Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Archive 16

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Archive 10 ← Archive 14 Archive 15 Archive 16 Archive 17 Archive 18

Stub tagging and out of date assessments

Recently I have been auto-tagging articles about novels which have been assessed as stubs by WPNovels, some of the assessments of these pages are out of date, please help sort the articles and screen for out of date assessments at Category:Novel stubs, Thank you, Sadads (talk) 15:50, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Re the auto-tagging, is it ok to remove the stub tag on the article whilst leaving the stub class (on the talk page) for later re-assessment? There are many, many novels that are outdatedly classed as stubs (as we are seeing). I'm not very offay with admin'ing and don't want to screw anyone's tracking systems up. There are also a lot books classed as novels that are not novels, British books, classed as US books etc. What's the best approach for, if and when these turn up (seems I should do something)? Your advice is appreciated.Thanks Spanglej (talk) 19:45, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Question about sources for bibliographies

Hi all, I have a question about Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor that I hope someone can answer. I would have asked at WP:SF child project or the SF task force, but it doesn't look like anyone is active on the talk page there. In the article, as a bare list of names seems sparse, I'm adding in the works that the editors in question worked on in the nomination period. However, as I'm going to take it to FLC like the lists of novel winners etc., I need a reference for those works. Are there any good bibliography sites out there stand stand up to WP:RS scrutiny at FLC? I was getting a lot of information out of the fantasticfiction site, but it doesn't seem like that will fly, and the other one I found, ISFDB, doesn't seem promising either. Has anyone else ever run into this? Thanks! --PresN 19:12, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Publishers weekly maybe? Worldcat might have some of that information, also, Google books will surely allow you to vet some of the editor information, Sadads (talk) 19:27, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Merge discussion at Talk:Gone (series)

I have initiated a merge discussion at the above page. Comments are welcome and much appreciated. Thanks, Airplaneman ✈ 19:36, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Potential Changes to WAF

There is currently a discussion over at WP:BIO with regard to how we present fictional characters' names in the lead paragraph of their articles (i.e. whether they should be listing commonly used names, or any full variation that is reliably sourced as they do for real people). It would be good for the WAF guideline to be an accurate reflection of the community consensus on this issue so that we can identify it as such in the actual guideline.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 12:08, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

It would be really good of more people came over to the discussion. Right now it has become largely stagnent, and only about 20 people have provided their opinions. We'd really appreciate a wider sample size. Thanks.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 21:17, 24 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Edgewater River

The article Edgewater River has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

A search for references failed to find significant coverage in reliable sources to comply with notability requirements. This included web searches for news coverage, books, and journals, which can be seen from the following links:
Edgewater River – news, books, scholar
Consequently, this article is about a subject that appears to lack sufficient notability.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{dated prod}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 15:47, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Article assessment

Hey all, we have only about 160 articles that need their initial first assessments for the project. Since it seems I have been the only person doing them, (about 100 in the past week or so), I thought we might get everyone else to chip in, even just five from everyone active would very quickly eliminate our backlog! Sadads (talk)16:01, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Count me in! Assessors, when checking out the article for assessment, don't forget to make any fixes/improvements :). Airplaneman ✈ 16:46, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
On that point, basic fixes to keep an eye out for:
      • Categorization
      • Bolding of article title
      • urls embedded in articles -> refs
      • Infoboxes with missing information that is present in the lead
      • Section formatting
      • Whether tags like {{Plot}} or {{lead}} are appropriate
Sadads (talk) 16:56, 26 August 2010 (UTC)
Hey All, under a hundred, (after the addition of over a hundred more articles recently). Come help! Sadads (talk) 13:56, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Are the Harry Potter books "sports books"?

I wouldn't normally ask this here, as I think it's pretty straightforward, but since another editor disagrees with me, I would like to gain consensus. At Talk:List of films based on sports books#Harry Potter I have started a discussion about whether or not the Harry Potter books can be, or are, classified as "sports books". I would very much appreciate some input there. Thankyou, --BelovedFreak 09:28, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Quiditch isn't important enough. So no, unless you find a reference that empasizes the sport-genre focus of the books (don't think you will though), Sadads (talk)
Agree for the most part with Sadads above. The only caveat I might add is to maybe ask whether games which are first proposed in fiction and later gain some life beyond that might be a slightly different case. Jetan might be an better example, if anyone ever verifiably played the game in real life, which isn't indicated in that article. So, I guess, in general, I would see no reason to disagree with Sadads, although I acknowledge the fact that this game does seem to have some real play might make an exception. John Carter (talk) 15:16, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Speculative fiction is now featured!

For anyone who is interested, Portal:Speculative fiction is now a featured portal! Thanks to everyone who participated and helped in any way. I really appreciate it. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 19:24, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

I didn't assist at all, but congratulations Nihon! Beautiful work. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:27, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

New article - Recursive science fiction

Thought WikiProject members might be interested. :) Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 21:54, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

High Importance Article on The Golden Ass Updated

I'm still relatively new, but I did a good deal of additions to the article on The Golden Ass. It was marked as 'high-level importance' for this project, and I would greatly appreciate if somebody could give me a few tips or a review; there aren't many users actively working on the article. I am wondering if there is anything unclear in the article or a great amount of content missing. I also put it up for Good Article nomination. The novel is the only surviving Latin Novel and I added quite a bit about it being a precursor for future picaresque novels, and on that level 'ought' to be better known.--Artimaean (talk) 05:33, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

A new direction

Hello all. Some of you may know of the ongoing Public Policy Initiative. Since this initiative began, others have expressed interest in having their classes collaborate with Wikipedians on specific projects.

One professor, Jentuser, has already gotten a class started on a group of tasks that fall under this project's scope, like this. Would you be interested in working with the online ambassadors to support this class? This will involve "adopting" the course as a subpage of this project, like these. (The ambassadors will be mentoring the students.) Your help would be greatly appreciated. Regards, sonia♫ 08:15, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Any thoughts anyone, it seems like a good opportunity to revive a little interest in the project. I support it (of course I am biased being an ambassador and on the steering committee, Sadads (talk) 03:30, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
I support it too, but I'm also an online ambassador. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 03:46, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
Well, I'm not an online ambassador and therefore not biased, and I also think this is a good idea! PrincessofLlyr royal court 13:53, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
I'm not an online ambassador, but I think it is a very good idea and I am more than willing to offer what assistance I can. John Carter (talk) 16:11, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
It can be a good idea as long as it's managed with long standing editors. I have seen a fair few articles such as In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose and Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence written wholesale as part of a schools project which is not a good use of students' or editors' time or energy. I don't know very much about school's projects and how they are run here, but there often seems to be little understanding initially from teachers or students, about the principles of Wikipedia, such as sourcing, collaboration or original research. It sometimes seems to be framed as an easy online one-off project for young people. As we know, the best articles tend to be contributed to over the long term, with research using multiple sources over time. Articles are not school essays or papers. I guess these concerns are well covered by Wikipedia:School and university projects. Span (talk) 18:10, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
Agreed, I saw the same thing with Field Notes from a Catastrophe a couple years ago. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 18:16, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
As Ed and I pointed out, there is a reason why we have been setting up the Ambassador program. Though I don't think the current literature class has WP:Campus Ambassadors hopefully we can get one for every class, which will make the management and Wikipedia-worthiness of the content easier to enforce.Sadads (talk) 20:51, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
The Ambassador programme looks interesting. Span (talk) 23:18, 13 October 2010 (UTC)
Yes, the hope is to have a combination of on campus support and online support to help make sure that what is done in the university classes really does benefit Wikipedia instead of happening outside of our oversight. Does that make you a little more confident about working with these classes?Sadads (talk) 00:27, 14 October 2010 (UTC)
Sure, from what I have read, the project seems worthwhile. Best wishes Span (talk) 00:35, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Course page

I started a course page, to give Jentuser and Sonia a place to start setting up shop for this course: Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/American women writers fall 2010.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 17:12, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

Portal:Children's literature at peer review

Portal:Children's literature is at portal peer review. Review comments are welcome, at Wikipedia:Portal peer review/Children's literature/archive1. -- Cirt (talk) 19:03, 17 October 2010 (UTC)

Peer reviews

Hey guys, we have a bunch of peer reviews that no one has commented on. Anyone want to help us knock them out? (and don't forget to watch the page!) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 22:36, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Novel articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release

Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Novel articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (♦) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Sunday, November 14th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of November, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

If you have already provided feedback, we deeply appreciate it. For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 16:35, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing

I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:48, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Collaboration anyone?

I found Purge (novel) as a really well referenced stub and figured that it would make a good GA at least. It's an award winning Finnish novel about Estonia that was widely praised by European critics. Would anyone be interested in helping expand it? The Reception section is in pretty good shape and I started developing the Themes and Style, but support and feedback would be great especially if anyone has read it and can give me a good plot summary. Sadads (talk) 02:04, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, if anyone knows French there has been an awful lot of French languge newspapers related to her and the book on Google News. My French is really rudimentary, so I can only get a little from the text. Sadads (talk) 02:19, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Invitation to participate!

Hello! As you may be aware, the Wikimedia Foundation is gearing up for our annual fundraiser. We want to hit our goal, and hit it as soon as possible, so that we can focus on Wikipedia's tenth anniversary (January 15) and on our new project, the Contribution Team.


I'm posting across WikiProjects to engage you, the community, in working to build Wikipedia not only through financial donations, but also through collaboration in building content. You can find more information in Philippe Beaudette's memo to the communities here.


Please visit the Contribution Team page and the Fundraising page to find out how you can help us support and spread free knowledge. Rock drum Ba-dumCrash (Driving well?) 19:48, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Back to Before (Megamorphs)

Hello, my friends: A group of us are working on clearing the backlog at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Articles_lacking_sources_from_October_2006. The article in the above header has been without sources for the past four years and might be removed if none are added. I wonder if you can help find one or two good references. Sincerely, and all the best to you, GeorgeLouis (talk) 06:00, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Badge of Evil

Yes, it's me again. Badge of Evil is another novel that needs some sourcing. I wonder if anybody here is interested in helping out? You guys know more than I about where to find the references. Yours sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 06:37, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Translation In The Eighteenth Century Gothic Novel

Does Translation In The Eighteenth Century Gothic Novel fall within the purview of this project? Whatever it's actually supposed to be about, it needs some help to explain it better! - BilCat (talk) 07:36, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Find out what it is actually about, then we can answer that. :-) (looks like an essay...on what, I don't know) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 08:54, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Immediate help required

Hi, Sorry to trouble you.
I have recently translated 2 pages from Dutch Wikipedia which I found useful, and I thought that other English speakers might feel the same way.
One is a list of the best German novels; the other is a list of the best Dutch novels. The German list was chosen by authors, critics and scholars; the Dutch list by readers.

An admin who evidently does not read novels (??) has marked them both for deletion because, apparently, when German scholars pick the best German novels that is "not notable". Go figure.

The discussions are here:

Thanks for any favourable word you might bring to the discussion, Varlaam (talk) 05:38, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Per WP:CANVAS, any unfavorable word is welcome too! - BilCat (talk) 08:58, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

Dark romanticism

Dark romanticism has been nominated for deletion at WP:Articles for deletion/Dark romanticism -- 65.94.47.218 (talk) 07:55, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Latin translations of modern literature

I think this article is a candidate for becoming a "list of" ; "List of Latin translations of modern literature". I have some titles to add to it, but I don't want to do the work and then have it undone, I may as well do it right the first time. Opinions? EraserGirl (talk) 20:28, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Definitely better as a list. PrincessofLlyr royal court 21:32, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
I was bold and moved it, hope there are no objections. It has been sitting around for a year, so I think you are more than welcome to revise it. I recently added the article to my watchlist, so I can also help along the way, Sadads (talk) 21:43, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Quality improvement project - Slaves of Sleep by L. Ron Hubbard

I am going to try to work on a quality improvement project - Slaves of Sleep by L. Ron Hubbard. It'd be nice to see if there is enough source coverage to fully cover the topic for eventual improvement to GA quality. (Right now it'd simply be nice to flesh it out a bit more with additional WP:RS secondary sources.) Help would be appreciated - if you'd like to collaborate on this project and pitch in somehow, please post to Talk:Slaves of Sleep. Thank you for your time! ;) -- Cirt (talk) 22:20, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Sue Grafton novels

The entire range of Sue Grafton's "Alphabet mysteries" has been placed up for deletion. Since 20 of the 21 article at issue were not tagged by the nominator nor did he put it in the Literature deletion discussion listing, I bring the discussion to your attention so that it is not lost in the holiday shuffle. - Dravecky (talk) 21:54, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Serials and dates

I've started to sort the entries in Category:Science fiction novels into Science fiction novels by decade categories and I've come across a problem. Novels that were originally published in magazines are classified by their first book publication. Taking the example of Almuric, I'm inclined to classify it as a "1930s science fiction novel", and to "be bold" and change the main category from "1964 novel" to "1939 novel" too. But is there a policy about this that I don't know about? Robina Fox (talk) 20:16, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

