ISFDB:Moderator noticeboard

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Moderator TODO list: Spam

Unavailable Moderators

 * Al von Ruff - Talk - updating docs, then looking at code, but not performing any data updates.

Uberarticles spammers
Can something be done about this whole lot of new "contributors" ? Perhaps should the inscription procedure be severized (with a captcha or a moderator) for a short time, just in case it deters the offending bot. I'm quite fed up with blocking accounts and deleting user pages. Hervé Hauck 14:12, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


 * There are a few things that we could do, but there are certain tradeoffs involved.


 * First, we could prevent new users from creating new Wiki pages -- they would only be able to edit their Talk pages once a moderator (or an established editor) left a note on it. The downside is that it would prevent new editors from creating Bio/Author pages.


 * Second, we could require that new users provide a valid e-mail address and be approved by a moderator before they are allowed to edit. Unfortunately, there appear to exist thousands of unused spammer accounts in the database -- spammers frequently create them ahead of time -- so this change may not have much impact in the immediate future.


 * When the current wave of attacks started, I hoped that it may subside in a week or two once the spammers' management realized that their inserted content was being deleted expeditiously. After all, they run a business, so if the rate of return is poor, they are likely to go seek other targets. However, we don't know what their business model is and it's possible that they get paid regardless of how long their spam pages stay up.


 * At this point I would be inclined to go with Option 1 as outlined above and see what happens. Thoughts? Ahasuerus 19:55, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm in favor of anything that would stop the spammers. The second option would be my personal favorite. I can't imagine any serious user would object to providing a valid e-mail address. --Willem H. 20:08, 7 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with Willem. Anyone who wishes to update the database and/or wiki pages should have no objection to providing a valid email address. I've said this several times over the years and nothing ever came of it. Perhaps these latest series of attacks should be a strong argument for such a change. If we had done this years ago, there wouldn't be "thousands of unused spammer accounts in the database." Any account that has been inactive over a certain period of time should be disabled, requiring the user to contact us to re-activate it. Which reminds me, there should also be a valid email address or some other method for potential users to contact us. Mhhutchins 02:02, 8 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm also in favor of the solution requiring a valid e-mail address. Every so often there are users who really want to correct or add to an author's bio, so it wouldn't be favourable to block these, I think. Stonecreek 06:16, 8 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with requiring valid email addresses. However, it's not that hard to create apparently valid spam email addresses, so I hope this includes the tactic of sending the confirmation email to the address given and requiring a response within a specified time. Chavey 15:20, 8 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree, too, with requiring a valid email address but I think that the confirmation-response procedure is necessary, as pointed out by Darrah. Hervé suggested also a captcha to deter spam bots: would it be difficult to implement (or easy to circumvent) ? --Pips55 20:19, 9 June 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) Thanks, folks! Here are some answers/comments:

1. The reason why we originally decided not to require e-mail addresses/confirmations was to make registration as easy and painless s possible. Keep in mind that ISFDB accounts and Wiki accounts are shared, so that if the proposed change is implemented, you would need to provide an e-mail address and be confirmed before you can create User Preferences. There may be some ways around it, e.g. it may be possible to tweak our Wiki settings so that anyone could create an account on demand, but that account would require additional moderator approval before you could edit/create Wiki pages. I'll see what I can do.

2. Similarly, we have to be careful disabling Wiki accounts because it could also affect User Preferences. Also, I am not sure I see the value of disabling long-inactive accounts. As long as we are sure that the user is a legitimate contributor, would it be advantageous to have him or her re-contact us when s/he comes back a year later?

3. We are currently using simple capchas to deter spambots, but they are not effective against human spammers. It's a common tactic for spammers to create new accounts manually and then feed them to bots hours or days later. It helps them defeat certain "autoconfirm" settings which require that new accounts be older than N seconds before they can be used for posting.

4. We currently have an e-mail account (isfdb.moderators at gmail.com) which is forwarded to moderators, but it hasn't been made public. I can add it to the top of all ISFDB pages, but we'd have to decide how we want to handle incoming e-mail. If 12 moderators get the same e-mail message and 3 of them respond at approximately the same time, it could get messy and wasteful. In the meantime, I occasionally get e-mail from contributors who know my e-mail address and do not want to go through the standard editing process. When that happens, I enter the data into the database on their behalf. (Which reminds me that I have an outstanding e-mail to process.) Ahasuerus 06:09, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * 1. I can think of only one website which allows someone to edit their pages without registering with a valid email account: Wikipedia. (They must have some way of deterring spammers. I know they record ISPs for non-registered editors.) I can not imagine that any person who seriously wants to edit the database would have an objection to registering with a email account.


 * 2. My point in suggesting that inactive accounts be deleted was in response to your statement that there have been spam user accounts already created. It would not apply to accounts that have provided valid email addresses. Once that policy was made, the question of de-activation would become moot.


 * 3. Requiring users to register with a valid email address would solve this problem, wouldn't it?


 * 4. Until it goes "live" there's really no way of knowing how a shared email account is going to work. I would hope that we could come up with some kind of plan. We would have to strongly suggest that the email address not be used to provide database information. It should be considered a contact address only. Mhhutchins 14:14, 10 June 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, let me try to change some settings. Hopefully this will work... Ahasuerus 23:23, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, it looks like it worked. I will post an update on the Community Portal shortly. Ahasuerus 23:28, 11 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Done. Now we'll have to wait and see how much difference it will make. Dedicated spammers have long lists of previously generated e-mail addresses which they can use to register spam accounts, but they may also find that it's not worth their time and switch to more lucrative targets. We'll give it a few days... Ahasuerus 23:43, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

User talk:Don Erikson
Don Erikson's talkpage looks empty, but no one deleted anything. The history tab shows an addition by Stonecreek at 6:04 (my timezone), but this doesn't show on the recent changes page. Is this a bug? --Willem H. 06:14, 14 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, it's a bug or, to be more precise, a case of minor database corruption. As far as I can tell, Stonecreek last edited Don't Talk page approximately 24 hours ago while I was purging old versions of Wiki pages (for space reasons.) The way we purge the Wiki isn't officially supported and I should have warned all users to stay away from it while the purge was in progress. The result was that Don's Talk page and the Moderator Noticeboard page collided. I have rolled back the Talk page, so the problem may have been resolved. If not, I will have to inspect/tweak the underlying Wiki tables, which is always an iffy proposition... Ahasuerus 06:44, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

ISFDB maintenance
As posted on the Community Portal a minute ago:

Due to technical problems caused by the Wiki purge two days ago, I need to bounce the database and perform a quick backup. ISFDB will be unavailable for about 20 minutes. Ahasuerus 22:19, 15 June 2013 (UTC)

Stephen King's Joyland: Genre or Non-Genre?
I do suspect that King's new novel slipped into the category of NONGENRE because of its publisher 'Hard Case Crime'. From a review it seems that it has some genre relevance, since at least spooks and precognition do play a role. If there isn't an argument against this I'd like to change it to genre NOVEl. Stonecreek 13:47, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Data from reviews indicate this should be classified as speculative fiction. Mhhutchins 14:37, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you, Michael! I have changed the novel to NOVEL. Stonecreek 15:08, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

New wiki registration causing problems with current editors?
A submission I just accepted from a very active editor had this note to moderator: "I cannot edit messages; I'm told to confirm my e-mail address, which I've tried to do numerous times, but cannot seem to get done (I never get an e-mail)." Mhhutchins 16:33, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I created a new test account a few minutes ago and the registration process worked fine. I have also tested the process with Fixer to make sure that it works for pre-existing accounts. It's possible that this particular editor's spam filters (either account-based or provider-based) think that our confirmation messages are spam and either quarantine or auto-delete them -- this is a known peril of requiring e-mail confirmation during account creation and one of the reasons why we were leery of it. As the first step, I would suggest leaving a note on the editor's Talk page asking to check his/her spam folder to see if our confirmation e-mails may be stuck there. Ahasuerus 18:30, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Message left on the editor's page. I see that although he's unable to edit the Wiki, he's still able to upload images to the ISFDB server. Is that function excluded from the registration process? Mhhutchins 18:41, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The way it works is that there is an "e-mail has been confirmed" flag for each user. This flag is checked by the Wiki software when a user tries to edit a Wiki page, but I don't think it is checked when users upload images. Ahasuerus 01:37, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * He's still unable to edit the wiki. The latest submission's Note to Moderator: "I still cannot confirm my e-mail because I do not get messages. I checked spam - nothing there either. I have two e-mail addresses, and neither one seems to work. These addresses are [removed here. I've made a private note of the email addresses to avoid publicly posting them here]. Can someone please fix this problem?" Mhhutchins 17:54, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I tried sending him an e-mail through the wiki, but got the message "This user has not specified a valid e-mail address, or has chosen not to receive e-mail from other users." I think he has to edit his preferences first, either adding an e-mail adress, or checking the box "Enable e-mail from other users". --Willem H. 18:13, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I think that's what he's trying to do, but is not getting the confirmation email back from the ISFDB. The problem may be because he's an existing user, and not a new one. He can edit the database, and can upload images...he just can't edit the wiki. I'll leave a message on his talk page to check his preferences. Mhhutchins 18:46, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I tested the "existing user" use case with Fixer right after I changed the Wiki settings and it worked fine. I have sent an e-mail to Bob at the e-mail address stored in the Wiki database to see if he gets it.


 * I have also run a number of additional queries against the Wiki database and it looks pretty grim. There were hundreds of spam accounts registered and authenticated (via e-mail) yesterday, so they are smart enough to defeat our safeguards. I suppose it makes sense since these safeguards have been used by various Wikis for years and spammers have had plenty of time to come up with automated ways of bypassing them. There is currently nothing preventing them from launching a truly massive spam attack on our Wiki with thousands of spam edits per day. We'll have to think of additional lines of defense... Ahasuerus 19:22, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * That's not very good news. This attack is obviously from one source. Is there a way to know the host of the email addresses and be able to block that server? Mhhutchins 21:09, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * They are using hotmail.com addresses (550ish out of the 726 registered yesterday), which is a spammer SOP. I don't think we can prevent new users from using hotmail addresses for registration purposes, at least not with this version of the MediaWiki software and without installing additional extensions. Also, I see some other apparent spam accounts that use outlook.com (30 accounts) and gmail.com (120 accounts), which may be coming from another spam entity.


