12:28, 3 August 2022 (EDT)
Great! I cancelled my Monteleone edit and made another one because even though the author image is now working again, when I added it long ago I forgot to erase the trailing "?r=" thing at the end of the URL, and I also found a rare 1990 interview conducted by fellow horror author Robert McCammon on a TAPE RECORDER (kids, ask your parents), so another edit was necessary. However, in the many edits I've made since I wrote this I may have replaced 1 or 2 FantLab images that were broken while I was adding other info to the record the image was in, so I'm mentioning that to forestall any complaints of "Why did you replace a perfectly good image?!?" when a moderator gets around to approving them. --Username 12:43, 3 August 2022 (EDT)

Mira

Famous author James Patterson edited an anthology, Thriller, back in 2006 which included some well-known names; someone entered it here but didn't add any contents (doubtful most of them are genre, anyway) and the page count was off by nearly 200 pages, so I fixed/added stuff from the Archive copy; however, the publisher, Mira, got lumped in, I think, with a Mira that publishes women's fiction, of which there are nearly 600 on ISFDB. So the question is how to differ this book's publisher, and whether among those 600 there may be at least a few that are by this Mira. EDIT: I decided to do an advanced search using publisher and 7783 ISBN and it turns out that this Mira IS the same as the others, which is weird because they published books by women and this anthology's 30+ writers are mostly men. Oh well. --Username 13:45, 2 August 2022 (EDT)

Hot Blood

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?8749; I added the Book Club edition of Stranger By Night from Archive.org, which shows the PB cover on OL, and then noticed, as usual with these insane Pocket Books with their Canadian maple leaf editions and several printings and whatnot, that the cover for the original PB of Hot Blood was not the right cover, having no price (possibly the Gallery edition; they used the same Pocket covers but ridiculously jacked up the prices). There's an Archive copy of the Book Club edition which also shows a different cover on OL, also added by me, but after importing the original PB cover, because it doesn't seem to be on any friendly sites (FantLab shows the later printing's cover with the much higher price that's already on ISFDB, but then shows a photo of the back cover of the original edition!), I noticed that the subtitle on the original PB cover is Provocative, not Erotic. There's some confusion about that, with other editors making notes about how later editions say Erotic on the cover but still use Provocative on the title page, so I believe the original cover is the only one with the original title on both cover and title page. So just mentioning this in case anyone owns a lot of editions and can compare and make sure everything's as it should be re: proper titles, prices, covers and such. --Username 20:36, 2 August 2022 (EDT)

Kheryn Callender / Kacen Callender canonical name change

I think it is time to switch the canonical name here. Except for the few early editions of the first book, all books are published under Kacen Callender. Any objections? Annie 18:42, 3 August 2022 (EDT)

Sounds like a plan. Ahasuerus 23:01, 3 August 2022 (EDT)
And done while adding their new book. Annie 13:09, 4 August 2022 (EDT)

Smoking Shatner

In a follow-up to my Nichelle Nichols post above, I replaced the terrible William Shatner ISFDB photo, too-bright, old, and fat, with a crystal-clear B&W photo of a young and incredibly handsome Shatner smoking a cigarette, so you know it's from a long time ago. Looking next at George Takei, I think his photo is OK as it is, but I noticed that his 90's autobiography has a British price here for the Archway edition; the copy on Archive.org, https://archive.org/search.php?query=takei%20%22to-the-stars%22&and[]=mediatype%3A%22texts%22&and[]=collection%3A%22internetarchivebooks%22, has only American prices. It seems the original editor was the one who entered that price, but they're very long-gone. There's also some odd confusion about the ISBN being re-used from some much older book. So anyone more familiar with this book may know more, like where that British price came from, and whether it should just be changed to the American price and the Archive copy linked here. --Username 20:29, 4 August 2022 (EDT)

May Dawney Designs

Checking... Three different May Dawney Designs - I guess we should merge these into just May Dawney Designs, right? MagicUnk 13:16, 5 August 2022 (EDT)

Done. Looking at the Amazon Look Inside for the pubs, the 2021 and 2022 were copyright year credits and not part of the name. -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:56, 5 August 2022 (EDT)

Mysterious Poe Collection

https://archive.org/details/illustratededgar0000poee; Found this with no dustjacket, contents don't correspond to the other book with that title on ISFDB (also published in 1976), by Jupiter but there's a reprinted by Bookthrift on bottom of title page, Bookthrift only appears once on ISFDB as the publisher of an F. Paul Wilson book in 1990 with no cover image and ISBN finding nothing, ISBN of this Poe title finds 2 different Amazon covers, both terrible sideways photos, and Goodreads cover is upright but badly framed and damaged. So does anyone own a copy/know more? --Username 12:53, 6 August 2022 (EDT)

Molt Brother

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?22570; As I've been working on Playboy books, some were entered as Playboy Press when they were really Playboy Paperbacks, and here's one with several active PV. Photo of title page here, https://www.ebay.com/itm/112360554002. Needs fixing? EDIT: Mind War, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?290886, is on OL and even though there's a (non-active) PV the cover artist wasn't entered from the copyright page so I took care of that, but then the publisher is Playboy Press Paperbacks so I changed it to that, and then the LCCN does show up on the LOC site but as "invalid" and a completely different one is listed as "valid" so I entered that. However, looking further, it seems that a lot of PB from the publisher were entered as Playboy Press, the HC name, but somewhere along the way they switched the PB name from Playboy Press Paperbacks to just Playboy Paperbacks, but editors entering them on ISFDB couldn't decide because there are more than a dozen with the longer name and several dozen with the shorter; far too many of them have active PV, so I'm just fixing Mind War's publisher and leaving the other ones alone. Someone here with a ton of patience could go through every paperback and fix everything. --Username 13:31, 6 August 2022 (EDT)

Robert Foster Middle-Earth guides

This author has 4 different Middle-Earth guide titles published between 1971 and 2001; pubs of the 1971 and 1978 iterations have verifiers. The copyright page text copied into the notes indicates that these are revisions of the same book e.g. from a 1978 pub: "First Ballantine Books Edition: August 1974" (over) "Revised and enlarged edition: March 1978 (hardbound)", so I'm just double checking that the consensus that the later titles are definitely different enough that they shouldn't be varianted from the original 1971 one?

The reason I ask is that there's another version of this to be published next month. The blurb doesn't indicate any difference in content from earlier versions, other than the addition of illustrations, so I'm inclined to variant it to the 2001 version, but throwing open to any alternative opinions...? ErsatzCulture 12:41, 8 August 2022 (EDT)

Horne Anthology Art

https//www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?33822; I added a link to the Book Club edition; PV is gone now. I also added a link to the PB (at least 1 active PV), but artist was entered as Daniel even though it says Dan in the PB and note even mentions that, so I changed it to Dan. I'm sure someone will say something about this. --Username 12:51, 8 August 2022 (EDT)

The Man Who Created Tarzan

https://archive.org/search.php?query=porges+tarzan&sin=; I came across these 2 books, 1 uploaded more than 10 years ago and 1 uploaded recently. The HC is a 2nd printing, and PV is not around anymore, while the PB has 1 active PV who I tried to interest in looking at Archive's copy to compare with his own and possibly add or fix anything, especially since it seems the uploader only included the first volume, not the second, but PV wasn't having any of it, apparently being a Luddite who only cares about physical copies, which I can sympathize with, being in my early fifties and remembering when people actually read books on paper. So I mention this here in case anyone who's interested in Burroughs wants to see if this printing of the HC differs in any way from the original entered on ISFDB (people who like entering multiple printings would probably want to enter it, anyway, just for posterity) or if the half-uploaded PB can yield anything useful. EDIT: I noticed that the publisher of the HC, Brigham Young University Press, only has 1 other ISFDB book, a kids' book from nearly 40 years earlier, while Brigham Young University has dozens of ISFDB books starting in the mid-1980's. Just thought that was weird; I can't believe the only 2 genre books they published in nearly 40 years were a little chapbook and a Tarzan bio. --Username 14:11, 8 August 2022 (EDT)

Emperor of the If

Just a heads-up that this rare novel by Guy Dent is on Luminist.org, but since they seem to have converted all of their books to PDF they screwed up because the PDF link goes instead to a French fairy tale book a little further down the list. The archived Google Drive and Dropbox links are, of course, very dead, but I managed to find a PDF on some Canadian digital archive and have made an edit with a link to it. I've been adding many PDF links and author photos from Luminist recently and this is the first mistake I've come across, so if anyone is friends with whoever runs that site they may want to let them know that Dent's PDF goes to the wrong book. --Username 21:12, 8 August 2022 (EDT)

Ten Tomorrows

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?34741; There's at least 2 permanent PV and 1 transient, so I'll just mention this here. Someone wrote a note about initials on the cover and how they don't appear here, but they do, so I added the cover artist, FMA (along with a PDF link to the book). --Username 11:06, 9 August 2022 (EDT)

Margaret (P.) Killjoy

Does anyone object making Margaret P. Killjoy (4 credits, all from 2007 in Steampunk Magazine) to Margaret Killjoy (various credits from 2009 onwards, including the same magazine)? I've not found anything to definitively tie the 4 earlier credits to the latter person - their personal site seems to be down, which might have had some useful info - but the common publication venues, and very similar but distinctive names, makes me think it highly unlikely they are 2 different people. ErsatzCulture 12:16, 9 August 2022 (EDT)

Margaret P. Killjoy is an alternate name for Margaret Killjoy. She was an editor of 'Steampunk Magazine'. The masthead of early issues credited 'Margaret P. Killjoy' later issues 'Margaret Killjoy'. Various work is credited to both names as well as just Margaret within a given issue. Of the four titles, only Issue Three: The Sky is Falling has the correct attribution. Go ahead and make the alternate name & variant the one title (correct the case first, 'Is'). John Scifibones 10:50, 10 August 2022 (EDT)
Thanks - I'll make the edits as you propose in the next day or so, assuming no objections are raised. ErsatzCulture 13:33, 10 August 2022 (EDT)

Gaines

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=gaines&type=Name; I found an uncommon photo of the founder of Mad Magazine, but after adding it I saw that ISFDB has a Bill Gaines/William Gaines as a separate person, which should probably be linked to William M. Gaines. --Username 15:32, 9 August 2022 (EDT)

Arthur Hailey Cover Artist

Mr. Hailey, writer of many once-popular books, like Airport, that nobody reads anymore, has 1 novel on ISFDB, In High Places, from 1962 (although apparently it was published in 1961 elsewhere and serialized in Canada in Maclean's magazine and a bunch of other confusing stuff that I'm willfully ignoring); it's a possible nuclear war type of book, so popular in the 1960's, and was reprinted roughly a zillion times, many editions being on Archive.org (but none on ISFDB), but the original American edition from Doubleday, for some reason, is very difficult to track down exact info on. Most eBay and other online sites either have no jacket or are a Book Club edition, but I finally managed to track down an auction of the original edition with the jacket flaps visible, https://picclick.com/In-High-Places-by-Arthur-Hailey-1962-1st-Edition-223453505903.html, although the seller started off with a bunch of photos with no jacket and stuck the jacket photo at the end, and the text on the flaps is either defective or was photographed badly, because some of it is tough to make out. I'm 99% sure the price is 4.95, so I included it in my edit, although I can't find a definitive place online where this price is mentioned, which is odd for such a mainstream book, but the real problem is the credit on the back flap. I've seen one other photo of the back flap online somewhere that was photographed bright and sharp, but the photographer cut off the photo after the words JACKET PAINTING, while the artist is visible here but the letters in the name are sketchy. I've tried finding it by searching for Homer in advanced search, but none of the 4 with that name match up, and it's possible it might not even be Homer. So does anyone know who the artist is? It's a very nice cover, and it would be good to credit them. --Username 21:41, 9 August 2022 (EDT)

Fortunes of Brak

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?28665; I added a Luminist PDF of the American Dell edition, but there's an un-entered (Book Club?) hardcover on Archive.org, uploaded last year, and I noticed it said DOUGLAS Beekman on the copyright page; there's no dustjacket. It turns out that it says so on the paperback's copyright page, too, so is it correct to go with the back cover's DOUG, as someone did, or should it be the longer name (which has a couple dozen entries on ISFDB)? --Username 13:26, 10 August 2022 (EDT)

Holt(-)White

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5387088; This author has the dash in his name for some of his books but clearly not for this one, as seen on the title page in the PDF. However, my edit was rejected, so was that right, or should it be accepted and author's name made a variant of the hyphenated name? --Username 20:42, 10 August 2022 (EDT)

Mod who rejected has un-rejected. All is well. --Username 19:56, 11 August 2022 (EDT)

Coronet Kersh

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?488936; While adding info about prices on back cover I noticed the title on the title page is the same as the American edition, so I fixed it and the cover art title, too. I don't know who provided the alternate title, but once my edit's approved some merging or unmerging or whatever needs to happen. Also mildly amusing is they partially rewrote the cheesy blurb on the back cover because, I guess, Brits wouldn't know what premium redemption stamps are. --Username 22:47, 10 August 2022 (EDT)

City of Glass

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5388100; Rare book, Luminist PDF shows there are 2 numbered ad pages after the novel, PV hasn't responded to anything since last October, so should another edit be made to change the page count? --Username 19:55, 11 August 2022 (EDT)

Genre Fiction: The Roaring Years by Peter Nicholls is out

Genre Fiction: The Roaring Years, a compendium of 60 articles and reviews by the late Peter Nicholls (the mastermind behind the first version of Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 1979), is now out in paperback and as an e-book. It's not available from Amazon, but you can order both versions directly from the publisher, which also makes the table of contents available online. There are no page numbers, but Dave Langford has volunteered to provide a scan of the ToC of the paperback edition if anyone wants to enter the book. Anyone feel up to the task? Ahasuerus 15:20, 12 August 2022 (EDT)

Sure, I would do it. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:20, 13 August 2022 (EDT)
Thanks! Dave has added a link to a scan of the first few pages to the ToC Web page, which should hopefully help. Ahasuerus 22:11, 13 August 2022 (EDT)
I have entered both the tp and ebook versions along with the contents. We did not have existing records for quite a few of the contents. The website provides a listing of original appearances so my next step will be to sort that out. Some may be variant titles, but others (like Hop Aboard Kids, We’re Going to 1984: Seven Children’s Books which first appeared in Foundation, #10) sound like they may have been review columns where we only list the reviews in the original publication. I will need to reach out to the verifiers of the original works so it will take a bit to work through that. -- JLaTondre (talk) 10:31, 14 August 2022 (EDT)
One step at a time :) Thanks! Ahasuerus 12:08, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

Make Variant - submission review changes

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I have been working on a rewrite of the ISFDB software responsible for displaying submission review pages. As part of that rewrite "Make This Tile a Variant" has been changed. The following changes have been made:

  • All fields associated with the title record are now displayed in the table; in the past only the fields whose values were explicitly specified in the submission were displayed. This is supposed to help moderators see the entirety of the record and identify potential problems.
  • The order of rows within the table has been changed to match the order of rows in the edit forms which created the submission, e.g. "Authors" is now displayed after "Title" and "Transliterated Titles" as opposed to at the bottom of the table.
  • The left column and the right column of the displayed table use the same color since they represent separate title records and not changed values in the same record.
  • For COVERART titles, two separate rows are now displayed. The first one shows the title types and the second one shows the related cover scans (if there are any.)
  • All fields now display hyphens ("-") in empty table cells.
  • All fields have been updated to support multiple yellow warnings. In the past some fields supported only one yellow warning per field even if the software identified multiple problems with the submitted data.
  • If a field generates multiple yellow warnings, they now appear on separate lines, making them easier to parse.
  • A yellow warning is now displayed when creating a new parent title record with a disambiguated series name, e.g. "Future History".
  • A yellow warning is now displayed when any non-Notes/Synopsis fields of the proposed parent title record contain recognized HTML tags. (Notes/Synopsis fields will continue to display yellow warnings if an UNrecognized HTML tag is used.)
  • A yellow warning is now displayed if the languages of the two titles are different. This is experimental and may be removed if it proves to be distracting.
  • Yellow warnings are now displayed if there is a mismatch between the two titles' non-genre, juvenile, novelization and graphic flags.
  • Yellow warnings about new, pseudonymous and disambiguated author names now specify which author(s) they apply to. This should help when the proposed parent title has multiple authors.
  • For omnibus titles, a yellow warning is now displayed if there is a mismatch between the Content values of the two title records.

Please note that these changes are limited to the way Make Variant submissions are displayed. No changes have been made to the way field values are entered in your Web browser or to the way they are filed into the database.

If you come across any bugs or anything unexpected, please post your findings here. If everything looks OK after a few days, I will start making similar changes to other submission review pages. Ahasuerus 17:00, 13 August 2022 (EDT)

Spot-checking a few "Make Variant" submissions currently in the queue, I see a couple of relatively minor issues:
  • "Disambiguated author" warnings are displayed twice under some circumstances
  • Series names are not linked in the left column
I will start working on fixing them shortly. Ahasuerus 17:09, 13 August 2022 (EDT)
Fixed. Ahasuerus 18:22, 13 August 2022 (EDT)
Consider showing the warning only if the languages are different and the child title lacks the translator template. Would function as a reminder for the editors. John Scifibones 13:03, 14 August 2022 (EDT)
An interesting idea. Thanks. Ahasuerus 14:51, 14 August 2022 (EDT)
I noticed the yellow warning is also shown when varianting art titles (see this edit). This is confusing, because art titles don't need the translator template. --Willem 15:13, 14 August 2022 (EDT)
Perhaps we should get rid of the "Different languages" warning and replace it with a "Translator template" check for non-COVERART/INTERIORART titles. Ahasuerus 16:48, 14 August 2022 (EDT)

JFIF

Luminist.org includes some author photos with a .jfif extension, which is accepted here as I added Evelyn E. Smith's photo recently and there was no problem, and a search revealed it's the only .jfif image on all of ISFDB. Anyone familiar with it? --Username 09:47, 15 August 2022 (EDT)

I was only aware of its existence, and knew nothing about the technical details, but Mozilla's image format docs indicate that it's basically JPEG, and that there's shouldn't be any issues with any browsers rendering those images.

Tevis Dillon Cover

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?184021; I added FantLab ID because it shows the back cover, and noticed that 1 of the 4 PV here wrote a note about cover art being signed "illon"; Leo and Diane Dillon did a cover for Fawcett the previous year, so I think it's probably them, as several websites agree with. --Username 11:38, 15 August 2022 (EDT)

Double quotes in untitles award authors and plus signs in all author names disallowed

The following bugs were fixed in the patch installed a few minutes ago:

  • Author names associated with untitled awards could include double quotes even though double quotes are automatically converted to single quotes for all other author names. This was preventing the software from matching author records with untitled award records, e.g. George "Lan" Laskowski vs. George 'Lan' Laskowski. 25 award records will need to be fixed manually, which I plan to do later today.
  • The way the software is currently designed, plus signs can't be used within author names. A minority of data entry fields automatically stripped them during the data entry process while most didn't. The software has been upgraded to display a pop-up message telling you that plus signs are not allowed in author names. (Eventually I plan to upgrade the software design to allow plus signs, but it's a long term project.) 2 author names will need to be fixed manually, which I plan to do later today.

If you encounter any issues, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus 13:03, 15 August 2022 (EDT)

All affected records have been fixed. Ahasuerus 13:48, 15 August 2022 (EDT)

Helicon Award

I just ran across the Helicon Award, offered in a number of different categories since 2019. Here's the basic info:

  • Short Name: Helicon Award
  • Full Name: Helicon Award
  • Awarded For: "Recognizes the best in science fiction, fantasy and horror for each calendar year."
  • Awarded By: The Helicon Society
  • Poll: No
  • Covers more than just SF: No
  • Webpages: https://heliconawards.com/
  • Note: (from the website) Named after the mountain that the mythological Nine Muses called home, the Helicon Awards recognizes the best in science fiction, fantasy and horror for each calendar year. The 2019 Helicon Awards served as the awards’ inaugural year and covered works originally released in 2018. A selection committee meets several times prior to January 14th to select nominees and final winners for each category. Nominated works must have been published for the first time between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31 of the previous year. Membership in the Society is not a requirement to be considered for an award.