It was published as a novel in the 1960s, serialized in the 1930s - so it can be classified as a 1930s serialization but not as a 1930s book, in my view. TK88 (talk) 21:37, 6 January 2011 (UTC)
I suppose the point is, is it only a novel if in book form? Wasn't it always a novel? One could say that "novel" is a sub-category of "book", but then does a "book" have to be in book form (i.e., hardback or paperback)? I think one would have to say no, because of audio books and ebooks. Robina Fox (talk) 01:15, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
There are categories for books that were serialized first - sorry, but am terrible with categories and don't have the time at the moment to look - but I'd add the serialized cat and the book cat. It's not considered a book until published in that format, in this case didn't happen until 1964. At least that's how I'd treat it. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:20, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Indeed - but the point here is what makes a novel. Not it's publication in book form. e-publishing should have highlighted that anomoly to anyone who thinks about it. The issue is the work a novel if it is published in series form or only whan publishing in one piece. Personally it is only logical to say it is a potential novel "while" in serial publication but "is" a novel once completed, regardless of format or media. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 13:00, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Quotation Marks in Nav Template

Does the {{Nathaniel Hawthorne}} template require quotation marks around every story? It's adding a lot of cruft that's making it difficult to read.Smallman12q (talk) 23:03, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I was working on one of these articles the other day and saw this template. Short stories should be in quotation marks (see the template for Ernest Hemingway), but they should all be redlinked or something. It does look extremely messy. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)
Yes to the quotation marks and they should be red linked, Sadads (talk) 17:17, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Scope question

I see no indication in the section on the scope of this project that in includes novelists. As such, I have never tagged any writers for this project. I noticed where Mark Katzman was just tagged for this project. (I don't at this point know if any other writers have been thus tagged.) Has there been a change in consensus about this? (I don't care one way or another; I just want to know.) LadyofShalott 15:38, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Generally, authors should not be in our scope. However, several exemption cases should be included IMHO:
  1. Author pages with substantial sections on novels, which the novel page redirects to
  2. Author pages which belong explicitely to the scope of one of the taskforces
If anyone disagrees, feel free to correct me,Sadads (talk) 17:21, 10 January 2011 (UTC)
I agree with you Sadads. Authors should be within the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography and this NovelsWikiProject should focus on writing articles on novels. Biography-articles and novels-articles are fundamentally different types of articles. maclean (talk) 02:56, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Everlost (novel) and Everwild

Can you please expand and grade these articles? --Tyw7  (☎ Contact me! • Contributions)   Changing the world one edit at a time! 00:36, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Project tagging and assessment completed. PrincessofLlyr royal court 23:51, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

PJTF mass deletion

I am in the process of a Percy Jackson mass deletion. --Perseus, Son of Zeus ✉ sign here 18:56, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

errr, can you say more - Why? Where? How? Span (talk) 22:14, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Ditto, very confused, Sadads (talk) 22:18, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Ditto (tritto?). You need to explain your reasons BEFORE you start deleting. Aristophanes68 (talk) 22:24, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Must be a ploy to see how many people read this page. No deletions without explanations please. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:43, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Some of the character articles weren't notable enough to have thier own article, it looks like. Glimmer721 talk 22:51, 26 January 2011 (UTC)
Perseus, are you having a bad day? Span (talk) 23:40, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Perseus has been in the process of culling the non-notable Percy Jackson character pages. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with his actions except that they could be more efficiently accomplished by merging instead of AfD-ing. And unlike his statement sounds, he is not deleting them, just nominating for such. Hope that clears up some confusion. PrincessofLlyr royal court 23:45, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

I concur; merge discussions on either the project's talk page (WT:PJTF) or the articles' talk pages would accomplish the tasks more efficiently. Here's a list of current AfD's (add some if I missed any): Airplaneman ✈ 23:54, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

5-5-5 Improvement Drive

I am proposing a modest improvement drive modeled after the new Wine WikiProject Drive. Basically, during January, we ensure that at least 5 novel-articles have maintenance tags removed, 5 novel-stubs are improved to start/C/B-class, and 5 novel-articles are created. If you are interested in participating, please indicate so here. maclean (talk) 05:49, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I am certainly interested, there are numerous important articles that need work. Might I make a suggestion for the improvement of articles to include unreferenced starts as well?
FYI, I plan to improve The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea which is an unreferenced start and write James Fenimore Cooper's Lionel Lincoln which I have started in a draft at User:Sadads/Lionel Lincoln, and I will continue deorphaning Novels articles which I have been doing en-mass for about the last month, check out my links at User:Sadads#To_do if you want to help (I find the best way to deorphan a novel is to create a navbox for the author's publications, if you want some examples, you can see the ones I have been working on at User:Sadads#Templates_I_have_started), Sadads (talk) 05:58, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
For clarification, is the entire project doing 5, or per person? I will most likely focus on removing tags and improving stubs/start-class. Great idea! PrincessofLlyr royal court 13:59, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I think we should start small with the project doing 5-5-5 minimum the first month, and keep a record of what we do, and if we have enough activity do a 10-10-10 or larger the next semester month, Sadads (talk) 14:22, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
My thoughts are that we should start with modest objectives and a large scope (5, 5, 5 for the entire Novels Project) and see what kind of participation it draws. We can tailor the next segment (Feb?) to that participation level (ie. increase to 10, focus on a specific novel category/genre, etc.) depending on where the participants want to go. maclean (talk) 19:46, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
I have updated Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Collaboration where we can keep a record of this Improvement Drive. maclean (talk) 06:14, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
I think I will try to AWB advertise that we are doing this, hopefully it will engender a few more people supporting. Sadads (talk) 16:25, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the notification. My to-do list includes creating a few articles on missing Vince Flynn novels and if that's the sort of thing that you're hoping for with the 5-5-5 it's a good of a reason as any to get moving. JesseMSmith (talk) 02:56, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Exactly. I got through about 2/3rds of the members list last night, ideally will do the rest this evening, Sadads (talk) 07:25, 13 January 2011 (UTC)
Left a comment about awards at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Collaboration, Sadads (talk) 14:03, 30 January 2011 (UTC)

Horatio Hornblower

FWIW, I've made a few proposals at Talk:Horatio Hornblower that you may be interested in. 184.144.169.126 (talk) 06:51, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

New article: The Mystery of a Hansom Cab

New article, created, at The Mystery of a Hansom Cab. Additional assistance in research would be appreciated, feel free to help out at the article's talk page. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 13:40, 1 February 2011 (UTC)

New set up on Members page

If you watch Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Members please note that the new sign up page is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Members/Active in order to facilitate distribution of announcements to active members, Sadads (talk) 23:40, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

FAC for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is up for an FAC nomination, and I would appreciate it if there is more feedback on it. Thanks, Guy546(Talk) 02:16, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Structure question

Hey, all. I posted a question about article structure/sectioning here -- but, the talk-page edit history has big gaps (i.e. doesn't look like it has a lot of traffic), so I thought I'd ask here, too, for someone to chime in. --EEMIV (talk) 18:38, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Howl's Moving Castle

A discussion is ongoing (see here) to rename Category:Castle series to a less ambiguous title. Input from this project's members would be most welcome. Thank you, -- Black Falcon (talk) 17:07, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Lensman rewrite

I'm interested in doing a thorough edit/rewrite of the Lensman article, but I need help from someone familiar with Wiki's policies. If anyone is interested in collaborating or helping me with this, please respond on my personal talk page. (P.S.-- I hope I have not violated procedure by posting here. If so, my apologies.) --Lensman003 (talk) 13:12, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Sharpe series characters

Several Sharpe series characters have been nominated for deletion. As there is no current list of characters article for the Sharpe series, there's no obvioius merge target. See WP:Articles for deletion/Log/2011 February 22 . 65.93.15.125 (talk) 23:17, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Image deletion problems

I've been adding lots of book cover images of late; but just had a problem with

which are being considered for speedy deletion. I have added the hang on tag to them and used a wordier Fair use rationale. Can anyone help; am I missing something ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 18:09, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

I think these have been fixed...GrahamHardy (talk) 21:08, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Should "Category:Novels by X" be a subcat of "Category:Books by X"?

I was puzzled to find that Category:Books by H. G. Wells only had 13 entries, then noticed that it has a note saying "for non-fiction works by the author". There is a separate Category:Novels by H. G. Wells, and both are children of Category:Works by H. G. Wells. This seems odd - I would place novels as a subcat of books. I see that Category:Works by Jean-Paul Sartre has the same subcats. Is this standard? Any thoughts?

I have also raised this at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Books#Should_.22Category:Novels_by_X.22_be_a_subcat_of_.22Category:Books_by_X.22.3F. Could you please make any comments there, to keep discussion in one place? Thanks.

PamD (talk) 16:58, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Young Adult Novel focus school project

Just letting interested people here know. There is currently a school project underway to write and/or improve various articles on young adult novels. I've added a link to their coordinating page listing this wikiproject as a resource. I thought that the editors here might appreciate a heads up. - TexasAndroid (talk) 15:11, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Policy on using text from other (i.e. competing) wikis

I usually don't work on any other wikis, but on one of the topics I want to work on (The Malazan series by Steven Erikson) the wiki at wikia is in a much more advanced state than that at wikipedia. So I was wondering whether there are any guidelines on using text from other wikis? This particular wiki also seems to use the CC-BY-SA license (see http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Community_Central:Licensing) (There are some notes on the copyright policy of wikipedia below the edit page, but could somebody explain them in a simpler manner please?) Apoorv020 (talk) 17:28, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

You should include the template {{CCBYSASource}} at the bottom of the page, so that the attribution is public Sadads (talk) 17:01, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

English name RFC

There is an important RFC discussion regarding an English-language name move at Talk:Toki o Kakeru Shōjo#Move proposal. Please join in the discussion by posting your thoughts on the move proposal there. Thank you, Darth Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 22:04, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Make WikiProject Discworld a task force?

While I'll admit that the Discworld series has a fairly large amount of articles, most of those could probably be merged somewhere anyway. The WikiProject hasn't been active in a while now, and I don't think it can really function as its own WikiProject. I still think it would function greatly as a task force, however, so I'm proposing this. What does everyone think? Harry Blue5 (talk) 20:27, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Btw, there's a discussion going on about Discworld characters here. Harry Blue5 (talk) 00:15, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Most of those articles are merged already, but haven't been listed as "redirect" on their talk pages. Serendipodous 13:38, 8 February 2011 (UTC)
changed the class ranking of redirected articles, though I don't know how long it will be before they are removed from the article list. Serendipodous 14:20, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

As far as the Taskforce goes, I'll participate. Also I'm going to start dropping lines on editor talk pages to invite those who I notice making substantial content-related edits to Discworld articles, as previously discussed.--Mobtown Mongrel (talk) 01:14, 10 February 2011 (UTC) Reposted from my talk page.