 * I suspect that at some point we may have to abandon the current Wiki registration model and require individual account approval before users can edit pages. As an experiment, I have created a "Write" group which lets users edit/create Wiki pages and made it accessible via the Bureaucrat interface. If we ran a script to add all existing users with at least one edit to this group, then we could change the Wiki settings to require new users to be explicitly added to the "Write" group before they could edit the Wiki. We'd probably want two things to happen before we did it, though: (1) modify the core ISFDB software to add support for Bio notes, Biblio notes and Series notes and (2) give all moderators access to the Bureaucrat interface. And, of course, we'd need to post the e-mail address that new users would need to contact to be added to the group. It's not my preferred solution, but it may be the lesser of two evils, especially if these attacks intensify. Ahasuerus 21:48, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Bio notes, Biblio notes and Series notes are fairly easy, but I have no clue about how to transfer existing Wiki Notes to the DB. I can start the process if people wish, and let the Macro-confident do the next step? BLongley 23:12, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The Wiki maintains comprehensive lists of all Series pages, all Bio pages, all Author pages, etc. It would be fairly easy to copy the text of these pages to the database, but converting all Wiki formatting would be challenging. It may be easier and less error-prone to tackle the conversion process manually. Ahasuerus 08:09, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

[unindent] Now that they've found us, I think it's unlikely they'll let up unless we make the drastic change you propose in Wiki registration. Unless you can think of another method for editors to communicate. Thanks. Mhhutchins 22:12, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Nothing else comes to mind at the moment, but I am not exactly a Wiki expert. Perhaps Marty or some other editor with Wiki experience may be able to come up with better alternatives. Ahasuerus 22:23, 23 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Have you seen this article? It has some pointers that might be useful.  I suspect the medicine required may be a strong lock-down for a month or two to get the attackers to shift their attention elsewhere.  But employing some of the regex stuff and black lists subscriptions might be a good start.  --MartyD 03:02, 25 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Marty, that page gave me a few ideas that I hadn't considered previously. I have changed the captcha settings to make captchas required when a user with less than N edits or creates a page. It's not much, but it doesn't cost us anything and may stop some bots.


 * Unfortunately, a number of other tricks that the author of that article uses wouldn't work for us because they would make our Wiki very slow: I tried a few of them the last time we ran into these problems and things slowed down to a crawl. Ahasuerus 04:17, 25 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, that didn't help much since all spam edits include URLs and those already required captchas. Oh well, back to where we were... Ahasuerus 05:18, 25 June 2013 (UTC)


 * More tweaks to the spam filters, which should auto-reject over 70% of the spam that has been added lately. We'll see if the spammers are smart enough to figure out what we are doing and adjust accordingly... Ahasuerus 08:01, 25 June 2013 (UTC)


 * So far so good -- only one spam edit got through in the last 18 hours. Ahasuerus 00:57, 26 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Things are looking up, only a few spam edits over the last couple of days. I have applied a few more tweaks which may help reduce the number even further. Ahasuerus 17:00, 28 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Fantastic. Mhhutchins 20:05, 28 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for the relief, Ahasuerus! Stonecreek 20:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Feels very good. Thanks! --Willem H. 20:35, 28 June 2013 (UTC)


 * One battle at a time :-) Ahasuerus 21:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

New cleanup script -- CHAPTERBOOKs with synopsis data
The other day I noticed that we have a non-trivial number (148) of CHAPTERBOOK titles with synopsis information attached to them, apparently because some of our editors have been entering synopses via the New Chapterbook menu option. We should probably explain it to them that synopses need to be associated with Shortfiction titles rather than with their containers. We may also want to remove the Synopsis field from the data entry form for Chapterbooks.

In the meantime, I have added a new cleanup script to the bottom of the "Cleanup Scripts" menu for your cleaning pleasure. Ahasuerus 01:19, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * And as an added bonus I have added a script that finds publications without titles. Ahasuerus 03:07, 24 June 2013 (UTC)


 * And since I am on a roll tonight, I have also added a script to find Chapterbooks with no contents titles. Ahasuerus 03:33, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Price corrections
Fixer is in the process of correcting UK prices, so you will be seeing a couple hundred submissions that will all look like "Change the price of this pub from L5.99 to £5.99". Ahasuerus 04:43, 27 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The data has been fixed and the software has been updated so that it will no longer try to transform "L" prices to "£" prices. Ahasuerus 18:01, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Michael Dahl
I thought that I would ask before acting, unusual I know, but Michael Dahl has put out a large amount of fantasy fiction, so has he reached the tipping point for me to enter several books in a young adult mystery series featuring Finnegan Zwake? These books all seem to involve a quasi-fantastic, scientific premise, with a mundane, I think, resolution. MLB 11:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)


 * [This was posted on the wrong page (the talk page), when it should have been posted on this page, which is linked from the ISFDB:Community Portal). The talk page is used to discuss this page, not to leave messages for the moderators. Thanks.]


 * I see no problem with adding the series to this author's summary page. Unless they're borderline, and clearly not spec-fic, enter them as NONGENRE. Mhhutchins 14:13, 2 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I think he is over the threshold or very close to it, so there is no harm in adding his "quasi-fantastic" books to the database as long as we explain their nature in Notes. Ahasuerus 18:45, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

A whole mess of Fernandez
There's an airbrush artist Stanislaw Fernandes. There's also a comic book artist Fernando Fernandez whose signature looks like 'fernando' with a circle under the last letter, and who is sometimes credited as Fernando (see below). Two of Stanislaw Fernandes' covers are actually by Fernando: The Sundered Realm, and The Other Side of the Sky. There's also an entry for Stanislaw Fernandez: The Vardeman & Milan covers (both Playboy and Ace, 1982-1986) should be credited to Fernando Fernandez, the others I don't know. There's an entry for Stanislaw Hernandez: This is actually Fernando Fernandez again (see signature). There's an entry for Fernando, this is sometimes Fernando Fernandez (1980s entries), but sometimes half of photographer duo Fernando/Mercedes, also listed as Fernando Mercedes. Then there are entries for Fernadez (two covers, non-PV'd, probably a spelling error), Fernandez (is Fernando Fernandez for all listed covers but maybe Hunter's Moon, scan too small to read signature). Suggestion: - Create new author Fernando (II) for the photographer. - Make 'Fernando' and 'Fernandez' pseudonyms of Fernando Fernandez. Horzel 09:20, 5 July 2013 (UTC).


 * I've made corrections to the records based on your suggestions, but have left the verified records alone. I'll check into the suggestion about pseudonyms. Mhhutchins 15:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I've separated the Fernandos and made one into a pseudonym of Fernando Fernandez. Mhhutchins 16:14, 5 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much, this looks a whole lot better! Horzel 20:42, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Mid-life Confidential
I have a copy of this book. It is listed as NONFICTION, which it certainly is, but since it is a collection of essays by the members of The Rock Bottom Remainders edited by Dave Marsh, should it be listed as an ANTHOLOGY instead or should I just add the essays as content on the existing title? There is also one content, Appendix I: The Henley Episode and Its Ramifications, that has been credited as "Edited and annotated by Roy Blount, Jr." How do I go about adding that as the content field doesn't recognize editors?--Jorssi 10:30, 19 July 2013 (UTC)


 * This should remain as NONFICTION which is for book length works of nonfiction, regardless of the contents' author credits. An ANTHOLOGY contains works of fiction by different authors. Also, you should not add contents unless they are spec-fic or spec-fic related. Otherwise you can use the "Note" field to add as much (or as little) information as you want. (I'm not even sure if the book qualifies for inclusion in the database.  So it's best not to do a lot of work on it if another editor decides it doesn't qualify and wants to delete it.) Mhhutchins 15:26, 19 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the answer. I was surprised at the first place that this title was listed here as it is not spec-fic. I will verify it all the same, but I'm not offended if it is deleted in the future. However, the price isn't printed anywhere on the book, so I will edit that out and verify it after that when I wake up. Now, I'm going to sleep. Thanks again. --Jorssi 22:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Cemetery Dance, #55, 2006
I added content to this title. I also changed the page count, but you can ignore that since I found out after submitting the edit that in magazines the covers are added to the page count. Sorry about that. --Jorssi 13:55, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * You linked to #61, which scared me for a second, since I was the one who entered that record. I think you meant to link to this one. I'll change the page count back to 116 after I accept the submission. Moderators do not have the ability to pick and choose which parts of a submission to accept. Since you added so much new data, it would be a shame to reject it for an error in one field. Thanks. Mhhutchins 14:05, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Whoops, my bad. Thanks for the edit. --Jorssi 14:19, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

CreateSpace and Fixer
As some of you may remember, back in late 2008-early 2009, when Fixer was still very young, he submitted a lot of books published by CreateSpace, which was originally a POD company called BookSurge. (BookSurge had been purchased by Amazon in 2005 and turned into their flagship self-publishing division.) CreateSpace publishes many hundreds of SF titles every month, most of them by amateur writers, and it would overwhelm our moderators if we tried to keep up with them. For this reason I convinced Fixer to put CreateSpace books in a separate "suspend" queue, where they would languish until we had moderators who would volunteer to process these ISBNs.

Or at least that was the plan some 4+ years ago. It turns out that as of 2013 quite a few commercially published authors make their books and stories available via CreateSpace. Because of this change, we can no longer ignore CreateSpace completely, so I have modified Fixer's logic to submit CreateSpace-published books as long as their authors have been known to publish SF commercially. You can expect to see more of them in the queue going forward.

Please note that although Amazon lists these books as published by "CreateSpace", in many cases Look Inside shows that another publisher is credited on the title/copyright pages. As far as I can tell, they are mostly single-author publishers, sometimes shared by two or more authors. In some cases they are responsible for quite a few books, e.g. WMG Publishing. Based on our rules, we presumably want to credit these publishers rather than CreateSpace (when applicable.) Ahasuerus 06:58, 26 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I checked the Amazon Look-inside on all of the Fixer submissions that I handled last night. About half of them had a publisher stated on the title page or copyright page, so I updated the records to credit the publisher. All of the others I left as CreateSpace. Thanks for fixing Fixer's logic to add only those pubs by authors who already have work commercially published. I can deal with those. The others will have to languish in limbo, as I can't imagine there ever being a time when there's enough moderators to handle them. Mhhutchins 15:52, 26 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks! I should probably add that determining whether a book's author has been published commercially is not always easy. Fixer can tell that we have an author record on file (unless CreateSpace uses an uncommon form of the name like "Mr H G Wells"), but determining the nature of the publisher(s) associated with the author's books can be tricky. Ahasuerus 18:42, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Trema over the Vowel i
An editor submitted a proper name changing of the author Garen Drussai into Garen Drussaï. I accepted it, but the trema doesn't appear. Can ISFDB not display an i trema? Rudam 13:37, 10 August 2013 (UTC)


