Bibliographic standard for Sfeditors wiki

[netmouse]

I've noticed quite a few editors tend to post their work listings on SF Editors in reverse order, like one might on a resume. I myself tend toward the chronological standard most used in wikipedia. That might be my history degree speaking. I've also see listings with title, author, author --title, etc. many different ways to present this information. Just for kicks, I'd like to know how other people would format entries (feel free to browse SFeditors to get a feel for variation. (Check recent changes to find ones I haven't resorted yet.)

(as an aside, I've already suggested in the template that publisher only be listed where the editor is freelance or the title is not by their primary publisher. for the moment anyway, that keeps listings cleaner and makes it easier for people to add information quickly.)

[Poll #1145257]

Comments

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

I would pick one of the standard bibliographic formats out there and just stick to it. Better than doing something custom for the site.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

The most recent year is most important, so should go at the top. Since the years are in reverse order, putting books within a year in forward order is as silly as the typical US date format.

Author is more important than title.

Generally, a single-author collection is obvious from the title ("The Best of X") but it might not be, and editing the works of one author differs from selecting works by many. I'd also be inclined to want to see whether something is a collection of original stories or of reprints (or a combination).

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

author, title -- publisher

This is the way the book would be listed in a library catalogue main entry.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I forgot to put Author, title (publisher) as an option -- do you prefer the hyphen over putting the publisher in parentheses?

[jeffreyab.livejournal.com]

I have not filed since the card days and back then it did not matter.

So go with current practice, check with A2 PL or U of M library.

[yarram.livejournal.com]

I voted by my preferences, but quite honestly, any format works *so long as it's consistent*. My temptation, in a bibliography would be:

Book Title, Jean Q. Author. Dom N. Editrix (ed.), Hardphur Call-Ins, 1999.

With whatever sort item listed at the top and omitted from the bibliographic string, so Jean Q. Author's booklist would have the author's name at the top and then include:

Book Title, Dom N. Editrix (ed.), Hardphur Call-Ins, 1999.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

This is a list of books by editors, not books by authors. so it's Rick P. Editor we're interested in, not Jean Q. Author.

within each editor's page, I'm tempted to believe other people that what's most important is the author names and those should lead, followed by the titles.

We call out the year they are published in list subheaders anyway, so that needn't appear in the book's line.

[cherylmmorgan.livejournal.com]

I would be tempted to go look in my copy of the SF Encyclopedia to see what Clute does, but it is in California and I'm not.

However, "don't reinvent the wheel" seems like good advice, because if you do then partisans of all of the available standards will attack you. At least if you pick a standard you'll have some support.

from Kathryn Cramer

[(Anonymous)]

I've a had a serious whack at adding material to the WIki.

My feeling is that most editors with significant careers are going to need separate pages for the lists of books they edited. Formatting needs to take that into consideration.

To some extent, this won't be a problem because data is hard to come by, but think for example about the fact hat in either 1977 or 1978, David Hartwell was editor of over 250 titles. (Many were reprint, but still).

Even my own list of anthologies published is a bit unwieldy once all the books are there.

Re: from Kathryn Cramer

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't mind extra length in the page but it also makes the table of contents quite massive, so that may be true. We just need to make it really obvious if and when we split off a separate page.

And btw, thank you for all your contributions!