Categories (2019):

  • Best Science Fiction Novel
  • Best Fantasy Novel
  • Best Military SFF Novel
  • Best Alternate History Novel
  • Best Media Tie-In Novel
  • Best Horror Novel
  • Best Anthology (SF/F/H)
  • Melvil Dewey Innovation Award
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder New Author Award
  • Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award

Categories (2020):

  • Best Sci-Fi
  • Best Fantasy
  • Best Military SF/F
  • Best Alt History
  • Best Media Tie-In
  • Best Horror
  • Best YA
  • Best Anthology (Book or story)
  • Best SF/F Movie
  • Best SF/F TV Series
  • Best SF/F Comic Book or Graphic Novel
  • Best SF/F Game
  • Melvil Dewey Innovation Award
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder Best New Author Award
  • John W. Campbell Diversity in SF/F Award
  • Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award

Categories (2021):

  • Best Sci-Fi
  • Best Fantasy
  • Best Military SF/F
  • Best Alt History
  • Best Media Tie-In
  • Best Horror
  • Best YA
  • Best Anthology (Book or story)
  • Best SF/F Movie
  • Best SF/F TV Series
  • Best SF/F Comic Book or Graphic Novel
  • Best SF/F Game
  • Melvil Dewey Innovation Award
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder Best New Author Award
  • John W. Campbell Diversity in SF/F Award
  • Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award

Categories (2022):

  • Best Sci-Fi
  • Best Fantasy
  • Best Military SF/F
  • Best Horror
  • Best Alt-History
  • Best YA
  • Best Anthology
  • Best SF/F Movie
  • Best SF/F TV Series
  • Melvil Dewey Innovation Award
  • Laura Ingalls Wilder Best New Author Award
  • John W. Campbell Diversity in SF/F Award
  • Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award

I'll be happy to populate them if the award is created. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 17:03, 15 August 2022 (EDT)

The name rang a vague bell, so I did a bit of Googling - IMHO it's a Sad/Rabid Puppies-esque culture war thing for the founder to give prizes to his friends. From File 770, which is not exactly a completely unbiased source - see below the quotes - but I'm open to other coverage/documentation:
(15) HELICONIA WINTER. Richard Paolinelli handed out the 2021 Helicon Awards [Internet archive link] yesterday, some to bestselling sff writers, two to L. Jagi Lamplighter and Declan Finn, but if you want to know what’s really on Richard’s mind look at this entry on the list:
John W. Campbell Diversity in SF/F Award – J.K. Rowling
Paolinelli also presented awards named for Melvil Dewey and Laura Ingalls Wilder, which he created after their names were removed from two American Library Association awards in recent years.
....
(13) HELICON AWARDS. Richard Paolinelli celebrated the Fourth of July by announcing the ten inaugural winners of the Helicon Awards on his YouTube channel. Sad Puppy Declan Finn won the Best Horror Novel category, which is probably more informative about where these awards are coming from than that Brandon Sanderson and Timothy Zahn also won.
....
Throughout the presentation Paolinelli keeps using the pronouns “we” and “our” without shedding very much light on who besides himself is behind these awards. The slides for the winners bear the logo of his Science Fiction & Fantasy Creators Guild, opened last year with the ambition of rivalling SFWA. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Creators Guild closed group on Facebook is listed as having 275 members – you can’t see the content without joining, but FB displays a stat that it’s had 6 posts in the last 30 days. The SFFCGuild Twitter account hasn’t been active since February 2018.
Paolinelli’s blog claims sponsorship of the awards, but in the video he says not only won’t winners be receiving a trophy, he hasn’t even designed a certificate for them, though he might do that in a few weeks.
In addition to the 10 Helicon Awards, Paolinelli named “three individual honorees for the Mevil Dewey Innovation Award, Laura Ingalls Wilder Best New Author Award and the Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award.”
So far as the first two awards are concerned, it’s likely that what did most to persuade Paolinelli to give them those names was the decision by two organizations this past year to drop the names from existing awards – in Wilder’s case (see Pixel Scroll 6/25/18 item #5), the US Association for Library Service to Children said it was “over racist views and language,” while the American Library Association dropped Dewey (see Pixel Scroll 6/27/19 Item #13) citing “a history of racism, anti-Semitism, and sexual harassment.”
I note that one of the 2022 winners is a book entitled "China Mike", which I'm sure by complete coincidence is a derogatory nickname that the Puppy crowd use to refer to Mike Glyer of File 770. ErsatzCulture 18:35, 15 August 2022 (EDT)
It looks like the core eligibility issue here is whether the Helicon Society has a non-trivial number of members beyond Richard Paolinelli. If it's effectively a one man show or a small press trying to promote its authors, then we wouldn't want to include the award. If it's more than that, then it's a different story.
Here is what I am seeing so far. The main award page says the following about the Helicon Society:
  • The Helicon Society was founded in 2018 and is a collective of SF/F authors and other creators who subscribe to the Superversive approach to creating SF/F media and look to promote good quality sci-fi/fantasy entertainment to their customers.
  • It is not an official organization, it collects no fees and membership is by invitation only.
  • Membership in the Society is considered private, unless the member chooses to publicly announce they are a member of the Society. Any inquiries, or requests for a membership list, will be ignored.
This makes it hard to tell whether it's a one man show. https://scifiscribe.com/ , Paolinelli's Web site, used to have a Web page about the Helicon Society, https://scifiscribe.com/the-helicon-society/ . Unfortunately, it and other Helicon Society-related Web pages at that Web site are no longer available. The Wayback Machine says This URL has been excluded from the Wayback Machine.
Luckily, Google still has a cached version of the main Helicon Society page. The "Reviews" section has two bullets: "Reviewers Wanted" and "Richard’s Reviews", which suggests that the only reviewer is Paolinelli. The "ABOUT" section has one link to a sub-page about "TUSCANY BAY BOOKS" -- see their Web site and the ISFDB Publisher page, including the Author breakdown page for this publisher.
The other thing that I noticed after reviewing the list of 2019-2022 winners was that there was a shift in the winning authors in 2022. In 2019-2021 the winners included Robert J. Sawyer, Ann Leckie, Jack McDevitt, S. M. Stirling and other established authors. In 2022 the winner in the "Best Sci-Fi" category was "Eerie" by Gibson Michaels, which has no ratings or reviews on Goodread after 11 months. The winner in the "Best Fantasy" category was "Dusklight" by N. R. LaPoint, which has 4 ratings and 2 reviews on Goodreads after 14 months.
At the moment I have more questions than answers. Ahasuerus 21:31, 15 August 2022 (EDT)
Yeah, I don't know that I'd trust File 770 to be impartial about anything related to Sad Puppies as there is a long history of animosity on both sides. Regarding Goodreads, it is (at least in my experience) really hit or miss when it comes to number of reviews something gets there. I've noticed that a lot of more conservative authors tend to have fewer people reviewing their works on the site, even if they have sold well (even reaching #1 in multiple categories on Amazon in multiple cases). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:26, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
I wasn't aware of possible major discrepancies between Goodreads and Amazon rating. Curious.
Checking Amazon.com's record for Eerie, I see that the book has 2 ratings and no reviews. Its rankings within Amazon's browse node system is as follows:
  • #1,980,551 in Kindle Store
  • #9,228 in Historical Fantasy (Kindle Store)
  • #15,617 in Fairy Tale Fantasy (Kindle Store)
  • #16,482 in Historical Fantasy (Books)
Dusklight fares somewhat better: 4 Amazon ratings and the following rankings:
  • #320,712 in Kindle Store
  • #271 in Christian Fantasy (Kindle Store)
  • #299 in Christian Fantasy (Books)
  • #476 in Religious Science Fiction & Fantasy (Kindle Store)
At the same time, Gibson Michaels, the author of Eerie, was nominated for the Dragon award in 2016, which suggests that there may be more going on than someone "giving out awards to their friends". Ahasuerus 12:50, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
Top post on the Gibson Michaels Facebook page: It's been a slow process, but Gibson Michaels' last work is now available for pre-sale on Amazon.com. Publish date is set for Sept 7, the anniversary of his passing. I'm very grateful for the help of Richard Paolinelli and Dawn Greenfield Ireland for their contributions to help me get Mike's last work out there. What exactly that refers to is unclear, but it would seem there is/was some relationship betwen Paolinelli and and Michaels.
Also, based on the Rose Oliver blog post, Midlands Scribes Publishing - the publisher of the 2021 Mil SF category winner - is a Paolinelli company; he also contributed one story and the cover.
2020 anthology winner Places Beyond the Wild is from a different publisher, but amongst the contributors listed on the Amazon UK product page are Paolinelli, Declan Finn (seemingly the most prolific author at Tuscany Bay Books) and at least one other author who's had multiple titles published from Tuscany Bay. ErsatzCulture 17:45, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
Update: The 2022 Best Anthology winner (not currently in the database, ASIN is B0B72GZMMV) was also published by Tuscany Bay in its first edition, per the Amazon preview. ErsatzCulture 18:24, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
Regardless of any of that, I don't know that we should be making decisions on which awards to include based on what boils down to politics. We've had other awards that are handed out by unknown judges who use unknown methods in choosing the winners. I think the fact that this award has been given out to a fairly broad range of well known and lesser know authors would indicate that, whoever the judges are, they are doing more than simply giving out awards to their friends. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:26, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
Politics is certainly not a criterion when deciding which award-sponsoring organizations are eligible for our purposes -- we list everything from the Prometheus Award given by the Libertarian Futurist Society to the Soviet-era Aelita Award. The question that I am struggling with is whether this particular award sponsor is more than one or two people. Ahasuerus 12:50, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

[Resetting indent to respond to some of Nihonjoe's and Ahasuerus comments]

Nihonjoe> I've noticed that a lot of more conservative authors tend to have fewer people reviewing their works on the site, even if they have sold well

I agree with this - e.g. I've been regularly scraping the Publisher's Weekly monthly genre top 10s and for the past few years, and David Weber is one of the few "new release" authors who can get (some of) his pubs into that chart, yet he has somewhat underwhelming numbers-of-ratings on Goodreads (whilst still outperforming other authors who write in the same niches). So, whilst Goodreads stats are an interesting thing to look at, they should be taken with a large pinch of salt, especially when there's any amount of fake/bot activity on there for several years.

Nihonjoe> ...even reaching #1 in multiple categories on Amazon in multiple cases
Ahasuerus> [other stuff about Amazon rankings]

The problem I have with Amazon rankings as any sort of meaningful indicator of popularity, is that I don't think Amazon have ever described how exactly those rankings are calculated, specifically in terms of the time periods they cover. e.g. if the rankings are only based on a very short period, then being one of the top ranked books in some subgenre probably doesn't mean very much. (If anyone does know more about how Amazon rankings are calculated, I would genuinely be very appreciative of that info.)

Ahasuerus> Gibson Michaels, the author of Eerie, was nominated for the Dragon award in 2016

That was the first year of the Dragons, and IIRC they weren't publicized very widely. I would contend there are a number of "interesting" results in that first year which others have documented more thoroughly.

Nihonjoe> I don't know that we should be making decisions on which awards to include based on what boils down to politics
Ahasuerus> Politics is certainly not a criterion when deciding which award-sponsoring organizations are eligible for our purposes

I agree. (Note that I personally added 2020's Prometheus Best Novel finalists, and I'm currently trundling through this year's Dragon finalists, both of which could reasonably be argued are on the right hand side of the awards spectrum.) However, when the Helicon Awards has the "John W. Campbell Diversity in SF/F Award", with past winners being Larry Correia, JK Rowling and Orson Scott Card, does anything think those are legitimate awards, as opposed to using culture war icons for trolling purposes? (As an aside, I see zero indication that they have obtained permission from the relevant estates to name the "John W. Campbell Diversity in SF/F Award" or the "Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award" the way they have.)

Nihonjoe> I think the fact that this award has been given out to a fairly broad range of well known and lesser know authors would indicate that, whoever the judges are, they are doing more than simply giving out awards to their friends.

I disagree. Putting well-known and respected figures (e.g. Stephen King, Neil Gaiman) alongside their clique was a key part of the Puppy Hugo slating tactics, and was repeated for the second year of the Dragons.

Some general comments and observations:

  • I don't see that SFADB has covered this award
  • The Helicon Society Twitter account has all of 37 followers and none of its Tweets have had more than low single digit interactions.
  • The top few Google search results for "helicon awards" (which may well be different for other people are): the File 770 tag I posted earlier; the heliconawards.com site; a blog post by a contributor to one of a winning anthology (thanking the publisher, Richard Paolinelli - what an amazing coincidence...), a couple of other blog posts by other winners/finalists, and unrelated results

None of these convince me that this is a widely recognized award.

NB: I am quite possibly being overly negative about this particular award; there are several high profile awards that strike me as having an overly close link between their current or former organizers and the works that get nominated and/or win, so picking on this particular one is perhaps unfair. However, their own statements about "It is not an official organization, it collects no fees and membership is by invitation only." and "Any inquiries, or requests for an official membership list, will be ignored." make me unwilling to consider it at all seriously. ErsatzCulture 14:51, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

Does an award need to be "widely recognized" to be included here? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:40, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
I don't think it does. Regional and specialized awards often have a limited number of people involved and that's fine.
The question -- in my mind -- is where do we draw the line? A single person giving awards to his or her friends is clearly not a real award. A small press giving "best of the year" awards only to its authors is presumably not a "real" award either. However, we include the Analog Awards, which is limited to works published in Analog. We also include АБС-премия / ABS-premiya, which, for the first 13 years of its existence, was controlled by a single prominent SF author:
  • [Boris Strugatsky] was responsible for appointing jury members and the nominating commission as well as selecting nominees based on the commission's recommendations
I am trying to think of a single rule which would help us determine award eligibility, but there are too many possible permutations :-\ Ahasuerus 08:59, 17 August 2022 (EDT)
I wasn't aware of that criterion. The UtahSF Awards certainly weren't widely known, and they were only given out for 3-4 years, but we've included them. They were definitely a regional award. And SFADB is hit or miss as far as covering awards, in my experience.
Regarding "putting well-known and respected figures (e.g. Stephen King, Neil Gaiman) alongside their clique", it seems you may be overly biased against the Sad Puppies as that's misconstruing what I've read on the topic. Everything I read showed that they based their selection criteria off which books and stories they enjoyed the most, regardless of who wrote them. I definitely don't agree with how the Sad Puppies approached some things in their various campaigns, but that part seemed consistent throughout all of them. Note that this is the Sad Puppies, not the Rabid Puppies (whose only goal was to destroy the Hugos). It's possible you were conflating the two different groups.
As for refusing to divulge their membership list for an organization that isn't really organized, who cares? ··日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:40, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
It's not a requirement, it's just something that might help us determine whether this society/award are more than a single person. Then again, it's also possible that this society's (active) membership has fluctuated over the years. When a new organization is formed, it's often due to a surge of interest in some topic and then that interest dissipates over time, leaving only a few people involved. That's what happened to Mack Reynolds's Socialist Labor Party of America, which had the support of tens of thousands of voters during the 20th century, but has faded away over the last few decades.
In addition, I am thinking that the fact that this award was apparently created as a side effect of fandom politics may be a minor argument in favor of its inclusion. An award created out of desire to promote some kind of common cause -- in this case adherence to "superversive principles" -- is arguably of more interest than an award given to its creators' friends. Ahasuerus 09:21, 17 August 2022 (EDT)
I think it likely was created as part of the "superversive" movement (though that was around prior to the Sad Puppies). And I agree that would be a good point in favor of including it. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 11:11, 17 August 2022 (EDT)
As I mentioned before, there are any number of organizations that give out awards that don't provide specifics as to how they settle on the finalists or the winners. Some of them don't provide the names of the judges, either, but they are still included here. Listing it here doesn't lend it any more legitimacy than they currently have (however much that may be). It's simply providing the information for people to find, documenting speculative fiction information. The awards don't require a fee to enter, and it's not some marketing company (as far as I can tell) trying to drum up more business. That's the main reason I suggested they be included here. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:40, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
I feel like I am wasting my breathe in continuing to argue this, given that some of my prior points have gone unresponded to, but let me try one (final?) tack: there are rules of acquisition for pubs, if there were similar ones for awards, would this qualify. In particular, a story is not eligible for inclusion if it has just been thrown up on an author's blog, or some general site like Wattpad - so it seems strange to me that we would consider for inclusion an "award" that doesn't seem to have anything (digitally or physical) tangible beyond a domain name and Wordpress.com site, and a low traffic/follower Twitter account. (Maybe there's more on Facebook, but I didn't see anything much in a search - but this may say more about FB search and my minimal footprint on that platform.) ErsatzCulture 12:00, 18 August 2022 (EDT)
I think both you and Nihonjoe have raised good points; you have certainly provided a significant amount of evidence suggesting that this award is closely linked to a single person.
I believe the underlying problem is that ISFDB:Policy doesn't say anything about award eligibility -- there is a single reference to "major awards", but the term is not defined -- so we have to decide on a case by case basis. After reviewing the arguments for and against I am thinking that we should put the issue of this award's eligibility on hold and come up with a general award inclusion policy on the Rules and Standards page first. Ahasuerus 13:57, 18 August 2022 (EDT)
I'm fine with that. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:52, 18 August 2022 (EDT)
Other than the fact that RP has called these "awards", is there any meaningful difference between them and a blog posting their favourite books of the year (example)? I guess there's the fact that they are put into (sub)genre categories, but that seems pretty tenuous personally. As an aside, I find it odd that only winning works have been announced, but no longlist/shortlist/nominees/finalists - are there any other awards for works that do that? (i.e. not stuff like SFWA Grandmaster awards to individuals.)
Also, I have my doubts about the motivation for these awards. Prior to their advent, RP was called out for misrepresenting the award status of his books in advertising (claiming they were award winning when they weren't; claiming to be a "Nebula nominee (non-finalist)" which is pretty meaningless; listing pay-to-play awards], so what better way to avoid that sort of embarrassment than creating your own set of awards that you control?
(As a further aside, RP has a history of being pissy and abusive online to people who aren't complimentary to him, so I do wonder if/when I might fall into his sights for having the temerity to question one of his pet projects.)
And just to summarize and reformat details I've (mostly) already posted above: in the 4 years these awards have been running, there have been 29 winners of the prose categories. Of those, by my reckoning, 7 of these have editions published (currently or formerly) by and/or have contributions from RP. A further 2 are from other publishers, but by authors who have other books published by RP; 1 more seems to have had RP involved in getting it published. i.e. just over a third of prose category winners have an explicit connection with the only person publicly identified with this award. ErsatzCulture 12:00, 18 August 2022 (EDT)
To respond to your comments in order:
  1. That's an interesting thought regarding "rules of acquisition" for awards. It might be difficult to define them, however.
  2. Regarding lack of much social media presence, I don't think that should play into it at all. Not everyone is good at social media, and it can require a lot of time. I think this is pretty much irrelevant from ISFDB's point of view.
  3. I wouldn't put a lot of stock in anything coming from Camestros Felapton when it comes to discussions of anything or anyone remotely connected to Sad Puppies. They (whoever they are, since that's not their real name) are extremely biased in that regard. Maybe those reasons were why the awards were created, but since we can't read minds, we can't know for sure.
  4. Regarding whether you might be noticed by RP, again, Camestros Felapton is an extremely biased source for that. Unless you are equally as visible as that pseudonym, I wouldn't worry about it.
  5. If 1/3 of the winners are as you describe, that means a super majority of them are not.
We can always put a disclaimer on the description of the awards (though it may be good to work out rules as mentioned). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 14:55, 18 August 2022 (EDT)

To the Sound of Freedom

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?269192; Does anyone know if this was published? There's a few mentions online but no cover images anywhere, no Archive copy, nothing. --Username 18:06, 15 August 2022 (EDT)

Google Drive

I did a search in Advanced Search for publication webpages containing drive.google and several hundred came up; I replaced the 2 books' links, Falcons of Narabedla and The Elemental, with Luminist PDF, but all the rest are magazines, with a couple of hundred Analog/Astounding, single issues of other magazines, some webzines, etc. So there might be a need for Archive links for the print zines and online links for the webzines, etc. because Google Drive links are unstable at best. --Username 08:57, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

A Lion Books Checklist

I recently created a new record for a reprint 1956 Lion Library edition of the original 1952 Lion Books edition of The Naked Storm by Eisner/Kornbluth, using the Luminist.org copy (which is not the usual PDF that almost all of their books are now but a weird Adobe document thing), and thought it was something special I'd found until it was just approved today and I saw online that fadedpage.com has it fully readable in a half-dozen different formats (odd that nobody ever entered it here). Damn it. Anyway, two questions: can anyone verify whether the 1952 edition's title page has the ellipsis or not, and is this book, https://books.google.com/books?id=WLt9awonT5gC, reliable, because it's not on ISFDB and the publisher seems shady judging by the note in their record here. The author did the other 2 Ultramarine non-fiction books entered on ISFDB. None of the 20 Lion Books on ISFDB have the day entered as part of their date, so if it's reliable then the days could be entered. --Username 11:54, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

Borderlands 2

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?302701; I've mentioned at least once on these boards that a few years ago I picked up a very new-looking copy of the White Wolf edition of the horror anthology Borderlands 2, even though it came out way back in 1994. That still puzzles me, but today while entering/fixing some stuff for White Wolf Borderlands editions I thought I would PV my copy, only to find out that it seems to not be quite the same as ISFDB's, having the same ISBN but a "printed in Canada" on the title page and an additional $6.99 Canadian price on the back. More importantly, in my copy every story from "Androgyny" on p. 92 to "Slipping" on p. 259 actually begins 1 page ahead of what the contents page says, and the book actually ends on p. 280, with a 1-page About the Editor, an ad for the HC of Dark Destiny, and a 6-page extract from In the Forests of the Night. White Wolf, as anyone who's done any edits for their books here surely knows, were an insane mess in many ways, so I'll ask if anyone owns the copy on ISFDB with just the American price so that it can be verified that this shoddy page numbering is not just Canada's fault (unlike J. Trudeau) and it can be fixed here. --Username 14:24, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

Error when submitting Make Variant option 1

I got this error when submitting a Make Variant option 1. The request is in the Pending Queue as this submission.

