ISFDB talk:Chapterbooks with Missing Chapterbook Contents

Missing Chapterbook title records
Every pub record I've worked on is missing a chapterbook title record, but all have a content record. The content record is not visibly displayed on the pub record until after I've added a chapterbook title record. 90% have been Project Gutenberg "ebooks", and all appear to have been created before the software change that auto-creates a title record. Many of them have been primary verified, notably by DESiegel and Davecat. I'm not going to go to the effort of notifying them of the changes I'm making in their verified pubs.

So it appears someone (pointing at Bill Longley) will have to write a script which will find chapterbook pub records that are missing a content record. Hmmm... Mhhutchins 03:30, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Yes, this list only covers missing CHAPTERBOOK contents - which makes them fairly easy to fix as there's no particular thought involved. The only other thing is possibly needing to merge Chapterbooks afterwards. I can script for Chapterbooks that ONLY have a CHAPTERBOOK record in them, but those are a lesser problem. BLongley 14:04, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Novel/chapterbooks mismatches
Bill, I see you're holding out doing any work on those records that have been verified by Clarkmci. I saw that he was having some difficulty with chapterbooks about a year ago and left him this message. It looks like he's not gone back to make the corrections. As I state above, I'm making changes regardless of whether the records have been verified, and not going to the effort to notify them. At the time these records were created/verified the software was different, so I'm not holding that against any editors whose records are being "fixed". Mhhutchins 15:36, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure whether his preference would be to make them "Juvenile" length Novels or Chapterbooks, so left them for now. (I'm pretty bored with them at the moment, after looking at 100 or so.) I think that after the next backup I'll split the script between Chapterbook/Novel mismatches, and completely missing Container types. I could also break it down by verifier (where present) if people want to correct their own - I appreciate not many people want to pitch in on such a repetitive task. But if we can get it down to 100 or less then I can put it in as a Moderator clean-up script - the full list takes about a minute on my machine, whereas 100 would only take 3 or 4 seconds - and experience suggests it would be even less on the live server. The advantage of a clean-up script is that it's not as out-of-date as my offline scripts - it's been so long since I refreshed my local copy that it shows NO forthcoming books, for instance! BLongley 16:45, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Ironically, it's those children's books which are truly "chapterbooks", unlike the chapbooks for which the misnomered type was created! Mhhutchins 17:02, 21 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Yeah, we're not going to win even if we implement, "Rename CHAPTERBOOK to CHAPBOOK" - there'll always be some that are wrong. BLongley 17:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks like we didn't fix them in time
Just downloaded today's backup, and there's still 175 showing. I'll try again next week. BLongley 21:23, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Does that mean there were 175 records badly created between the two backups, or that there's a delay between the time the db is backed-up and the time it's made available for download? God, I hope the latter! Mhhutchins 21:38, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * I suspect the latter. I didn't check them all, but many looked familiar from the previous list. BLongley 21:48, 23 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Remind me to refresh this tomorrow. BLongley 01:09, 2 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Is it tomorrow there yet? I suspect it must be in the middle of the night. Mhhutchins

Damn good
Only one we missed from the original list, which is a great percentage. I wonder why "The Vampire of Croglin" didn't show on the first list. It doesn't look like a new title. Mhhutchins 15:49, 3 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Fixer has been doing some 2008 titles recently, may that inspired a submission? The bad news is that it still took over a minute to find those two records, so this probably isn't a candidate for a regular moderator clean-up script just yet. (Although don't give up, I have some ideas for improving scripts for particular title or publication types.) BLongley 17:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)