Help:Screen:MakeVariant

When you're displaying a title, there is a link in the left navbar labelled "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work". Clicking on this link displays the "Make Variant Title" screen, which allows you to specify that the title in question is a variant of another title.

Two title records are variants if they are in fact the same story, but have either a different title, or a different author. See the help screen for publication entry for a detailed discussion of what counts as a different title -- capitalization is usually irrelevant, for example.

Marking a title record so that it's a variant title of, or a pseudonym for, a title that already exists in ISFDB
Once you have decided two records are different but should be connected, you need to decided which is the canonical version. This will be the "parent" of all the other variant titles. For example, Isaac Asimov's story, "Robbie", was originally published as "Strange Playfellow". However, the story is much better known as "Robbie", and so that is the canonical title. Similarly, Asimov's "Lucky Starr" stories were originally published as by "Paul French"; they have since been republished under Asimov's name, and are now better known under Asimov's name than they were under the name Paul French.

The canonical title record, then, is the title record with the canonical title and the canonical author. To use the "Make Variant" screen, you should first find the canonical title record, and make a note of the title ID. This is the digits after the question mark at the end of the URL when the title is displayed. For "Strange Playfellow", for example, the title ID is 44190; look at the title display and you can see those digits in the URL (in the browser's address bar or field).

Now that you know the title ID of the canonical record for the title you are working with, display the child title -- the title that's a variant of the canonical record. Once you have it displayed, click on "Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work", and then enter that ID number in the "Parent #" field. Click submit; and when a moderator approves the change, the new title will be linked as a variant of the canonical version.

Marking a title record so that it's a variant title of, or a pseudonym for, a title that does not exist yet in ISFDB
If, for some reason, there is no title already in the ISFDB that has the canonical form, the best option is to locate a publication that has the title in canonical form, and enter that publication. That will create a canonical title record, which you can then link to.

However, sometimes this will not be possible. For example, a short story that was published under a pseudonym and never republished has no appearance under the author's canonical name. In this case, lower half of the "Make Variant" screen provides an alternative; you can enter some of the title data for the canonical form, and a new title record will be created and made the parent of your title. If you use this approach, the fields to be entered are the title, author, year, and title type.


 * Add Author. If there is more than one author or editor for this publication, this button will create a second author field.  As many authors as you wish can be added.

Click "Submit Data" to submit the new records for either set of data. Once a moderator has approved your changes, your title will be connected to the parent title as a variant.

Removing the Variant Title or Pseudonym link from a title
If a title is marked as being a variant title or as a pseudonym when it should not be then enter 0 (zero) in the Parent # field in the upper part of the page and click [Submit Data]. This will change the title record from being a Variant Title to instead being a standalone title.

Correcting a Variant Title or Pseudonym that was done backwards
If you realize that the variant title and/or pseudonym relationship between two titles was done backwards then do the following.
 * 1) Go to the variant title or pseudonym title (the child record) and note the record number that’s in the URL. You will see that the URL ends in something like …/title.cgi?123456. The record # would be 123456.
 * 2) From the variant title or pseudonym title (the child record) click “Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work” in the left navbar and remove the link to the parent title by entering 0 (zero) in the Parent # field in the upper part of the page and clicking [Submit Data]. You do not need to wait for moderator approval of the delete-variant-title but instead can just continue on to the next step.
 * 3) Go to the canonical title or name (the parent) title record, click “Make This Title a Variant Title or Pseudonymous Work”, enter the record number you recorded in step 1 in the Parent # field in the upper part of the page, and click [Submit Data]. Once approved you should see that the relationship between the two titles has been flipped around.

It is important that you perform the steps in the order listed above. If you do step 3 first and it's approved, then each title will be pointing at the other and, as both are variants of the other, they will not be displayed in the author bibliography at all, although you will still be able to locate the title records via Advanced Search. If you then did step 2 the software would end up removing both variant title relationships and you will need to redo step 3 to set up the variant title or pseudonym relationship again.