User talk:Dan.M.McLaughlin
You asked about an ISBN I changed in the "Peltast" article. I first found this ISBN in the Norwegian Wikipedia, where this article had been translated, including the book citation (see no:Peltast and also ru:Пельтасты). The old version of the article specified ISBN 0-7841-0109-8, which is dead wrong. The checksum doesn't compute. Using that ISBN I was unable to find information about the book in any catalog or bookstore available to me. However, I was able to search for the author, title, publisher and year (Peter Connolly, Greece and Rome at War, Macdonald, 1981) on http://worldcat.org/ and found the alternative ISBN 0-356-06798-X, which actually does work. Sometimes publishers make a mistake and print the wrong ISBN on a book, even though the error tends to be in one or two digits. Library catalogs typically provide a corrected ISBN, but allow searches also for the bad one. Thanks for pointing out that the real ISBN should be ISBN 0-7481-0109-8 (see how -7841- was -7481-!). The ISBN checksum was designed so that swapping two digits could easily be detected, thankfully! I will change to that number. However, the OCLC catalog says the publisher and year should be "Black Cat, 1988" rather than "Macdonald, 1981" for that ISBN. Which publisher name is printed in your book? --LA2 00:46, 2 October 2007 (UTC) Answered on --LA2
On your edits to Beast Quest[edit]
I'm wondering why you reverted aptly referenced edits that show the varying titles and book numbering? I'd guess that in fiction, external references such as the sites used trump whatever listing comes in the books themselves. In this case I'm surmising there are different editions of the same books. Until someone comes along and cleans that mess up with verifiable edits (yours are but they only show a part of the "story", a fact which is itself verifiable) I'd let the previous state of affairs stand. For all our chagrin as wikipedians that like neat articles there is a Beast Quest book called "Cypher..." which is not the same as "Arcta..." if descriptions are anything to go by.
Oh, for crying out loud, there is an "Arcta the Mountain Giant" [5]. I blame the editors :-[ Dracontes (talk) 11:25, 10 December 2008 (UTC)