"Got your note on an IP-user talk page (User_talk:98.228.48.11) regarding the Discworld cleanup. I'd be glad to help, but won't have much time until July 30th -- I'm finishing law school and getting ready to take the bar exam, which is (ahem) nontrivial. If there are any specific tasks, let me know via my talk page; I'll try to check it on weekends. MJustice (talk) 12:03, 20 February 2011 (UTC)"--Mobtown Mongrel (talk) 19:29, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm happy to join in (non-Wikipedia duties permitting). LordVetinari (talk) 01:01, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

I'll have to renege on that. I have too much else happening elsewhere on Wikipedia and and in WP:REALLIFE. Sorry. -- LordVetinari (talk) 04:27, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

So, we setting up the taskforce or what? :P Harry Blue5 (talk) 17:26, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

With only 3 confirmed editors involved? Up to you two if you want to go ahead now or wait for more people to sign on for it. Doing a little reading and 5 seems to be the preferred minimum number for a taskforce.--Mobtown Mongrel (talk) 14:38, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

The way I see it is that User:Serendipodous/Discworld has plenty of discussion. Now, the average task force in an inactive piece of garbish that rarely accomplishes anything. The level of discussion's that going there exceeds many task forces with about 20 members. Going through with this actually removes an inactive WikiProject that hasn't achieved much, if anything, involving and discussing Discworld, so we're still essentially not adding more importance to Discworld discussion, in fact we're lowering it. Not too much can be damaged by doing this, as it isn't spreading Discworld discussion across a whole task force pointlessly, and is instead focusing it.Harry Blue5 (talk) 21:01, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

1st edition image question

Anybody care to comment on : File:Sputniksweetheart.jpg, the 1st Japanese edition image being replaced with the 1st English edition with the reason given being this is the English Wikipedia, English cover should be used, not sure this reasoning is valid. A number of other images are similiarly affected. GrahamHardy (talk) 22:55, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

I think I'd make a separate file for each one. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 23:17, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
Does that then imply that both would be used in the article ? GrahamHardy (talk) 23:45, 13 March 2011 (UTC)
It gives a choice which to use. Which to use in the article would be a separate issue, imo. I see that all the other books use the first US edition. There's no rule, as far as I know, to do that, and if we have 1st editions, personally I'd rather see those, but looks as though it might have to be hashed out here. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:30, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
I had always assumed that 1st edition image was always the worldwide 1st edition in whatever language the book was first published in, anyway is here the best place to discuss this or at Template talk:Infobox book... GrahamHardy (talk) 12:40, 14 March 2011 (UTC)
Here are the affected images, all of which have been reverted for the reason this is the English Wikipedia, English cover should be used :

Is this reason valid? surely the image should relect the original version as published; not the translation (in my opinion) GrahamHardy (talk) 13:33, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

I could see why English would be good, but i also would have to count whichever one had bigger impact. so maybe some research should be done, which version was more popular or bigger impact and then decide which one is best based on the results. I don't agree that English Wikipedia means English cover no matter what. but i do believe English is the most convenient most of the time.Bread Ninja (talk) 13:41, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
I would think that the original language should be used unless there is some particularly notable reason why the English Language version is important. English Wikipedia does not mean English Cover, there is no logic or justification for that. It is almost like saying that because we are writing in English, that means that only English language scholarship matters, which is clearly false, Sadads (talk) 15:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Personally I think first edition is first edition, wherever published. That said, I still think the images should have separate files and the discussion taken to the individual talk pages or hashed out here. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:04, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I was the one who reverted those changes because, firstly, no prior discussion took place and the original images were there for a long time. Secondly and more importantly, worldwide first edition does not work unilaterally. For instance, as a book collector I know that sometimes American authors will have their books come out in other countries in translation prior to being published in the US. This was the case with Stephen King's Under the Dome, for example. I forget which European country it was, perhaps Germany, but that book came out there first. But I don't think anyone would approve having the German cover insead of the first US edition. This should be the case here as well, because of user consideration. People on English Wikipedia wanting to read an article on a book would prefer to know what that book looks like in it's original English incarnation. For historical purposes I would agree that the cover of first publication in the original language should be added to the article's publication history section. Jmj713 (talk) 15:55, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem is, which as a collector you would know, the first place of publication is considered the first edition. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 16:02, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
If you're a book collector as well then you know that there's a difference between "first edition" and "true (worldwide) first edition". Again I stress that for book covers we should concentrate on the language, author's nationality and the like when choosing a cover. Personally I've always adhered to the idea that US authors should have first American edition covers and British authors first UK editions. With translated books it would be the first English-language edition. I believe these guidelines are simple and sensible. Jmj713 (talk) 16:11, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
SO you're saying keeping the english cover just to promote it....while encyclopedia that covers historical, you would be able to put the worldwide version if it was historical....Bread Ninja (talk) 16:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
It shouldn't even be about the author's nationality. just wherever he published it first.Bread Ninja (talk) 16:18, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Do we have a consensus that for these specific examples at least where there are no such complications (the author is Japanese and the first edition is Japanese) I can reinstate the 1st Japanese edition images without reversion ? GrahamHardy (talk) 20:31, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

It feels that way yes, Sadads (talk) 21:05, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe so. I think a compromise should be made and both covers used. Since the articles are for an English-speaking user having a Japanese-language cover may be confusing. Having both (English in infobox and Japanese in publication history section) would make the situation clearer. Jmj713 (talk) 00:42, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

It's better to decide to use one or the other because it's not really a good idea to use more than a single fair use image in an article. In my view first edition is first edition and it's interesting to see the real first edition cover if it's available and someone has taken the time to upload. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 00:50, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
Reinstated 1st edition (Japanese) images GrahamHardy (talk) 16:45, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
the problem itself shouldn't really be a problem with covers in general. for names it's different. english wiki doesn't mean we should be bias about english content. if the author is in japanese, and it was released in japan and has a certain reception in japan more than anywhere else. than the japanese cover should be used.Bread Ninja (talk) 17:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Cold Spear

Can someone please take a look at Cold Spear? I googled and nothing came up on the author or either book mentioned. I'm pretty new, so didn't know which tag to use for delete request, or if I should make a request. Thanks for the help! Tbennert (talk) 21:37, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Tagged with a PROD. I did my own search and could find nothing. Thanks for the alert. PrincessofLlyr royal court 22:26, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

How about Adaptations Section ?

I propose that we add an Adaptations section to each article. Movies, TV shows with exact list of changes to the original novel / novella / story.

We can only do this if WP:Reliable sources verify the information. Generally, also we try to avoid putting in too much trivia per WP:Trivia. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Actually, the Novels Template already contains a built-in section for Adaptations. Feel free to add it as necessary, as long as it's sourced and focused on the main points (not trivia, as Truth points out). Best, Aristophanes68 (talk) 20:18, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Adaptations are usually covered in media sections.Bread Ninja (talk) 20:19, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Article for each Story

I have found it very hard to track down short stories on Wikipedia. Thus i propose that we add a specific article for every short story and novella. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Safagheld (talk • contribs) 18:00, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Hi, don't forget to sign using four tildes (found on the upper left of your keyboard) so it looks like this ~~~~. It's harder to find WP:Reliable sources to WP:verify short stories, but we have some that are quite well done. See for example "The Open Boat" by Stephen Crane. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:24, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Redirects of the short story's title to the appropiate article would assist with searching. What was the short story you were looking for? maclean (talk) 19:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I sympathize with the difficulty of finding short stories. Even short story collections are hard to find. For some big-name authors, you can always search Category:Short stories by author. In the meantime, Maclean's idea of redirecting the story titles back to the author is useful until we can get an article up for each story. The problem of course is knowing which stories in a collection are worth getting their own articles. Check out China Men for an example of a collection that may not warrant giving every story its own article. Have you joined the Short Story task force over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels? Aristophanes68 (talk) 20:24, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Copy Edit - The Chronicles of Narnia

Howdy - just posted a request for Copy Edit here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests#The Chronicles of Narnia. Just thought I'd cross-post this to the Wikiproject in case anyone was interested in taking this up. Thanks! -- Jake fuersturm (talk) 01:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Publication date

Hi everybody. I recently created an article for The Space Between Us (novel) and am having trouble tracking down the 1st edition cover and the original date of publication. The hardcover copy says that it was copyrighted around 2005, but the earliest date on any of the editions on Harper Collins's site is 2007.[4] Amazon says it was published in Jan 2006, which seems the most likely since many of the dated reviews are from early 2006. Any thoughts? Kaguya-chan (talk) 21:32, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Amazon sin't always reliable with dates. but whatever seems most reasonable and most credible.Bread Ninja (talk) 21:47, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Depends on where it was first published and the type of edition you're looking at - hardcover, softcover, etc. Have you tried looking on WorldCat? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 21:54, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
I had forgotten about WorldCat...It says the hardcover edition was copyrighted in 2005. Kaguya-chan (talk) 21:58, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Also, copyright doesn't exactly mean released.Bread Ninja (talk) 21:59, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) That makes sense. That's the publication date to use, I'd think. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 22:00, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Okay, thank you! Kaguya-chan (talk) 22:07, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Discworld

Fyi, I have nominated Wikipedia:WikiProject Discworld for deletion at WP:MFD. Please comment here for any concerns. JJ98 (Talk) 08:55, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Nationality of Man on Fire

Man on Fire (novel) was written by an English author, but the book is in a category under "American novels" - Shouldn't this be English novels? Even though Scott Pilgrim is published by a US author, the book is still considered to be Canadian as the author is Canadian... WhisperToMe (talk) 02:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

There's been a long debate about what nationality means, since it could refer to the author or to the publisher. I've removed the "American" from both cats, since the book could go both ways. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Aristophanes68 (talk) 17:20, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
This also is the reason I dislike infoboxes for some novels. Pinpointing the parameters isn't always simple. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:04, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
The problem here isn't the infobox--the parameter is clearly for country of publication. Instead, the problem is whether the "nationality" in the category belongs to the author or to the publisher. This is a cat question, not an infobox question. Aristophanes68 (talk) 00:09, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
I guess the way to find out is to check newspapers and see if they call it a British novel or an American novel WhisperToMe (talk) 01:11, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Today's featured article

It seems that Pattern Recognition (novel) will be appearing as the main page featured article on April 12, 2011. You can view the TFA blurb at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 12, 2011. --maclean (talk) 23:37, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

RfC on meaning of "novels by country"--author's or publisher's?

Please contribute at Category talk:Novels by country#Question on nature of country. There's some discrepancy about whether the category belongs to the author or to the publisher. Thanks, Aristophanes68 (talk) 00:16, 5 April 2011 (UTC)

Fictional fictional character

Fictional fictional character has been nominated for deletion. 64.229.100.45 (talk) 04:29, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

List of Oz books' FLRC

I have nominated List of Oz books for featured list removal here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured list criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks; editors may declare to "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. GamerPro64 (talk) 20:36, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Heavy Water and Other Stories, Martin Amis

Just made the sites/expansion adjustments on Amis' collection. Is there a way to remove the "Stub Class" from its quality scale? Zoidbergmd (talk) 20:54, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes; on the article's discussion page you change the parameter class=stub to whatever class seems appropriate. I alterted the banner to read "Start-class." Please correct it if you think the article merits a different quality rating. Layona1 (talk) 01:54, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Standard for book covers?

I read through this guide as well as the WikiProject Books page, but was unable to find any information about this - Is there a standard size for book covers in infoboxes? 150 pixels wide? 200? Thanks for any help! -CaptainJae (talk) 00:42, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Default thumb size is 220 - so you can always use that. I don't use infoboxes so am not much help, but I do boost lead images beyond default. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 01:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
There is no numerical standard. However, from Template:Book cover fur the guideline is "The copy is of sufficient resolution for commentary and identification but lower resolution than the original book cover. Copies made from it will be of inferior quality, unsuitable as artwork on pirate versions or other uses that would compete with the commercial purpose of the original artwork." -maclean (talk) 04:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Novel at FAC

I've nominated Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises to FAC - Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Sun Also Rises/archive1. The article has a high importance rating. Reviews are always welcome. Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:14, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Category:American novels by century

There is a case to answer that Category:American novels by century is over-categorization. It seems to have been set up last year following Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Archive 15#Category:American novels because of the need to diffuse a large category. You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Literature#Categories by century, country and genre. - Fayenatic (talk) 20:16, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Licenses of images of books

This pre-1923 dustjacket image was deleted on the basis that the photograph is recent. [5] If this is the case, and basis for deletion, then it effects many of our book-cover images, so I've decided to post that here in case anyone is interested. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 18:17, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Should novels be placed in the Fiction category?

I posted a question about the scope of the Fiction category—including whether that category should include novels and short stories (it might seem obvious, but many of the Fiction by nationality cats don't include them)—over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Literature#What belongs in the Fiction categories?. Please add your thoughts. Thanks! Aristophanes68 (talk) 18:06, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Shannara

{{portal|Shannara}} Portal:Shannara has been nominated for deletion. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 05:28, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Portal:Fantasy

Note, Portal:Fantasy has been proposed to be replaced with a different portal, see User talk:Jj98/Portal:Fantasy

65.94.47.63 (talk) 06:01, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

Why? It's a featured portal. Who's proposing? Truthkeeper88 (talk) 15:32, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Well, it's a user subpage, and it has a requested move. The user subpage belongs to User:Jj98, who also initiated the requested move, so from all appearances, it should be User:Jj98 who proposed to replace the old Fantasy portal with the user draft one. From conversation with User:Jj98, it appears to me that he is the one proposing it. NOTE, the requested move expires on 17 June, so the closing administrator may move the new portal over the old one if no opinions to the contrary are lodged. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 05:37, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
Is there a link to the request? Thanks. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 11:38, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
I posted on in the first sentence. User talk:Jj98/Portal:Fantasy -- 65.94.47.63 (talk) 09:23, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

The request has failed, see User talk:Jj98/Portal:Fantasy -- the administrator closed it as no consensus since there was an existing portal at a different name, and did not choose to move the new portal on top of it. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 11:02, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Eragon cover image discussion