<type 'exceptions.AttributeError'> Python 2.5: /usr/bin/python Tue Aug 16 15:29:15 2022 A problem occurred in a Python script. Here is the sequence of function calls leading up to the error, in the order they occurred.

/var/www/cgi-bin/edit/submitmkvar1.cgi in ()
  67                 update_string += "    <ModNote>%s</ModNote>\n" % (db.escape_string(XMLescape(form['mod_note'].value)))
  68         update_string += "  </MakeVariant>\n"
  69         update_string += "</IsfdbSubmission>\n"
  70 
  71         submission.file(update_string)

submission = <isfdblib.Submission instance at 0x8919b0c>, submission.file = <bound method Submission.file of <isfdblib.Submission instance at 0x8919b0c>>, update_string = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>\n<Is...me</ModNote>\n </MakeVariant>\n</IsfdbSubmission>\n'

/var/www/cgi-bin/edit/isfdblib.py in file(self=<isfdblib.Submission instance at 0x8919b0c>, update_string='<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>\n<Is...me</ModNote>\n </MakeVariant>\n</IsfdbSubmission>\n')
 450                 if isinstance(self.viewer, str):
 451                         from viewers import SubmissionViewer
 452                         submission_viewer = SubmissionViewer(self.viewer, submission_id)
 453                 else:
 454                         self.viewer(submission_id)

submission_viewer undefined, SubmissionViewer = <class viewers.SubmissionViewer at 0x8de677c>, self = <isfdblib.Submission instance at 0x8919b0c>, self.viewer = , submission_id = 5392848L

/var/www/cgi-bin/edit/viewers.py in __init__(self=<viewers.SubmissionViewer instance at 0x8deb68c>, method_name=, submission_id=5392848L)
4120                 if not self.submitter:
4121                         self._InvalidSubmission('Submitter user name not specified')
4122                 getattr(self, method_name)()
4123 
4124         def _InvalidSubmission(self, message = ):

builtin getattr = <built-in function getattr>, self = <viewers.SubmissionViewer instance at 0x8deb68c>, method_name = <type 'exceptions.AttributeError'>: SubmissionViewer instance has no attribute
Phil 15:35, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

Yes, I've gotten the same thing when I've made variants in the last few days; when I look in my edit list, though, everything looks as it should. --Username 15:47, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
Investigating... Ahasuerus 15:56, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
Bug identified. Working on it. Ahasuerus 16:08, 16 August 2022 (EDT)
OK, I think I got it. Please let me know if anything is still off. Ahasuerus 18:19, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

Bruce McAllister

Heads up that his collection The Girl Who Loved Animals, which has no Archive.org copy, was released by Cemetery Dance as an e-book in 2012, never entered on ISFDB, so I made a go at entering it. Also, while being known for SF/fantasy he seems to have shifted into horror in recent years, with several recent stories in CD Magazine and 1 in their Shivers VIII anthology, but what may not be known here is he's contributed 3 short-short stories to their website cemeterydance.com under the Free Fiction section. Haven't read the 3rd one yet, but the first 2 are pretty creepy, especially the one about the guy who killed a lady scientist in Africa because the hyena she was studying told him to telepathically; he brought it home to America and passes the time going out at night and watching as it kills junkyard dogs. --Username 19:47, 16 August 2022 (EDT)

Alex/Al Saviuk

Alex Saviuk (9 art credits) and Al Saviuk (3 short fiction - or possibly comic? - and 3 art credits) both appear in today's birthdays, and both link to the same "Alex Saviuk" Wikipedia page. I propose to make the latter a pseudonym of the former (and variant the titles), unless anyone thinks it should be other way around? (The Wikipedia page indicates he was more prominent in the comics world, so maybe one of those name variants is more widely known there?) ErsatzCulture 08:41, 17 August 2022 (EDT)

Making Al the pseudonym of Alex is i.m.o. the most logical solution. --Willem 09:56, 17 August 2022 (EDT)

Also, can anyone with knowledge of Dutch sanity check that "Bouke IJlstra" is a correct use of capitals, rather than an artifact of sloppy shift key usage? A very cursory skim of Wikipedia indicates the former, but I'd defer to anyone with relevant expertise. (May be worth having an author note to explicitly state that capitalization is correct?) ErsatzCulture 08:41, 17 August 2022 (EDT)

Yes, this was on purpose. The Dutch "IJ" is considered to be one letter and is one of the things that make Dutch a difficult language. --Willem 09:56, 17 August 2022 (EDT)
Thanks - I've now updated both of these authors (and varianted the works for the first one) as described. ErsatzCulture 09:11, 20 August 2022 (EDT)

Nightworld

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?24292; The NEL HC cover is on Amazon with somebody's junk in the background, but FantLab seems to have gotten a photo where that stuff was cropped out and the lens flare removed, so I added that here, but Bluesman, a long-gone editor, uploaded the Dark Harvest cover as the NEL PB cover and didn't size it properly anyway, so if anybody can find the NEL PB cover they can upload it and replace the wrong one. --Username 11:10, 17 August 2022 (EDT)

Pub

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?2534; I added pub. series # to Death Guard based on dustjackets.com spine and the list at seriesofseries.owu.edu, then noticed 2 of the books weren't on that list, so I added (Hutchinson) to their 2 books to differ the series from Unwin's. Then I had a random thought; every time I do an edit it seems weird that every field starting with pub has no period; pub type, pub series, pub series #, and pub note. Is it possible to add one or would that require something major? The way it currently is makes it look like a tourist's guide to the local bars. --Username 21:07, 17 August 2022 (EDT)

Ghost of Sherlock Holmes

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?286757; I own a small number of paperbacks and I never PV some of them, so while doing that today I realized that when I worked on this Halliwell book long ago I wrote a note about the Academy Chicago sticker on the back, only realizing now with more experience here that it's actually the American edition, so I deleted the note. What's interesting is that while looking at this I saw that while my copy has a sad little white sticker on the bottom left corner of the back cover with American publisher and price, the copy on Archive.org, which I assume I linked to back then, has a gigantic medieval-looking thing on the back with the publisher name/address and a white sticker with just the price. So if anyone thinks that copy really needs to be entered here as a separate edition it's available. I don't think there's any differences in the book itself as far as the stories or anything else; it's one of those "we can't be bothered to print new info so we'll just stick the details somewhere" type of thing. --Username 18:27, 18 August 2022 (EDT)

Curtis Books ID

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5391717; I'm going to make another edit simply adding the PDF scan, but I'd like to point out that if the mod's rejection note is correct then someone should let the editors who entered the five dozen or so other Curtis entries with full ID here that they entered the ID wrong, too, many of which are PV. EDIT: I just went to make that edit and discovered it was already there, because after rejecting my edit the same mod made his own edit adding the PDF link himself (and for some reason included the entire PDF URL verbatim in the Note to Moderator), so now it looks in the Edit History like he's the one that found it. Wonderful. --Username 13:56, 19 August 2022 (EDT)

Night Screams

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?187393; The collaborations between Pronzini and Malzberg have had copies added to Archive.org over the last few years, and this one has a weird note where the editor, Mhhutchins, who PV way back in 2007, determined the month was May by oddly using the date stamped on the library copy at the back; I see a March 1 date on Kirkus Reviews and Amazon, but don't really see May anywhere, so if any mystery experts can determine the exact date, it's probably not May. I've fixed the cover art date to May to make everything the same, but of course if the exact date is determined all the fields will have to change. --Username 15:01, 19 August 2022 (EDT)

File 770

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?28984; In a weird sequence of events today, while adding prices and page numbers to Gerald Kersh books I saw there's a publisher called London Books that reprinted his 1938 novel Night and the City in 2007, and while adding the Archive copy I also entered the intro by John King. Somehow there's only one John King on all of ISFDB, and even that's a pseudonym, but I saw somebody named John King Tarpinian in the name search list and being an unusual last name I clicked on it, and noticed 1 of the essays he wrote had 2 obviously misspelled words. Checking the file770.com PDF of the December 2014 issue I learned there were several other spelling mistakes so I corrected them all in an edit, but I didn't do a thorough check so there might be more. The Edit History doesn't reveal who entered the contents, but as can be seen at that link above, there are many, many issues on here, so I have a feeling there are probably many more mistakes. --Username 19:34, 19 August 2022 (EDT)

Best SF Two (1)

https://archive.org/details/bestsftwoscience0000cris; Someone uploaded this recently, called it Best SF two, it's actually the first in the series, price-clipped with a Faber sticker on front flap, I just added the Archive link but if anybody owns a copy of this 1969 printing they can always add the real price. --Username 20:00, 19 August 2022 (EDT)

RHCP

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=rhc&type=Publisher; There's 400+ RHCP but also 22 RHCB, all of which should probably be RHCP; also, 6 of those 22 have page numbers entered even though they're e-books, which I don't think is correct. --Username 09:47, 20 August 2022 (EDT)

Personally I'd be wary of rushing into changing these. Loads of UK ebooks are listed on Amazon/Kobo/penguin.co.uk as being from "RHCP Digital", but if you look at the title pages, in many cases - quite possibly the majority I suspect - it's actually Penguin, Puffin, or one of their umpteen other imprints list. Example. Cornerstone (Digital) is another name that PRH use to make life difficult example
I only came across a product listing using "RHCB" in recent weeks - probably because I've only recently ventured into trying to attack the backlog of kids books that Fixer never submitted - but I don't recall what was actually listed on the title page when I looked up the preview on Amazon. I absolutely wouldn't automatically presume it anything listed with RHCB would be RHCP though. Fortunately 22 pubs shouldn't be an overly onerous job to check the previews on individually, not that I'm volunteering to do it personally ;-)
I have been tempted to add publisher notes for RHCP Digital, Cornerstone Digital etc saying that pubs listed against them may be misleading - I dunno what anyone else thinks?
Agree that the page numbers are probably wrong, unless those pubs are PDFs or similar, in which case that should be mentioned in the note. (Off the top of my head, I don't recall seeing any PDF ebooks from PRH, but it doesn't strike me as completely infeasible if they're kids picture books, and I know Bloomsbury lists PDF ebooks for current titles on their website, even if I've never gotten round to submitting any as yet.) ErsatzCulture 10:11, 20 August 2022 (EDT)
I decided to try one and picked the only collection out of the 22, R. Westall's Break of Dark, and found it on Amazon India with the wrong cover, but Look Inside revealed that it is RHCP, so I fixed that. --Username 10:29, 20 August 2022 (EDT)

Chaz/Charles Brenchley

Chaz Brenchley is an author with (mostly) prose works from 1991 onwards. He is listed as being born in 1959 in Oxford, and legal name of Charles Brenchley.

Charles Brenchley has some fanac (letters and reviews) between 1977 and 1979. His letter in Matrix #15 is scanned on fanac.org, and (a) has a contact address of Oxford, and (b) not to put too fine a point on it, looks like it was written by a stroppy teenager.

Any objections to making the latter a variant of the former? The 12 year gap in (recorded) activity might indicate different people, but everything else points to them being one-and-the-same. (NB: his personal site says "I sold my first story for £36 in 1977 and for the next 10 years writing for teenage and women's magazines and children's comics was my bread and butter.", which seems a plausible explanation for that gap.) ErsatzCulture 10:37, 20 August 2022 (EDT)

In a 2014 interview, Chaz Brenchley said:
  • I’d known about fandom since I was a teenager, but it was mostly something that happened somewhere else, and required money I didn’t have, and social skills that were not at my command. I had friends who were quite heavily involved with the BSFA and fanzines, and I did some work with them, but I never went to anything - until I moved to Newcastle and actor-friends from Oxford phoned to say they were involved with a play at this SF con in my new city and could they come and stay with me to save the hotel costs? ... That was Mexicon in 1984.
This tells us that he "did some work" with "BSFA and fanzines" as a teenager and that he lived in Oxford until he moved to Newcastle in the early 1980s. Overall, I think it's more than enough evidence to support the notion that they are the same person. Ahasuerus 14:03, 20 August 2022 (EDT)
Thanks for digging that out. Assuming no-one raises any objections in the mean-time, I'll do all the necessary varianting tomorrow. ErsatzCulture 16:17, 20 August 2022 (EDT)
The author link has been done, and all the titles varianted to the parent author. ErsatzCulture 10:21, 22 August 2022 (EDT)

Battlefield Earth Cover

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?3704; There's more than 1 active PV, and it's clear that's the wrong cover because the sticker says soon to be a movie and that was in 2000, so original 1984 cover needs to replace it. They reprinted so many of this loon's books over and over again that it may be difficult to be sure which is the original. Oh my God, now that I've called him a loon online the Scientologists may come for me. Oh well, at least I'll get to meet Travolta. --Username 10:40, 20 August 2022 (EDT)

Witchdame

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1121377; Berkley edition uploaded to Archive in '10, PV didn't link so I added OL ID but artist is spelled MEITZ on copyright page, a search of text contents on Archive revealed it's the only "by Don Meitz". PV barely responds to anything anymore, so if another mod wants to change it or contact him somehow; Don Maitz has extensive ISFDB credits but the only alternate name listed is Maitz. EDIT: https://archive.org/details/magicon-worldcon/Abracadabra%20--%20Program%20newsletter; 1 search result for "Don Meitz". --Username 10:52, 20 August 2022 (EDT)

Cold Fear

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?885928; Someone just uploaded an Archive copy of the Brit edition; foreword as entered here says editor's foreword in the book, so I'd like to know if the American edition says the same so it can be fixed. Also, Pitman's name doesn't appear on the contents page because of the long poem title; is it the same in the American edition? In case anyone owns a copy and can say for sure. --Username 19:58, 20 August 2022 (EDT)

Littlefinger

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?14255; John D. Keefauver supposedly wrote at least 700 stories during his lifetime, and recently a collection of his stories was published. I imported the first 5 stories because they all included the D. in his name, but everything after that does not, so those will require variants and such. What's interesting is that I discovered not only that several stories had the wrong date on ISFDB, but that his story How Henry J. Littlefinger... seems to be 1 of a series of stories he wrote about that character, with another in the men's mag Knight in 1976, this odd one, https://www.nytimes.com/1980/12/03/archives/shapely-nonsmokers-seek-brainy-bikers-lonelyhearts-needs-can-be.html, and most interestingly a novel in 1992, The Three-Day Traffic Jam, the Amazon description of which mentions the character and says it's set in the future, which means it probably should be entered here; maybe I'll try using the Google copy. So if anyone can provide more info this could be made a series; anyone who owns his collection could also add a lot, because there's a couple of dozen more stories in it. EDIT: I entered the novel, pending approval, but no cover image, although the Google copy clearly has an illustrated cover which can be seen partially while searching inside the book, so a cover image must exist online somewhere. --Username 18:51, 21 August 2022 (EDT)

Masques Photos

https://fantlab.ru/images/editions/plus/big/196234_1?r=1519300680; I'm wondering if any software experts know how to cut-and-paste from an image like that one, because while most of the authors are famous genre figures with many online photos, there's also David Knoles with only the story in this book on ISFDB and Dennis Hamilton with 2, in this book and its sequel 3 years later. If so, their photos could be added to their records. --Username 21:20, 21 August 2022 (EDT)

One Footprint in the Sand, Part 2

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Community_Portal/Archive/Archive50#One_Footprint_in_the_Sand; Someone just uploaded this rare book to Archive.org, so I'll finally be able to fix/add everything. I still love that cover; creepy. EDIT: Now that there's a copy to look at it turns out that the white smudge on the bottom of the back cover is actually a signature! Sadly, it doesn't match any cover artist for the publisher, William Kimber, and the copy is a ratty ex-library one that may have had the back flap ripped out, where the cover credit may have been. Damn it. However, someone here may know who it is. --Username 16:16, 22 August 2022 (EDT)

Marcelin

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?169482; While adding/fixing stuff for their books I noticed Philippe is spelled wrong here, with 2 L's. Is that some ISFDB thing about spelling French names or is it a mistake, and would changing it in his record fix his name in all the books contained in his record? --Username 09:26, 23 August 2022 (EDT)

WorldCat loses Responsibility

The new WorldCat is here, after "coming soon" this weekend.
It appears to me that WorldCat.org has eliminated (display of) the "Responsibility" field that reports writer, illustrator, editor credits from title pages.

For instance OCLC 1008214608:
Served as https://www.worldcat.org/title/favourite-fairy-tales/oclc/1008214608
Also served as https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1008214608 [& today "/title"]

Yesterday
  • Author: David Grant; Anne Renier; Fernand Gabriel Renier; Jennie Williams; Collins (Firm); [link] All authors
[That short list atop, linked to a longer list in the Details frame that continues: "... Richmond upon Thames (London, England). Library Service,; William Collins Sons and Co.,"]
  • Responsibility: Jenny Williams.
[last line of the Details frame]
Today at the new WorldCat
  • Authors:David Grant, Anne Renier (Donor), Fernand Gabriel Renier (Donor), Jennie Williams (Illustrator), Collins (Firm) (Publisher), Richmond upon Thames (London, England). (Former owner), William Collins Sons and Co (Printer)
  • [no Responsibility field; no mention of "Jenny Williams"]

(No change in this.) "Author" names are active linknames, which return catalog search reports. The hits are neither matches on title page credits nor matches on identified persons.

In this instance (a book not in the database), illustrator Jenny Williams born 1939 is correct. "Jennie Williams" is a mistake.
Neither the old nor the new display of record OCLC 1008214608 links to, nor clearly indicates, either of the persons, or identities,

who are two creators of English-language children's books.