 * My understanding is that the system more-or-less ignores such diacritical marks. E.g., you search for names with an ï, you get every name with an "i" in it. So since it views "Drussaï" and "Drussai" as being exactly the same, a "name change" from one to the other has no effect. I believe that the only way to get a name to appear with a diacritical mark is to have the first record that introduces that name (or possibly the lowest numbered record with that name, or something like that) to include the diacritical, and that change can't happen by just changing the spelling in the author record. Chavey 13:52, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I think what happens is that the database's configured language/"character set" is one where there's a bit of insensitivity to many diacriticals. So, for example, the database might consider "i" and "ï" to match.  This, in turn, could lead the combination of the ISFDB software and the database to conclude that a edit changing Drussai into Drussaï did not actually change anything.  You could try a two-step rename: Drussai -> DrussaX, then DrussaX -> Druissaï, and see if that produced the desired result.  X will not match either "i" or "ï", so both edits should be viewed as true changes by all parts of the system.  --MartyD 18:55, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your suggestions. I've tried it with the X and it worked. Thanks again! Rudam 19:00, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I Am Active, But Not Very
After cataloging my SF collection, I had a hiatus of several months from the site and a moderator, quite rightly, has put a "No Longer Active" flag on my account. Although not as active as I was during my personal cataloging, I do still visit the site and will respond to questions about my PVs. My activity frequency is likely to be about once or twice a month. I'll leave it to a Mod to decide whether or not the flag should stay, or whether a note of my activity frequency could be substituted. Cheers. Nimravus 16:29, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That template probably isn't the best in a case like this. I'll create an infrequent user template as an alternative. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:12, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Template:Infrequent user created. If anybody has recommended changes, just make them. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:18, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Little Leather Library
I have a number of these that I would like to post on this site. I have just submitted one for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and it has not yet been accepted, but if so, I would appreciate any criticism as to what should be in the note field, and on what I did put in. I have a cover scan for this book. MLB 08:11, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Submission accepted here. Notes are OK, but many seem to be specific to the publisher and not to the book at hand. These notes should be moved to the publisher page. I'm assuming these had a soft cover and not hardbound.
 * There were a couple of other problems. You should not record blank pages in an ISFDB record's page count field, unless there they appear between two sets of numbered pages. Also, the record should not have been entered as a CHAPTERBOOK, because the work is classed as a NOVEL. I'll make corrections for both of these. A reminder: when adding other volumes in the series, only add the spec-fic titles. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:53, 12 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you. However,  I did not know that you could put notes on the publisher page.  How do you do that?  I would only list speculative titles or titles with some speculative content. MLB 05:53, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Go to the publisher's page and click on the link "Edit This Publisher" under the Editing Tools menu. You can add any publisher-specific notes in the edit, and link to any pertinent webpages as well. Mhhutchins 16:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Unless there was a change for which I missed the announcement, only moderators may edit publisher records. -- JLaTondre (talk) 21:52, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * That's new to me. I knew non-moderators couldn't merge publisher records, but assumed they could add notes or weblinks to a publisher record. The submission has to be moderated so why not allow it? Mhhutchins 23:00, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * This answer was given to me once upon a time. I agree that non-moderators should be able to edit links and notes. Assuming the software hasn't already been changed, it may just need a feature request created. -- JLaTondre (talk) 23:54, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Also, this site will not allow me to post a cover image unless I changed the cover image to this book which I suspect would not be appreciated, especially by Bluesman who posted it. MLB 06:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Those records are entirely separate, so uploading images to one shouldn't effect the other. Are you certain you're using the "Upload cover scan" link on the page for the publication record? I just tried the link and it's working for me. Please try again and tell us if you get a warning message that you're replacing another image file. Thanks. Mhhutchins 16:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I see now what happened. It's this record's image which will be replaced. It was uploaded from a record which once had the same tag. I'm not sure how your record got the same tag (I thought the system wouldn't use the same tag again, even if the pub had been deleted.) I'll change the name of the older image, and you'll be able to upload using the regular method. I'll post back here when I've finished. Mhhutchins 16:39, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * You should be able to upload now without any problems. Mhhutchins 16:43, 13 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay, thanks, I'll try again. MLB 18:37, 14 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Edited the notes as requested, hope that they are okay now. MLB 18:55, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Abridged/Altered Fictions
I have a number of these books around here. These are books, novels, and/or short stories that have been abridged (dumbed down) by various parties for children (of all ages, I guess) for various parties. Baronet is the most guilty, but others have done it, and while I have listed these things on this site, I don't know if there is any fast and hard rule here on how to list them. Should a story be listed as "Story (abridged)", "Story by Author and Abridger" and then list that the story has been edited in the notes, or "Story (abridged)" and then list the abridger, or editor, in the Notes? I see these things listed all these ways on this site and I would like to know what the bylaws are for me to follow. And if this is figured out, should I go back and change my previous entries? MLB 01:33, 18 August 2013 (UTC)


 * As far as I know, there are no specific rules about how to handle these cases. It seems everyone pretty much does the best they can to deal with a situation which the database itself has never been able to handle, either by software design or editor consensus. Some cases are more clear cut than others, while others are more problematic. It depends upon how the work is credited on its title page, both the title and the author(s). If you do that when creating a publication record, you can't be faulted. Use the Note field to give as much information as provided about how the book is credited. There may need to be "fixes" once the record is in the database, particularly in the determination of when to variant titles. So in other words, work with the moderator and deal with each book as they arise on an individual basis. Mhhutchins 17:20, 18 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I have been thinking about this problem for a few months and hope to start a discussion about possibly changing the software in the foreseeable future. Until then, though, we are stuck with the options that Michael listed above. Ahasuerus 02:12, 19 August 2013 (UTC)


 * If the story is simply shortened, then it seems that tagging it "abridged" should be fine and credit should go to the author only. If it's rewritten in part or in whole then it becomes more complicated. If it's a complete rewrite, then I would think that something like labeling it as "original story by "X" retold by Y," as it's a completely new story and not "abridged" as I understand it. Or it could be treated as a "translation" or "interpretation" in a more general sense of the terms. If it's a combination of shortening combined with a partial rewrite then I'm not so sure. As an example, I have a copy of Aelita by Alexei Tolstoy written for students of the Russian language that I've been thinking about how to enter it for some time. Compared to the original it's been shortened by maybe twenty percent, and difficult words and idioms have been replaced to make it easier to read. The large majority of what's left is still original.--Rkihara 16:31, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Quoting copyrighted material
See this submission. The material quoted is copyrighted. While the source is attributed, I'm concerned about the amount of material: Part of those notes is pretty much an entire page from the site, and I did not hunt down the rest. Does anyone familiar with copyright law and how something like the ISFDB plays in that realm have an informed opinion (or one that's more informed than mine, anyway)? Thanks. --MartyD 10:38, 23 August 2013 (UTC)


 * If the notes are facts that are represented in the book itself, I see no problem with including them, even though they're to the point of being excessive...but if the words are taken exactly from another website (regardless of whether they're copyrighted or not), then the quoted page can be linked. Even better, because the notes appear to not be publication specific, the website can be linked in the title record's webpage field. Mhhutchins 18:16, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Gerd Maximovič
The autor is currently a pseudonym of. It should be the other way round. I own a book with a name-imprint from himself and it clearly states a "č" in the name. Also most stuff is credited by that name. As this is a major change I don't know how to proceed.
 * Unlink the autor records,
 * Reverse the variant,
 * delete all the wrong title entries caused by that pseudonym,
 * reverse the few entries where the pseudonym really was used? --Stoecker 20:49, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Looking for the cover artist for Heinlein's Star Beast
New editor Zflip provided a new printing of the novel and has found the letters SA 86 on the cover. Does anybody has an idea about the artist? Stonecreek 11:15, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

User email contact
I tried sending an email to this user, only to learn that they did not provide an email address. Could they have registered before a valid email address was required and only now have started editing the database? I can think of no other scenario. Mhhutchins 03:56, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
 * It is also possible to disable email in your preferences. The same message is displayed for both cases. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:39, 2 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Then what's the point of requiring an email to register? That defeats the purpose entirely. It shouldn't be a "preference" to be able not to be contacted. Sheesh! Mhhutchins 14:54, 2 September 2013 (UTC)
 * A valid email address was mandated to reduce spam. You also have to remember the wiki software is not written by ISFDB developers. It is also woefully out of date. When it comes to the wiki, we're limited to features Wikimedia chose to implement for their purposes a ways back. It's possible there is a setting to override that option, but a cursory glance of the Wikimedia documentation doesn't show one (though that's not definitive as docs aren't always complete). -- JLaTondre (talk) 15:56, 2 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I guess that leaves those of us who handle new editors' submissions without any method to contact them other than a user page which many never find. Frankly, I've pretty much reached my limit when it comes to handling such submissions. Straw...camel's back... Mhhutchins 17:58, 2 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Checking this user's account definition in the database, I see that the "disable email" flag is set to "yes", so JLaTondre's guess was right. Unfortunately, I don't see a way to change the behavior of the Wiki software to prevent users from doing this. Perhaps MediaWiki creators thought that it was an important privacy feature?


 * In the medium run, we will need to upgrade the MediaWiki software in order to get the benefit of various security and performance improvements that are now available. I was hoping that Al would come back and do it since he knows more about it than I do, but at this point it seems unlikely. Ahasuerus 19:29, 2 September 2013 (UTC)


 * What about making the message notification more prominent on the database side? It's been awhile since I last saw it as I usually check my watchlist prior to the database. But if it is still just the highlighting in the left toolbar, that's not as visible as on the wiki side. What about a similar bar that shows up across the top of the database page? -- JLaTondre (talk) 19:51, 2 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Sure, we can do that. Perhaps add something along the lines of "Your submissions may not be approved until you respond?" FR 479 has been created.) Ahasuerus 20:11, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

CHAPTERBOOKs and series
Checking submission history for 2013, I see that we have at least four moderators who seem to have occasional trouble with CHAPTERBOOKs. Let's make sure that we are all on the same page before we start fixing the data:

1. A CHAPTERBOOK publication should contain one (and only one) CHAPTERBOOK title. It should alsocontain at least one non-container (or "constituent") Title record. This non-container record is typically SHORTFICTION, but sometimes it can be a POEM or an ESSAY.

2. SHORTFICTION records and CHAPTERBOOK records should never be VTs of each other.

3. Normally, a CHAPTERBOOK record should not be added to a series. Instead, it's the associated SHORTFICTION record that should be added to the series. The exceptions to this rule are few and have to do with complex situations where the constituent SHORTFICTION record already belongs to another series in a nested series situation. When this happens, a Publication Series is often a better choice.

4. The Notes field of a CHAPTERBOOK record should never be used to record information about the constituent work. For example, "It is the first story about vampires in the English language" should be associated with the SHORTFICTION record for John Polidori's "The Vampyre" rather than with the CHAPTERBOOK record.