There is a dispute over the cover image that should be used for the novel Eragon (see User_talk:Theleftorium#Eragon_changes)
I maintain that as per Template:Infobox book and Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels/Style_guidelines#Image this should be the first edition, albeit self-published. User:Theleftorium maintains that as it did not sell well in this form and the "Knopf edition with the blue cover has sold millions of copies worldwide. It is therefore the one that should be used in the article". Thought I'd move the discussion here for wider input, Thanks GrahamHardy (talk)

well....although i agree 1st edition is always best...i dont think we should use the self-published version. We could consider just using 1st published edition.Bread Ninja (talk) 22:42, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
Self published is still published though (if you read the Eragon article the publication history is interesting) i.e the 1st published edition was the self-published edition (as evidence http://www.cinemareview.com/production.asp?prodid=3783 ! GrahamHardy (talk) 23:22, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
According to that source "Upon its initial release in hardcover by Knopf in August 2003, the novel Eragon became a worldwide publishing phenomenon". Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels/Style_guidelines#Image clearly says that "the most significant cover historically for that book" should be used. Theleftorium (talk) 08:07, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Personally, it seems appropriate to maintain the first edition cover in the infobox, regardless if it is self published or not (books like Sense and Sensability were self published, but we aren't arguing that the other editions of the cover, and for good reason, I would think.). However, if sources treat the blue cover as important, and we have direct commentary on that, then I think it would be concevable to include both covers under fair use, because both items are being discussed (the First edition, because the first edition always represents the work, even if it is unfamiliar to the majority of readers, and the blue cover because it is of significant interest in sources, to be the object of commentary.), Sadads (talk) 06:41, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

One cover is more than enough to help readers identify the subject of the book. Using two covers would be violating WP:NFC. Theleftorium (talk) 07:04, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
Agreed, but for historical reasons it could be added to one of the sections for the original to illustrate it was once self published.Bread Ninja (talk) 07:12, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
No, that would fail the non-free content criteria: the fact that it was self-published first can adequately be conveyed by text without using non-free content, and a cover of the self-published one would not "increase readers' understanding of the topic". Theleftorium (talk) 07:36, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
Then there you have it.Bread Ninja (talk) 07:42, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

I am still struggling to reconcile the current guidelines which state The image presented in the table should be the most significant cover historically for that book; often this is the first edition, but occasionally it is not. For example, sometimes authors make drastic revisions to texts and later editions are considered to be the "preferred" edition. The exceptions to the 'first published image' rule are understandable; the content of the first edition being markedly different to that about which the article is primarily concerned. But for Eragon it appears tha the exception criteria we are employing is that the first edition did not sell well. I dispute this - I need to check the sources but believe that it sold remarkably well for a self-published novel and so gained the attention of Knopf, even if the sales were slight, the content of the 1st edition are identical to the Knopf; so we do not appear to be in the spirit of the exceptional example given (no drastic revision to the text). Many examples of the self-published example are for sale on Abebooks all cited as true first edition. Not using this as the main criteria would set a dangerous precedent. Historical significance is subjective, first edition is not - far more straightforward to take the guidelines at face value unless the book itself has changed in content (which is the only example of a rare exception given). The first edition of many books, indeed most debut novels do not sell well - are we saying that only the best-selling edition should be pictured? Too subjective, stick to the letter of the guidelines (in my opinion !) GrahamHardy (talk) 10:54, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

When it comes to these things, the guidelines also enforces for the most recognizable image, and it may very well be the blue cover. Sure WP:NOVEL enforces 1st edition and it has its reasons.Now if you claim that its too subjective, it could be. And usually self published work sells more when its republished. IN eragons case it doesn't seem like it didn't.Bread Ninja (talk) 06:19, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Where does it say 'most recognisable' ? Surely the most recognisable is often not the first published; and rarely the most recognised for debut novels and almost never the most recognisable for works first published more than 20 years ago; it's totally subjective - let's stick to first published and avoid the confusion ! GrahamHardy (talk)
I have to agree with GrahamHardy, its hard to actually say the cover is more meaningful/recongisable unless some source says that is the case. I am guessing that for Eragorn, some critic for the book or the movies, will mention the priminence of the blue cover on bookshelves or library shelves or something. Otherwise, we should keep to the first edition, Sadads (talk) 08:54, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
  • Look, I'm going to say this once more. Book covers are used on Wikipedia to help readers identify the book so that they know they have reached the right article (see WP:NFC). We have to ask ourselves, which of these two covers provide the best identification? It's the blue one, obviously. Because that is the version that almost everyone owns or have read. There's really no point in discussing this further. Theleftorium (talk) 09:10, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
But if we go down that route then we need to change the vast majority of cover images on older book articles, a non-starter, let's stick to the guidelines that are currently in place for books, i.e first edition ! GrahamHardy (talk) 12:13, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
I think the rule should affect only if released in multiple countries. Those that are already originally in english could be affected differently considering its not about a localized cover, just a new one for it being re-published.Bread Ninja (talk) 12:20, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Since we are an encyclopedia, the only historically important and encyclopedic is the first edition cover whatever that may be. All subsequent printings are irrelevant for a cover image, in my opinion. The first edition represents how a work first was published. That is an encyclopedic fact. Further covers aren't. Jmj713 (talk) 14:31, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

The wikipedia guidelines appear difficult on resolving such issues. The free use image seem to conflict with the historical record and comment of the an encyclopaedia - which this is. However I would say that the Frist edition is nearly always preferable. But in this can an argument can "just" be made for the main and 1st commercial publication. Personally I would say the navigation / identification issues suggested by the fair use guidelines be secondary to the encyclopaedic issues. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 15:01, 17 June 2011 (UTC)

Although I was asked to comment here, I'd intended to anyway once back from a break. I agree with Kevinalewis. From the point-of-view of encyclopedic value, the true first edition cover should be displayed somewhere. Although I've seen the blue cover often, until I read this discussion, I didn't know an earlier edition existed. I don't think the image should be used for readers to identify the book, that's what Amazon is for. Here we show encyclopedic information, and imo that includes the earlier edition. A link here to the image would be nice - I'd like to look at it. I'm thinking we can write a FUR for both images and then place them side-by-side at the top of the page. But once we reach consensus about the image, we can move the discussion to the article talkpage. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 11:43, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
Look, we shouldn't use the cover of the first edition in the article because it doesn't help readers identify the book (this is one of the requirements of WP:NFCI!). The book is known for the blue cover by the large majority of its readers. And using the first cover because it's "encyclopedic" doesn't work either. As Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria says, the cover could adequately be conveyed by text without using the non-free content and it doesn't "significantly increase readers' understanding of the topic." Theleftorium (talk) 11:52, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
I disagree. I've just had a look at the page and frankly see other problems. But to stay on topic, the fact that book, which is a debut novel, was self-published first is very relevant to the topic, and as such the cover is of the self-published edition is relevant. The page has other images that I don't think are relevant, particularly the one of Philip Pullman and the one of the mountain in Montana. The true first edition cover is much more relevant. I understand this is a GA, but nonetheless, the File:Eragon.jpg is important in my view. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 12:04, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Truthkeeper88; I see no justification for going against the accepted guideline and not using the 1st edition cover... GrahamHardy (talk) 18:10, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
I agree that the first edition is important to an extent where it was released multiple countries that have changed the cover, but it seems in this case, it has consistently been the blue cover. I agree the first self-published is important, but in the end its just a cover, and mentioning already that it is self-published, is enough. An image of the second cover might not be, especially if discontinued.Bread Ninja (talk) 05:44, 20 June 2011 (UTC)
Not sure I understand the reasoning here - My reading of the guidlelines states that the 1st edition image should normally be used unless their are excprtional circumstances, the example it gives is where the content of the book has changed. Please advise why Eragon is an exception - just because the Knopf edition sold a lot more than the first edition does not appear to be a valid enough reason to go against the accepted guidelines. The vast majority of debut novel first editions will sell poorly compared with later editions. No reason not to use the first edition image - the guidelines are clear - let's stick to them... GrahamHardy (talk) 17:00, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the arguments for the first edition cover - first editions are historically significant, and I see no reason to show prejudice against a self-published edition. The argument for identification does not hold up - the original cover does serve to identify the book for anyone needing reassurance on that score - the eye is clearly a dragon's. Robina Fox (talk) 18:23, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Indeed; according to the guidelines here we stick to the first edition cover. Or do we want to change the guidelines ? GrahamHardy (talk) 08:42, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Actually it doesn't say we stick witht he 1st edition. in fact it says it often can be the 1st edition. But historically, in a sense is a subjective term. I still don't agree with self-published just for the sake of that rule. Historically, the blue cover did a bigger impact, clearly. If you wish to question that, then you'll have to prove it with numbers.Bread Ninja (talk) 08:51, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
So are you saying we should use the image with the greatest sales, nonsense ? I do not know of any other articles where the first edition has not been used except (as explained in the guidelines) where the content differs; why should Eragon be any different to the thousands of other novel articles ? Let's stick to the established guidelines - First edition is preferred (as stated in the Novel template) let's not confuse the issue by looking at sales figures ! GrahamHardy (talk) 13:57, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
This is quite interesting http://www.jimchines.com/2009/09/self-publishing-myths/, though not that relevant to our argument it appears the first edition was not self-published as such.. GrahamHardy (talk) 14:04, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm saying we should use the one most recognizable, and the one that made more impact "historically" which could be more sales, but also could be affected deeper. If you can find alot more sources talking about the book with the original cover, than it can stay. And sales do help depending. The guideline does not prefer 1st edition. It says it will most likely be 1st edition, but sometimes its not. Let's not get adamant for 1 rule that we both know isn't so strict on the covers.Bread Ninja (talk) 14:30, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Using the first edition cover is unambiguous and historically valid. To start deciding which cover is more "impactful" is needless. Jmj713 (talk) 14:29, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

but it's clear the blue cover one is. And this whole time it's been benefit of the doubt. And it "can" be unambiguous, and the latest edition of the cover is just as historically valid as the original if not more.Bread Ninja (talk) 14:34, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
i think 1st editions work well when they are released multiple countries where the cover are constantly localized. But when originally English, and the cover changes once or twice, i think it depends on what we can refer to be more "historical". If the latest cover edition out lives the original, i think its best to use that one instead. And lets not put any doubt that the original was just as historical as the latest cover. the original self-published was released for 1 year until it got re-published in 2003, so it's now 2011. clearly, the latest cover is the most historical one, most impact, and most recognizable. Being adamant over 1st edition i can understand as it's a pattern we all take, but not every book should go like that. And i highly doubt the cover will change again, as theres a series behind it that follow similar pattern.Bread Ninja (talk) 14:46, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
Your statement "the latest cover is the most historical" is pure nonsense, I'm sorry. No offense. I believe the consensus of this discussion is to stick to the first edition as encyclopedic. Jmj713 (talk) 14:48, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

I have been watching this discussion quite curiously, but I read the guidelines myself and must agree that the Knopf cover is the one that should be used. The guideline clearly states: most significant cover historically for that book; often this is the first edition, but occasionally it is not. The example of a highly-revised text is an example, not the only infallible situation. The Knopf cover is clearly the more notable (significant), with no prejudice against the first (self-published) edition. And likely has been commented on...I think I'll go research that. PrincessofLlyr royal court 14:50, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Exactly! I completely agree. Theleftorium (talk) 18:01, 23 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm guess I'm worried that this will set a precedent against first editions - what is the point of Category:Novel has infobox needing 1st edition cover if a later edition has greater impact / sales, or if the book was first published some time ago and the first editions have become a rarity and the book is now better known by a later cover - it's just a can of worms with edit wars looming; I have replaced hundreds of better known later editions with first edition images - is such work to be undone ? under what circumstances are later editions preferred ? the current guidelines were to my mind clear; now they are not... GrahamHardy (talk) 19:02, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm not really seeing consensus here, and even if consensus goes against you, I think you should try to write a FUR for the self-published edition and add to the page. As I wrote up-page, it adds more encyclopedic information than some of the images in the page. Just my opinion of course. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 20:06, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Please add setting and source to novel articles as you edit

I've been filling out the setting and source categories for novels: see Category:Novels by city of setting, Category:Novels set in the United States, and Category:Novels by source and Category:Adaptations of literature by source. Please add in any relevant information for these categories as you're editing articles. For the settings: I've gotten all the state cats set up, but some foreign cities and countries still only have "Location in fiction" cats, so you may have to use those. Also, for novels that don't have specific states given, I've added several "Southern/Northeastern/Southwestern United States in fiction" etc. categories for use. I hope all these cats are useful. Cheers! Aristophanes68 (talk) 23:43, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Happy to start setting up Category:Novels set in Kent and so on for the counties of England, would people be happy with this ? GrahamHardy (talk) 15:48, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
No objections here, Sadads (talk) 15:57, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
Sounds good. I think the novels-by-setting cat will be more useful as we create smaller categories based on counties, provinces, regions and cities. Otherwise, we'll have several thousand entries in "Novels set in England" etc. I just realized last night that a previous "Novels set in Paris" cat had been recently deleted amid concerns that the cat tree is not useful. So setting up localized cats should keep everything manageable and should be useful as well to folks working on more localized topics. Thanks! Aristophanes68 (talk) 16:57, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
Had a first pass at creating and populating categories covering the English counties; Norfolk leading the way with 19 - should Scotland be treated similiarly ? Would we use the 32 Subdivisions of Scotland ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 21:33, 26 June 2011 (UTC)
You might start with the major cities first and keep a list of how many other places need categories. When I went through Category:Locations in fiction by city, I made new cats only for those that had 10 or more pages already in them. I figure it makes more sense to focus on the most common locations, and we can fill in others as they get more pages. Aristophanes68 (talk) 23:44, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Category Parallel literature

Found Category:Parallel literature but not too sure what it is; suspect it may be linked to Parallel novel which redirects to List of fictional works using settings created by other artists but a little more explanation should be given, certainly at the top of the category... Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 21:26, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books#Publishers cited by Wikipedia

A discussion about building a compilation of publishers cited on Wikipedia is going on at WikiProject Books. Since novels usually are books, I figured I'd let you know and ask for your participation in this. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:58, 14 July 2011 (UTC)

The Help

If someone is looking to prune a plot summary, this one needs help. I'm not sure if I have time to do in the near future, and it's been a couple years since I read it. Thanks --CutOffTies (talk) 03:07, 15 July 2011 (UTC)

 Done --CutOffTies (talk) 13:44, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Project renovation

I been wanting to ask this for a long time but i held it off for a while for god knows why....but now i feel we really need to do something about this project. How can a project about something so well-known not have a lot to offer? First things first, i really think we need to reorganize the main project page. Make a separate page for the categories (and removing the red link categories).we'll do it a step at a time so we can all agree.Bread Ninja (talk) 12:14, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Not every poll is quotable

There is a certain trend to quote newspaper and lifestyle articles concerning books. These are mostly in the form of the "100 Best Books" or the "25 most important books" of some era or country, published by "The Guardian" or "Time Magazine" or whatever. Those polls are not serious achievements, but decided upon by some editors. Therefore they should not be quoted in the opening paragraph of any work, but rather in the RECEPTION. And even then should not be treated as possessing some inherent worth or merit. There are even quoted polls on Wikipedia that were written by one custom user and published on some platform. Just because its on the internet does not mean the source is any good. The worth of novels should be estimated by their sales record and established literary prizes.