[&] P.S. Today at this station, browser address bar displays the shorter URL with "/title" in place of "/oclc". --Pwendt|talk 12:02, 23 August 2022 (EDT) --Pwendt|talk 12:02, 23 August 2022 (EDT)

It's true, I mentioned their "coming soon" some time ago in a thread above called "New WorldCat?" and updated it today with some more comments; this redesign, I think, is going to lead to much angst here. --Username 13:05, 23 August 2022 (EDT)
I can't find any traces of the "Responsibility" field either. Hopefully, their development team will tweak things over the next few weeks. Ahasuerus 13:12, 23 August 2022 (EDT)
The old pages were so low-tech, but now everything has giant pictures everywhere. Also, I like how when you type WorldCat on Google this page is one of the first results, "New WorldCat.org coming soon", but the link leads to this, https://www.worldcat.org/whatis, which isn't even working, so apparently someone forgot to tell someone else that the new WorldCat is already here. For once I'd like to see a site redesign where they go from a picture-heavy overcrowded site to a streamlined text site. Less is more. God, I hope this doesn't mean that all the hundreds of WorldCat links I've added, and the countless thousands that other editors have added over the years, won't lead to the right page anymore. --Username 13:38, 23 August 2022 (EDT)

New cleanup report -- translation template mismatches

A new cleanup report, "Translations with Tr template in Pub Notes and no Tr template in Title notes", has been deployed. It's a weekly report, so it will run every Sunday morning. It's currently limited to "title type = publication type" cases, so it will find only 43 mismatches when it runs in 4 days. There is no "ignore" functionality at this time, but we may need to add it later depending on what we find. Ahasuerus 20:45, 23 August 2022 (EDT)

Awesome, thanks very much for this! ErsatzCulture 06:22, 24 August 2022 (EDT)

John McNeil?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?5229; I added OL ID link to Archive copy of Little Brother and saw there's a story credit nearly 20 years after he died, but the Clarkesworld bio at the bottom of the story gives no info and the website doesn't, either, so if anyone knows who that McNeil is they can add something to his name to separate him from the dead guy. --Username 10:09, 24 August 2022 (EDT)

Digging through his site, there's a link to GitHub and LinkedIn. I can't see the latter (whilst I used to have an account there, I deliberately let it slide due to that site being awful in any number of ways), so I dunno if that has anything useful, but the GH profile indicates he is in the US, whereas the earlier one was British, so maybe "(US)" would be a reasonable disambiguator in the name field? ErsatzCulture 11:02, 24 August 2022 (EDT)
OK, I'll add (USA) to his name since there are a half-dozen other authors with that here. --Username 11:45, 24 August 2022 (EDT)
His LinkedIn profile says that he's been a "Specialist at Hennepin County Library" since 2012 and that he is "Interested in opportunities in libraries and web development". Ahasuerus 11:59, 24 August 2022 (EDT)

Scaremongers

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?29003; 1 copy on eBay, added cover artist from it (only other credit: Scaremongers 2), but 4 stories had different titles, two which altered the title greatly and 2 which were just missing The at the start, but while 3 of them were only under the wrong title on ISFDB, Stephen Gallagher's story has all other appearances with The at the start, with story title in this book being the only one without it, so either it's another one of the countless variants someone made here that wasn't actually a variant in the publication itself, or it's possible that the title page has no The at the start. Rare book, so the only hope is that someone here has a copy and can check all stories against their title pages. If my edit's approved first and anything needs fixing by someone else it can be fixed. --Username 12:40, 24 August 2022 (EDT)

Gerani

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1490758; His book has a later date, https://picclick.com/Top-100-Top-100-Horror-Movies-by-Gary-175326440714.html, of November 2013 and is copyright 2013, so what's the deal? --Username 14:43, 24 August 2022 (EDT)

Chetwynd-Hayes Story Title

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?889327; American edition of Cold Terror recently added to Archive.org, while making an edit I saw that "The Day That Father Brought Something Home" had no That in the title, and neither does the British edition's contents page on FantLab; I also added Tales To Freeze the Blood from Archive.org, which does have That in the title, and so does Doomed to the Night's contents page on FantLab, so I suspect the first anthology made a mistake and the second one copied it, but a look at Cold Terror's British story page and Doomed's story page are needed, if anyone has copies, and then titles can be separated and variant made. --Username 19:03, 24 August 2022 (EDT)

Badger Price

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?260982; The note said artist credit came from SFE (although his full name is there on the cover) but I noticed the SFE cover has no price on the bottom like the cover on ISFDB. Is that a common Badger thing or is it an alternate edition or something? I know there's a lot of old SF paperback experts on here (the paperbacks are old, not the experts). --Username 20:06, 24 August 2022 (EDT)

Why is Robin Hood in the database?

While browsing the database, I stumbled upon Robin Hood, and was wondering why it's in? I don't recall there being any spec fic elements in the story? I can be wrong, but no witches or sourcerers, right? So, shouldn't it be removed? MagicUnk 11:49, 25 August 2022 (EDT)

I'd consider it alternate history. It's definitely based on a possible real person, but it's an alternate history retelling and embellishment of that. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:53, 25 August 2022 (EDT)
That seems to be quite a stretch if you ask me. True, Robin Hood is based on (likely) historical characters, but that doesn't mean it is to be considered an alternate history - if that were the case, all midieval stories with knights and ladies-to-be-rescued would have to be entered in the db (if there're dragons to be slain, yeah, that's something different :)). And what with contemporaneous novels that are loosely based off of real events & real people, but which have been used in an alternative narrative? I wouldn't think these are alternate histories either. MagicUnk 16:19, 25 August 2022 (EDT)
There have been multiple versions of the story over the years, a few with at least marginal SF elements. I wouldn't include the non-SF versions, but the SF ones should remain in the database. Luckily one of the publications has been primary-verified, so we could start by asking the verifier. Ahasuerus 16:31, 25 August 2022 (EDT)
Indeed, we're only talking about the original. I've asked Chavey to come over and give his opinion. Regards, MagicUnk 09:40, 26 August 2022 (EDT)
I agree that the standard "Robin Hood" is not spec fic, and I have this book marked that way in my own database. Someone else had earlier entered the 1938 edition, and I had the 1928 first edition, so I added it. But I have no objection to removing this title. However, I wish we were more consistent, or more efficient, about removing books that *aren't* genre. And so far as I know, if we do remove such a book, we have no system in place to prevent other editors from just adding the book back in again. As best as I can tell, "Robinson Crusoe" and "Swiss Family Robinson" have no spec fic in them, and yet we have them listed in the database. (Yes, Crusoe is marked as non-genre, but why is it even in the database? We don't list most of Defoe's other 75 known writings.) Francis Hodgson Burnett's "A Little Princess" really doesn't belong here either. Someone else had it included, so I worked very hard on writing up an excuse as to why it belonged here, but even though I wrote that note in the title record, it doesn't convince *me* that it belongs. (Really, Darrah? the rat Melchisedec had "supernormal abilities to understand and respond to Sara"?) I wish there were a better way to deal with this type of book, but I have no recommendations. On "Robin Hood", though, I'm fine with deleting the entire title. Chavey (talk) 03:23, 30 September 2022 (EDT)
Der Schweizerische Robinson aka The Swiss Family Robinson has the following note attached to it:
  • A juvenile adventure story. The only speculative element is the fact that the desert island that the protagonists are stranded on has a combination of animal species which is unrealistic based on their natural habitats.
It puts it somewhere between "lost world" and "fantastic voyages" on the proto-science fiction spectrum. Since ISFDB:Policy says "The older the book, the more likely we are to include it even if it is borderline eligible", it was included.
Re: consistency, there was a time when we created title/publication records for non-genre books (both fiction and non-fiction) reviewed in genre magazines. The policy was changed years ago, but some ineligible non-genre books still linger. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:45, 30 September 2022 (EDT)

Scottish Lowlands

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=scottish+lo&type=All+Titles; 1 of Paul Finch's Terror Tales anthologies had no cover artist so I entered it from R. Dalby's site, and then checked and found 1 other volume had no artist, either (same guy, Neil Williams), so I entered it from Amazon's back cover, but there's some weird phantom edition someone forgot to delete or something, and that review not only is missing a word in the title but I'm sure it's supposed to be Rath, not Roth, who has 1 other review on ISFDB. Also, there's another Roth review from way back in 1995, so I'm going to check that one, it being in an easy-to-find book, and change to Rath if necessary; if anyone has this Scottish Lowlands book the page numbers still need entering. EDIT: What a dope; the book's easy to find, the review's in an obscure Brit zine. Bob PV both, so I'll just ask him to check and fix if needed. --Username 13:10, 25 August 2022 (EDT)

Black Mask Covers

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubs_not_in_series.cgi?4674; While looking at the Sarban omnibus I realized the 2 cover photos on the book's cover were original PB covers; Black Mask has a few dozen books on ISFDB and only the last one had someone named MOHearn who realized this and made Fabulous Clipjoint's cover a variant of the original. The Sarban book is the only one that's PV and that dude's long gone, so there's no problem with asking anyone, but there's a couple of points, firstly that some of the covers don't look like any of the original covers, possibly due to copyright issues, and also there's the question of how the artists are credited, if they are at all, in the Black Mask editions and whether the names differ from what's here already and have to be made variants. As far as I can tell Archive.org only has Dark Chase, Detour, Night of the Hunter and Pick-Up, none of which are on ISFDB (well, Night is, but only in a recent edition from another publisher). --Username 14:22, 25 August 2022 (EDT)

Reorganizing some large numbered tie-in series

There are some large tie-in series that currently consist of many dozens of numbered entries. This numbering comes from the publisher - the number might or might not be on the cover and is usually listed on a page that gives an overview of the series. The numbering simply follows publication order, there is no relation to in-story continuity or suggested reading order. There are some problems with this: the numbering is publisher-specific and might change or be dropped when the line changes publishers. There is no way to display books that are actually related story-wise, like some trilogies that later get their own omnibuses etc. I would like to change these series numberings into what has been done with Star Trek: The Original Series, where the numberings where changed into publication series like here and here. Examples of such series are the other Star Trek series (TNG, DS9, VOY) or gaming-related series like Shadowrun, and Battletech. Are there any objections? TerokNor 15:32, 25 August 2022 (EDT)

Given the sizes of many of those, I'd recommend creating a working page for each (perhaps at User:TerokNor/Star Trek, User:TerokNor/Battletech, and User:TerokNor/Shadowrun, for example). You can use wiki markup to make the various series lists as you imagine them. That will also allow you to make sure you don't get confused when you get into making the changes. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 16:01, 25 August 2022 (EDT)

New yellow warning for translations

The post-submission review page for "Make Variant" has been updated. It now displays a yellow warning if the two title records have different languages and the proposed variant's Note field doesn't contain the "Tr" template. (This warning is not displayed for COVERART or INTERIORART titles.) The older yellow warning which displayed the words "Different languages" in the "Language" row of the table has been removed.

If you come across anything unexpected, please your findings here. Ahasuerus 16:23, 25 August 2022 (EDT)

11th Armada Ghost Book

Archive.org copy added recently revealed "Lavendar Girl" was actually Lavender and page count was 1 short because of the usual last unnumbered page thing, but what's more odd is the back cover has a dirty and faded Scholastic Book Club sticker or something on it covering up the foreign prices; the only ISFDB entry by that publisher is an umpteenth reprinting of some old Doc Savage novel, so those people here who like entering every edition of something they can find may be able to source the date or enter it as date unknown or whatever. There are no other copies readable online. --Username 19:30, 25 August 2022 (EDT)

Fat Cow

I came across a Bookscans cover with fatcow in the URL; there are 11, I replaced 3, but the other 8 are PV, in case anyone thinks it's necessary to contact active people and ask to replace those with their updated URLs. I saw this, https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Data_Consistency/Disallowed_URLs, but that's old and might not be relevant anymore. --Username 15:56, 26 August 2022 (EDT)

Uncanny Banquet and Leisure

A few thoughts I've had which I've finally decided to ask about; first, about Ramsey Campbell's 1992 anthology Uncanny Banquet. I distinctly remember back in the 1990's when I used to go to bookstores all the time that I saw several copies (of the hardcover, I think) at the Barnes and Noble in Mid-Manhattan, NYC, near St. Patrick's Cathedral (the same place where I saw Chauncey Howell, recently-deceased local New York entertainment newscaster who worked at ABC back in the 1980's and was known for his happy on-air demeanor, who was browsing through a half-price bin looking about as angry and unhappy as a person possibly can) being sold for ONE DOLLAR. Yes, this supposedly never-published-in-America book somehow showed up in an American bookstore practically being given away. Being as cheap as I am, I didn't buy it, just sat there reading the included novel Hole in the Pit (which at the time was almost impossible to find), which I still regret because I've never seen another copy anywhere since, and there's a few stories in there that are still rare 30 years later. So I'm curious if anyone who owns a copy could have one that has B&N stickers on it or, possibly, actual text in/on the book itself calling it a B&N edition? Also, I just noticed that the cover art credit here is only on the PB even though the HC had the same art, so I imported and fixed the date; not sure how I never noticed that before. Second, Leisure Books released many, many books in their pre-respectable days back in the 1980's, and even a teenage horror fanatic like I was eventually gave up on reading their books because they seemed to have a policy of making them as long as possible, with a Leisure horror title under 300 pages being a rare thing, but also because of the low quality of many of them, even by the standards of horror paperback fiction back then. However, one thing I remember about them before I stopped was that their quality control was incredibly shoddy, with many horror titles suddenly switching to a page or two from one of their non-horror titles before going back to the horror. I'm sure many people on here own copies of old Leisure titles, so if anyone has one that includes pages from a Leisure western/action/whatever it might be interesting to add notes and see how many people can find. EDIT: Hey, here's something; an Italian edition of Uncanny Banquet, https://www.fantascienza.com/catalogo/volumi/NILF109393/l-orrido-pasto-racconti-del-soprannaturale/, in case anyone fluent in that language owns a copy and thinks it needs entering here. I guess Uncanny doesn't translate well so they just used Horrid instead. --Username 19:40, 26 August 2022 (EDT)

Add Variant Title upgraded

The Web page responsible for displaying (admittedly uncommon) "Add Variant Title" submissions has been updated to use the new submission display software. It will now display the same yellow warning about missing "Tr" templates for translated titles as the previously upgraded "Make Variant Title" page. Ahasuerus 21:52, 26 August 2022 (EDT)

I don't receive the confirmation email.

Hello, I am trying to set up my email in "My preferences" and the system says it sent an email to my address for confirmation. However, I never get this email. I tried oh so many times already.

- I am using gmail. - I have already checked spam folders, trash, all mail, etc. I also have no filters set up.

For a test, I created a 10-minute mail service. Well, the confirmation email DID SHOW there, coming from apache@server.isfdb.org . Problem is, no use in confirming a temporary email... I want to use my regular gmail.

I also tried with an older yahoo email that I still have. No luck either.

So, is anyone able to help me with this issue? Thanks! Pugno (Paolo Fabrizio Pugno)

Different email servers have different automated rules which may block email coming from certain Web sites, so it's hard to tell what's preventing ISFDB email from being delivered to your mailbox.
The good news is that confirmation emails are optional as far as ISFDB is concerned. If you can log in here, i.e. on the Wiki side, with a Wiki user name and password, you should be able to use the same user name and password to log in on the main database side. At that point you will have full access to all ISFDB features including Advanced Search, display preferences, submission creation etc. Hope this helps! Ahasuerus 17:46, 28 August 2022 (EDT)
Understood. Well, if there's no loss of functionality, I guess it's Ok. Thanks for the quick reply. CHeers! Pugno 18:25, 28 August 2022 (EDT)

Mr. Saunders

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=saunders&type=Name; I suspect essay by David R. Saunders was originally (in English) by David Saunders (1922-2003), and essay by David Saunders should be by David Saunders (1954 - ), in case anyone more expert knows for sure (and, by the way, should there be spaces before and after the dash in 1954?). Impetus for all that was this, https://fantlab.ru/user13240/blogpage2, where that big Saunders cover caught my eye; might be something worth entering here. --Username 18:39, 28 August 2022 (EDT)

Variant Dates - new yellow warning

"Add Variant" and both versions of "Make Variant" have been modified to display a yellow warning when the proposed variant date is before the proposed parent date. Certain other changes were made under the hood, but they shouldn't be visible to editors/moderators. If you come across anything unexpected, please let me know. Ahasuerus 12:59, 29 August 2022 (EDT)

R(obert). S. Brown

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/se.cgi?arg=s.+brown&type=Name; Not long ago I entered the short story in GoreZone #1, which was the sister magazine to the great Fangoria and ran for a couple of dozen issues from 1988 to sometime in the nineties. The first issue had artwork by someone not on ISFDB previously, but today as I entered #2-4 (Archive.org has all of them, although they stopped including fiction for a couple of later issues until public outcry convinced them to go back to doing so), completing the 1988 issues, the artwork was all by Robert S. Brown, who only has a single art credit here for a 1982 John Wyndham paperback reprint. I thought it was odd that he did 1 mainstream cover for a major publisher and then suddenly switched more than 5 years later to doing interior art for a gory horror zine, so I checked further and I believe the credits under R.S. Brown here are all by him, too. The signature on some of the covers, RSB, matches that on the GoreZone artwork. There seems to be no mention anywhere on the internet of Brown doing art for GoreZone, so this would be good to get entered, if anyone else looks into this and agrees with me. I assume the long name would be a variant of the short name since that's what has most of the credits. --Username 15:07, 29 August 2022 (EDT)

Saturn's Children

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?829343; Somebody named Aardvark (?) entered the first entry recently from Archive.org copy, using the full title unlike everyone else, but used a cover image that has the Book Club number of the later SFBC edition on the back, and this actually showed up on the cleanup report as the only Science Fiction Book Club record without a catalog ID; also, the PV SFBC edition has the wrong cover artist, the art actually being used on several other editions with the correct artist. So I guess this means Mr. Aardvark should enter the ID and replace the image, and someone should tell PV of other edition that they should change the artist, except oddly it was Alvonruff, the guy who does the behind-the-scenes stuff here that nobody else understands. You mean many years ago he was just an ordinary guy entering books like most of us plebes? Get out of town. --Username 22:22, 30 August 2022 (EDT)

Which Way

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?41315; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pubseries.cgi?10883; same publisher, but somebody made 1 a series and the other a pub. series, so a decision is needed on which is correct. --Username 14:34, 31 August 2022 (EDT)

British Fantasy Award / Best Audio

Would the British Fantasy Award for Best Audio be considered an award that should be connected to EDITOR records?

For example, PseudoPod has been a nominee from 2018 through 2022[1], and PodCastle has been a nominee from 2019 through 2022 (with a win in 2020)

BFA Audio Award Category Record # 778: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/award_category.cgi?778+1

Things like the Hugo, Ignyte, and Locus are listed on the individual magazine pages for each of these publications by publication year. Links to the 2021 EDITOR Title Records:

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2820526

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2874271

Currently, the BFA Audio Award nominees only include a link to the Sandman Audible production. What would be the most appropriate way to connect records?