5. Synopsis information should be added to the SHORTFICTION record and not the CHAPTERBOOK record.

Does this match everyone's understanding? Ahasuerus 04:19, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * All of these are in agreement with my practice based on my understanding of the standards, with one slight difference (in #1). I won't make the publication of a single ESSAY into a CHAPTERBOOK record. That would be considered a NONFICTION type. The rules state that a CHAPTERBOOK contains "a single work of short fiction", which I interpret to be SHORTFICTION or POEM. Of course, it can additionally contain ESSAY and INTERIORART records, but not another SHORTFICTION or POEM content which would qualify it as a COLLECTION or ANTHOLOGY, even if there are only two of them. Mhhutchins 04:51, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see that I was apparently misremembering the outcome of the original CHAPTERBOOK discussion. I thought that we had adopted the proposal to list books with a single essay as CHAPTERBOOKs rather than as NONFICTION, but apparently not. Not that it happens all that often, but I've seen some very slim single-ESSAY booklets, e.g. an 8-page (?) pamphlet by Vonnegut. Ahasuerus 06:15, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Or ones closer to the spec-fic field: this essay by Algis Budrys and this one, probably the most famous essay ever published as a standalone in the history of horror literature. Mhhutchins 06:34, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Also, you might add that a synopsis should be added to the SHORTFICTION record and not the CHAPTERBOOK record. Mhhutchins 04:51, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Good point, done. Ahasuerus 06:15, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Will you be able to write a script to find the errors? There's already one that looks for missing contents. Mhhutchins 04:51, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, we should be able to create additional scripts once we are all on the same page. Ahasuerus 06:15, 16 September 2013 (UTC)

Entering record numbers for other databases and secondary sources
When sourcing non-ISFDB databases which contain record numbers, it is the ISFDB standard to enter such numbers in the following format

XXXX: nnnnnnnn

For example, a sourced Worldcat/OCLC record should be entered in the Note field using the format "OCLC: 1234567". The same thing goes for Library of Congress control numbers: "LCCN: 1234567". (Linking to the outside database is optional.)

The standard for OCLC entry is here. The standard for LCCN entry is here. Both show that a colon and space should be used as a separator between the source name and the record number.

Although it hasn't been documented, I propose that we use this same standard for all outside sources which number their records. For example: the British Library ("BLIC: xxxx"), R. Reginald's references, Amazon's ID ("ASIN: xxxx"), Bleiler's guides, etc. (See this example.)

This may at first sound trivial, but it's not. It is important that the standard be used, including the colon and space, so that any future software upgrades that include the creation of a new field for such numbers can be implemented with the least effort. Any record using such forms as "OCLC number", "OCLC record", "LOC", or "LCN" will have to be manually updated, instead of a single universal change. I've noticed that some moderators do not use this standard, and so have not passed it on to new editors. We should all be following the documented standard, if only for the LCCN and OCLC, the two most likely candidates for getting their own field. Mhhutchins 16:49, 16 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with this as a standard (although I'm not sure where it's documented). Chavey 20:33, 17 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The documentation for each is linked in my original post. Mhhutchins 02:28, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I haven't looked at the other standard numbers, but my count gives about 2,700 records with "OCLC#", "OCLC Number", or "OCLC Record", and about 15,900 occurrences of "OCLC:", so percentage-wise we're not bad, but that's still a lot of records that break the standard -- and I didn't count those with only a space, like "OCLC 1234567". Chavey 20:33, 17 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I fix them when I see them, but it's a losing battle if moderators continue to accept submissions that don't follow the standard. (I've probably fixed a third of those 15K records.) Mhhutchins 02:30, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Eek, I must have completely forgotten about this standard. Sorry about that, I'll try to do better in the future.


 * As far as Amazon goes, I usually use "Kindle ASIN NNNNN", but perhaps that's redundant: we generally do not record ASINs for anything that is not a Kindle book because ASINs and ISBNs are the same for almost all recently published books. Ahasuerus 01:48, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * When did that start? I've yet to see one Amazon listing for a Kindle ebook which gives an ISBN. They only give the ASIN. Mhhutchins 02:33, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I meant "ASINs and ISBNs are the same for almost all recently published [paper] books." Ahasuerus 02:40, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the clarification. But the ASIN matching a print book's ISBN has been the practice for as long as I remember. It was easier for Amazon to use the already established book ID number (i.e. the ISBN) than to create a new ID number. It was only when they started selling products other than books that they had to come up with the own way of identifying products, thus the Amazon Standard Identification Number. BUT, because the ASIN is a 10-digit number, Amazon has to convert a book's stated ISBN-13 to the ISBN-10 for its ASIN.  Mhhutchins 03:41, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * When I wrote "recently published", I meant since the early 1970s when ISBNs became common :-) They have to use non-ISBN-based ASIN for older books. Ahasuerus 04:06, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, I guess compared to this one, all books in the database are "recently published." :) Mhhutchins 04:38, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I blame it on the fact that I have been reading up on the 16th century lately :) Ahasuerus 05:22, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Patch r2013-112 - new cleanup screen for pre-2005 ISBN-13
Moderators should now have access to a new cleanup script which finds pre-2005 pubs with ISBN-13s. Ahasuerus 00:00, 17 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The script has been updated as per Michael's feedback and should show all matching ISBNs. Ahasuerus 17:50, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Patch r2013-113 -- Moderator cleanup scripts reorganized; CHAPTERBOOKs in series added
The moderator cleanup page has been reorganized to group related scripts together. We now have three CHAPTERBOOKs-related scripts at the bottom of the page. I'll add another one to find incorrect VTs once I figure out how to do it without bringing the server to its knees. Ahasuerus 03:10, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I like the re-organization of the scripts into related subsections. Mhhutchins 03:43, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, the "CHAPTERBOOKs with mismatched VTs" script has been added. I also removed the word "Find" throughout because it was redundant. Ahasuerus 04:47, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, nice change. If I was creating them now I'd probably retitle the entire option as none of them actually DO clean up anything - they just make more (necessary) work. I'd also hoped that most would be temporary scripts that could be retired by now.... oh well, if I could predict what you lot would do with them I'd become a sooth-sayer instead. BLongley 11:05, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Unfortunately, most of them are still valid because of human input errors. The only one that can be retired is "Duplicate Publication Tags", because of software changes that prevent it from happening in the first place. Mhhutchins 15:28, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Ideally, the software should prevent editors from creating invalid records. However, there are so many valid permutations and multi-step workarounds that imposing software-based constraints may cause more editor frustration. Ahasuerus 15:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * "Missing Editor Records", and "Publications with Extra Editor Records" could probably be removed, but it's possible that someone could accidentally change an EDITOR record to another type or change a title record to an EDITOR record, which should be caught by the moderator. They couldn't do either in a publication record creation or edit. So those two, though rarely used, should remain.


 * Concerning "Publications without Titles": frankly I don't know how a publication can be in the db without a title record, but this relatively new script did find about five or so when I first used it, but none since. So those pub records may have been orphaned by some method which can no longer happen. That script may no longer be necessary. Mhhutchins 15:28, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I think Remove Title lets you remove all titles in a pub. Ahasuerus 15:37, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

New cleanup script
A new cleanup script, Binding Codes, has been added. Some offending codes like "audio" may be hard to find using Advanced Search, so we may need to enhance the script to directly link to the pubs for any binding code with less than 20 pubs. Ahasuerus 06:24, 30 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The script has been fine-tuned to ignore "common" (i.e. documented in Help) bindings and to display links to the affected pubs. Ahasuerus 01:41, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. A great improvement. Mhhutchins 02:34, 2 October 2013 (UTC)


 * A reminder to anyone who chooses to use this script: it's not necessarily a "clean-up" script. For the most part, these are legitimate bindings, just uncommon, and there's no need to fix them...unless a Rules & Standards discussion leads to removing such uncommon bindings from the Pub Format field, leaving it blank, and then recording the oddity in the Note field. This is an approach that I would recommend because it would then open the door for a drop-down menu with all of the common bindings. Mhhutchins 02:38, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Patch r2013-122 -- Recent integration/rejection lists improvements
The pages showing recent integrations and rejections have been improved. They should display all submission types, including Import/Export, NewPub, AddPub, and ClonePub correctly from now on.

In addition, New/Add/ClonePub rows have been linked to the body of the approved/rejected submission. It's a bit inconsistent compared to the way other submissions are linked, but there isn't much we can do about it because all other submissions have the record number of the record that they modified embedded in the body of the submission while the New/Add/Clone submissions do not. Ahasuerus 05:14, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

New Submissions page -- cosmetic changes?
What do you think of the following proposed changes to the New Submissions page:

http://www.isfdb.org/wiki/images/d/d9/Sample_Moderator_page.jpg

Note the changes to the header area and the addition of cell borders. Ahasuerus 22:00, 31 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I think that's an improvement. Chavey 04:51, 1 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Done. If everything looks OK, we can apply the change to the Recent Integrations/rejects pages. Ahasuerus 03:42, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

New version of the "Chapterbooks without Contents Titles" script
The "Chapterbooks without Contents Titles" cleanup script has been fixed and should be able to find more wayward pubs now. The new logic checks all CHAPTERBOOK pubs to make sure that they have at least one SHORTFICTION, POEM or SERIAL title. Ahasuerus 18:56, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

New cleanup script - "Pseudonyms with Canonical Titles"
A new cleanup script, "Pseudonyms with Canonical Titles" has been deployed. It takes about 4-5 seconds to run, but I doubt I can make it any faster because it needs to examine hundreds of thousands of records.

The vast majority of the 1000+ author records that the script finds need to be fixed. However, there may be a few like whose collaborations were so unusual that we have circular pseudonyms for them. I guess once we have cleaned up 98% of what we currently have, we can decide what to do with the remaining 1-2%. Ahasuerus 00:24, 19 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Also be aware that some of these are house names and there are titles which have not been varianted to a canonical author because the true author is unknown. Don't arbitrarily variant if you're not sure that the pseudonym isn't used by another author. That would be good advice whether it's a house name or not. Mhhutchins 04:44, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

(unindent) The script has been further tweaked to show how many canonical titles each pseudonym has and to display the total number of affected pseudonyms at the top of the page. Ahasuerus 23:43, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