Write if you agree or disagree. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Singularity Rider (talk • contribs) 08:42, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Agree. The reception section is the place for them, if at all. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 12:13, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Renaming proposal

I would like to propose renaming this project "Wikiproject Fiction". The project scope extends to fiction of all lengths, and I would think having the name reflect this would be appropriate and uncontroversial. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 02:33, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I would propose that there is little reason to actually separate out most of these into different arenas. There should be a Fictional Media project with subsections. Why would you have separate projects for handling things like Star Trek -- books, comics, games, movies, and TV -- or the same for Star Wars? And whose definition of "SF" is one going to apply to a random book? There are lots of books which are nominally SF and some other formats -- "Time And Again", for example -- which barely qualifies as SF, being closer to Science Fantasy. And it's really more of a work of social fiction or a mystery, the time travel aspect of it being almost trivial in terms of explanation.--OBloodyHell (talk) 06:27, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Strawpoll. How many want to make being on the bestseller's list proof of notability for a book?

Please come participate in the discussion and poll. Thank you. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WikiProject Japan! 17:55, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Remove red linked books from navboxes and templates

There is currently a discussion ongoing at Template talk:Dale Brown and at Wikipedia_talk:Red_link#clarify_wording_to_include_series_of_bestselling_novels_are_allowed_to_be_red_linked_in_template. More editor involvement is necessary in these discussions. Thank you. SilverserenC 17:24, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Replied there but won't again; the current straw poll effects this project as does this discussion, fwiw. Truthkeeper (talk) 20:27, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Short story collection layout

Does anyone know if there is an MOS for a short story collection article? Either that, or is there a short story collection that is a Good Article that can be used as a template (apart from The Tales of Beedle the Bard!) Cheers - SchroCat (^ • @) 13:48, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

While not perfect by any means, I feel that Stephen King's Night Shift (book) and Skeleton Crew are a good template to follow. Jmj713 (talk) 14:05, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
Twilight Zone: 19 Original Stories on the 50th Anniversary is a GA. maclean (talk) 15:39, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
That's great- many thanks to you both - SchroCat (^ • @) 18:08, 12 October 2011 (UTC)
I'm struggling with this myself - currently working on Hemingway's In Our Time. I think it's important to prosify as much as possible, but the sentences are very listy. Truthkeeper (talk) 20:18, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Middlesex FAC

Middlesex (novel) has been nominated as a Featured Article Candidate since 29 September. The novel about the life of a person, whose gender falls "in-between" the two sides, won the Pulitzer in 2003. More comments on the article's suitability to meet the criteria of an FA or what can be done to further improve the article are welcomed. Please leave your opinions at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Middlesex (novel)/archive1. Jappalang (talk) 06:10, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

I changed the title for obvious reasons.Bread Ninja (talk) 06:46, 13 October 2011 (UTC)

Article on Silko's Ceremony needs to be restarted

The previous article on Ceremony (Silko novel) was deleted as a plagiarism. I've recreated the stub, but please feel free to rebuild the article. Thanks, Aristophanes68 (talk) 18:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Twilight portal

I thought would be possibly to add a Twilight portal along with Narnia and Lemony Snicket since it never has any portals for each task forces on the banner along with other modifications that I've made at the sandbox. So what do you think? JJ98 (Talk / Contributions) 19:37, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Character infobox template changes

Just wanted to notify people of a discussion taking place here about changes to the template mainly about the removal of the last appearance field. D4nnyw14 (talk) 23:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

What is fiction?

Is this section accurate? Is it complete? Please take a quick look. Thank you. The Transhumanist 00:15, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Name of novel The Raw Youth or A Raw Youth?

The entry for this Dostoyevsky novel is titled The Raw Youth, but my 1947 Dial Press edition is titled A Raw Youth. Can anyone verify "The" on any other edition? Jonrkennedy (talk) 21:40, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

Toki o Kakeru Shōjo

The naming of Toki o Kakeru Shōjo is under discussion, please see Talk:Toki o Kakeru Shōjo. 76.65.128.132 (talk) 05:08, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Help with article Child of Fortune

I created an article for Norman Spinrad's novel Child of Fortune. I would appreciate some advice on how to "wikify" the article. Any other advice would be welcome as well! Puddytang (talk) 04:27, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

I made a few edits and removed the tag. maclean (talk) 05:41, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank You! Puddytang (talk) 07:03, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Mass deletion of Mortal Engines Quartet articles

Please note the following:

Nominations are broadly this:

"Plot element from a series of novels, not independently notable (WP:GNG) for lack of substantial third party coverage. Not appropriate for a merger, as it consists only of excessive plot summary (WP:WAF). "

Once again, we see the simple deletion argument put forward against fiction-related articles (Brian Jacques' Redwall went the same way recently), that WP doesn't cover fiction. Yet again, this is targeted at a non-US series without a Hollywood film to raise its profile. Can anyone imagine this same nomination being made of Reaver (Firefly), an article with equally little out of universe coverage?

We also see that a bulk deletion on the same basis is boiler-plated across 10 deletions, another handy tactic for diluting opposition to them. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:56, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month

Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Novels will have interest in putting on events related to women's roles in novels; as characters, authors, etc. I also pinged folks at WP:Lit and WP:Poetry! We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 19:00, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Notability of characters - how do you define that

I am locked in a discussion with a fellow Wikipedian over the notability issue of characters from Barchester Towers. I created many character pages which are deleted and now the individual pages are merely redirected. I looked in vain to search for a similar guideline on this issue. Can anyone help? Under what circumstances should fictitious character stay or be deleted? DORC (talk) 13:48, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

The relevant guideline for fictional characters is Wikipedia:Notability. But it is only a guideline and compromise is usually reached using a list-class article of characters (see Category:Lists of fictional characters by medium). maclean (talk) 19:15, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Publication dates

I am struggling finding reliable sources for the publication dates of the novels in A Song of Ice and Fire series (1996–post-2011). The author's website only gives the years (I need months also), and amazon only goes back for about five years. Is there a reliable database for novel release dates that I could use, or does someone have a good advice where I might check? Thanks. – sgeureka t•c 10:22, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll look into this for you, but give me a little time. I have the first editions of the more recent ones, and older editions that probably give the dates on the copyright pages for the earlier one. Which page/s do you need these for? Btw - as for websites, I use the Library of Congress when I'm unsure. Truthkeeper (talk) 14:09, 5 February 2012 (UTC)
Thanks so far. Unfortunately (at least as far as I can see), Library of Congress only gives the year again without a month. – sgeureka t•c 10:33, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
Update: I found the US release dates (month+year) on the Publishers Weekly website, so this issue is resolved for me. – sgeureka t•c 13:00, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

New Jane Austen portal

Hi all, Just placing a note that I created Portal:Jane Austen. Any editors interested in improving Austen-related articles, or who just like reading her novels, are welcome to put their name down at Portal:Jane Austen/Editors. Thanks! Ruby 2010/2013 21:19, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Advice required

I recently created a stub The Train Has Reached Amritsar and now wish to expand it to GA status, would someone be so kind as to point me in the direction of a how to on article structure for books. Thank you. Darkness Shines (talk) 00:03, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Have a look at this list. Should be helpful. Truthkeeper (talk) 00:27, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
The project page gives links to some useful pages. Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Novels and Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/ArticleTemplate should give you a good start.
Thanks guys. Darkness Shines (talk) 09:34, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Renaming discussion regarding the article Tom Brown's Schooldays

The proposed renaming being discussed at Talk:Tom Brown's Schooldays#Re-Opening the "Schooldays" vs. "School Days" Question may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Favonian (talk) 11:54, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Novella vs. short story

Several entries in {{Nebula Award Best Novella 1981-2000}} and {{Nebula Award Best Novella 2001–2020}} use {{Infobox short story}}. Some set the title accordingly (e.g. Bern (novella)), while others (e.g. Story of Your Life) set the title like a book, introducing inconsistency within the same article. We could change them all to use {{Infobox book}} like most novellas, but 'Story of Your Life', for instance, "is a science fiction short story" according to article and yet a nominee/awardee of several novella awards. Is there any guidance on this? Rl (talk) 12:06, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Infobox book everywhere seems like the best solution, I see no obvious reason to have different info based on length. The dilemma here is of course that there are no universal definitions of these terms. Each award has its own eligibility criteria, so what is a short story according to one prize jury might be a novella according to another, etc. And it's even more tricky with works from other language areas, with their own terminologies which rarely match the English. So in general I think we should try to avoid giving too much emphasis to what exactly is what; just use the pages field in the infobox and let the reader decide. About the quote marks versus italic title I think it's impossible to achieve full consistency, it's not that much of a problem, though I guess it's desirable to at least have internal consistency in the article. Smetanahue (talk) 12:27, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
Thanks. Rl (talk) 09:16, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Attention parameter in banner?

More or less moved from "Wikipedia:Help desk#Attention parameter?"

When is it appropriate to mark the attention parameter in the talk page banner as "yes"? I can't find anything on what qualifies an article as "requiring immediate attention". - Purplewowies (talk) 02:06, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Moving "Isaac Asimov's ..." articles

I've noticed two articles within the Project Novels scope that aren't in line with the naming conventions and seem to need moving: Isaac Asimov's Robot Series and Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire series.

There appears to be no precedent for naming them "Isaac Asimov's" (unless it was part of a commercial advertising campaign) and if needed anywhere in the article title, Asimov should be added as a disambiguation term in brackets after the series title. The "Series" should also be all lower-case, and both changes would put the articles in line with Asimov's third connected series, the Foundation series.

Robot series already exists as a disambiguation article (linking to a series of video games and this series), so I propose the first article should be renamed Robot series (Asimov).

A proposal to move Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire series (when it was called Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire Series) was discussed four years ago, but with only one voter, no consensus was reached to move it to Empire series (which now links to the page), but the "Series" was made lower-case at the time (a quirk which still remains on the Robot Series article).

There is some confusion over whether the second series should be called the "Galactic Empire" series or just "Empire" series. Here on WP the article is Galactic Empire, but the infoboxes, templates etc. found on all the articles refer to the series as "Empire". I think the confusion arises from the books: publisher's lists of Asimov books (e.g. Grafton) refer to the series' as the "Galactic Empire Novels" and "Robot Stories and Novels", but Asimov himself talked about his "Empire novels" and "Robot novels"/"robot short stories" (e.g. in his Author's Note to Prelude to Foundation). As a result, I would propose it be moved to the current Empire series redirect article, in line with the Author's convention, especially as there doesn't seem to be a popular name for these otherwise quite obscure novels.