[1] 2022 shortlist announcement: https://www.britishfantasysociety.org/authors/british-fantasy-awards-shortlists/

Fenrix1958 17:51, 31 August 2022 (EDT)

I am not familiar with this award, but I think there may be a structural problem with linking nominations and awards to EDITOR records. Let's consider Poscastle, which was nominated in 2019 and 2021. Its series page shows that the editorial team changed during 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2019, which is why we have multiple EDITOR records for each of these years. We can only link an award record to a single EDITOR title, so we would need to pick one out of 2+ EDITOR titles for these years. How do existing EDITOR-linked awards handle this issue? Ahasuerus 09:29, 2 September 2022 (EDT)

Blood Is Not Enough

https://fanac.org/fanzines/Birmingham_Science_Fiction_Group_Newsletter/Birmingham_Science_Fiction_Group_Newsletter230.pdf; Someone recently uploaded to Archive.org an apparently rare book, the Grafton edition of E. Datlow's anthology Blood Is Not Enough, but the price was higher than ISFDB, and there was no mention of later printing on copyright page, but that PDF above says £4.50 in the review and is dated just after the publication date and the 1 eBay photo of the back cover online I've seen also says £4.50 so, assuming the original price came from Locus, it's another of their many mistakes, so while entering the missing page numbers I also adjusted the price. Of course, if anyone here can produce a photo showing £3.99 on the back it can always be reverted. --Username 19:07, 31 August 2022 (EDT)

Guy's Vendetta

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?711064; I added The Pan Book of Revenge Stories (1971) to ISFDB recently since the contents are largely genre/by genre authors, but Maupassant's "A Vendetta" is only on here in the German edition of Michel Parry's dog horror anthology, Hounds of Hell, and only as "Vendetta" (although the original has "Une" at the beginning), with that story not in English-language editions and other stories seemingly dropped. So if anyone can figure out the date of the first appearance of the story with "A" they can always add that to the Pan book and variant it, and also it seems like the German Hounds of Hell should be a variant, too, since it has different contents. --Username 11:04, 1 September 2022 (EDT)

Canonical Name Change Richard Strachan from Richard W. Strachan

Any objections to making Richard Strachan the canonical name and Richard W. Strachan the alternate? John Scifibones 14:38, 1 September 2022 (EDT)

Go ahead. This one is obvious. Annie 15:01, 1 September 2022 (EDT)
Done, John Scifibones 15:56, 1 September 2022 (EDT)

ISFDB Receives Special Committee Award at Chicon 8

The ISFDB was awarded a Special Committee Award at this year's Worldcon, Chicon 8. Go us! The award was presented at the opening ceremonies and Al was there to accept the award. He mentioned some of the early history of the database, specifically mentioning Ahasuerus, NESFA and others. It was nice to see our work appreciated. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 23:42, 1 September 2022 (EDT)

Great! ISFDB has certainly been a major source of genre information for many years and I'm glad I've contributed in some small way over the last 20 months. A few thoughts, though; Chicago is one of the most dangerous cities in America, so I wouldn't linger after the convention is done if I were you. Also, on their website, https://chicon.org/, the section labeled Policies is chilling, with full vaccination and mask-wearing required almost everywhere, almost all the time, even at this point when the pandemic has ceased being deadly for most of the American population; the organizers of this con seem to think it's still 2020, unless that COVID Policy page is old and someone forgot to update it. Also, the Code of Conduct and Anti-Racism Statement pages are full of some of the most Orwellian doublespeak I've seen in a long time, and I live in New York, so that's really saying something. I fail to see how anyone could actually have fun at one of these things anymore when the slightest misspoken word or joke or even a look could be taken the wrong way and result in expulsion from the con or possible legal action. I'd be terrified to even enter the front door. It also makes me wonder if the winners of the awards at this con are actually the most deserving (this site not included, of course) or whether they're being given instead to the most inclusive, diverse candidates. But then this is an issue everywhere now, so I shouldn't single out Chicon. Anyway, Godspeed! --Username 00:15, 2 September 2022 (EDT)
Hmmm. Not good enough to talk about science fiction, we have to get into politics too? Or don't you appreciate how essentially EVERYTHING you just said is all politics, politics, and more politics. Chavey (talk) 03:28, 30 September 2022 (EDT)
Leaving aside the fact that you're responding to a nearly month-old thread that everyone else abandoned a day after it started, warning someone about the severe danger of being in Chicago these days, especially for SF con attendees who usually aren't the most capable people when it comes to defending themselves, isn't politics, it's called common sense; as for the rest of my comments, the truth hurts sometimes, and I suspect that the reason it bothers you is because you agree with those policies. Science fiction isn't real; those things are real. --Username (talk) 07:30, 30 September 2022 (EDT)
A reminder that the ISFDB Wiki is not a place for discussing politics. There are plenty of other Web sites where political issues are talked about. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:23, 30 September 2022 (EDT)
Wow! This is great news! That in addition to us being a regular bibliographic reference with SFE and Wikipedia should give us even more monemtum. Christian Stonecreek 03:44, 2 September 2022 (EDT)
Yet another step on the path to world domination through bibliography... ahem, I mean it was very nice of them to give us the award. Ahasuerus 08:56, 2 September 2022 (EDT)

Laser Books

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?16874; Several active PV for Herds, it's the only Laser with no month, but it's between the first 2 books which are both August so logically it should be August, too, right? --Username 08:55, 2 September 2022 (EDT)

Amazon Images

Anyone know what Amazon is doing to their site? It seems totally random now as to whether clicking a book link will take you to the right page or a page that just shows the cover with an error message, and when I just added Daniel G. Keohane's author image, not the big one at the top which has the kind of URL that ISFDB gives a yellow warning for but the bigger of the two identical photos in the scroll list below, it has WEBP in the URL; advanced search reveals there's not that many WEBP URL on ISFDB, less than 100, while many others I've entered recently have the same old URL with media or ssl in them. Why is every site changing, from WorldCat to Amazon? It's becoming untenable. --Username 19:35, 2 September 2022 (EDT)

WebP is a Google-developed image file format which produces significantly smaller files than traditional image formats like JPG and GIF. According to various sources, including Amazon, Google began prioritizing WebP images in certain operations about a year ago. Chances are that it created an incentive for other companies to speed up the adoption of this format. Hopefully any instability which it may cause at Amazon is just growing pains. Ahasuerus 22:06, 3 September 2022 (EDT)

Unpublished Campbell Awards

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?42308; I came across this randomly and found a 2015 post on lawrenceperson.com that included all the page numbers, so I've made an edit. Odd is that Mr. Person himself made an edit here early in 2016, which was cleaned up by someone afterwards, but for some reason nobody ever entered those numbers. If anyone knows him they may want to ask for an actual photo of the contents page because he wrote one of the titles wrong, Shang instead of Shan (at least I assume it's wrong because it's Shan everywhere else online), so it's possible he could've done the same for some of the numbers, and if possible he could also be asked other things like whether Donaldson's story has "A Fable" like it does elsewhere, if there's a reason why no price was entered, whether that essay on p. 251 has that exact title (I cut-and-pasted it into my edit), etc. --Username 21:05, 3 September 2022 (EDT)

Ariel

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2185053; Says non-genre, but from long-ago reading I remember it having some ambiguous supernatural touches, and online talk, like https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/ArielBlock, seems to agree. If the original HC is entered there's a LOT of reprint editions to follow, so if anyone here agrees then it will be entered. --Username 12:23, 4 September 2022 (EDT)

Uncle Silas and Gods, Men and Ghosts

https://archive.org/details/unclesilas0000jsle; Antiquarian alert; someone recently uploaded this but it's damaged, missing copyright page and a few others, but it seems much earlier than other Dover editions of this title on ISFDB judging by the price, $2.00, so maybe someone here knows what the date is and it can be entered properly. EDIT: Also recently uploaded is this, https://archive.org/details/godsmenghostsbes0000duns, which has no price unlike the other 2 copies on ISFDB with the same cover; there's confusion about printings judging by the notes someone wrote, so maybe this is the true 1972 Dover edition. --Username 13:49, 4 September 2022 (EDT)

Server migration on 2022-09-06

All bibliographic pages have been updated with the following banner:

> The ISFDB is moving servers the week of 9/4. Editing will be disabled on 9/6 until the database is migrated, and you may see either the old server or the new server while the domain name change propagates across the Internet. You are currently on the OLD SERVER.

The current plan is to start by disabling all editing/moderation before 9:30am (server time, i.e. Eastern Daylight Time). The migration process should take over 24 hours. It may take another day or two for the rest of the internet to start sending "isfdb.org" traffic to the new server. While various upgrade processes are running on the new server, the old server will remain available in "read only" mode. Hopefully everything goes smoothly <fingers crossed>. Ahasuerus 20:33, 4 September 2022 (EDT)

How will this affect edits? Will edits still pending on Monday night remain after the switch (I have over 100 currently and doubt they'll all be accepted by tomorrow night)? --Username 20:53, 4 September 2022 (EDT)
Any edits already in the queue will remain there and will be processed after editing is re-enabled on the new server. Ahasuerus 23:11, 4 September 2022 (EDT)
What are the advantages of the switch, and will the editing process be the same afterwards? --Username 20:53, 4 September 2022 (EDT)
The planned server migration will also upgrade pretty much every software component that underlies the ISFDB database. It will let us move from HTTP to HTTPS, improving security. Upgrading the software that runs the ISFDB Wiki will also plug a number of security holes. The new server will have more memory, making it faster. It will have more disk space, which will let us (eventually) migrate the Fixer software to the main server and open it up to all moderators. The migration will fix the ISFDB-SFE nightly reconciliation process which is currently unable to run. Lots of minor and not so minor things, really. Ahasuerus 23:11, 4 September 2022 (EDT)
Cool, dude. Happy Labor Day. --Username 23:28, 4 September 2022 (EDT)

Morrell's Testament

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1621261; I added the Pan last October, but while doing some Morrell edits recently I noticed that it's actually a third printing; maybe I didn't notice back then because the type in the book is so small. I fixed that, giving it "date unknown", but then found a messed-up copy of what I believe to be the real 1977 Pan on Archive.org from The Public Library of India; there are no covers, no copyright page, words are cut off due to poor scanning, pages are photographed crookedly, etc. I entered it as 1977 judging by the much lower prices of other Pans at the back compared to those in the third printing, but of course anyone here who owns Pan copies can fill in some blanks, like the price, ISBN, etc. of the original, or maybe they have the second printing or later ones if there were any. --Username 10:36, 5 September 2022 (EDT)

Server migration today at 9:30am

This is to confirm that the server migration is still scheduled to start today at 9:30am server (Eastern Daylight) time. The data will be visible through the migration process, but you will not be able to create submissions until the migration is completed.

Once the migration is finished, you'll need to login to the ISFDB Wiki first and the ISFDB database second. If your password is too short or too easy to guess, the Wiki will tell you about it and suggest that you change it. Ahasuerus 07:37, 6 September 2022 (EDT)

Editing will be turned off at 9:28am. Ahasuerus 09:26, 6 September 2022 (EDT)
Editing has been turned off. Ahasuerus 09:28, 6 September 2022 (EDT)

Koontz and Gibbons

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?976021; Archive copy of 1997 has totally different cover but Lee Gibbons is cover artist for both, so I've added Archive link and checked eBay for 2007 and it's Gibbons there, too, so after edits are approved I assume some unmerging is needed, or maybe not, I'm not sure if artist is more important or if different covers by same artist need separating. --Username 08:13, 6 September 2022 (EDT)

We separate them out. I accepted the edits and unmerged them. -- JLaTondre (talk) 09:23, 6 September 2022 (EDT)
OK. Looking further, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?9849, the 1997 art actually originated in the Headline HC, upside-down, while the 2007 art was re-used for the 2012 Headline e-book but the cover credit wasn't added, and there's a date unknown Headline PB where PV "Jorssi" made the Gibbons cover credit separate from the earlier one, plus there's a 2018 Headline TP that has totally different art, so more to do which can't be done now because this server issue may take a day or several days before editing can resume and then passwords need to be re-entered and blah blah blah. --Username 10:31, 6 September 2022 (EDT)

Moving

So yesterday I tried to get into isfdb.org, saw the GoDaddy crap, then somehow stumbled on something called isfdb2.org, and tried to log in to Wiki, which said my password wasn't valid, either because it's been so long since I created it that I've forgotten or maybe it's lost in the server move, but it allowed me to skip that part and continue anyway, so then I tried to log in to ISFDB itself and it didn't recognize my password and said something about capitalization being important so I tried multiple times and eventually got through, either because I stumbled on whatever way I entered them a long time ago when I first created them or the software just got tired and gave up. Now I see today that isfdb.org is back, and actually that seems to be the site to use because ISFDB2 only goes up to June, while ISFDB is current. Did anyone else see any of this or did I have a unique experience? This is Username, by the way, because I don't see the signature thing above to sign this message with, either because I'm not logged in enough to see it or SNAFU.

isfdb2.org is a staging server for the isfdb. It's where we did all the work to move up to the latest Linux kernel, Apache, MySQL, MediaWiki, etc, and did work to get https working. It's not updated regularly, and data entered there will not find itself to the isfdb proper. isfdb2 will be used to stage large changes that would be too risky to put up at isfdb.org (like maybe a Python 3 port someday). isfdb.org is back (sort of), and since we've moved mediaWiki to a version that is 10 years past the old one, we're currently working through things like the missing wiki toolbar. (I've been doing mediaWiki so long that I had no idea the signature was in the toolbar, since I've just been doing tilda tilda tilda tilda forever) Alvonruff (talk) 16:23, 7 September 2022 (EDT)

Back

The site was down for a few minutes --Username (talk) 09:49, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Yes, it was down between 9:30am and 9:35am while the daily backups ran. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:51, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

and when it came back I was able to make an edit, adding Peter Straub's death date on 9/4, so apparently us non-mods can now edit again. --Username (talk) 09:49, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

I was just about to post that all editing features were enabled a few minutes ago. Ahasuerus (talk) 09:51, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Updating Wiki-based tables

As many of you know, our Wiki software lets you create tables within Wiki pages. Most editors used:

    class="TablePager"

at the top of each table to create table borders, but "TablePager" is no longer valid in the new version of the Wiki software. You can use:

    class="wikitable"

to achieve the same results.

I have updated the tables embedded in some of the more popular Wiki pages, but I am pretty sure I didn't get all of them. Ahasuerus (talk) 10:47, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

I updated all the other tables that showed up in an Everything wiki search. --Alvonruff (talk) 06:51, 14 September 2022 (EDT)

Psychotronic II

https://www.isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/ISFDB:Community_Portal/Archive/Archive52#Psychotronic; Archive copy uploaded recently, 6th printing with $20 price, I made an edit for it, so that's 1 printing with that price, others need finding and entering. Read the book, it's awesome, with much info about movies not mentioned online much if at all. My copy was read so often the spine is broken and the book's barely hanging together. EDIT: 1996's Psychotronic Video Guide is also on Archive, hiding in the Magazine section (?) since 2017, so I added a link to that, too, and it turns out the page count was way off so that's been fixed. --Username (talk) 11:12, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Thriller Book Club

https://archive.org/search.php?query=thriller-book-club&sort=titleSorter&and[]=mediatype%3A%22texts%22; There's only 2 books on ISFDB by that publisher, and only 1 of them is genre, the other being included because it's by John Brunner, a genre author. However, Archive.org has many books by them, most in old reliable Public Library of India, and some of those titles/covers seem like they may be genre, in case anyone here has read any of them and knows for sure. That In the Still of the Night cover is oddly disturbing, like Blair Witch's ending 30+ years earlier. --Username (talk) 12:34, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Replacing Uploaded Images

Recent copy of junk horror novel The Supernatural by John G. Jones on Archive, added link, replaced previous cover image added by me some time ago with better Archive cover, noticed that replacing the old one didn't require a CTRL+F5 to see the new cover, so that may be one improvement of this new ISFDB. --Username (talk) 13:37, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Server migration banner removed

The banner which informed users about the server migration has been removed. We should be back to normal operations. I hope to have a fix for the server performance issue in another day or two. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:40, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Rich Horton

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?807208; Horton title on p. 9 obviously not fiction so I changed it to Essay, but it's in the wrong year, Scribd.com preview shows it in the 2019 edition, 2020 edition has an intro by Horton with a completely different title that's in the e-book but not the TP; many PV for these books, so moving/fixing/checking everything else is recommended. --Username (talk) 22:14, 8 September 2022 (EDT)

Ed Gorman and Donald Trump

I added a 2014 collection by Ed Gorman, Scream Queen, that somehow escaped being entered here even though it seemed every last thing by Gorman had already been entered. The copyright section is a mess, with wrong dates, wrong titles, etc. However, there's 1 story I think needs fixing here on ISFDB, "En Famille", because while it says in the book that it originated in 1994's Murder at the Races, one of those crap Peter Haining anthologies, the date of that anthology seems to really be 1995 based on online info, but the earlier Gorman collection the story appears in, Moonchasers, says it was first published in 1995 in Ellery Queen's on the copyright page, and yet ISFDB gives it the same date as the collection as if it was an original story. The problem is that it seems to have really originally been written in 1993, because another crap Haining anthology, 1992's Television Detectives' Omnibus, was revised in 1993 as another crap anthology, The Armchair Detective Omnibus, and Gorman's story is in that. Many of Gorman's stories are hard to pin down, he being a multi-genre author whose work appeared in many publications not on ISFDB, but this one I think I've got. So if anyone can look into this and agrees with me that Armchair was really the first place the story appears in then the date can be changed to 1993. I took some time importing the stories, only to find out that the mod who approved my first edit entering the book went ahead and imported the stories himself, so while checking my edit history to see what other edits of mine he'd approved I found that he'd only rejected one, where I'd added Donald Trump's specific birth place of Jamaica Estates (previously it said just Queens, which is far too vague for such a huge place), and added a note, since there were none, identifying him as the 45th President, for those in other countries who might not recognize who he is, since he's about to announce his run for 2024. My edit was rejected with this: "Too much honor". Now this has been an issue before, with lefties on this site deciding which information they want added and which they don't, and removing a previous photo of Trump I'd added (which I asked about here months ago and nobody replied to, even though I'm sure it would be very easy to find out who it was that took it down), so what I'm going to do is re-do my edit with exactly the same info and let another mod approve it. --Username (talk) 10:16, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

If you believe that one of your submissions was rejected in error, the process is to raise the issue with the reviewing moderator. If you disagree with the moderator's reasons, the next step is to appeal on the Moderator Noticeboard. Ahasuerus (talk) 11:13, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
I've done enough of that; nobody responds. Adding a more specific birth place and a note about who the person is doesn't require a reason; it's bio data. It was rejected purely for political reasons; "too much honor" isn't a legitimate reason to reject anything. I've made another edit, so one of you who are not partisan can approve it when you have the time. --Username (talk) 11:30, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Even if another moderator approves the edit, there is nothing stopping the original (or another) moderator from removing the data later. When a submission is rejected for an invalid reason, it's important to make sure that the moderator who rejected it is understands why it shouldn't have been rejected, otherwise he or she may do something similar again. I'll post on the Moderator Noticeboard. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:05, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
I have posted my analysis of the issue on the Moderator Noticeboard. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:35, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Chauncey G. Parker

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?204281; I've just added birth/death dates, and it seems like the III should be added to the main name and the shorter name without the III, which was only used for the Brit edition of his novel, should be the alternate name, right? --Username (talk) 10:32, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Removing from watchlist

After the upgrade, it looks like you can no longer directly stop watching a talk page or a discussion/notice board page. The option to stop watching has disappeared from the bottom of the page. I was able to use the EditWatchlist button and make the changes I wanted but it's a lot more inconvenient. Phil (talk) 12:20, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

As far as I know, all Wiki pages have a star displayed between "View history" and "More" at the top of the page. Clicking the star should toggle its "watched" status for the currently logged in user. Can you see it? Ahasuerus (talk) 12:39, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Yes. It does work. :) However, it's more inconvenient and not particularly intuitive since you now have to scroll to the top of the page and know to toggle the star to do something that used to be able to be done at the bottom of the page with a clearly annotated check box. Phil (talk) 13:29, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Curious. I see a "Watch this page" check mark displayed next to "This is a minor edit" check mark when editing sections of the Community Portal and Talk pages. Perhaps I have my Editing Preferences configured differently? Also, if you hover your mouse over the star, it will tell you that Alt-Shift+w should also work as a toggle. It seems to work for me. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:50, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Good call. I had to check "Add direct unwatch/watch markers (×/+) to watched pages with changes (JavaScript required for toggle functionality)" on the watchlist section of the wiki preferences. It was unchecked. Phil (talk) 17:53, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

Logging on to "isfdb.org" vs. "www.isfdb.org"

There have been reports of odd and inconsistent logging in/logging out behavior when signing on to "isfdb.org" as opposed to on to "www.isfdb.org". We have installed a fix for this problem. From now on, logging on to "isfdb.org" should act the same way that logging on to "www.isfdb.org" does. If you come across any bugs or other unexpected behavior, please post them here. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:34, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

editing topics

For some reason you have to edit the entire page since the move, instead of being able to edit a specific topic.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 16:50, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

The [edit] link is immediately after the thread title as opposed to being right justified. John Scifibones 17:00, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Thanks! I see it now, didn't notice it before.--Dirk P Broer (talk) 19:26, 11 September 2022 (EDT)

Brian Matthews

The two works attributed to Brian Matthews appear to be by different Brian Matthewses.

  • 1742110 is written by the Australian writer Brian Matthews (1936-2022). This author has a Wikipedia page. His AustLit page says that his full name is Brian Ernest Matthews.
  • 2797724 appears to be a self-published work available through Amazon but there's no accompanying author page.