The Waugh submissions
Dr. Charles G. Waugh submitted a whole bunch of newly edited anthologies, which stood for quite a time waiting in the queue. I accepted them but there remains a lot to do, since the contents were only listed in the synopsises. I will see what I can do for Apemen, Saved by the Belle and Survive, or Die! over the next days (or weeks) but there are five more that need to be taken care of. Since they are all published by Sam Teddy Publishing it shouldn't be too difficult to find them. Stonecreek 14:18, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I created a macro that does most of the work of conversion, so I'll be glad to handle the contents for these. I'm leaving his submission notes as is, since he lists the dates of the story settings, but I'm moving them from the title rec to the pub rec, and converting them to lists. Here's one example. I'll do the rest later today. Chavey 17:43, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Great! Please tell me if there's anything left I can do (for example looking for needed mergings or variantings). Stonecreek 18:49, 21 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I added price, page counts, and ISBN's to most of these books. ("Tooth and Claw" is listed as "Fort]hcoming" by Sam Teddy, with details unavailable.) I cleaned up the extensive, but unformatted, notes of Waugh, and added all of the stories as contents. I changed several title formats to our standards (changing parentheses to ":"). I added Waugh's names to books where he had not listed himself, but the covers showed him as a co-editor. I added publisher's synopses of the books, and added notes on several books that they seem to be largely or completely non-genre, i.e. "Saved by the Belle", "Survive or Die!", "Sailing Into Danger", "Making Tracks: 23 Classic Railroad Stories", and "Pine Tree Pioneers: 20 Tales of Early Mainers". What's left to do is: Variant author names to canonical names where necessary; merge titles where necessary; contemplate whether some of these books should be deleted as non-genre, or have only partial contents to remove non-genre. (That last step is hard, unless someone gets the books. But his one-line plot synopses makes an awful lot of them look like non-genre.) Let me know which books you do varianting and merging on, and I'll try to do those you don't get to. Chavey 16:43, 23 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Are you certain that the contents of this anthology are eligible for the db? Same concern about this one and this one. Mhhutchins 15:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Re: Survive or Die! I entered the contents for this one and could merge nearly all of the titles with already existing ones, with three exceptions, two of which I mentioned in the publication notes, and the third (The Open Boat • (1897) • shortfiction by Stephen Crane) seems to be by an author who seems to be above the threshold. The listing of the contents in the title notes seems a bit superfluous now, doesn't it? Stonecreek 17:20, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * That is not one of the anthologies I linked to. About the Stephen Crane story: even if he is "above the threshold" (which I would personally dispute, no one would remotely think of Stephen Crane as an author of chiefly speculative fiction), this piece is non-genre short fiction. The NONGENRE type can only handle novels, and is unable to work with non-genre works of short fiction. It has been an established standard (whether it's documented I can't say) that we do not enter the contents of non-genre anthologies. The only other option is to list the non-genre works in the publication's Note field. And yes, it is superfluous to enter the contents (non-genre or not) in the Note field of the publication's title record. Mhhutchins 18:09, 25 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry about Crane, I must have thought that a low author identity number would indicate a foundational impact for a given author. I'll remove the title (and also the superfluous notes). Stonecreek 08:52, 26 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I also expressed concern that near the top of this thread that an awful lot of these stories looked non-genre. I left the content listings in the notes field because, generally, they included information that didn't go into the contents -- e.g. the location of the original publication of these stories. In all honesty, I was too lazy to edit all those short-story title recs and move the "first publication" notes to their individual short story title recs. Especially if someone else was going to delete the contents as non-genre. Chavey 06:43, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Date change for Orbit 8 and contents?
See the notes in this pub. I'm inclined to change the date from October to December. Does anyone have strong feelings about the date, one way or the other? Thanks. --MartyD 11:47, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * As you answered to the submitter, IMHO "physical" (on book) date trumps all. Hauck 13:59, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with Hauck that the date of the ISFDB record should reflect the stated date unless there's a reliable secondary source providing overwhelming evidence that the statement is drastically incorrect (e.g., publishers have been known to give the wrong year.) A couple of months in this case could just mean that copies may have appeared before the stated publication date, a pretty common practice in those days. Retain the note about Contento's "contention". But change the publication date of the book and its contents to conform with the ISFDB standard. Your note to the primary verifier sufficiently explained the various exceptions to this standard. Mhhutchins 16:53, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Fixer 2013-12
I have cleaned up high priority ISBNs for 2013 and 2014-01 as much as I could, so now I am going back to software development, health permitting. In the meantime, I will be asking Fixer to submit batches of relatively high priority ISBNs from 2012 as well as some medium priority ISBN from 2013. I expect each batch to contain about 20 ISBNs, although the first one has turned out to be a bit bigger than expected. Ahasuerus 05:35, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * P.S. One more thing. Over the last few weeks I have reconciled Fixer's database with Amazon's "authorities" data. Using our terminology, an "authority record" is any record other than a publication record, so our Title and Author records are authority records as far as Amazon is concerned. The nice thing about this is that you can ask Amazon's authority database questions like "What other ISBNs are related to this ISBN?" It's not comprehensive, but it does have a lot of useful information, so now Fixer can create submissions for additional ISBNs. Ahasuerus 06:41, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * When did CreateSpace and ReadHowYouWant get to be high priority ISBNs, or even medium priority? Mhhutchins 06:20, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Well over 90% of what CreateSpace publishes is low priority and ends up relegated to Fixer's "queue number 3" where ISBNs go to die -- or at least languish in obscurity.


 * However, CreateSpace is also used by bona fide SF writers. For example, this ReAnimus Press edition of 's The Men in the Jungle was published via CreateSpace and that's how it appears in Amazon's database.


 * ReadHowYouwant specializes in large print reprints, including books by the likes of L. Ron Hubbard, Terry Bisson and Margaret Atwood. They are not terribly active, e.g. see this list of what they published in 2013. Ahasuerus 06:41, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Fantastic Fiction images
I have a moderator question. I put a hold on a submission by Gerryjm for "Gods for Tomorrow". He submitted a PubUpdate that added a picture of the book that he got from Fantastic Fiction. I know we have implicit permission to use their images. But normally we link to them, which then gives them credit for the image. In this case, the editor downloaded the image from them, uploaded it to us, and submitted that image. Is that kosher? The relevant Help Page seems quiet on this point. Chavey 04:33, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I see no problem with this practice. Bluesman has uploaded thousands of cover images from various sources over the years. I've even done it a number of times myself. I know some editors have downloaded images from Amazon and uploaded them to our server in order to avoid any future problems with changes in Amazon's URL or in the image itself. (I personally feel the latter is overkill, but there is no policy against the practice.) This doesn't violate any copyright laws that I'm aware of, as long as the uploader is using the correct upload procedure and a fair-use license is attached to the file. One last thing, there's no need to credit the source in the pub record unless we are actually drawing bandwidth from their server to display the file. And that's only a courtesy, as long as they are aware that we're deep-linking to their files. Mhhutchins 07:17, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Having said that, whenever I see a pub record with an image linked to Fantastic Fiction, I try to find another source for the cover. Their servers are very slow and their images for the most part aren't worth the trouble. Mhhutchins 07:19, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I just wanted to make sure. Chavey 16:02, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with all of the above with one caveat. Sometimes sites make changes to cover scans and claim "derivative work copyright". In most cases we are not interested in their altered images since they are not exact representations of the cover art. However, there are cases when their "alterations" amount to cleaning up images to remove creases and other post-production artifacts. Occasionally site owner(s) claim that these changes entitle their versions of images to copyright protection due to the amount of time they have invested. I am not sure whether their interpretation of the law has been/will be upheld by the courts, but I would steer clear to avoid potential problems. Thankfully, these cases are rare. Ahasuerus 17:24, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * That's akin to renovating a neighbor's kitchen and then claiming it as your own. Mhhutchins 17:33, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Hm, I sense a business opportunity! :-) Ahasuerus 17:55, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I've cleaned up thousands of images and uploaded them to this server. So I hereby declare that I shall retain no claim to these images and release them to any person without them having to credit my work. :) Mhhutchins 17:33, 18 December 2013 (UTC)


 * This seems suspiciously like a general claim that we can download, then upload, a cover photo from any site that doesn't claim derivative copyright, and post it on our site. That seems to violate my understanding of the copyright law. Chavey 18:00, 19 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Displaying a copyrighted image of the subject of an accompanying text is not a violation of copyright laws. It aids the user in knowing what the referenced object looks like. Imagine newspapers, magazines, online websites, etc. having to get permission from copyright holders to display an image of books, movies, CDs, DVDs, etc which are being reviewed or discussed. It's called fair use and is very much legal. We cover ourselves legally by attaching the fair use license to every image uploaded to our server. Mhhutchins 19:11, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Submissions by Zygilix
Will the moderators who accepted submissions from this new editor please recheck the pub records? I noticed that he used a discounted price in several of his submissions. He'll also need to be informed about disambiguating generic titles, softcover binding formats, and the capitalization rules. One last thing: he should be asked to respond to messages left on his talk page instead of the page of the poster. (He's done that several times.) I'd do all this myself, but I'm taking a break from moderating new editors. It's really taken a toll on me both mentally and emotionally, and it's got to the point where I'm ready to give it all up. (I'm asking that no one other than an ISFDB moderator respond to this message. Thanks.) Mhhutchins 21:27, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Since no moderator responded to this message, I've gone ahead and made the corrections and left a message on his talk page. Hopefully, he won't take it too badly. Guess I'll have to go on playing the bad cop on the beat. Mhhutchins 23:19, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

"Authors with invalid Last Names" changed
One of the moderators-only cleanup scripts, "Authors with invalid Last Names", has been changed to look for punctuation characters, which should greatly reduce the number of false positives. Ahasuerus 22:54, 23 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks. As probably the only person who works on the clean-up scripts, I find that change to be very helpful, especially since most of them were not really "invalid" but just non-English names using a non-English alphabet. Thanks again. Mhhutchins 23:17, 23 December 2013 (UTC)


 * You are welcome! Our improved support for non-English works has had some unexpected side effects. We are still discovering various obscure areas of the ISFDB software that don't know how to handle Unicode characters. Ahasuerus 01:39, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

Patch r2013-201 - Edit Title submissions fixed
Edit Title has been fixed to submit titles whose authors and/or series contained apostrophes correctly. In the past, the author's/series' name always appeared as changed on the moderator approval page. Ahasuerus 05:14, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Adding a cover credit
I'd like to add the cover credit to, as he isn't currently around, Dragoondelight's verified .From the signature and style I believe this Jerome Podwil. He notes a guess as to the artist. If there is no objection I will add the credit and note my reasoning.Don Erikson 05:38, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, please, go ahead. I don't expect a wild guess from you. Stonecreek 06:21, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

IMPOSSIBLE TO ENTER NEW PUBLICATIONS!!
I tried to enter a new novel as well as a new magazine: both actions returned Title ID must be a valid integer number after submitting. Stonecreek 07:03, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * This is also happening to me too. --Chris J 08:14, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Same here. Hauck 08:52, 27 December 2013 (UTC)
 * And here, when entering a new fanzine. PeteYoung 13:10, 27 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Sorry, must be a new bug introduced in a recent patch. Looking into it now... Ahasuerus 15:23, 27 December 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, I think I got it -- please give it a try. Sorry about the aggravation! Ahasuerus 15:34, 27 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for fixing this bug so fast! Stonecreek 18:04, 27 December 2013 (UTC)


 * The least I could do considering that it was I who broke it in the first place :)


 * There are a lot of bugs (or at least buggy band-aids) in the code that balance each other out, although imperfectly. As I continue replacing them with more solid code, I need to make sure that all of the affected areas are upgraded at the same time, which can be tricky. Ahasuerus 19:38, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

New Cleanup script - sort of
At one point Al created a "Most Queries Titles" script, which can create lists of "most queried novels", "most queried short fiction", etc. However, he never made the script available via the ISFDB interface and it's been sitting idle all these years. One of its incarnations, "Most Queries Titles without a Wikipedia Link", looks like it may be useful, so I have added it to the Cleanup Scripts page. Ahasuerus 02:08, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Amazing Stories Annual, Vol. 1, facsimile
Well, I did it again. I was putting in the correct page numbers and the illustrators correct names, as listed in this publication when I accidently hit the enter button, and instead of re-doing it all, if accepted I will go back and finish what I started, and correct other content errors. MLB 20:15, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

There is also an illustration by "Gambee", I suspect that this may be artist Martin H. Gambee, but I can't find something accredited to him with his signiture to compare the artwork here to. MLB 20:36, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

New warning for disambiguated authors
The New Pub approval page has been changed to display a warning when a disambiguated author has been submitted. For example, submitting a new pub for will cause this warning to be displayed because we also have "Robin Hardy (III)", "Robin Hardy (UK)" and "Robin Hardy (US)" on file. Ahasuerus 05:46, 10 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Fantastic. Thanks! Mhhutchins 07:06, 10 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, it's better than nothing :) Ideally we'd support multiple authors with the same name the way Goodreads does it. However, it would be a time-consuming project, so a warning will have to do for now. Ahasuerus 08:57, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

"Pre-2005 pubs with ISBN-13s" cleanup script enhanced
The cleanup script previously known as "Pre-2005 pubs with ISBN-13s" has been enhanced and renamed. It's now called "Pre-2005 pubs with ISBN-13s and post-2007 pubs with ISBN-10s" and functions as its new name implies, all at no extra cost!