What do the rest of you think? --xensyriaT 18:52, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:10, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
Suggest possibly looking for more information such as 3rd party reliable sources to see what they call the series. the article does not see to be very notable for the Galactic Empire. It's probably best to merge these articles in the main author's page.Lucia Black (talk) 22:10, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
Omnibuses are mixed, the most widely seen seems to be titled The Empire Novels, but a Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire Series was published two years ago. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Multiethnic American Literature (p. 210) uses "Empire Series", Twentieth-century science-fiction writers (p. 883) reads "Empire series" and The concise new makers of modern culture (p. 22) has "empire series"; but Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime (p. 77) has "Galactic Empire series". Also another Asimov quote uses "Robot Series" and "Empire Series" (see Nemesis]). The secondary sources imply to me it's a viable article and I'm planning on expanding it once it's moved.. Cheers. --xensyriaT 23:16, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
If we're still collecting sources, the Nicholls/Clute Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, which is a pretty well regarded text, says Galactic Empire. Euchrid (talk) 19:53, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
The more the merrier I say! The ISFDB (admittedly not a very reliable source) uses Trantorian Empire. It seems they were first collected into an omnibus called "Triangle". Also, impossibly, 'Asimov "Galactic Empire series"' has more hits on Google than 'Asimov "Empire series"', and the website linked to in the series article even edits Asimov's words to make them read "[Galactic] Empire novel(s)", so regardless of actual books, the web convention seems to be Galactic Empire. --xensyriaT 01:42, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

My best guess is if "series" is capitalized alongside either of them, then you might not need to disambiguate, But if it is, then Maybe Empire (novel series) or The Empire (novel series). I guess it also depends if "The" is also capitalized. in the header, you could also mention that the series is also known as the Galactic Epire Series. Same goes for Robot series.Lucia Black (talk) 00:06, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm strongly in favour of the removal of 'Isaac Asimov's' from both articles, though I'm unsure as to Empire/Galactic Empire. If there are roughly equal number of sources for each, I'd lean towards the latter as the more specific title. Euchrid (talk) 04:30, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Since Empire series has been modified to become a disambiguation page, I've modified the proposal to rename Isaac Asimov's Galactic Empire series to Empire series (Asimov) (and so it probably does need that disambiguation term). I would think that "Empire series" is to be preferred over "Galactic Empire series" as the most commonly used term in both primary and secondary sources (about 2:1 in my experience), but Galactic Empire series has the benefit of being less ambiguous, and agreed that the header should include the other title, regardless of which one is chosen for the article name . The series' are always referred to with the word "series" as well (stylistically normally uncapitalised, and without "The", especially on WP: see Wikipedia:Naming conventions (books), Foundation series, Aubrey–Maturin series etc.) not just "Robot" and "Empire". --xensyriaT 08:55, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I did the bulk of the edits to Foundation series and decided upon the personal naming convention of "Foundation series" for the seven Foundation novels and "Foundation Series" for the expanded universe (including the Robots, etc. books). Not knowing if this convention stretched back to the earlier novels, I left those articles as they were. In my opinion, its a viable solution if it were to be included in the other articles. -Gohst (talk) 11:41, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I oppose of using (Aismov) as a disambiguation. Its vague and will be difficult to find. It's better to use general disambiuation such as (novel series) or such. ANd naming conventions in general is guide, but you still need tot ake information accounted for.Lucia Black (talk) 16:47, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
I agree. (Novel series) or (science fiction series) would be better. I'm looking for an example of a series of novels with a bracketed disambiguation and can't find one.Euchrid (talk) 19:53, 29 March 2012 (UTC)
It seems most authors use less ambiguous series names! As there were a number of other Empire novel series (and probably more to come) I chose (Asimov) as a unique disambiguator, but I wouldn't be fazed if we chose to use another term. Looking at a related sample of article names, we have the following db terms:
  • (series): 10
  • (novel series): 8
  • (Author's name): 5
  • (novels): 3
  • (German science fiction): 2
  • (anthology series): 1
  • (book series): 1
  • (character): 1
  • (franchise): 1
  • (science fiction): 1
  • (science fiction novels): 1
  • (science fiction series): 1
  • (trilogy): 1
As you say, general guides need to take specifics into account and here (series) alone would be redundant (e.g. Robot series (series)), and (novels)/(novel series) don't adequately reflect either series, especially the Robots series which consists of many short stories. (science fiction series) or just (science fiction) would fit though; so if you're all happy with that then I am. If so I'll make the changes to the proposal, and we can use support/oppose to get a consensus; thanks for all your feedback :) --xensyriaT 01:12, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
I'm in favour of Galactic Empire (series), but let's put it to a vote. Euchrid (talk) 03:58, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
I vote for Galactic Empire (series). I think we need to find a proper form of disambiguation in the manual of style if it doesn't mention one clearly. Theres also year added to them, if both names are both novel series. For example, the year the series started, it could Galactic Empire (20XX series) etc. I'm not familiar with the series so thisis just an example.Lucia Black (talk) 05:34, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
I prefer Empire series (science fiction) and Robot series (science fiction), as they reflect the most common use here in Wikipedia (in templates, infoboxes etc.), in reliable published sources (granted with some notable exceptions), the most widely published omnibus titles and the Author's own convention. That's my vote, but either one solves the current problem. Do you also propose Robot (series)? --xensyriaT 14:55, 1 April 2012 (UTC)
Well, it looks like I've been outvoted by a landslide 2/3 majority! Proposal updated to Galactic Empire (series), and as the discussion's been open for more than a week, I may look for an admin to close it, unless there's a better suggestion for the Robot series article? --xensyriaT 14:06, 6 April 2012 (UTC)
For the record: JHunterJ has moved the pages to Galactic Empire (series) and Robot series (Asimov), and I've now changed (hopefully) all the relevant links, though keeping the original articles' use of Galactic Empire / Empire series (overwhelmingly the latter in practice). I won't object if anyone wants to standardise them as the former, but I hold out hope that it may be changed one day to the real world (i.e. not just the internet) standard! There are a few other similarly named articles that I noticed during this process, and I have moved List of Isaac Asimov's Robot Series characters to List of Robot series characters as one of these. The others are "Isaac Asimov's" books by other authors, which I've left for now as "Isaac Asimov's" could arguably be part of the title for these; for posterity they are currently as follow:
The original move is now complete though, and the articles are much better named, so thanks again for everyone's help. --xensyriaT 23:35, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Merge discussion at Caroline Kirkland

I have just proposed a merge from The Schoolmaster's Progress to Caroline Kirkland, and I would be grateful if any of you could come and comment. The merge discussion can be found at Talk:Caroline Kirkland#Merge proposal. Best regards — Mr. Stradivarius ♫ 16:21, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Waves (novel)

The article Waves (novel) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Long tagged as non-notable (with talk page "bump") with no attempts to address the issue.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jwy (talk • contribs) 16:34, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The Garden of Forking Paths

I noticed a similarity between the story and the Many-worlds interpretation, I wrote a sugestion in the The Garden of forking path's discussion. Could you consider it? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.131.87.211 (talk) 02:38, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Input sought

I've made a comment at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Creative professionals guidelines pertaining to notability criteria for writers. I think members of this project could bring valuable perspectives to the discussion. Cynwolfe (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 15:23, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Self-published references used in this project

Hi, Some time ago I started a discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Self_publishing_list and it eventually resulted in List of self-publishing companies. It seems that some of those publishers are used in this project, e.g. Vantage Press on The Well of Loneliness, etc. I am sure there are others. I am asking a few projects to help turn the tide against the invasion of Wikipedia by self-published sources by:

Eventually we will write a bot that checks these and leaves messages about them, and suggestions on that on Talk:List_of_self-publishing_companies will also be appreciated. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 21:46, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

Talk:Doctor Zhivago#Requested move

This renaming proposal is currently discuss. Feel free to improve the consensus. --George Ho (talk) 19:29, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Feather and Bone: The Crow Chronicles

When was the last time that the Feather and Bone: The Crow Chronicles article has been checked for quality? I have given the page a massive overhaul and no longer think that the article still counts as "start-class". Do you agree? Brambleberry Chat ♠ Watch 22:43, 12 May 2012 (UTC)

I upgraded to C-class. It still needs more reliable sources and references. Great work so far! PrincessofLlyr royal court 03:50, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

WP:WikiProject Harry Potter

Project of the Harry Potter franchise is becoming less active than it was previously. I have proposed a conversion to the task force of this Project. Feel free to join in. --George Ho (talk) 03:18, 23 May 2012 (UTC)

Question: pen names

A question for the enlightened peoples of this wikiproject. When a novel is written using a pen name, I assume that the article lead should identify both the author's pen name and actual name. However, after this, which name should be referred to in the body? -- saberwyn 02:31, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Report on the use of self-published sources

The first version of a report on the use of self-published sources is now available, in Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikipedia reliability. Some of the self-published sources listed in the report pertain to this project.

Suggestions on the report itself (a discussion has started here), and help in remedying the use of the self-published items that relate to this project will be appreciated. History2007 (talk) 06:33, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Proposal: Animal literature

If most of the literature you enjoy has an animal as a main character or at its heart, please feel free to discuss a proposal for a WikiProject called Animal literature at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Animal literature. Brambleberry of RiverClan Chat ♠ Watch 22:42, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

adding new books

I am a new editor looking forward to make his second article, and i would like to know how to add any article to this project — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shashwatpkumar (talk • contribs) 12:59, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

On the talk page of the article, add {{NovelsWikiProject}} and the article will be included into this project. —maclean (talk) 15:36, 4 July 2012 (UTC)

Input on an article that might need to be moved

Hello to the members of this project. I got my copy of this book Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas in the mail today and I wanted to make you aware that the : A Novel with Three Codas is not used anywhere on the book. Not on the dust jacket nor the spine nor, most importantly, the title page. I suspect the extra wording was added by marketing wonks to try and make the title stand out a bit. Amazon sells it by the longer title but there are other book websites like this one [6] that don't use it. IMO we probably should move it to the correct title but I didn't know if there were any quirks to this projects naming conventions that would require its inclusion so I wanted to check with members of the project to see what you think. Any input that you can add will be appreciated. MarnetteD | Talk 00:29, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't know of any reason not to rename it. --xensyriaT 16:30, 22 July 2012 (UTC)
  • Worldcat lists both names [7] and [8] but the US Library of Congress only lists the Redshirts It would seem the "A novel..." could be more of a tag line than a subtitle. It would be fine to move it to Redshirts (novel). —maclean (talk) 19:33, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

The Ghost and The Goth

Hello I just started the page for the book The Ghost and The Goth and need alot of help please help expand it and add a plot summery I don't have time to write one myself Dman41689 (talk) 17:44, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Great idea, but the novel isn't very high on the priority list for the community (see how we organize the 32,000 articles that fall within our scope at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels#Scope). We can do a really good job at researching other stuff related to the novel, but plot summaries are only creatable by someone who has read the novel, and I know I have no interest, and I could probably read many other books that a plot summary that would have a much higher impact. Things I can do to support developing the article: find book reviews, copy edit and help revise the article, and provide support structuring the content (including infoboxes and categories). Wish you the best, Sadads (talk) 18:59, 25 July 2012 (UTC)
ok if you can do anything to help improve the article that would be very helpful every little bit helps Dman41689 (talk) 19:07, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Determining primacy of Harry Potter films and novels

The novel has 2,000 to 3,000 views per day; the film has at least 2,000 per average day. How do I must determine primacy specially for more than one topic with same name? --George Ho (talk) 08:35, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

This discussion has moved to WT:WikiProject Disambiguation. --George Ho (talk) 17:38, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Publication year debate late 1890s - The Celebrity

  • A question for the antiquarians out there -- On the article for late 1890s novel The Celebrity, am having a devil of a time determining if the book was first published in 1897 or 1898. Some biographies of the author state it was published in late 1897, however, all the free online scans I can find e.g., [9] are no earlier than 1898. They say copyright 1897, but also "set up and electrotyped January 1898." Earliest press mentions of the book date to March 1898. (word that the book was poking fun at a popular journalist of the day helped propel its success). Any thoughts are welcome.--Milowent • hasspoken 04:35, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Thomas Mann's Joseph and his Brothers

Happens to be one of my favorite books. The current article captures nothing of the essence of the tetralogy, which is high comedy (very high, but still comedy). Mann thought it was funny, and it is. Joseph's adventures in Egypt sometimes descend to bedroom farce and even the difficult beginning of the story, in which Joseph becomes his father's favorite, with some homoerotic hints, and the butt of his brothers' bullying, is handled with the sophistication of a turn-of-the-century boulevardier. Can some literary type get this into the article, or will this lowly Bachelor of Arts have to try? Rev. H. Carlton Earwiggherd (talk) 00:51, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

Evelyn Waugh's Men at Arms

Great comic novel, part of Sword of Honour series. Started page as per WikiProject Novels; the page (WikiProject Novels Articles Needed) still asks for content on Men at Arms. Mthwaite (talk) 23:37, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Film adaptations in writers templates

Please comment at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Literature#Adaptations.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 18:40, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Brother Cadfael Plots

Some help would be appreciated with various Brother Cadfael novels, the plot summaries are in my view excessively detailed. Examples include The Raven in the Foregate, The Leper of Saint Giles and Saint Peter's Fair. Could someone more skilled have a quick peek GimliDotNet (Speak to me,Stuff I've done) 14:59, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