What naming convention should be used for separating these two authors? Riselka (talk) 19:35, 9 September 2022 (EDT)

As per Help:How to enter duplicate record names:
More specific qualifiers like "(1971-)", "(UK)" or "(artist)" are more informative than less specific qualifiers like "(I)", so we try to use the former when possible. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:10, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Thanks for sharing this page, I'd only seen this other one. Both authors should receive additional qualifiers, but I'm not sure which exact convention to take for the qualifiers. For the first, known author this is simple enough since we have birth/death dates: "Brian Matthews (1936-2022)". However, it seems less clear for the self-published Brian Matthews since I couldn't find any additional information about the author. So, should the record just receive a numeric qualifier (i.e., "Brian Matthews (I)")? Riselka (talk) 20:53, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Yes, "Brian Matthews (I)" is probably the best that we can do at this point. We can always update it if and when we find additional information. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:57, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
Great, thanks for the help! I've submitted the initial edits. Riselka (talk) 21:02, 9 September 2022 (EDT)
After reviewing the submission I realized that we have only 2 "Brian Matthews" records on file, so we can leave one of them as just "Brian Matthews". I have approved the "Brian Matthews (1936-2022)" submission and kept the other one as plain "Brian Matthews". Ahasuerus (talk) 10:25, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

Galactic Central

Anyone else notice philsp.com cover images are broken unless you click on them? See the Haunt of Horror issues for an example. --Username (talk) 09:18, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

We are talking about pubs like The Haunt of Horror, August 1973, right? The problem is that we are now on HTTPS and Galactic Central still uses HTTP. (I believe the owner of the site has stated that he has no plans to move to HTTPS because he doesn't have user-created content.)
When an HTTPS page includes an HTTP image, different browsers display it differently. Firefox displays the image, but shows an exclamation point next to the "lock" icon to the left of the URL bar. If you click the icon, it will say "Connection not secure: Parts of this page are not secure (such as image)". On the other hand, Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge do not display the image, which is presumably what you are running into. Apparently Google Chrome used to do what Firefox currently does, but they changed it in Chrome 81. Users can allow "insecure content" on a site-by-site basis, but it's not going to help casual browsers.
Unfortunately, there isn't much we can do about this. All of the major players, including all of the browser vendors, have been trying to get rid of HTTP for years and its days are numbered. Many companies already block HTTP on their networks and it's only going to get more restrictive.
We have 12,584 Galactic Central image links, which means that any kind of manual migration is liable to be painful:-(. Then again, perhaps the owner of Galactic Central will upgrade to HTTPS once the pressure gets to be too much.
I also need to check how many other HTTP links to third party images we have. (As an aside, most ISFDB-hosted images are still linked to using HTTP, but our software upgrades them to HTTPS automatically, so they do not cause problems). Ahasuerus (talk) 10:13, 10 September 2022 (EDT)
If anyone is in contact with the owner they could tell him that covers from his site are now broken on the biggest source of genre information website, so they might want to consider that and upgrade to HTTPS, since most owners are greedy and only care about how much traffic they get; I can see people browsing ISFDB and seeing all those broken images and not bothering anymore, not realizing the images appear if you click on the broken thing. Yes, I use Chrome, and it's terrible like everything Google touches, but the fact is that's what most people use, so I'm sure one of the behind-the-scenes people that work on this site can do something to make the images appear without having to click anything. --Username (talk) 10:44, 10 September 2022 (EDT)
Browser vendors consider it a security issue, so it's not something that we can change on our side. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:23, 11 September 2022 (EDT)
Also, those spam users are getting really annoying now, clogging up the recent changes list and making it hard to see the real messages, so I'm sure someone's working on that, too. --Username (talk) 10:44, 10 September 2022 (EDT)
Do you have "Group changes by page in recent changes and watchlist" checked on the "Recent Changes" tab under Special:Preferences? It greatly reduces the number of lines displayed on the Special:RecentChanges page. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:23, 11 September 2022 (EDT)
I also uploaded a few wraparound magazine images to replace front-cover only philsp.com images (at least there's a handful that won't be broken now) and I downsized one that was a little over 600 in dimension but forgot to do that for the next one, but it didn't give me a broken image like used to happen when it was over 600, so was that fixed pre-move or is that one of the actual good things that have happened as a result of the move? --Username (talk) 10:44, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

Sites serving HTTP images

Images from www.mondourania.com seem to be broken, too. --Username (talk) 13:30, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

We have permission to link to the following Web sites which are still serving HTTP images:
Based on the above, I am going to:
  • remove the 3 obsolete "Dr. Robert G. Williscroft" site definitions
  • investigate the Encyclopedia of Fantasy situation
  • ask if anyone has had recent contact with the owners of Galactic Central and Mondourania
Ahasuerus (talk) 12:10, 11 September 2022 (EDT)
The 3 "Dr. Robert G. Williscroft" domains have been removed. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:38, 11 September 2022 (EDT)
Could someone write a bot script that can grab all of the images from these sites and upload them here? Maybe have it run in batches of 50 or 100 until they are all moved over? Kind of like Fixer, but on the wiki side? ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 12:52, 12 September 2022 (EDT)
There are a few MediaWiki extensions which support mass file upload -- see this list. We would then need to perform a number of additional operations to integrate the newly imported images properly:
  • Check file sizes
  • Add the standard license language
  • Change the Image URL of each affected pub
Some of it could be (most likely) automated, but it would require development work. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:01, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
I am dubious of the idea that some other sites allowing ISFDB to hotlink to their images (with a credit) automatically means that they would be happy to have ISFDB copy their images and host/serve them locally (which I think would lose the credit to the original source, at least on the pub page?) It may well be that those sites wouldn't have any issue with ISFDB doing that, but it seems overly presumptive to just assume that they'd be OK with that happening.
Can't think of any specific precedents off the top of my head, but it seems vaguely analogous to news websites wanting search engines to show links to their sites, but not being as happy when Google starts pulling contents and displaying it directly as snippets/cards in the search results, removing the likelihood that a user will click through to the source site. ErsatzCulture (talk) 12:37, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
To the best of my knowledge, scanning an image and uploading it to a Web site doesn't create any rights. The reason that we get permission to link to third party sites is strictly because displaying an image hosted on another server consumes the owner's bandwidth, which can be a limited resource and/or cost money.
The only exception that I am aware of is some Web site owners scanning old, poorly preserved, covers, cleaning up the images to make them look pristine and then claiming derivative copyright. I don't know how successful they have been, but we typically do not encounter this issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:26, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
At least in the United States, where (I believe) the ISFDB servers are, cleaning up an image doesn't grant any derivative copyright rights. Except for those covers in the public domain, all of the covers we host are done so using fair use. It doesn't really matter where the cover image came from for fair use as long as the proper credit is given for the cover artist (if known). ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 13:36, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
The hosting company has servers in multiple countries, but I believe our servers are in the US. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:47, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
My concern is less to do with legalities/fair use/etc - IANAL basically - and more of being a "good neighbour" to sites that are in a similar space to ISFDB. I vaguely recall a recent exchange on this wiki (maybe in the past couple of weeks?) where someone who ran another (German IIRC?) site was unhappy with an editor who'd uploaded an image here, which (again IIRC) that editor had actually sourced from an ebook which had stolen the image from the complainant. Whether that complainant was legally and/or morally in the right or not, I have absolutely no idea, but it's obviously preferable not to annoy external parties, especially in cases where we're talking 1000s of images.
It may well be that those external parties would be perfectly amicable to having ISFDB host copies of their stuff, but I feel that that is something that should be sounded out long before any technical concerns are looked into. Related, after looking briefly at BuildDisplayedURL(), I'm unclear whether the code that generates text that reads "Image supplied by ISFDB on <wiki link>" is able to credit the original source? It looks like it determines the credit name based on the domain of the URL, but IMHO it would be preferable to credit the image source rather than the host? (If I've not fully grokked what that code does, then apologies in advance.) ErsatzCulture (talk) 14:28, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
The discussion referred to was this one.
When I upload images from other sites (or databases) I (nearly) always refer to the source like here. Might be an idea. --Willem (talk) 14:48, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
One thing to keep in mind is that we really have 2 different scenarios here. The first one covers the 3 sites with between 39 and 150+ HTTP images. The second one covers the 2 sites -- Mondourania and Galactic Central -- with thousands of HTTP images. It would be ideal if we could ascertain the intent of their owners before doing anything about their images. With all of the major browser vendors moving away from HTTP, the owners may decide to reconsider their stance on HTTPS. Many companies no longer let their employees access HTTP sites over their network and it's likely to get worse in the next year or two. Anyone who is still on HTTP has a built-in incentive to migrate to HTTPS if they want to make their data widely available. This isn't the first time a major change like this has happened as those who remember Gopher from 30 years ago can attest to. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:08, 14 September 2022 (EDT)

Encyclopedia of Fantasy in webpage field

Evidently SFE now serves Encyclopedia of Fantasy targets that use domain sf-encyclopedia.uk (eg, http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=baum_l_frank) in a way that displays URL using domain sf-encyclopedia.com (eg, https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/baum_l_frank) --in Chrome addressbar at this station now.

But we display linkname "Encyclopedia of Fantasy" only when the former domain is specified.

  • L. Frank Baum Webpages linknames include: Encyclopedia of Fantasy, sf-encyclopedia.com
  • David Severn Webpages linknames include: sf-encyclopedia.com-1, sf-encyclopedia.com-2

For both, the two content targets are Author entries in the two encyclopedias. Baum's URL http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php?nm=baum_l_frank is old here. Severn's URL https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/severn_david is new, from copy-paste using Chrome browser yesterday. --Pwendt|talk 12:43, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

It looks like they may have changed some things on their end. Investigating... Ahasuerus (talk) 14:09, 11 September 2022 (EDT)
The credits have been corrected. L. Frank Baum, David Severn and other similar pages now credit SFE and Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:36, 17 September 2022 (EDT)
Dave Langford has confirmed that they have migrated "http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/fe.php" URLs to "https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe". The change is permanent, so I have created FR 1539, "Update Encyclopedia of Fantasy URLs". I plan to write a script to do a mass conversion in the near future. Ahasuerus (talk) 07:07, 18 September 2022 (EDT)
Done. All "http://sf-encyclopedia.uk/" links have been converted to "https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe". Ahasuerus (talk) 14:47, 18 September 2022 (EDT)

Performance enhancements

As previously discussed on the Moderator Noticeboard, we have identified what we believe to be the main cause of the recent performance problems. The way the database stores authors and titles has been tweaked to eliminate the identified bottlenecks. If you come across any errors or unexpected behavior, please post your findings here. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:44, 10 September 2022 (EDT)

SFE reconciliation

The SFE reconciliation report was unable to run between October 2021, when SFE started using HTTPS, and last week when our server was upgraded. The report is back in business, runs nightly and has caught up with SFE. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:40, 11 September 2022 (EDT)

Performance -- 2022-09-12

The server is currently experiencing system-wide performance problems. We are looking into it. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:27, 12 September 2022 (EDT)

As near as we can tell, the performance problems mentioned above were due to issues at the Virtual machine (VM) level, something that we have no control over. Everything went back to normal within 24-36 hours, but we plan to keep an eye on performance issues. If they continue popping up, we will consider alternative hosting solutions. Now that we have everything working on the new and improved version of the software, moving to another hosting company should be much easier. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:15, 15 September 2022 (EDT)

Selected Forthcoming Books algorithm

The current algorithm here does not take into account how many books from the same author show up. So if a major author gets a reprint of a few long series, they can end up dominating the 22 spots we have on this list. At the moment, Mike Resnick has 6 of the 22 spots (we got lucky, he actually has 11 reprints coming out tomorrow but the publisher chose a series whose titles are later in the alphabet so there are not enough spots for them. Some of the others may also go down as I am adding some ebooks coming out tomorrow at the moment but that reminded me to post. Should we restrict the number of books per author on this list? Annie (talk) 19:09, 12 September 2022 (EDT)

We would have had the entirity of Wheel of Time (14 books?) showing up there late last year, but I lost the will to live submitting them more than a couple of week, so there were only about half-of-them in that list just before they got published. The Michael Anderle gigafactory clogging up the list is something I've been happy not to see the past few months as well ;-)
I did briefly look at the code for that page section a while ago. I don't have any amazing insights or suggestions, but perhaps just showing a maximum of 1 pub per author, and then adding something like "plus X other titles" to the text details? One problem with that is that there's no easy way (AFAIK) to give a site visitor an easy way to see those other titles, other than going to the full forthcoming list and searching through (potentially) several hundred pubs. ErsatzCulture (talk) 19:21, 12 September 2022 (EDT)
There are a lot of possible permutations, e.g. multiple books with overlapping but not identical co-authors like Michael Anderle's collaborators. For the sake of simplicity, "one pub per author" is probably a decent baseline. We can always revisit the issue if and when we come across unexpected and undesirable behavior. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:47, 12 September 2022 (EDT)
Possibly with a preference to a new/unknown title when one is available compared to a reprint so an author who gets out book #3 in their series while book #2's paperback is out the same day (or both 1 and 2 get reprinted in some form), has #3 on the list... Although that may make that query too heavy to be sustainable so food for thought only - we rarely have so many eligible titles not to allow a secondary sort I suspect. Annie (talk) 20:10, 12 September 2022 (EDT)
True, performance is definitely a concern. It's probably better to move the process of selecting matching pub IDs to the nightly job first. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:54, 12 September 2022 (EDT)
As the vast majority of these come from Fixer anyway (plus the UK ones from John), we should be able to make sure we are running a few days ahead so a nightly process can work. That may help the overall loading time on this page as well - it had always been slow(ish). :) Annie (talk) 22:19, 12 September 2022 (EDT)
IMHO stuff like forthcoming books, author bibliographies, publisher yearly pages, etc - basically webpages that use/show derived/aggregated data that can't be edited directly - would preferably have some sort of memcache'ing on the resource intensive bits, so the relevant database query only runs as-and-when a site visitor goes to a page, with memcache told to keep that processed data for (say) an hour, and then after that time it's automagically ejected from the cache. (In the case of bibliography pages, the directly-editable author data like dates, links, notes etc probably wouldn't be cached, but list of titles or awards would be.) I dunno if that is something that has ever been considered? The nightly jobs I guess are conceptually similar, but I don't think you could, or would want to, have things like (thousands of?) bibliographies generated that way every night. ErsatzCulture (talk) 17:28, 13 September 2022 (EDT)
Forthcoming books, author bibliographies, etc can't be edited directly, but they are affected by regular editing activities. It would be exceedingly difficult to edit the data if you couldn't rely on the displayed data being current. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:30, 13 September 2022 (EDT)
P.S. Also, it could cause different pages to be out of sync with each other. Ahasuerus (talk) 22:31, 13 September 2022 (EDT)
As I type this, there are over 2000 items pending in the edit queue going back god-knows how many days, which is surely more of a negative impact on editors knowing what the current state of the database is, compared to having forthcoming books be an hour out of date. ErsatzCulture (talk) 10:32, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
Unprocessed submissions do not cause the same consistency problems that cached data can cause.
Caching is a huge and complicated area. I would only consider it as a last resort. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:08, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
In any case, memcache (at least the implementations I've used) allow code to forcibly evict info from the cache ahead of schedule, so for example, once an AddPub is accepted by a mod and the database updated, any cached info for that author's bibliography, and - if the pub date is in the future - forthcoming books could be removed, causing them to be regenerated if/when a site visitor next visits those pages. This does put the onus on the code knowing which edits might invalidate particular cached items, but I suspect the majority of cases can be caught fairly easily.
FWIW I can think of at least 2 cases where Amazon.co.uk displays inconsistent data due to caching - or at least, consistent with caching - in some cases over a period of multiple days. If caching might help address some of the recent performance issues - and I might well be talking rubbish here, as I don't know what sort/quantity of requests are coming in that have been causing those issues - then the short-term/minor (IMHO) display inconsistencies it causes may be preferable to restricting functionality, as has been done in a couple of cases so far.
(Apologies for bluntless and veering increasingly off-topic.) ErsatzCulture (talk) 10:32, 14 September 2022 (EDT)

Applying for self-moderating

Hello, all! I am applying for self-moderating status. I think I'm around long enough and there's no need for clogging up the submissions. I have also learned my lesson and will not repeat my fads & fallacies of earlier. There also will be more communication upon planned actions from my side. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:18, 14 September 2022 (EDT)

In the foreseeable future I'll concentrate on entering European magazines (well, mostly German), adding months of publication based on infos stated in magazines (like here), the seemingly neverending Perry Rhodan complex, and caring for some European authors, at last especially Sławomir Mrożek whose bibliography needs original titles & dates and misses lots of relevant speculative work. Oh, and add some more classic and upcoming books from my collection. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:38, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

You get my backing, Christian. PeteYoung (talk) 06:40, 24 September 2022 (EDT)
Abstain -- I have no objection, but I was not involved with past issues and defer to those who were. --MartyD (talk) 08:25, 25 September 2022 (EDT)
I back your application. Bob (talk) 08:55, 25 September 2022 (EDT)
I support Christian's application. Henna (talk) 13:29, 25 September 2022 (EDT)
Support (somewhat qualified but still support). I have some concerns with the by now usual pattern of behaving under moderation, promising improvement if permissions are returned and then getting back to the old behavior as soon as permissions are granted again, especially around “correcting” other editors’ work silently and conforming to our dating and varianting rules, especially for art titles (hint: art or not, same rules apply per community agreement and the rules). Which is a pity considering that Christian is one of the best editors in the DB - when he wants to be and does not decide that having it his way is more important than the community agreement. Hopefully this is the last time we are at this stage - next time it will take a lot more than a promise for me to support an application (partially because I often end up needing to mop up after the latest creative interpretation of the rules). Annie (talk) 13:41, 25 September 2022 (EDT)
Neutral. I have thought long and hard about this. Too much has happened in the past for me to support this application, but I believe in second (or third or ??) chances, so I won't object. I sure hope there won't be a next time though. --Willem (talk) 16:07, 25 September 2022 (EDT)
There won't be. I've been somewhat short-tempered (and even unfair & wrong to you) before. Apparently I've been a hothead regarding some things that didn't work out the way I thought they should. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 10:56, 26 September 2022 (EDT)
No objection. John Scifibones 10:51, 26 September 2022 (EDT)
Thanks to all of you who thought about this and commented here! Christian Stonecreek (talk) 02:09, 30 September 2022 (EDT)
I'm a bit late to comment, but I'd like to repeat your promise here :) There also will be more communication upfront upon planned actions from my side. (I've emphasized the important part here by adding 'upfront'). Take that at heart, abide by the consensus, and all will be well. Regards, MagicUnk (talk) 06:46, 30 September 2022 (EDT)

Outcome

Self-approver flag has been set on the account. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:04, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Darker Angels

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/File:DRKRNGLSBK1998.jpg; Another case where I subbed real cover with Koontz quote at bottom but it's not on the right Wiki page, so someone put it right when you have time. --Username (talk) 13:55, 14 September 2022 (EDT)

WorldCat link behavior

When linking to WorldCat over the last few days, I have been intermittently getting a splash screen showing
www.worldcat.org
Checking if the site connection is secure
www.worldcat.org needs to review the security of your connection before proceeding.
It sits and shows a spinner for 20-30 seconds and then redirects to a standard publication page. I suspect that this is because the address for the link for WorldCat in the Other Links menu is for http instead of https. Could someone check on this? It's kind of annoying. Thanks. Phil (talk) 16:38, 14 September 2022 (EDT)

Yes, I saw it, but it accepted me a few seconds later. Whether it's their issue or this site's is the salient point. --Username (talk) 19:14, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
It would appear that WorldCat has installed one of the increasingly popular software packages that check that your users are humans and not robots. I have seen the exact same pop up banner elsewhere, e.g. at https://www.fanfiction.net/ , which has had issues with robots downloading their whole Web site, one page at a time.
In theory, the check that this software performs should take just a few seconds. Once it's done, it shouldn't bother you again for 24 hours or a similar configurable period. However, it looks like the process may take longer if you are using an older browser, although that's just a suspicion at this point. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:57, 14 September 2022 (EDT)
It's always let me in as well and the wait time seems random. I'm using the Brave browser which is Chromium-based so it's not the browser age in my case. Phil (talk) 07:19, 15 September 2022 (EDT)

Hubin and Crime Fiction

https://archive.org/search.php?query=crime-fiction%20allen%20hubin&and[]=collection%3A%22inlibrary%22; While looking for something else I saw these and figured I'd mention them since they're tangentially related to this site and could be of some use to editors here. --Username (talk) 19:13, 14 September 2022 (EDT)

New Writings 2

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?23815; While adding other prices from a photo on R. Dalby's site I saw on title page that it was edited by David Sutton, no A.; fixed it, but Riley's name on contents page has no A. and Holdstock's name has a P., so if anyone owns a copy they'll need to check story pages to see how all authors are identified and fix if needed. EDIT: The names on Volume 1's, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?23814, contents page match with a photo on FantLab, but that site, nor any other, doesn't seem to show the title page, so it's possible #1 is also edited by David Sutton, no A., in case anyone has a copy of that. --Username (talk) 11:13, 15 September 2022 (EDT)

Links to User and User Talk pages standardized

As per FR 1459, "Standardize links to User and Talk pages", links to User and User Talk pages have been updated. All ISFDB pages have been standardized to link to Talk pages only. Ahasuerus (talk) 14:42, 15 September 2022 (EDT)

Wiki rollback behavior tweaked

One of the side effects of the new Wiki layout is that it's easy to click "Rollback" by accident. I have tweaked Wiki settings to ask for confirmation before allowing rollback. Ahasuerus (talk) 19:45, 15 September 2022 (EDT)

Silvia Moreno-Garcia - above the threshold?

