Duplicate series / how to handle multiple volume translations?

[Isabell]

After doing a quick search and finding no adequate answer to my question (by the way, am I the only person annoyed by the fact that the timestamp on topics only shows a day and month, not the year, thus leaving one in the dark about how old the topic actually is?), I'm giving a short overview of my problem:

I've noticed that for A Song of Ice and Fire, there exist two series listings:
Number 1
Number 2

Number 1 seems to be the main listing, including all the books (even the broken into several volumes foreign language editions), while Number 2 only includes some of the foreign editions and seems to me incomplete (part 1 of book 1 for instance is not on there).

Since the series feature allows to have non-primary works, wouldn't it be best to have one series displaying all titles (including the split foreign editions, which are numbered accordingly) instead of two, thus only causing confusion?
Or should the foreign editions be put into a series of their own, but then only those books that make one complete series (I have seen some of the books split into two volumes, some editions split them in three parts and the German audiobook tops it with four part per actual book).
The current state of things just seems inconsistent to me. Either we have all volumes in the main entry, or we separate the multi-volume editions into their own series.

How would you handle this issue?

[Cecile]

Isabell wrote: "...by the way, am I the only person annoyed by the fact that the timestamp on topics only shows a day and month, not the year,..."

I was annoyed by that as well, until I switched to the full English version on my profile: in English you have the year. I find it less inconvenient to have the full date in English than only part of it in French.

Isabell wrote: "... Since the series feature allows to have non-primary works, wouldn't it be best to have one series displaying all titles..."

Maybe it's the way it should be.
I'm still not quite sure of what to do with a similar problem I have: I created the full series with the primary works, now there's the re-publishing of the series in volumes of several novels each to deal with.

Can anyone confirm that differently re-published series (in either split or merged volumes) should be put in the same list than the original, with the primary work unchecked?

[Isabell]

Cecile wrote: "I was annoyed by that as well, until I switched to the full English version on my profile: in English you have the year. I find it less inconvenient to have the full date in English than only part of it in French."

I didn't think of this as a solution. Thanks for the tip, this solves a major annoyance for me.


Cecile wrote: "Maybe it's the way it should be. "

I was thinking that as well. If people managed to find one book in a series (not matter if it was one of the split-volumes or a whole book), they should be able to find whatever other volume they want in the series listing, so having everything in one place would be best.

[Gerd]

Isabell wrote: "...by the way, am I the only person annoyed by the fact that the timestamp on topics only shows a day and month, not the year,..."

I had the exact same, it's a language/location bug.


Well, that first listing is certainly a lot more orderly than the second one.
Kudos to whoever did that.

Personally I see no pressing need to include foreign versions into listings, if you need to look them up they should be combined with the original anyway.

[Isabell]

Gerd wrote: "Personally I see no pressing need to include foreign versions into listings, if you need to look them up they should be combined with the original anyway.
"

Those translations are listed separately because they were split into multiple volumes in the translation process, so they shouldn't be combined. But they should still be findable as part of the series (thus included in the listing somehow), in my opinion.

My main point could actually condensed to the question if it wouldn't be best to have the second (essential duplicate but with less content, nothing additional as far as I can tell) series entry deleted.

[Deborah]

If there's nothing new on the second series, I would delete it. It's preferable to have everything in one series whenever possible. A second series is sometimes desirable for an alternate numbering scheme.

[Gerd]

Agreed, I can't see anything that the second series listing would add to it.
It may as well be deleted.

[Cecile]

I guess it can also be an answer to my question, so for this other series, I added the re-published volumes as non-primary works in the same list, with a numbering like "1-4 (vol. I)" to know which episode each volume contains.

[Isabell]

I've deleted the second entry. It had been my impulse from the beginning, I just wanted the matter brought up in case there was some reason for the second list I didn't see.

Thanks for your opinions.