Templates

Just letting you folks know that I have been creating lots of templates for individual novels and their multimedia franchises. For the most part, (excepting Shakespeare who has too many), I have added these to the pages of the authors. The most extreme example is Charles Dickens. Other notably affected examples include Hans Christian Andersen, Oscar Wilde (mostly plays), H. G. Wells, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Alexandre Dumas, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Nikolai Gogol. Feel free to comment on the propriety of this change.— Preceding unsigned comment added by TonyTheTiger (talk • contribs) 14:02, 21 October 2012‎ (UTC)

Great! Tony, I used to do a lot of those for smaller authors (See User:Sadads#Templates_I_have_started. Adding those to article pages for the individual works is also a good idea because it helps create create access to the more obscure works of the authors from the other book pages. Also, I made sure that I created redlinks for all potential articles, especially for the high profile authors. For a while I was systematically working through starting the articles on Template:JFCooper (that was before I got wrapped up in the Education program), Sadads (talk) 14:44, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
If you look at the bottom of User:TonyTheTiger/creations#Templates_Created for the Multimedia templates you can see what I have created. I sort of think it would be a nightmare to attempt to determine which redlinks are anticipated for some of them. Silent movies, foreign language adaptations, operas, ballets, and such are often mentioned in an article, but it is difficult for me to determine which red links should be included.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:42, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

New article on novel Donkey Punch

I've created this new article. If you've got additional input for secondary sources, please feel free to suggest them at the article's talk page, I'd really appreciate it. :) Cheers, — Cirt (talk) 18:20, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Book of Mormon

This 19th Century fictional narrative authored by a glasslooking stone seer and moneydigger is under discussion for its categorisation here.Sciot (talk) 20:35, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Multimedia templates

I have created about 200 multimedia templates (see multimedia works towards the bottom of the templates section at User:TonyTheTiger/creations) in the last 2 months. Many have dozens of links such as {{Cinderella}} and {{The Three Musketeers}}, while others have just a few such as {{The Old Man and the Sea}} and {{Gigi}}. I have been trying to make them look as uniform as possible so that if you go to the bottom of a page like Oscar Wilde they all look the same. On that page all of the multimedia templates were created by me. However, on pages like Charles Dickens or H. G. Wells many of the other templates were created by others. I have even tried to make the titles of the templates on these pages look like the ones I have created. After two months of work creating these templates, Robsinden (talk · contribs) has started undoing a lot of my efforts, but in a fairly consistent way. We have reached an impasse on two or three issues:

  1. Should we include dates in template titles? See Oscar Wilde vs. Charles Dickens.
  2. Should include foreign languages in multimedia templates. E.g. Rob removed many foreign languages. I think the old version was better, but Rob thinks only disambiguation justifies parenthetical text.
  3. In the case of ballets or operas such as {{Swan Lake navbox}} and {{Cinderella}} should we include the composer.

Since I am pinging many projects, please hold all the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Navigation_templates#Additional_disambiguation_info_in_navboxes.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 19:32, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Requested move of Graham Taylor (author) to G. P. Taylor

I have requested to move the above page to pen name under which the author is known, in a manner consistent with the likes of J. K. Rowling and C. S. Lewis. As this is one of three related moves, the discussion can be found at Talk:Graham Taylor (footballer)#Requested move. Regards, —WFC— FL wishlist 05:05, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

Changing salutation style in Pride and Prejudice article

MacMog suggested on the talk page for the Pride and Prejudice article that the salutation style be changed to use a period (such as Mr. Darcy or Mrs. Bennett rather than Mr Darcy and Mrs Bennett), because "American English always uses it and British English sometimes does". I agree, but am asking for further input before I go ahead and change the whole article. Any thoughts? Computergeeksjw (talk) 03:57, 1 November 2012 (UTC)


The Manual of Style (MoS) says almost (but not quite) what MacMog suggested, that a period is more usual in American usage, which is not the same as, "American English always uses it". The MoS also says that, "Use of periods... should be consistent within any given article, and congruent with the variety of English used by that article", which means that if the article is written in American English then American punctuation would be preferred, and vice versa. My own preference (I am British English) is that if the article is not noticeably written in American English it should not be punctuated in American English. This article, Pride and Prejudice, would seem to be written (as is common on Wikipedia) in a mixture, containing words like center, favorable, humor, and rumored that are American English but also coloured, favourable, favourite, favoured, harbours, neighbourhood, and rumour, that are British English. The British English spelling seems to predominate, as does the terminology; I can't imagine an American writing, "amused by his obsequious veneration". On balance, I think the article should be converted to British English throughout, not just with the abbreviations (not salutations) MacMog queried. Cottonshirtτ 05:10, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Pool of Radiance (novel)

The article Pool of Radiance (novel) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Article about a book that doesn't appear to satisfy notability guidelines per WP:NB. One source provided that likely wouldn't be considered third-party.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Doniago (talk) 18:18, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

"No quarter"

As "no quarter" is frequently featured in various novels, I thought you'd be interested. The usage of No quarter is under discussion, at Talk:No quarter where it is suggested that the Led Zeppelin song is primary. -- 76.65.128.43 (talk) 05:58, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Dragonlance novels

There is a mass merge proposal of about 40 articles at Talk:List of Dragonlance novels. If you can find any good sources for any of these, please help! BOZ (talk) 06:15, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Villains by Necessity

Could somebody review this? The article isn't really a stub anymore but needs work. Low-class article is what I would say. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.255.98.244 (talk) 00:15, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Literature portal

I posted the following at WikiProject Literature, but received no response. Perhaps this project is more active?

The main sections of the Literature Portal are red links, and do not appear to have been updated since 2011. Is anyone willing to take responsibility for updates or for converting it into the rotating content model, which would not require as frequent maintenance? Otherwise I fear its featured status will need to be reviewed. Espresso Addict (talk) 01:27, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Literature has been nominated for a featured portal review and may lose its status as a featured portal. Reviewers' concerns are set out here. Please leave your comments (which can include "keep" or "delist") and help the portal to be of featured quality. The instructions for the review process are here. Espresso Addict (talk) 17:34, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Notability question

I found that some news agencies did reports on The Greek Seaman after the author engaged on a controversy on a blog.

Do you think it is notable? The controversy erupted at http://booksandpals.blogspot.com/2011/03/greek-seaman-jacqueline-howett.html WhisperToMe (talk) 06:56, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

It certainly sounds notable to me. öBrambleberry of RiverClan 00:22, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Cool! I started The Greek Seaman. WhisperToMe (talk) 01:38, 2 March 2013 (UTC)

The Bones of Avalon

Hello, please have a look at my article The Bones of Avalon. It is about the novel of the same name by Phil Rickman. A very interesting book because it features not only the myth of King Arthur but also describes how this myth was politically instrumentalised. A rare combination that is, isn't it? Moreover it explains the fame of Glastonbury better than any other book or film I ever came across so far. I could go on like this forever... Please feel invited to check it out. NordhornerII (talk) _The man from Nordhorn 11:38, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Harry Potter and J. K. Rowling

If I understand correctly, these four of six current categories should be deleted at Category:Novels by J. K. Rowling and added at Category:Harry Potter books.

  • British fantasy novels (−) (±)
  • British children's novels (−) (±)
  • Children's fantasy novels (−) (±)
  • Fantasy novels by writer (−) (±)

That is, the subset Harry Potter books should replace Rowling novels in these four categories, because The Casual Vacancy is neither fantasy nor for children (nor YA).

WP:Harry Potter was converted to a Novels task force in July, according to its current address and main page. Perhaps it happened without legitimacy or notice here, but see Wikipedia talk: WikiProject Harry Potter (perhaps soon to be archived). It isn't yet listed as a task force here.

--P64 (talk) 19:13, 4 March 2013 (UTC)

The Greek Seaman

For the "reception" to the incident section at The Greek Seaman, would anyone be interested in going through the quotes and condensing/consolidating things or rewording them? Thanks WhisperToMe (talk) 16:58, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

The Kindly Ones discussion

Hello. There's an ongoing debate at Talk:The Kindly Ones (Littell novel)#"Further reading" regarding the use of a "further reading" section. I am not involved in this in any way, but input from project members would be appreciated. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:19, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Help with awards over on Howard V. Hendrix

I'm trying to find some references for awards over on Talk:Howard V. Hendrix#Awards. Any help is appreciated. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 06:02, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Ultimatum book clean up tag

For the love of..., does anyone read these days or have an Audible account? The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Ultimatum novel articles plot section is an accurate synopsis of both books. If you have a library card, extra cash, or have an Audible account, please pick up The Bourne Trilogy and read, or listen, to them and come back to these two book articles and tell me if you don't understand. I for one have read these books over and over again and continuously agree with the plot section in both articles. As noted above, please read or listen to these books. I'm sorry for coming off strong, rude, mean, and hot headed, but, really, if I who is a high functioning mental retard can actually tell you that both books and articles are the same is simple form. Sundogs UserPage My sandbox 02:11, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for asking for feedback. I agree with you the summaries are decent, however on the first the style and grammar are both rather poor, and both articles have an unbalance towards plot rather then the larger scope of the book articles: which should be real world context. If you want to further improve the articles, check out Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Novels, Sadads (talk) 15:07, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
So, basically saying here is that I have to write a broader scope of things like the subplot in the first novel, The Bourne Identity in the article with the conclusion in Identity or Ultimatum article? Also, what other needs, besides the grammar and punctuation and broader scope needs, is there to do. Is there a chance to include the The Bourne Identity (film) and the movie adaptation in the Identity movie? Going on with this theme, include The Bourne Ultimatum (film) in the novel as well? What about soundtracks from television or film? Reception I know that needs to be in all Jason Bourne novels and references? I have read what you posted and I am, somewhat, confused on what should and shouldn't be in the articles. Please respond in a nutshell on what should and shouldn't be in the articles. Thanks.
P.S. The Bourne Ultimatum refers to film, novel, and soundtrack. The Bourne Ultimatum (novel) redirects to The Bourne Ultimatum Is there a way to distinguish the name is a disambiguate The Bourne Ultimatum name from The Bourne Ultimate (novel) from The Bourne Ultimatum (film) from The Bourne Ultimatum (soundtrack). I would like to have public vote on this or simple be known and dealt with. Sundogs UserPage My sandbox 22:45, 2 April 2013 (UTC)
Generally, as regards the additions to both of these articles, it is usually appropriate to have summaries of the impact of the derivative works. Also, for both these they should expand reception, discussing the composition or history of the novel and a providing survey of themes or stylisitc traits identified by critics. An example of articles that handles these areas well (even though the plot summary is kindof long) is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone or Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
In response to the name thing, currently their is a line at the top of The Bourne Ultimatum which WP:DABS the various parts without having to take the reader to a separate page, so the reader can distinguish between them if needed. Sadads (talk) 13:43, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

The Bourne Supremacy plot

Just to be clear from the novels noted above, The Bourne Trilogy novels respectively is consisting rely on the plot synopsis. Should there be a {{Allplot}} tag on The Bourne Supremacy (novel) as well since it is rely heavily on the plot? Sundogs UserPage My sandbox 23:24, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to add whichever tags you feel appropriate. Part of the beauty of Wikipedia is that if someone strongly disagrees with you they can always change the tags. That being said, if you are invested in the topic, why don't you go ahead and improve the articles? Do you need help finding resources or research? Sadads (talk) 13:43, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
The resources that are reliable and I always like to know what aspects of good "research is best for Wikipedia" is good on here; if you catch my draft. Sundogs talk page sandbox 14:03, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
Certainly: here is the best quick summary and some useful links: First, everything that we assert about a subject beyond summary or details obtainable as common knowledge must be referenced to reliable secondary sources in order to allow WP:Verifiability, which is a mechanism on Wikipedia that allows us to all edit anonomously (essentially, not requiring individuals to have authority, but rely on the authority of outside authors. For examples, and our qualifications for sources see WP:Identifying reliable sources. The principle is that we don't publish any original research under the policy Wikipedia:No original research. I would suggest watching the video to the right.
File:Verifiability and Neutral point of view (Common Craft)-1280px-en.ogv
The Video about Verifiability and Notability, etc

.

The best practice for Wikipedia articles is to find as much reliable sources as you can and to try to find a way to present the different types of information within them in as balanced an approach as possible, Sadads (talk) 01:31, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

Vortex (novel)

Greetings, all.

I would like to call attention to an edit war looming on the Vortex article - perhaps somebody here could restore some needed sanity there by giving one's casual opinion on the plot synopsis? Another user, Eaglestorm, has repeatedly altered the existing revision by filling it with inaccurate information, unneeded tactical details, and overall plot dump. When I removed these on specified grounds, he attacked the earlier revision as being utterly inaccurate, even when I pointed out similar issues with his own. Although I have suggested he give me some examples of said inaccuracy to work with, (and even recommended that we approach the subject on the talk page) he has openly ignored this appeal and continued his problematic edits.