The cover of Velvet was the Night has been nominated for a "speculative or fantastic" award, despite the author themselves saying "Velvet Was the Night is historical and noir. There is no SFF element." Obviously this can be added as an untitled award, but I'm wondering if Silvia Moreno-Garcia counts for the nebulous-to-me threshold criteria, in which case I'll add the novel as a proper title/set of pubs, and then append the award nom to those?

And just whilst I'm here, on the subject of non-genre works and authors above the threshold, would there be any objections to adding this upcoming Robert Silverberg crime reprint, appropriately flagged as non-genre of course? ErsatzCulture (talk) 09:04, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Silverberg is in even if he publishes a phone directory. :)
And I’d consider Moreno-Garcia above treshold as well. Annie (talk) 10:13, 16 September 2022 (EDT)
I agree regarding both. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 15:26, 16 September 2022 (EDT)
Thanks all - the SM-G has been added, the Silverberg will be done in the next week or so. ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:24, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Most External ID Types upgraded to HTTPS

The vast majority of External ID Types now use HTTPS. The following External ID Types could not be upgraded to use HTTPS either because the third party site does not support it or because its HTTPS certificate is improperly set up:

  • BL
  • BNB
  • SFBG
  • PPN
  • NILF
  • DF-Leinbuch
  • PORBASE

We'll update their links if and when they fully implement HTTPS support. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:22, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Did you remember to also change the templates associated with the External IDs which got changed? Annie (talk) 16:47, 16 September 2022 (EDT)
All templates were updated a few months ago. It's the External IDs and the ISBN-based links in the navbar on the left that were missed the first time around. Ahasuerus (talk) 17:39, 16 September 2022 (EDT)
Ah, okey - I've forgotten and don't have handy examples for all of them :) All set then! Thanks! Annie (talk) 17:52, 16 September 2022 (EDT)
ISBN-based links to third party Web sites (including all Amazon sites) have been updated as well. Ahasuerus (talk) 20:31, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

Drop/Keep

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5424453; I brought this up a few times long ago, but there was a recent discussion here about this, I think, so I'm going to see if I can get anyone else to see what I see on my computer. Obviously I want to keep the 2010 date as that's the original, but the boxes say drop for 2010 and 2011 and keep for 2012, and yet the 2010 is the only one not highlighted, which makes me think that it's those boxes that are the problem. Am I wrong? Someone may want to approve this so we can see whether 2010 gets accepted, then we'll know it's just the boxes and that the system isn't keeping the wrong ones, because I used to do a ton of these merges in my early days here and I'd hate to think that a lot of them had the wrong date approved. By the way, it seems random, as sometimes when I do these the right date gets kept. --Username (talk) 22:37, 16 September 2022 (EDT)

When you merge, it always "keeps" the lowest ID (the first record entered into the DB among the set being merged) and "drops" the others. So the lowest ID will survive and remain going forward, while the higher ID(s) will be deleted and no longer exist. If you choose values from among the IDs that will be dropped, those values are copied into record that is going to survive. So anything highlighted in the "keep" record is going to overwritten by the corresponding value not highlighted in the other record(s). This is your submission:
CP-Merge-Q-20220917.jpg
The display tells us record ID 1896758 will remain, record IDs 2848219 and 2848220 will be deleted, and record ID 1896758's original Year of 2012-12-27 will be lost, replaced with the 2010-10-00 Year from record ID 2848219 (and record ID 2848220's Year of 2011-07-01 will also be lost). Does that answer your question/address your concern? The submission looks normal and correct, and I have accepted it so you can see the result.
Both the dropping and value-copying behavior are why one needs to be careful about submitting further edits involving titles being merged until after the merge has been accepted. If, for example, the submission above were pending and you submitted a clone of the pub containing the essay dated 2010-10-00 -- thinking it's the original/earliest -- that clone submission would contain a reference to record ID 2848219. Acceptance of the merge submission would delete that record, rendering the clone submission invalid. --MartyD (talk) 08:01, 17 September 2022 (EDT)
I'm a bit slow mentally and also not tech-savvy so your words went way over my head, but I see 2010 as the date of the intro now so the right date was accepted and it's all good. I also added a new record for the TP Kensington edition because nobody ever entered it and it's on Archive.org, so all contents will need to be imported to that, and I wonder if the intro is included in those 2 British Titan editions or those 2 Spanish-language editions; maybe someone else knows. --Username (talk) 08:37, 17 September 2022 (EDT)
OK, sorry about that. In case it's useful to you or anyone else trying to understand merging:
  1. There were three titles for that essay (with dates 2012-12-27, 2010-10-00, and 2011-07-01), and you picked those three and did a merge.
  2. Each title has a unique "ID" in the database (this is that number you see at the end of https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1896758). These IDs are assigned automatically by the software when titles are created, and the numbers are always increasing. Something entered earlier has an ID that is lower than something entered later.
  3. The merge screen shows each title being merged, one title per column, and the order of the columns uses those IDs, not the dates (or anything else). The title with the lowest ID is on the left, and each subsequent column shows the title with the next highest ID. The IDs are included at the top of each column.
  4. The title listed on the left, the one labeled "Keep ID", is retained by the merge.
  5. The title(s) listed to the right, the one(s) labeled "Drop ID" are dropped by the merge.
  6. When the merge presents you an option to choose from among different values, if you choose something that is not in the title listed on the left (that is, you choose to use something from one of the other titles), the acceptance of the merge will copy the value you chose from whichever title originally had it into the title listed on the left. Whatever value the title on the left had for that field is overwritten and lost. The screen is showing you what will be lost and what the final value will be.
So the merge operation is transforming that "Keep ID" title at the left into a composite of the information from the other titles and then deleting them. "Composite" can range from one extreme of not taking anything new from any of the other titles to the other extreme of completely replacing everything with values from the other titles. What looks to you like keeping the 2010 title and getting rid of the 2012 and 2011 titles is actually transforming the 2012 title into a 2010 title and getting rid of the other 2010 title and the 2011 title.
When you have a publication with contents (e.g., the publications where the ESSAYs in this merge came from), the ISFDB records that content relationship using those IDs, not the names or dates or anything else. So suppose pub A had the 2012 essay. Its contents list would say "I have title ID 1896758". And if pub B had the 2011 title, its contents list would say "I have title ID 2848220." Anything you do involving either pub's contents uses those IDs to identify the title. If you wanted to change the page number of the essay in pub B, while it looks to you like you're changing the page number of "Introduction: The Birth of the Dead" to nnn, the submission would say "Change the page number for title ID 2848220 to nnn". Or if you cloned pub B to make pub C and kept "Introduction: The Birth of the Dead" in its contents, the submission would say "make pub C and give it title ID 2848220 in its contents".
If the example merge had been submitted but not yet accepted and you submitted one of those other changes, the acceptance of the merge submission would delete the 2011 essay with ID 2848220. If a moderator then tried to process the page number change or clone, the system would read that submission, try to find the "title ID 2848220" it refers to, and would not find anything because the title with that ID was deleted by the merge. A submission referring to something that's not there cannot be processed, so the moderator would be forced to "hard reject". So once you submit a merge, you don't want to do any other edits involving the titles in that merge submission until it has been accepted. --MartyD (talk) 10:08, 17 September 2022 (EDT)
A very nice and detailed explanation. Do you feel like generalizing it and adding it to Help:How to merge titles as a new section? Ahasuerus (talk) 10:33, 17 September 2022 (EDT)
Ok, done. I also decided to reiterate the edit-with-pending-merge warning at the top of that page. Feel free (everyone) to revise/edit/prune as you see fit. --MartyD (talk) 12:31, 17 September 2022 (EDT)
Thanks! Ahasuerus (talk) 20:04, 17 September 2022 (EDT)
Alternatively, the lowest record ID will be kept, and all fields colored green (that had been selected) will be kept as well (and consequently the red ones will be overwritten/are lost. Regards, MagicUnk (talk) 10:42, 30 September 2022 (EDT)

Public database backups - MySQL version

We make a "scrubbed" version of ISFDB backups publicly available -- see the "Database Backups" section under ISFDB Downloads. At this time 2 versions of each backup file are posted each week: one for versions 4.0-5.1 of MySQL and one for versions 5.5+. This level of redundancy made sense during the early-mid 2010s when version 5.5 was still new (released in December 2010) and many people were still running earlier versions. However, it's been almost 12 years and I am thinking that we can drop support for MySQL 4.0-5.1, which will save time and disk space.

Will this cause issues for anyone? Ahasuerus (talk) 07:02, 17 September 2022 (EDT)

I download the 5.5 backups every week, but I think the only 4.x ones I've downloaded were a couple of ancient ones from 2011 and 2014 when newer versioned ones weren't available. (Not sure I ever actually did anything with them mind, I just thought they might be interesting for historical curiousity.) As such, I personally am perfectly OK with dropping the older file. ErsatzCulture (talk) 12:39, 18 September 2022 (EDT)
Hearing no objection, I am going to trim old 4.0 backups and use 5.5 going forward. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:19, 24 September 2022 (EDT)

Poles Apart

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5425152; I'm awaiting approval for this, but I'd like to alert any Polish readers that apparently someone put 2 guys with the same name together, with the cover art being by this guy, I think: https://fantlab.ru/art6950. Nothing about him on that page except that he's Polish, so if anyone's familiar with him they can separate him into his own record with some info after his name. --Username (talk) 18:24, 17 September 2022 (EDT)

Username Edits a Perry Rhodan Book!!!

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5425200; I swore I'd never touch one of those several-hundred-volume Rhodan books but I couldn't help noticing the lone volume in Community Texts on Archive.org and was drawn to it for some reason; it turns out that whoever entered the note here said the copyright page has a 1974 date but every other date in the ISFDB record is 1975; that's just a careless mistake, but the page count was off, too, and unless I'm mistaken not all the contents were entered. All 3 PV are gone, but now I shudder to think how many other Rhodan books they worked on may have wrong info, too. So I ask the other editors here who worked on these books in the past if they've noticed anything awry; many edits may be in the future if so, because there's dozens of Archive volumes in the non-Texts section. EDIT: Oh dear God, it's a magazine, so everything's counted, covers, ads, etc. That's why the page count was what it was. Damn it. Well, I'm going to cancel my edit and re-do it with just the Archive link and the note fix. I knew I shouldn't have touched one of these books. EDIT: It turns out the user who uploaded the book also did so for 1 other book, The Man With Two Faces, which didn't show up in my search earlier for some reason, so I added an edit with the link, although in this case, probably because there's an active editor, there were no mistakes for me to fix, not even a tweak to the year in the notes; how inconsiderate. Anyway, a search of Texts gave this, https://archive.org/details/opensource?query=perry-rhodan, which reveals that while these are the only 2 English-language Rhodan books available (which seems weird for such a huge series; of course, there could be more that don't have the series name in the title, hiding somewhere in there), there are a few foreign editions that may be of some use to someone who isn't me. --Username (talk) 20:14, 17 September 2022 (EDT)

Alison Scott disambiguation

The author of The Underwater Bridge is not the same person as the created the fanac that makes up the rest of that bibliography. (There's some bio detail in a foreword visible in the Amazon preview of the novel, that's inconsistent with the fan's bio details.)

My understanding is that the most prolific/highest profile person gets the "main" author name, and the others get a parenthesized disambiguation. In this case though, I wasn't sure if maybe an author of novels might take precedence over a fan?

Unless anyone indicates otherwise, I propose to leave "Alison Scott" as the UK fan, and set up "Alison Scott (US author)" for the novelist. ErsatzCulture (talk) 12:29, 18 September 2022 (EDT)

These have now been split up. ErsatzCulture (talk) 09:45, 21 September 2022 (EDT)
Why not "Alison Scott (US)"?
I suggest that we avoid using "author" in parenthetical disambiguation; that is, strain to avoid using it. I prefer "writer" but suggest we avoid that too.
With a glance at all our Author names that contain "author)", I suggest "(NZ)" rather than "(New Zealand Author)"; similarly for "(1990's author)" and "(US author)". [Alison Scott is now the only "(US author)" where we have about thirty "(US)".]
Our Pete Alexander (author) might be Pete Alexander (US). [I visited all our Pete Alexanders in order to validate this suggestion. The others are "(UK)" and an illustrator without parenthetical disambiguation.] --Pwendt|talk 16:00, 6 October 2022 (EDT)

Ivan T.'s Ghosts

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?278053; I added a better cover to this book recently, and the copy on Google Books says Ivan's story was reprinted from Tales for a Stormy Night, which is on ISFDB, but is separate because his last name is spelled differently, but looking at this, https://books.google.com/books?id=vBVlAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=ivan, I'm not so sure they shouldn't be merged. Thoughts? --Username (talk) 13:57, 18 September 2022 (EDT)

Blatty and The Ninth Configuration

Doing a bunch of W.P. Blatty stuff and remembered that I asked somewhere about Ninth Configuration; there's an Archive copy uploaded more than 10 years ago so I entered it. It was released in 1978, heavily revised from his 1966 novel Twinkle, Twinkle, "Killer" Kane, and was made into a really weird movie in 1980. I think it's genre, since the original 1966 version is listed as such here, but I marked it non-genre because there's this, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2184055, although whether that's for the book or movie I don't know, but someone else entered a 2020 German edition, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?6735, so whether the 2 versions need to be separated, is Ninth genre or not, whether the review is for the book and should be linked to it, etc. are some questions that need answering. --Username (talk) 23:56, 18 September 2022 (EDT)

https://isfdb.org/wiki/index.php/User_talk:Kolchak#The_Ninth_Configuration_by_Blatty; I was adding a note to "The Elementals" message at the bottom of Kolchak's list, who seems non-active, and happened to notice the other message about Blatty's book; Kolchak tried entering this more than 10 years ago and said the same thing I did about it being a revision of the earlier novel, but his publication was deleted. Lucky mine was accepted. I wonder what the problem was back then; the Archive copy is from 2011, so it's very possible Kolchak's edit used it, too. --Username (talk) 15:50, 26 September 2022 (EDT)

Account recovery

Hello, I only use two emails and neither one is working for password recovery for my main account, Settdigger

Is it RIP, or is there another way to recover it?

Cheers-- —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Everyman (talkcontribs) .
Checking the database, I see that the email address associated with your ISFDB account ends with "gmail.com". Is it one of the addressed that you tried? Ahasuerus (talk) 11:11, 19 September 2022 (EDT)

Portuguese version(s) of GRRM's Nightflyers

I spotted this "standalone" Portuguese 2012 "novel" of Nightflyers on GRRM's bibliography page. My strong suspicion is that it should be converted to shortfiction/novella and made a variant of the English language original. Based on the reported translators of the collection it appears in, it looks to be a different translation from either the 2017 or 2019 PT versions already varianted from the original?

As I don't know a single word of Portuguese, is there anyone more knowledgeable who might be able to take a look at these before I start blundering around? ErsatzCulture (talk) 07:55, 20 September 2022 (EDT)

We have a number of Portuguese translations which were never linked to their parent titles. I suspect that the editor who entered them submitted a batch of NewPubs and then became unavailable before they were approved. Ahasuerus (talk) 08:24, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
That happens a lot with translations so nothing unusual. Some languages get caught a bit faster than other. Based on the pub note, this is the translation of Jorge Colaço and/or Luís Santos so definitely a different translation. Based on Bibliowiki, this specific story is translated by Luís Santos :) From the looks of it, this 2012 book is from Portugal, the newer ones are Brazilian. The two Portuguese speaking countries very very rarely share translators and even when they do, they rarely share the translation itself. Welcome to the world of translations... Let me know if you would like to fix it or if I should take care of it. Annie (talk) 10:21, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
Thanks both. I'm happy to make the edits, presuming there are no objections to what I suggested above (convert to novella, variant to the EN original as a different PT translation from the other 2). ErsatzCulture (talk) 12:17, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
And add the translator. Actually, all the stories in that collection need translators if you want to look at them in bibliowiki :) Annie (talk) 15:50, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
Hold your horses - I've only just finished cleaning up all of today's Titan pubs! :-P
(Will take a look at the PT stuff later today or maybe tomorrow...) ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:23, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
I recently came across one of these: Edmund Cooper / Cinco para doze. There is no PV on the pub record but the edit history shows only one entry so I left a message on the submitter's talk page here. However, no progress so far. Teallach (talk) 18:17, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
When you find things like these, feel free to fix them. Sometimes editors do not finish the updates they started - they forget about them, don't know they should have or real life interferes. Would you like to try completing the needed updates or do you mention it so someone else could do it? Annie (talk) 18:32, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
I was reluctant to tread on another editor's toes. However, based on your comment, I will fix this. Will submit the Make Variant edit shortly. Teallach (talk) 16:17, 21 September 2022 (EDT)

X-Files Book That Was Never Published

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?34955; Probable vaporware; almost no info online, no covers, etc. --Username (talk) 10:34, 20 September 2022 (EDT)

Calling PeteYoung

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?326787; Log in seems random, some pages it works and others it doesn't, I can't get on that PV's page to let him know that I added an Archive link and replaced the cover because it was the wrong one (real Hodder HC has the foreword text on the bottom) so I'll say it here and maybe he'll see it. --Username (talk) 11:17, 20 September 2022 (EDT)

Pete Young's Talk page -- User talk:PeteYoung -- had an HTTP image embedded, which was causing some browsers to treat it as insecure. I have upgraded the image to HTTPS, so it should work normally now. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:00, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
Just seen this... All appears good now, so thanks for the very quick fixes guys! PeteYoung (talk) 15:36, 20 September 2022 (EDT)

More challenges added

Due to our continuing problems with spammers, we have added another challenge. You may be asked to answer a question when adding a URL to a Wiki page. You can see the current list of URLs which do *not* trigger a challenge on MediaWiki:Captcha-addurl-whitelist. If you find that you frequently add links to other legitimate sites, please post the sites' URLs here and I will update the list of exception.