The bad news is that we have 2,666 questionable ISBN-10s from 2008-2013. The good news is that 2013 and, to a lesser extent, 2012, 2011 and 2010 are reasonably clean, so we are getting better at it. Ahasuerus 07:25, 17 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the enhancement. I think most of those 2007-2009 records with the wrong ISBN were from Dissembler, which entered only the ISBN-10, even if the ISBN-13 was given in its source. So even when editors were primary-verifying those Dissembler-generated records, they failed to change the ISBN. When I brought this situation to your attention you "fixed" Fixer, and that's why the last few years are better than the years when Dissembler was harvesting records. Thanks again. Mhhutchins 17:05, 17 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Sure thing! The other script that you requested may take a bit longer, but I'll see what I can do later tonight. Ahasuerus 21:04, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Images Which We Don't Have Permission to Link to
A new cleanup script, "Images Which We Don't Have Permission to Link to", has been deployed. Now that I am looking at the results, perhaps another column with the pub's title wouldn't hurt... Ahasuerus 01:16, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Done. Also changed the sorting logic so that all URLs from the same site would appear together. Ahasuerus 01:30, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * The image files on brin1.com were linked to the records by an inactive editor from his own website. I assume he granted permission since he linked them himself. Should this website be listed among the allowable sites? Mhhutchins 02:13, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, it would seem logical, but I am a bit concerned about the durability of the site. If you go to brin1.com, the site will ask you (sic!) to set it up, which makes me think that it may go away on 2014-06-29 when its registration expires (even if no one hacks it in the meantime.)


 * Ideally we would copy all images to our Wiki, but, unfortunately, it would involve a non-trivial amount of work. Ahasuerus 05:25, 18 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Of the several dozen I've worked on since the script was posted, almost all of them had images on Amazon (to which I linked the records). I'll remove the links to brin1.com eventually, and either replace them with Amazon links or upload a copy of the image file to our server. Mhhutchins 06:10, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Author merges
I have been working on some bugs associated with author merges lately and I see a lot of possible problems with running "Titles only" and "Publications only" merges, so I'd like to disallow them. Does anyone find this functionality useful or would be it be OK to limit author merges to just "Both titles and publications" merges? Ahasuerus 01:39, 19 January 2014 (UTC)


 * In the relatively few cases in which I've merged authors, I've never needed to do separate merges of titles or publications. I've always chosen to do both with a single merge. If an editor is certain that the authors are the same, then there's no need to do separate merges. If the editor isn't sure, he should first start by correcting/merging the titles which he is sure are the same. Mhhutchins 03:34, 19 January 2014 (UTC)


 * That was pretty much my take on it as well, but I wasn't sure if there were any other ways in which moderators were using this functionality. Of course, once I slept on it (the ability to take naps at will is the best thing about retirement! :-) I realized that I could simply query the submission table and see how often it has been done.


 * It turns out that there have been only 3 "Pubs Only" author merge submissions, 2 of them during the original testing in 2006 and one by a then-new editor who didn't realize that merging authors with their pseudonyms would be a Really Bad Idea (tm) (the submission was rejected). Similarly, there were 5 "Titles Only" author merge submissions in 2006-2007, two of them during testing and three by newly minted moderators who haven't tried it since.


 * Since it hasn't been used in almost 8 years and since it can cause all kinds of issues, including the creation of two identically named authors, I'll go ahead and disable it. Thanks! Ahasuerus 04:48, 19 January 2014 (UTC)


 * That seems to be the best move. I just checked to see how many author merges I've done in 7 years and it's 227. I had not realized I'd done it that often, but compared to 252,000 submissions it is relatively few. Mhhutchins 05:05, 19 January 2014 (UTC)


 * OK, I think I got it fixed. In addition, merging authors should no longer result in loss of e-mail addresses or Web pages. Ahasuerus 22:54, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Macmillan
I accepted (1906) modifications that included specifying Macmillan as the publisher. I'm wondering if it should be Macmillan UK (it seems to have been published by Macmillan in London), but we don't have anything there prior to 1966, and it looks a little to me like the separation of Macmillan isn't as complete as the notes make it sound. Would someone familiar with that separation take a look and change this pub's credit, if appropriate? Thanks. --MartyD 12:29, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * It should probably be Macmillan and Co.. The notes indicate that it is the British publisher of that time period and that seems to match the book as listed in Worldcat.  There also appears to have been a Macmillan of Canada edition in 1906 and a scan of that edition can be found in The Internet Archive. --Ron ~ RtraceTalk 14:17, 19 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, missed that. Thanks!  --MartyD 16:29, 19 January 2014 (UTC)


 * That is a side project that I've been working off and on for the past few years. It's not as simple as it first seemed, because often a title would be published in both the US and the UK, and since there was only one record for it I was unable to determine which edition it referred to. Ideally there would be two records, but without more substantial data, I just left it as is. I'll still come back to it from time to time in order to clear up the more obvious cases, but there will be some that will be just "Macmillan" as long as editors continue using it for both publishers instead of designating the actual credit. Thanks. Mhhutchins 19:18, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Science Fiction Film and Television academic journal
I'm holding a submission which wants to add this periodical to the database. (It mistakenly believes it can enter the title without adding individual issues of the journal.) Even though it is published by the same university press as Extrapolation, an academic journal devoted to SF literature, I'm uncertain whether Science Fiction Film and Television should be part of the database. It would open the floodgate to add any number of magazines (and fanzines) devoted exclusively to SF film and television, such as Cinefex, Starlog, Cinefantastique, SFX, Famous Monsters of Filmland, etc., even though its standards are far more higher than those. How do other moderators feel about its inclusion? Mhhutchins 23:21, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

FYI: here is the table of contents of the latest issue. Mhhutchins 23:24, 21 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Hm, I am not 100% sure, but I think that although we list "books about SF in movies/TV" and "genre magazines", the intersection between the two is a step too far for us. Ahasuerus 01:28, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Although the issue of sf movie magazines has been discussed before (and dismissed as not eligible), I can't find any discussion about sf film-related books. I know there's a plethora of them in the database, mostly due to the policy of including titles which are reviewed in sf magazines. There's nothing in the policy about including such books otherwise. Mhhutchins 01:50, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I seem to recall that the last time this question came up (a bit less than a year ago?), Bill Longley said "I think this train has left the station" and there were no other comments, which I took for (possibly reluctant) agreement. Unfortunately, I can't find the discussion :( Ahasuerus 04:05, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * You may be remembering this discussion from last year when a question arose about allowing a science magazine (Future Life) which included sf-related essays but not fiction. I believe there was also another discussion when an editor wanted to index an issue of Cinefantastique which included no fiction but an article about the filming of a sf work. Mhhutchins 06:29, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Hm, I think it was a different sub-discussion, one specifically about non-fiction books about Dr. Who, Star Trek, etc. Oh well, one way or another it looks like the consensus is against the inclusion of media magazines. Ahasuerus 01:49, 23 January 2014 (UTC)


 * From the description entered in the submission, it seems to me more like it would fall into the non-genre/"general interest" magazine category. If there happened to be articles talking about "neglected texts" and "canonical texts", we would want to record them, while other articles probably not.  --MartyD 02:01, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Yet, the rules are clear that only the fiction in non-genre magazines is eligible for the database. A non-genre magazine without fiction would thus be ineligible, regardless of whether the subject of the text is literary and not media-related. Disregarding the rules about "fiction only" could lead to an even greater misinterpretation allowing non-spec-fic periodicals into the database, even if they just include work that is only slightly sf-related. Mhhutchins 03:34, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd speak against an inclusion; I think that we would gradually end up with all kinds of media magazines, that may occasionally discuss how a certain fiction was adapted into film or whatever. Stonecreek 07:43, 22 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Not a moderator, but given the table of contents I would say the journal (at the very least, this particular issue) is not appropriate for submission. That being said, I did submit an issue of SFX that did not contain any fiction, but did contain an interview with an author and numerous book reviews. I included the note "Only speculative fiction content listed; most articles pertain to television or film". Albinoflea 04:49, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Under the current rules, that record wouldn't be eligible for inclusion. The note that "only speculative fiction content listed" is false, when no speculative fiction is present in the record. I'm not going to delete it, but I hope no one else uses that record to add other movie magazines. That's the whole point of my argument against allowing such records into the db. Mhhutchins 05:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I would vote for handling it as a non-genre magazine. Chavey 10:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Then that rule needs to be made more explicit as I don't see how we would expect newer/infrequent users to pick it up. ISFDB:Policy (the primary place we point people) doesn't mention of it (and seems to say the opposite via Rules of Acquisition #3 and #6). Help:Entering non-genre magazines does have the statement "However, the ISFDB is not a general-fiction index and the non-speculative-fiction contents of such a magazine should not be entered.", but that statement is not the clearest ("not a general-fiction index" makes it sound like it's focused on the non-genre fiction; "non-speculative-fiction contents" could be easily misinterpreted as "non-speculative-fiction related contents" as any where else we talk about SF in terms of inclusion, we lump in SF-related non-fiction). -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:50, 25 January 2014 (UTC)


 * You're right. It should say "the nonfiction content of such a magazine should not be entered, regardless of its relation to speculative fiction." I'll start a discussion on the Rules page to alter that instruction, even though it has been discussed ad nauseum in earlier posts. Thanks. Mhhutchins 17:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd also exclude this magazine, but then I'm also in favor of purging publications like this one. We have a quite a few film related books due to reviews (which should be included per policy), but that seems to have led to people adding additional non-reviewed ones like this example. -- JLaTondre (talk) 13:50, 25 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Exactly! That's a perfect example of the slippery slope and a direction I'm trying to fight against. That's why there's also a proliferation of science books (and pseudo-science books), even if they're not being reviewed. I had originally pushed that such reviewed books be entered as ESSAYs and not REVIEWs, which "required" (not really) the creation of a publication record just in order to link them or to avoid stray authors in the database (i.e. authors who have works reviewed but not publication records.) It's too late to close that door now that the elephant's trunk is inside. Mhhutchins 17:10, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Recent Rejects improvements
As of patch r2014-51, the list of "Recent Rejects" should take much less time to load. Ahasuerus 01:12, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Duplicate titles cleanup
A new cleanup script, "Publications with Duplicate Titles", has been added to the menagerie. Please note that it takes 25 seconds to run and slows everyone else down, so it would be best if those who plan to work on the cleanup could run it once and then use the generated list for as long as feasible.

Since the bug in Import/Export which allowed these duplicate titles to be added was fixed earlier today, I expect that once the currently outstanding issues have been fixed, we can disable this script to avoid overloading the server. Ahasuerus 04:34, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

short fiction that appeared ...
What do we do to get short fiction for an author on the list of their fiction even if we don't know page number info, other content, or HAVE the item it appeared in?

For example (and probably the only one I'd do anything to), Nina Kiriki Hoffman's first two pieces of published fiction, "The Magic Piano" and "Cross My Heart" were published in a small-press 'zine called Concept in 1975 and 1977, respectively. They've never been re-printed... shouldn't they be here somehow?

Also by her were "Social Worker" which appeared in Bill Munster's Footsteps in 1986 -- and I can't find my copy of that 'zine.

Or, her "Laundry" which was in Deathrealm #5 in Spring of 1988 (and again it seems to have walked away during a move since then).

So, can anyone out there tell me how I should / can handle these? Thanks Susan O&#39;Fearna 23:09, 27 January 2014 (UTC)


 * You can create stub records for the publications which are totally spec-fic, with just a minimum of data: pub title, pub author (or editor), and pub date. Or you can create a false publication record giving and enter all of these stories as contents of that false publication. Once the submission is accepted, you can delete the publication record (and its title record), and the content title records for the stories will remain in the db. Then you can go back and add the original publication data in each of the title record's Note fields. I recommend the latter approach. Mhhutchins 01:22, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * How do you create stub records? Susan O&#39;Fearna 17:30, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * A "stub record" is any record created with less than desired information from secondary sources. Just the same as creating any other publication record, click on the appropriate "Add New Data" link on the front page of the db. Mhhutchins 17:41, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I have created a record for Deathrealm #5 Spring 1988. Mhhutchins 17:59, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I have created a record for Footsteps #7 November 1986. Mhhutchins 18:31, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I have created publess title records for The Magic Piano and Cross My Heart. Mhhutchins 18:41, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * So, I can create a magazine/anthology record even if I don't have any more info than that one story appeared in it?Susan O&#39;Fearna 19:52, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * As I said above: to create a publication record, you must at minimum complete these three fields: title, author (or editor), and date. Mhhutchins 20:23, 28 January 2014 (UTC)


 * To finish the Nina Kiriki Hoffman update, could some kind soul who knows how to, create a short-story record for "Party in My Pants", which appeared online at the Whidbey Island Student Choice Award in 2009 (I can't find it there anymore, but I saved the file...) Susan O&#39;Fearna 02:43, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

Ebook follies
As you know, I have spent the last few days teaching Fixer how to handle ebooks. It looks like 95% of the technical challenges have been overcome, but there are some data quality and consistency issues that I'd like to mention here.

It turns out that in some cases publishers use a different form of their names when creating ebook records, e.g. "ChiZine" instead of "ChiZine Publications". There are also times when the page count is set to "1", which is not particularly helpful. It doesn't happen very often, but please be on the lookout for these and other anomalies when approving ebook submissions.

Also, I am a bit worried about the volume. It would appear that a number of houses are currently in the process of republishing their backlists as ebooks, including novellas, short stories, anthologies and so on. That's a lot of work for us, although I am not sure just how many pubs we are looking at yet. I expect that I'll get a better feel for it in the next week or two as some of my mini-projects evolve. Ahasuerus 05:44, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

New cleanup script -- Publications with Suspect Images
A new cleanup script, "Publications with Suspect Images", has been installed. As you would expect, it generates a list of publications whose cover URLs appear to be broken. Unfortunately, it's not always 100% accurate because some sites do clever things with their images, but it should be reasonably close. Once a URL has been corrected (or removed or confirmed as valid), please click on the "Click to Resolve" link in the same row and the pub will be removed from the "suspect" list.

In the meantime, I will try to improve my tool's accuracy to reduce the number of false positives. Once the current list has been cleaned up -- which I am sure will take a fair amount of time given its size -- I will start running the tool every couple of months to catch any new offenders. Ahasuerus 05:56, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

P.S. Now that the "Publications with Duplicate Titles" script no longer reports any duplicates, it has been disabled to avoid performance problems. Many thanks to Michael and others who worked on it! Ahasuerus 05:56, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Moderation request
Hi -- would someone mind approving (or rejecting, if there are problems) the Solar Pons edits I made earlier today? I have to pack them up to ship them to a buyer tonight, and would like to give the resulting records a once over with the books in front of me so I can verify. Thanks. Mike Christie (talk) 22:48, 2 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Done! Ahasuerus 00:36, 3 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Mike Christie (talk) 00:39, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

UK price of Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine
It looks like User:Zflip hasn't found his Talk page yet. Since I am not sure if and when he may respond to my message, I'll re-post my question here where more UK prices-savvy moderators may be able to comment.

Zflip has added a 1970 Macdonald edition of Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine. The record looks OK, but "90p/18s" in the price field seems odd. I assume that it stands for 18/90, but there were only 12 pence per shilling pre-decimilization, so 90 pence seems unlikely. Or was there some obscure twist to it that I am not familiar with? Ahasuerus 05:06, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I don't have the book but it's almost certainly 90 new pence, and 18 old shillings, which would be the same price -- a pound is 100 pence and used to be 20 shillings. Mike Christie (talk) 11:47, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Mike! I'll make the change and leave a note on the editor's Talk page. Ahasuerus 16:54, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Why not email the user and let them know that there are messages on their talk page which need responses? When I do that I get a response at least half the time. Mhhutchins 23:36, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Good point, I will give it a shot tomorrow. Thanks! Ahasuerus 06:04, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Held Gandalf submissions
Would anyone care to suggest the best course of action for those four submissions from Gandalf that I've had on hold for 6+ weeks now? I'm thinking perhaps none is "in" anyway. I don't mind being the bad guy. I'm also happy to take them off hold and let someone else handle them. Thanks. --MartyD 11:50, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * When this happens, I usually copy the submissions to the editor's Talk page before rejecting them. That way if and when the editor finds his Talk page, he won't feel like his work has been lost. Ahasuerus 14:25, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * You can email the editor using the wiki mail system. Also, "Gandalf" is very likely . There's an email link on his author summary page. Mhhutchins 23:39, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

"Bad Ellipses" cleanup
Two more cleanup scripts have been added: "Titles with Bad Ellipses" and "Publications with Bad Ellipses". There are only 100+ of the latter, but the former will take some time to clean up because there are 3,000+ (or roughly 40%) bad records. Perhaps we should use this as an opportunity to discuss ellipsis use to make sure that we are all on the same page going forward. Ahasuerus 06:03, 11 February 2014 (UTC)


 * After reviewing the list, I am thinking that it may be better to convert all "..."s to ". . ."s programmatically. Going forward, we may want to change the software to do this conversion automatically at data entry time just like multiple spaces are automatically replaced with a single space. I will start a discussion on the Community Portal. Ahasuerus 12:56, 11 February 2014 (UTC)


 * If it can be done automatically, I don't see the point of discussion. It's an established standard...unless you want to discuss changing the standard. As far as I'm concerned, if a standard can be enforced programmatically, I say go for it. Especially since practically no one other than me actually works on the clean-up scripts. Mhhutchins 16:27, 11 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I am not sure the standard is clear on the issue of "ellipsis next to other punctuation marks", so I have started a discussion on the Rules page. Ahasuerus 16:31, 11 February 2014 (UTC)


 * But then the discussion turned in another direction, as such discussions seem to always do. Punctuation before and after the ellipsis hasn't even been part of the discussion. Mhhutchins 19:57, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Unmerge / Moderator Screen interpretation
Could (and would) someone explain how to interpret this screenshot? I think it means the editor when to that title and did Unmerge Titles and checked both boxes, but where the title is in the onmibus, I don't understand what the action would do. Thanks. --MartyD 02:11, 15 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I think it will remove both publications from the title record, and each will then have their own separate title record. Have you asked the submitter about his intention for the submission? Mhhutchins 02:28, 15 February 2014 (UTC)


 * No, I hadn't. Since I didn't understand what accepting the submission would do, I didn't know what my options were.  I ended up doing a local experiment, and I find accepting it would have done a bad thing: It would have made two collection title records, one for the unmerged collection (creating extra work, since now that would have to be re-merged with the original collection title), and another for the unmerged omnibus, making the omnibus publication's title record be a collection instead of omnibus.  Somewhat moot, as the submission is gone.  --MartyD 12:39, 15 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I've treated the problem, probably not very efficiently. I've made the unmerge, changed type, merged two identical titles with the same pub (bad idea !), recreated the correct omnibus. An interesting experiment in fixing. Hauck 13:05, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

The Forever Man
Hi. I would like to add a cover art credit to for Mark Slowaski (listed on the back cover). The sole primary verifier has a note on his talk page to ask here. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AliHarlow (talk • contribs).
 * As you have a copy and have primary verified it as well, go ahead and make the change. -- JLaTondre (talk) 17:59, 15 February 2014 (UTC)

Fixer and e-books
As mentioned earlier this month, I have been teaching Fixer how to handle ebooks and trying to get a better idea of how many additional ISBNs we are looking at. Here is what I have found so far.