Sorry about the hassle, but deleting/blocking a few dozen spammers every day is not viable in the long run. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:46, 20 September 2022 (EDT)

Some of those backslashes look to be on the wrong side of the dot - although I suspect they'll pass those domains OK, just might let through other stuff too? ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:34, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
Fixed, thanks. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:42, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
Looks like archive.org is still wrong? I can't edit the page myself - I assume it's locked to bureaucrats? ErsatzCulture (talk) 16:20, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
Can we add twitter\.com, which I link to fairly frequently. ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:34, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
EDIT: file770\.com and sf\-encyclopedia\.com might also be useful to have, more the latter than the former? ErsatzCulture (talk) 13:36, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
Good points, added. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:42, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
Add FantLab to white list please. --Zlogorek (talk) 17:44, 21 September 2022 (EDT)
Done. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:13, 21 September 2022 (EDT)
Related to this, it might be good to set $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createpage'] = false; and $wgGroupPermissions['*']['createtalk'] = false;, and only grant that to confirmeduser or higher. This will prevent anyone not registered from creating new pages, and prevent those who haven't edited existing pages a little from being able to create new pages. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:17, 21 September 2022 (EDT)
An interesting idea. We haven't seen any spam activity since the last change, so for now things look good. If spammers return, we can try your approach. Ahasuerus (talk) 21:16, 21 September 2022 (EDT)
I suspect my earlier comment got missed amongst the other edits, but the archive.org entry still looks wrong to me. ErsatzCulture (talk) 11:22, 23 September 2022 (EDT)
Oops! Thanks, corrected. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:03, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

Encounter Three

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?250701; There's an Archive.org copy, page count one less than entered here, made edit and asked active PV, they said their page count was correct and corrected my correction, other active PV moving house and can't check his books right now, so does anyone else have a copy? Maybe it's Archive scanner error, maybe Pinnacle sent out some copies missing the last page. If anyone does and it includes p. 372, maybe you can transcribe those few lines in the book's record so people who read the Archive copy can actually finish the book. --Username (talk) 15:24, 20 September 2022 (EDT)

Self-moderation: Zapp

Hello everybody, all users and moderators. I was told that there is a chance to contribute edits as a self-moderator. Since I'm an editor for more than seven years, I thought about getting that status. I would be happy if you could agree to this and give me support. Thanks a lot. --Zapp (talk) 16:54, 20 September 2022 (EDT)
I see, the right name is Self-Approver. --Zapp (talk) 17:03, 20 September 2022 (EDT)

SupportKraang (talk) 23:58, 22 September 2022 (EDT)
Support -- JLaTondre (talk) 10:03, 23 September 2022 (EDT)
Support Annie (talk) 11:10, 23 September 2022 (EDT)
I think you should be a little more careful in applying title types (for example [htte ps://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?914910 this] sounds a little more like a CHAPBOOK at johnsinclair.nl); it's better to have seen at least one example of a series 'in person'. But I think you'll apply that in the future, so: support. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 12:15, 23 September 2022 (EDT)
NB. All titles of this John Sinclair series are listed as MAGAZINE. --Zapp (talk) 18:12, 29 September 2022 (EDT)
That's right, but none of them has been primary verified. It is a difficult case to decide. If there are only the novellas in them (and that's what the source hints at), the publications should be entered as chapbooks, I think. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 05:02, 30 September 2022 (EDT)
Support --MartyD (talk) 08:26, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

Outcome

The self-approver flag has been set on the account. Ahasuerus (talk) 16:08, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Thank You. --Zapp (talk) 18:12, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Backwards French

I was entering Dutton ed. from Archive, noticed first names were switched, Barker ed. also on Archive, almost missed it because genius who uploaded it spelled authors' names as "Thomas Bileau" and "Pierre Narcejag", names are also switched in that ed., Panther ed. has just last names on the cover but title page not seen anywhere by me, Bantam ed. has correct first names on cover and title page I saw on eBay, so when these are approved someone should decide what the primary names should be. --Username (talk) 16:53, 21 September 2022 (EDT)

Josh Kirby Monster Face

Did some stuff earlier for Boileau and Narcejac books, Kirby did cover for Four Square edition of The Evil Eye so I added credit, online Kirby sites credit him for Corgi here, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/titlecovers.cgi?851823, so I added that, too, but earlier Bantam has same lower cover but different face on top, Archive copy of Bantam has been there since 2010 so I added it, but there's no art credit, so does he deserve credit or did he just do the new face for Corgi? --Username (talk) 20:08, 21 September 2022 (EDT)

Flight to the Lonesome Place

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?20193; I entered 1971's price info from Archive copy uploaded a few months ago, Chris J. entered that much later edition with the same price and ISBN, highly unlikely so if he sees this he may want to fix/delete, since it's tough getting on people's boards sometimes. --Username (talk) 23:28, 21 September 2022 (EDT)

If You don't have a copy in Your hands, that shows the price, You should give information in "note" where that information comes from to avoid such events. --Zapp (talk) 06:33, 22 September 2022 (EDT)

The Deep

I was updating my Wikipedia page on authors who potentially have missing articles, and was working on authors who have been nominated for a World Fantasy Award (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alvonruff/World_Fantasy_Award_Notability). In 2020 The Deep (https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2514516) was nominated for a WFA (as well as a Hugo) in the novella category. Our entry on The Deep shows it as written by Rivers Solomon, with the following note: "Based on the rap song The Deep by Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes, and which was performed by the group Clippings." Our award citations follow this by showing Solomon nominated for the awards, but not the others.

Wikipedia, however, show Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes as nominees for both the Hugo and the WFA. The wording on the WFA site states "The Deep, by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes (Saga Press/Hodder & Stoughton UK)", and the Hugo site states "The Deep, by Rivers Solomon, with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson & Jonathan Snipes (Saga Press/Gallery)".

So the question is: is there an official rule on determining who is actually nominated when there are side contributors who did not actually write the original text? I ran into a similar case with the Hugos in 2015 for the novelette "The Day The World Turned Upside Down", which nominated Thomas Olde Heuvelt, but mentioned Lia Belt, who translated the work. In the Heuvelt case, we show the author as Heuvelt, and a note mentions that the translation was done by Belt. But our award only goes to Heuvelt. Wikipedia cites both, and has the note: "Thomas Olde Heuvelt's 2015 winner "The Day the World Turned Upside Down" is the only translated work to win the "Best Novelette" Hugo. Hugos were awarded to both the author and the translator."

This is a very exclusive corner case, and I'm not recommending any changes, just wondering what folks opinions are on this somewhat arcane topic.--Alvonruff (talk) 08:43, 22 September 2022 (EDT)

My personal opinion is that for "titled" awards, the award record should be attached to the closest title record in the database, and any additional winners/nominees go in the note. I don't think there's any other way of handling those as the codebase stands right now?
A similar issue may be the recent kerfuffles over semiprozines listing all their staff, with IIRC Strange Horizons listing ~70 people as being responsible for their 2022 Hugo finalist. (Take a look at SFADB to see the full lists.) Personally I don't think ISFDB editors should feel any responsibility to try to match all of those up with author records in the database and/or to create new records - just adding a note is more than enough.
Re. translators, there were complaints that the stats report that the Hugo admins produce didn't list translators where applicable. My pedantic opinion is that I don't believe the Hugos don't distinguish between different translations of the same work, so if they are highlighting the XX->EN translators, why not the EN->XX for works that got translated into other languages in the relevant eligibility period. (Project: Hail Memory being a case in point.) ErsatzCulture (talk) 09:42, 22 September 2022 (EDT)
I have seen all kinds of scenarios. For translations, an award may be given to:
  • The translated title, which we can link to our variant/translated title
  • The translation, which is not the same as an award for the translated title and can't be linked to a variant title, so it needs to be entered as an "untitled" award
  • Both the title and the translation, which I would link to the variant title, then add a note to the award record about the translator(s) being co-recipients of the award
If and when we have beefed up translator support (a separate can of worms) which will let us link awards to translators, we will need to revisit the issue. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:17, 22 September 2022 (EDT)

Hitler Victorious

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?182333; Many editions, fixed "11" to "Eleven" in a few, Berkley has no title page photo online I can find, anyone who sees it can change title to Eleven, there's a few sites that say Eleven even if they don't actually show it. --Username (talk) 09:23, 22 September 2022 (EDT)

Gnomobile

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1006497; 2 copies on Archive.org, 1 with cover and 1 without, PV was unsure of price but it turns out it was correct, I added links and price, but online info suggested the art by Tillard was not done for Bobbs but for a 1959 French edition, and they were right: https://aux-belles-illustrations.fr/it/libro-francese-romanzi/1009-en-gnomobile-a-travers-l-amerique-0710377715864.html. PV long-gone, so French editors may own a copy and want to enter it here; not sure what the rule is for variants, because the French title is different. --Username (talk) 10:14, 22 September 2022 (EDT)

Stupid Question

While entering the previous message on this board I had to answer one of those questions because I added a link, which was "Do often have robot thoughts?" (my answer: NO). If we're going to be forced to answer them at least make them grammatical, unless they come from somewhere else, in which case we're screwed. --Username (talk) 10:17, 22 September 2022 (EDT)

It looks like the wording was corrected an hour ago. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:20, 22 September 2022 (EDT)

John Varley / Titan (map & diagram)

There are 3 interior art records by J. M. Weiss: 1) Titan and 2) Titan (maps) and 3) Titan (map & diagram) that are almost certainly identical and so I propose to merge them. I have verified they are the same in the Berkley/Putnam hc and the Ace pb 8th printing (undated but early 2000's - no pub record for this yet; I will create one). Furthermore, all the pub notes of the various pubs in which these 3 interiorart records appear strongly suggest they are the same (signed Weiss 78). There are two separate pieces of art: one map and one diagram so I intend to title the merged record "Titan (map & diagram)". I will wait a week for comments before proceeding. Teallach (talk) 18:22, 22 September 2022 (EDT)

If there are two pieces of art, I'd record them separately - that way if a reprint only uses one (for one reason or another) or if one of them changes, we can properly merge later. There are some active PVs on most of these books so you may want to post on their pages and point them to the discussion - not everyone is monitoring CP and as the board can get very busy, things slip. Annie (talk) 18:45, 22 September 2022 (EDT)
Now I wish I hadn't started this :-) As a general principle, I agree with you that a separate map and diagram by the same creator in the same pub should have two interiorart records and I would have done that if I had been creating these records from scratch. In this case though, the single interiorart record is used for both the map and diagram in a considerable number of PVd pubs involving a considerable number of editors / moderators all of whom were happy with the one record. Changing all these pubs to include two interiorart records will involve a substantial amount of work that does not seem to me to be really necessary. Furthermore, I have now looked at the map and diagram more closely and although they are separated by a page of unrelated material in the two pubs that I own, I see that there is a note forming part of the diagram stating "Area shown in aerial view map" so it is highly unlikely that a reprint would use only one of these pieces of art. I have now drawn attention of this discussion to several active PVs of the related pubs and will await further comments. Teallach (talk) 18:27, 26 September 2022 (EDT)
You never know what a translation can do to a map - having grown up on translations, I've seen all kinds of weirdness. So my mind goes there when I see combined records.:) Either way is acceptable and per the rules. We may as well leave it as is until we find a book that has just one of them. :) Annie (talk) 18:46, 26 September 2022 (EDT)
As far as I can see, the interior art of my own French copy consists of one map and one diagram, partly translated into French (the first map retains a few English denominations), no credit, no signature. One may assume that they are the same and should be credited to Weiss, without excluding the possibility that they could have been redrawn in part. Anyway, I'll make two records of my “Titan (maps)”, so you can fiddle with them if necessary. Linguist (talk) 05:01, 27 September 2022 (EDT).
In my copy the map is on page 8 and the diagram on page 10 (both unnumbered). In my copy of the Dutch translation the map is on page 6/7 and the diagram on page 5. Both have the text translated, the illustrations are identical to the original. I have no problem with splitting the title. --Willem (talk) 15:00, 27 September 2022 (EDT)
My Dutch copy has the diagram on unnumbered p.5, and the map on unnumbered pp. 6 and 7. Text translated in Dutch. The diagram is unsigned, the map is signed JMWeiss 78. Given that, I'm inclined to suggest to separate them out in two INTERIORART records, and variant them to the original(s). MagicUnk (talk) 06:37, 30 September 2022 (EDT)
I verified my copy in 2008. The ISFDB attitude and approach to art has changed over that time, but still seems to allow some latitude about naming. I like the idea of merging maps (or varianting them) where they are the same but have run across maps that morphed over a series and worry about how one can tell they are the 'same'. I'm less worried about republication / reprinting the same book. My concern about changing the title in my verified publication is that it implies I agree that the images match, when in fact I may not. The varianted / merged INTERIORART title should explain the reasoning and actions taken. ../Doug H (talk) 08:29, 27 September 2022 (EDT)
Various opinions have been expressed and there is no consensus so I will leave the map and diagram records as they are. Teallach (talk) 12:14, 3 October 2022 (EDT)

Dilky/Dilkey

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?2495876; I've been adding stories from the last (?) issue of Chizine in 2011, and this has a misspelled title, the original being "Dilkey", https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1154962; the print edition can't be found and the e-book links don't seem to lead to the right pages anymore, and the PV is gone, so if anyone can get a copy then the title can be corrected and merged or, if it is wrong, made a variant. Also, there's a note in "Dilkey" that says it's from Punktown: Third Eye, but that's not on ISFDB, which seems odd, being genre, I assume, and there's many other Punktown books on here. --Username (talk) 20:13, 23 September 2022 (EDT)

Uncovered Porn

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/view_submission.cgi?5432839; I saw someone uploaded a cover for an Ember Library book, which was 1 of the many Greenleaf imprints, so I checked the other books by the author and saw 1 of the Bookscans.com images was broken so I replaced it in my edit linked above; however, https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?20457, many, maybe the majority, of the covers (a lot of which were added by me, making it all a waste of my time), are now broken, because even though there hasn't been an update on Bookscans.com in months someone decided it was necessary to change images to images-Greenleaf. Luckily, some are from Amazon/other ISFDB-friendly sites or were uploaded to the Wiki and so don't need replacing. So if anyone knows how to fix those en masse or wants to change them one by one; I wonder how many other URL's they may have changed for other publishers that are now broken on ISFDB. --Username (talk) 10:50, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

I have recovered the cover for Garden of Shame, but that was the limit of my technical abilities!… :o) Linguist (talk) 11:28, 27 September 2022 (EDT).
I assume you're a self-mod and thus can accept your own edits since I see the cover is now there, so I've cancelled my edit which, as I mentioned above, replaced the same cover you just replaced, since it was sitting near the end of my 600+ edit queue and it might have been a long time before it was approved. Thanks. --Username (talk) 16:00, 27 September 2022 (EDT)
I think I got all the Bookscans Greenleaf images fixed. Post if there's a group I missed. ../Doug H (talk) 17:06, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

Dave, Is That You?

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?275497; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?16988; I believe the essay and interior art by "Dave English" belong to David A. --Username (talk) 14:00, 25 September 2022 (EDT)

Punchatz and The Amulet

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?175551; I saw on toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.com in a couple of different posts that Don Punchatz did the cover for Michael McDowell's The Amulet (the 1979 Avon ed.) but he didn't sign the cover like he usually did; it was supposedly verified by Grady Hendrix for Paperbacks From Hell. I also noticed that the FantLab page says Don Ivan Punchatz, and since I'm the one who added the FantLab ID a year-and-a-half ago I'm not sure why I didn't enter the name back then. So what's the rule for entering cover artists when there's no credit in the book or signature on the cover? The dude used a lot of different names. --Username (talk) 11:35, 26 September 2022 (EDT)

My recommendation: Unless you think the source is attempting to repeat/document an official credit, use the canonical name and when noting the source of the credit also record the name the source used there. If you think the source is attempting to document an official credit, then follow the precedent for reviewed titles -- if the title used in a review matches one we have, use that; otherwise, use the canonical title and document the title the review gives in the notes -- and use the source's name if matching a name we have, otherwise use the canonical name. When in doubt, use the canonical. --MartyD (talk) 14:13, 26 September 2022 (EDT)

Under Venus

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?14542; The copy of the Peter Straub collection Wild Animals I added recently from Archive.org says "never-before-published second novel", but Under Venus has a 1974 date here. Shouldn't it be the date of the collection, October 1984? Where did 1974 come from? EDIT: Uh-oh, it seems Stonecreek entered that date last year. I'm not getting into that; someone else can inquire and change it if they care to. --Username (talk) 00:41, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

It is stated at the Wikipedia entry for Straub: I'll take a search if there's an associated publication to be found, else I'll add a note to the title. I planned to do this at the time of the edit, but there seems to have been some deterioration. Thanks for finding it. Christian Stonecreek (talk) 04:28, 27 September 2022 (EDT)

The Wiz Book

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?673925; https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?213561; I added info to the empty record for SIDNEY LUMET and noticed his intro was only in that second link, but probably belongs in both books in the first link, and the second book in the first link seems the same as the book in the second link. --Username (talk) 01:00, 28 September 2022 (EDT)

Kate Alice Marshall / Kate Marshall canonical name reversal

Any objections to reversing the canonical name for Kate Alice Marshall and Kate Marshall? She seems to be using only the longer form these days and we have more titles under it already. Annie (talk) 15:54, 28 September 2022 (EDT)

sf-encyclopedia.uk URLs migrated

All 157 http://sf-encyclopedia.uk cover scans have been migrated to https://x.sf-encyclopedia.com. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:03, 28 September 2022 (EDT)

Has this been done for fantasticfiction.co.uk images? Because those are broken, too. --Username (talk) 11:59, 29 September 2022 (EDT)
Checking Fantastic Fiction-hosted images, I see that their HTTP URLs may have HTTPS counterparts. Thanks for the pointer. I'll take a closer look. Ahasuerus (talk) 12:58, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Zinewiki

https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/webpages_search_results.cgi?OPERATOR=contains&WEBPAGE_VALUE=zinewiki; Apparently we have another website that changed their URL's; only 26 of the above (will be 27 because I stumbled on this when I saw someone had recently PV an issue of Fantasy Macabre and went to the series page and clicked on the zinewiki.com link, only to see a huge 404 page, so I made an edit to fix it) have the /wiki/ that they added for some reason, so mods may know how to batch fix or do it individually or whatever. --Username (talk) 11:58, 29 September 2022 (EDT)

Front page performance and future changes

The way the ISFDB software generates the front page has been modified. In the past, the list of 20 publications to display was regenerated every time the page was displayed. Post-change the list is built once a day as part of the nightly process which regenerates cleanup reports. (If the nightly process doesn't run for some reason, the software will generate the list the old way.)

The immediate impact is that the page will load slightly faster, although the improvement will be marginal. Going forward, it means that we can make the process of selecting publications more sophisticated without affecting front page performance. For example, we should be able to display only one publication per author. Ahasuerus (talk) 13:40, 1 October 2022 (EDT)

What happens if a title on the page gets re-dated during a day it is on the list? Books get delayed or better information (different jurisdiction or source which was incorrect) can cause a book publication date to change - especially on the pre-release records? Generating a few extra titles and ordering by date at display time (or something like that) may solve that issue nicely. Annie (talk) 16:49, 1 October 2022 (EDT)
That's exactly what the new nightly process does. It selects 30 publications and stores them in a separate locations. The front page software uses that list of 30 pubs to build a list of 20 pubs which still meet the requirements. If the new list has less than 20 pubs, the software decides that something must have gone wrong with the nightly process and rebuilds the list from the database. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:38, 1 October 2022 (EDT)
And didn’t we actually have 22 books on that list before? Annie (talk) 16:49, 1 October 2022 (EDT)
The old code had the value of the "MaxBooks" variable set to 21. I thought it was rounded down to 20 due to the displaying 2 books per HTML table row, but it looks like you are right and the algorithm rounded it up to 22. The new code uses "20" without rounding. We can easily change "20" to "22" if desired. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:38, 1 October 2022 (EDT)

Proposed Changes Going Forward

Now that the process of building the list of pubs displayed on the front page has been moved to the nightly job, we can fine-tune it without adversely affecting front page performance.

The first idea, which was briefly discussed a few weeks ago, is to allow only one publication per author. That way if a publisher reprints multiple books by a popular author and they all come out on the same day, only one will appear on the front page.

I think this would be an improvement, but there is a caveat. Suppose Book 2 in a series comes out in hardcover and the publisher makes Book 1 available in paperback on the same day. If we implement the proposed enhancement, our software will display only one of the books, semi-randomly picking Book 1 or Book 2 even though we would prefer Book 2 to be displayed because it's a new book and not a reprint.

There are two ways we could address this issue. The first one would be to institute a "no reprints on the front page" rule. The second one would be to check the date of each pub's reference title and display the pub with the latest date for each author.

Which one would be a better choice? Ahasuerus (talk) 14:44, 4 October 2022 (EDT)

I prefer the second option. We want some reprints I think. Plus we have the pesky problem of translations - if the new book is in German but has a new title and the old translation, for us it is a new title but in reality it is a reprint. Same applies for any renamed book (even if the book just gets & swapped for "and" or something as trivial). And sometimes what looks like a reprint (because there is an earlier book in the publications list) is actually the first publication - due to early (or misdated) translation or early audio version (although technically this is a publication after all) or a book that never made it out but was never cleaned from the list and so on. Unless you make a manual process, reprints will always trickle in. So we may as well just suppress them a bit when they compete with another title. Annie (talk) 14:55, 4 October 2022 (EDT)

Fantastic Fiction URLs updated

All Fantastic Fiction URLs which used HTTP have been updated to use HTTPS. If you come across any issues, please post them here. Ahasuerus (talk) 18:49, 3 October 2022 (EDT)

Series deletion -- submission review page updated

The submission review page for Series Deletion submissions has been updated. The only change is the addition of a link to the about-to-be-deleted series record and slightly fancier formatting. If you come across any issues, please let me know. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:54, 4 October 2022 (EDT)

Publication deletion -- submission review page updated

The submission review page for Publication Deletion submissions has been updated. A few links have been added. Ahasuerus (talk) 15:54, 4 October 2022 (EDT)
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