At this point Fixer knows of 643,421 "allegedly SF" ebooks. Of that number, 131,869 have been examined since January and I expect that I will finish the process in the next few months. Of the 131,869 examined ebooks, 31,120 had ISBNs. They can be further broken down as follows:


 * 8,312 ISBNs were automatically rejected or suspended by Fixer's logic
 * 9,393 ISBNs had identifiable prices
 * 13,355 ISBNs are still without a price, although I plan to enhance Fixer's logic to check other sources in the near future

In other words, at the moment we have 9,393 additional ISBNs that are ready to be processed. I plan to start submitting them shortly, but please keep in mind that this is terra incognita in some ways and there will likely be a learning curve. For example, consider the case of, who self-published a post-apocalyptic series in 2012 and quickly became successful. The series was picked up by Orbit in 2013 and was e-published in January 2014 with a paperback edition scheduled for the middle of the year. Nothing earth-shaking, but the pattern is a little different compared to what we are used to. Ahasuerus 17:38, 18 February 2014 (UTC)


 * A rare case, but I suppose anything can happen. I'd rather work backward in these cases, rather than opening the door for all self-published ebooks. Let's start with ebooks with ISBNs from real publishers by authors already in the database. Even that relatively small segment of held submissions should keep us busy for years to come. And if by some miracle we get 1000 new editors from which we can draw 100 new moderators, then release the floodgates. Till then... Mhhutchins 18:48, 18 February 2014 (UTC)


 * That's actually pretty close to the way Fixer works right now. Everything published by established publishers is automatically assigned to "queue 1", which is how Fixer found the other day.


 * Books "by authors already in the database" (but not "from established publishers"), on the other hand, are a mixed bag. On the one hand, a lot of well-known authors have taken advantage of the ebook revolution to make their older (and sometimes even newer) books available, e.g. On My Way to Paradise or Amityville Now: The Jones Journal. On the other hand, a huge number of public domain texts (from Dracula to John Carter) have been published via CreateSpace and similar outlets, which would overwhelm us if we tried to catalog all of them. And, of course, ISFDB already covers books by some self-published authors, so the fact that we have one or more books by Joe Q. Public listed is no guarantee that he is not self-published. Just earlier today I added a new feature to Fixer so that he would show me not only how many titles by a given author ISFDB already has, but also a list of publishers associated with the author. So far I have found it very useful when deciding whether an ISBN should be added to Queue 1 or to Queue 2. Ahasuerus 00:27, 19 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, a reminder that not everything that says "CreateSpace" is actually published by CreateSpace. For example, Stamps, Vamps & Tramps, which Fixer submitted the other day and which I processed earlier today, was published by Evil Girlfriend Media, a small SF press, and contains stories by a number of established authors like and. Ahasuerus 21:39, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Russian submission
See this submission. What do we want to do with Russian publishers and Russian publication series and Cyrillic? We already have Detskaya Literatura (note a transliteration different from the submitter's) and Biblioteka priklyucheniy i nauchnoy fantastiki pub series. Do we want to change those to include the original Cyrillic and then a parenthetical Latin transliteration, just go with the transliterations and punt Cyrillic (or perhaps just go with Cyrillic and punt transliteration, although that would be a searching nightmare, so I'm not really suggesting it)? Thanks. --MartyD 11:07, 20 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd say we best stay with what we have for publishers; else, the next logical step would be to change the canonical names for far too many authors. Stonecreek 11:29, 20 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Welcome to my nightmare! Make yourselves comfortable :-)


 * Our default approach is to enter everything exactly as it appears in the publication, which in this case would mean using Cyrillic (or Arabic, Sanskrit, Georgian, etc). However, as Marty pointed out above, it would make it impossible to search for non-Latin records unless you happened to be familiar with the alphabet in question.


 * The long term solution will be to add a new field, "Transliterated/Romanized name/title", to all of our records, including authors, titles, publications, series, publication series and publishers. Ideally, these fields will be automatically populated at record creation time based on standard transliteration charts, but at the very least we will need the ability to enter/edit transliterated values manually. We could then display the original value and make the transliterated version available via mouseover/hover box. At the rate we are going, I expect to have this FR implemented in the next 6-12 months.


 * For now, I would recommend using the original (in this case Cyrillic) value in all fields. The only exception is the author field, which, as Christian said, will be a time-consuming project. Ahasuerus 18:35, 20 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Concerning this matter, wouldn't there be a way to make Детская Литература and Библиотека приключений и научной фантастики variants of Detskaya Literatura (although Dietskaia would be a better transcription in my opinion) and Biblioteka priklyucheniy i nauchnoy fantastiki ? Because Быстрые сны is now separated from the rest of the series (which I hadn't noticed at first). Linguist 13:29, 21 February 2014 (UTC).


 * I am afraid the software doesn't support variants for publishers and/or publication series at this time.


 * As far as transliterations go, there are many different crosswalk tables. Once the proposed "transliterated name/title" field has been added, we'll have to decide which one(s) we want to use. Ahasuerus 17:09, 21 February 2014 (UTC)

Cold Print
Hello. I have followed Unapersson's suggestion to post inquiries here, concerning he is the sole verifier of. I own the 1987 Grafton edition, which is priced £6.99 and not £2.95 as it appears on the record. I suppose this is a mistake, but could it be an unspecified later edition ? All the other data tallies with the record. Linguist 12:58, 21 February 2014 (UTC).


 * Is it possible that you own the trade paperback that is not yet in the database? The record Unapersson verified is for the mass market paperback. --Willem H. 16:16, 21 February 2014 (UTC)
 * My copy is a normal paperback, not a trade paperback; but indeed, it is the same cover. Linguist 17:08, 21 February 2014 (UTC).


 * Strange. The price (£6.99) is too high for a 1987 regular paperback. I checked Locus #320 (september 1987), which has the price at £2.95. If the higher price is not printed on a sticker, it can only be a much later reprint. Even the 1993 Headline edition was cheaper. --Willem H. 19:19, 21 February 2014 (UTC)


 * The Australian price is $14,99, which is also high. There is absolutely no other indication of reprint or anything, but indeed it has to be one. I'll just add a new pub, date unknown. Thanks. Linguist 20:11, 21 February 2014 (UTC).

Two accounts
I have been working off two computers and have unfortunately created two accounts. Can you merge Tweiss and Taweiss into the same account under the user name Taweiss? I've done most of my work with that account, and I'd like to be able to keep track of my edits with a singe account. Sorry for the confusion. I do have a pending edit under Tweiss which took a fair amount of time to complete. I'm hoping that the edits I've done with that account can be preserved. TAWeiss 01:13, 27 February 2014 (UTC)


 * We use the MediaWiki software for account management and, AFAIK, there is no easy way to merge accounts in our version of the software. There is an extension that lets you do that, but first we would have to upgrade PHP to 5.3 and MediaWiki to 1.13, and that would be a big project in itself. Sorry :-(


 * I would recommend picking one account and using it going forward. The other account can remain dormant indefinitely; there is no harm in that. Also, keep in mind that once an edit has been accepted, the change won't be undone no matter what happens to the account that initiated it. Ahasuerus 01:35, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

The Mammoth Book of Zombies
Hello. This is to say that I will add interior art credits and a scan of the cover to Unapersson's record of he is the sole verifier of. Linguist 22:14, 2 March 2014 (UTC).

Patch r2014-127: Add Pub improvements
The pre-approval page for Add Pub submissions has been enhanced. If a submitted pub has a more exact date than its associated title, e.g. "2012-03-04" vs. "2012-03-00", you will see a yellow warning. Um, that color that we use *is* yellow, right? :-) Ahasuerus 00:21, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Patch r2014-128: Submission approval page changes
A new link, "View Raw XML", has been added to all submission approval pages. If you follow the link, you will be able to view the submission's raw XML. You should then be able to return to the submission approval page. Ahasuerus 03:48, 3 March 2014 (UTC)


 * After watching it in action for a bit, I realized that it made the approval area very busy and moved the new link all the way to the right. Ahasuerus 05:48, 3 March 2014 (UTC)

Allhallow's Eve
As I was adding a pub to this title, I noticed the different spellings Allhallows Eve and Allhallow's Eve. Shouldn't these be considered as variants ? Thanks. Linguist 17:32, 4 March 2014 (UTC).


 * Yes, but in this case, the one record entered as "Allhallows Eve" isn't primary verified. If you can determine through a reliable secondary source that it is correctly entered, you can unmerge it from the current title record, and make it a variant title. Mhhutchins 18:01, 4 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Doing some further research, I see that OCLC gives the first NEL edition and the Kinnell edition as Allhallows Eve. I'll unmerge them and create a variant. Thanks for finding this. Mhhutchins 18:08, 4 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Digging even deeper, I learned that all printings before Headline's didn't have the apostrophe in the title. So I made Allhallow's Eve into the variant title. Mhhutchins 18:16, 4 March 2014 (UTC)

Headline / Headline Feature
Again, while editing some Richard Laymon, I noticed that some editions are attributed to Headline Feature, ans some others to Headline. Wouldn't that be the same thing, ans shouldn't these two records be merged ? Thanks again. Linguist 17:32, 4 March 2014 (UTC).


 * Headline Feature is an imprint of Headline. We try to keep such distinctions in the database. It's possible that some of the records may have to be corrected. If you see any that don't match your copy, please update it. Mhhutchins 17:58, 4 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I used “Headline” for all the records I made, not seeing any mention of “Headline Feature” anywhere, until I fell upon it by accident. I'll have to go through them again. Ah well. Linguist 20:07, 4 March 2014 (UTC).


 * Don't hesitate to change the publisher credit for any non-verified record, especially if it indicates Amazon as the source. Also, if a publication shows different forms of the publisher's name, the title page credit should be used. Doing a search for the publisher can also give you an idea about which form is more prevalent, i.e. "DAW Books" and not "DAW". Mhhutchins 02:07, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Impartial and objective synopsis?
So how did this synopsis get moderated? It looks like a quote, which I suppose is OK, but the source should have been cited. Mhhutchins 17:53, 11 March 2014 (UTC)


 * The quote is not in the submission table, which goes back to April 2006 when ISFDB 2.0 went live. In all likelihood, the synopsis was entered in the 1990s or the early 2000s, i.e. during the Stone Age :-) Ahasuerus 18:28, 11 March 2014 (UTC)


 * And nothing like it shows up in a Google search of a few selected terms. So it was written early on specifically for us. Doesn't that make you feel special? Chavey 02:57, 12 March 2014 (UTC)


 * So you think Doctorow himself wrote it? That's a possibility. I'd like to keep it just to point at as a bad example of synopses. :) Mhhutchins 04:20, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

Fixer tackling e-books
I am happy to report that the e-book reconciliation project has been completed. The results are as follows:


 * ASINs processed: 656,449
 * ISBNs found: 136,771
 * ISBNs rejected for various reasons: 44,445
 * ISBNs eligible for inclusion: 92,326
 * ISBNs with identified prices: 49,403
 * ISBNs without prices: 42,923

Fixer is ready to start creating submissions for the generated ISBNs. Of course, with 92,326 ebook ISBNs in the queue, it will take a while, so we'll need to prioritize. I have submitted the first 20 AddPub ISBNs; let's see how it goes. Ahasuerus 03:29, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Variant Titles.
I am putting some foreign variant titles to some Dr Who books. Why is it that both show up like this but only one shows up here. --Chris J 22:08, 22 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Check your language settings under "My Preferences". You probably only have one selected. -- JLaTondre (talk) 22:59, 22 March 2014 (UTC)