It's obviously a very situation, and a third opinion would very much be appreciated.

Thanks! --Katangais (talk) 03:16, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Question about the article structure beyond the plot

I am currently commissioned many of the Jason Bourne series books and I would like to know, in regards to, the article structure. I mean, am I allowed to place the development before or after the plot? Is response allowed on the article? What, if any, references are notable to use pertaining to Jason Bourne series (for this case), and the other minute things to use that I think it is relevant to the article(s) but may not be approved by Wikipedia's standards. Sundogs talk page sandbox 20:23, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Development should go in the place most appropriate for the content that you have about it. More often then not, it makes sense to have the development before the plot summary.
As for the character page, keep an eye on Wikipedia:WikiProject Fictional characters/Style guide and the quality examples at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fictional_characters/Quality_content. When writing about fictional characters it's important to explore the information explores them outside the fictional world (unlike how you should treat these types of articles on Wikia), Sadads (talk) 05:43, 8 April 2013 (UTC)

United States of Banana

The recently created page United States of Banana does not appear to satisfy WP:Notability (books), though the book's author, Giannina Braschi, does appear to satisfy WP:Notability (people). Another novel of hers, Yo-Yo Boing!, has been reviewed rather more often, and she has been profiled in some news media. I have proposed merging the former page into the latter. Discussion is at Talk:United States of Banana#Propose merge. Cnilep (talk) 07:10, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Trainspotting (novel) and Skagboys plot summaries

I came across the plot summary for Skagboys and tagged it with {{plot}}, as it was excessively long and showed a chapter by chapter breakdown of the plot. On second thoughts, I decided it was too long to be useful, so I deleted it. I now see that Trainspotting (novel) suffers from the same problem. Does anyone want to have a look at these? --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:40, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of The Vampire Diaries (novel series)

The article The Vampire Diaries (novel series) has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No third-party, independent sources demonstrate notability of the novel series independent of the TV series.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Rotideypoc41352 (talk) 07:47, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

The fact that the series has been converted to TV does give it some notability, so I've removed the Prod, if you'd like to take it further and go to XFD that might be better. GimliDotNet (Speak to me,Stuff I've done) 08:15, 17 April 2013 (UTC)

Notice of External links noticeboard discussion

We just need the intention behind WP:ELNO #12 elaborated on. I posted there using those words, the issue was addressed, and yet the editor who did not get the consensus he wanted continues on at Talk:Planet of the Apes (novel)#EL. The EL we want to restore to the article at issue was cleared at WP:Media copyright questions/Archive/2013/March#External link copyright issue. We are looking for additional comment at Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#Planet of the Apes (novel). - Gothicfilm (talk) 05:04, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Planet of the Apes (novel) RfC now posted

Others can comment at Talk:Planet of the Apes (novel)#RfC: The Sacred Scrolls external link. - Gothicfilm (talk) 23:50, 19 April 2013 (UTC)

The Death Cure

There is an ongoing disagreement over sourcing on a plot summary and characters section at Talk:The Death Cure#Delete by Qworty. Your input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 03:58, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Category:American women novelists

There is a discussion about Category:American women novelists, and a seperate one about Category:American men novelists. I was thinking that people in this project would be interested in weighing in on those. On the American women novelists category, it is the second discussion that specifically relates to that category.John Pack Lambert (talk) 22:11, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

Fukkatsu no Hi

The page has gone live, but this needs book RS reviews. Help whenever you can especially if you have a copy of the book as well. Thanks! --Eaglestorm (talk) 08:20, 1 May 2013 (UTC)

Categories

FYI for Wikiproject novels: discussion here re categorization. Truthkeeper (talk) 16:31, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

this nom for Asian-American novels was withdrawn. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 03:05, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_April_25#Category:American_men_novelists

You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_April_25#Category:American_men_novelists. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 07:12, 5 May 2013 (UTC)

Help diffusing Category:American novelists by century

I have realized that we probably should diffuse this category by century. Why? 1-even the "this is a distinguished category" notes on the women and men novelists categories are not very good at preventing that diffusion, because people do not need to ever look at a category page to add people to it, or remove them from it. 2-the genre categories often do not fully cover the novelists. Many novelists have written works that are historical novels for example, but have also written several other works that are not (Charles Dickens is the example that comes to mind the fastest), and so often when we put someone in a by genre cat they really should be in the parent, which is going to create a mess if left. 3-there is a clear change of novels and novelists over time. The century cats are still going to be immensely large, and Cateogry:21st-century novelists has a very high overlap with Category:20th-century novelists, although not as bad as you might expect, however it groups people more closely. I have gotten to the start of the D section, and also fully dispersed Z, but there is still a lot more to do, so any help would be appreciated.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:19, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Fantasy writers

Category:American fantasy writers is a sub-cat of Category:American novelists. At one level this seems like an inproper rlationship. For example Malcolm Marmorstein wrote the screenplay for Pete's Dragon, which is categorized as a work of fantasy. How exactly then do we not put Marmorstein in the fanstasy writers category, and if we were to do that, what should we do about this. I am torn between three solutions. Personally I think the best would be to create Category:American fanstasy novelists, and make that a sub-cat of both Category:American novelists and Category:American fantasy writers, then just have Category:American fantasy writers be a sub-cat of Category:American fiction writers. This way we could put any screenwriters, dramatists and playwrights, poets, short story writers or other writers of some type (I am not sure what else there is, but I am sure we could find some other way to write fantasy) who were not also novelists in the parent category. There are two potential reasons to not do this, 1-some people might say "this is really meant for those who wrote short stories and novels, not screenwriters and playwrights", I am not sure why that would be, but it might be. The other issue is that at least between fantasy novelists and fantasy short story writers there is a fairly high overlap. To make this even more of a mess, it is not always easy to say what is fantasy and what is science fiction, but I am assuming that sine we have the two different categories someone knows.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:26, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

  • considering there is an anthology called "Dark of the Moon: Poems of Fantasy and the Macabre", the idea of fantasy poems is actually clearly in existence.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:31, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
I just thought of another way to write fantasy, in songs.John Pack Lambert (talk) 04:57, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Presentism

So far, through D, we have about 7 times as many articles in Category:21st-century American novelists as Category:19th-century American novelists. If the categories were balanced from year to year it would be the other way around. I guess though there are lots more people at any given time in 21st-century America than there were in 19th-century America. I still have a feeling that we have an over abundance of people in the present category and an under abundance of people in the 19th-century category. I am not sure if there is any easy way to fix the problem.John Pack Lambert (talk) 02:26, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Thats a problem with the internet and research more generally...I would suggest that it is not fixable, and that most encyclopedias will be presentist anyway. Part of the reason we should be doing outreach like WP:GLAM and Wikipedia:United_States_Education_Program, is that most of the conversations in those spaces are not as presentist as the pop culture focus of the internet more generally. I strongly encourage you to write articles that are about important historical materials such as those listed at Template:JFCooper for example. Just a thought, cheersSadads (talk) 02:47, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Well, I did manage to add B. H. Roberts to the 19th-century category by hunting down information on a novel he wrote, and Susa Young Gates to the 20th-century cat by digging up a novel she wrote. Actually, few would accuse The Brittanica of being presentist, so I would not say it exists in all encyclopedias. With user generated content, we do have the problem that besides people being more likely to write bios of authors they read and the internet having a lot more stuff of living authors, some articles are created by the people themselves or their publicists. On the other hand, a very high percentage of articles that get put up for deletion are on living people, so there is some resistance to the problem.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:10, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

Defense of by century categories

In high school I had a couse that was "20th-century American literature". It seems fairly obvious that people support at least some novelists by century categories. It also avoids the problem of how to deal with novelists who wrote some novels that were clearly in specific genres but also wrote other novels that were not in geners we have categories for.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:34, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Don't confuse subject-by-century with person-by-century. It's simple to delineate a subject, like literature, with 1900 and 2000 as cut-off dates. You can't do that with authors, though, because of the ones whose careers overlapped centuries. Is Stephen King a 20th century novelist? Or a 21st century novelist? Do you diffuse to both categories? Or one (which one)?OttawaAC (talk) 02:57, 11 May 2013 (UTC)
You stick him in both. Not really a big deal IMHO. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 06:43, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Navigating this project

Haven't been here for a while, and I just kicked off The Underpainter and would like to invite others to have a look at what I've done so far and add/modify if they wish, but I'm not sure how to bring it to people's attention. Deb (talk) 17:39, 11 May 2013 (UTC)

Novelist genres

  1. Hi - as a result of all of the hoopla, some editors have been creating new genres under Category:American novelists. My thought was, we already have an existing Category:American novels tree, and the genres should, in general, match 1-1. So first, any thoughts on that?
  2. Secondly, a specific question on Category:American LGBT novelists, which was recently created - as a way of capturing writers who write LGBT-themed novels (and not to capture writers who happen to be LGBT) - I think this naming is confusing, and I'm wondering if you all might have a suggestion on a better name, then we can nominate it for renaming.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 16:25, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Let me be hopeless today. We have already cats such as Category:Canadian historical novelists and Category:Welsh fantasy writers. The latter is small enough and the names so distinctive that I know them at a glance to be fantasy writers who are Welsh rather than writers of Welsh fantasy--such as Susan Cooper and Alan Garner, who wrote Welsh fantasy novels. The former is big enough and opaque that I can't know at a glance. I am sure that both category names have double meanings for our visitors, same as Category:LGBT novelists (or same by nationality).

And what is a novel? Do we want to see moved from Novels by writer to Books by writer every subcategory that includes one article about a book that is not (whose content is not) a novel? Or reorganize to give every such writer a books category with a novels subcategory?

By the way, how many British books by writer subcats contain only one page? and why isn't British novels by writer one of its + subcategories?

Almost every deceased science fiction writer from the U.S. wrote at least one novel at least one short story. Should they all be in cats American science fiction writers, American short story writers, and now specifically 20th-century American novelists? (Philip K. Dick#External links; see also toda's preemptive edit summary[11]) Plus American historical novelists if one book was a historical novel? --P64 (talk) 18:04, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

Hi P64. Yes, you've raised a good many questions. I fixed that one issue re: British books by writer not containing British novels by writer. As to your broader points, my general feeling is, we should try to follow sources and notability when deciding where to stick someone. If someone wrote 100 sci-fi novels and one essay, I would not put them in Category:American essayists - similarly, even though everyone - including me - has written a poem or two, I don't think that gets you into Category:American poets - there has to be some body of work for which you are known - not just dabbling. Imagine if someone wrote a bio of said writer - would they say "Ernest Hemingway, novelist, did XXX"? Probably not - they'd say "Ernest Hemingway, writer, novelist, journalist, fisherman, etc etc etc" - so some people like him have so many facets that they end up in many many categories. That's my view. As for the sci-fi writers, for now I'd say they should all definitely be in Category:American science fiction writers and Category:20th-century American novelists - I think all novelists will eventually be in one of the by-century cats, as it diffuses the overly-large Category:American novelists cat. But anyway, that's a broader discussion... --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 18:25, 6 May 2013 (UTC)
  • On the science fiction writers, there are lots of people who have only written screen plays or plays that are science fiction. Our current tree does not allow us easily to categorize these people by the nature of their work. My general view on poets, is that they should have to be published. I generally focus most on what it says in the lead, but if the article lists multiple short stories, multiple novels, multiple poems, published collections of essays, says the memoirs or autobiography is widely read, or such, we should so categorize.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:40, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  • On the other hand Mike Allen (poet) appears to be a science fiction writer who has never written a novel. Short stories yes, a novel, not as far as anything in the article on him says.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:42, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  • The general consensus is Nationality identified + occupation means the person is of the nationality identified. This might mean we should rename Category:American young adult novelists to Category:American novelists who wrote young adult literature or something, since its contents are not young adults who wrote novels, but people who wrote young adult novels. I have still not figured out a better name though.John Pack Lambert (talk) 03:44, 7 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Also, any other thoughts on the above? Should we try to align novelist/novel genre categories as directly as possible? --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:33, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Category:Novels by country

I'm somewhat irritated by Category:Novels by country and its subcategories. Apparently those categories are effectively "Novels by author's nationality", and we seem to use them indiscriminately, irrespective of whether the author's nationality is mentioned or discussed in the novel article. The case in point is The Picture of Dorian Gray which is categorized as an "Irish novel" without any reliable sources to that effect merely because Wilde was born in Ireland; see Talk:The Picture of Dorian Gray. That seems to violate WP:CAT, which states:

  • "Categorization of articles must be verifiable. It should be clear from verifiable information in the article why it was placed in each of its categories."
  • "A central concept used in categorising articles is that of the defining characteristics of a subject of the article. A defining characteristic is one that reliable sources commonly and consistently define the subject as having—such as nationality or notable profession (in the case of people), type of location or region (in the case of places), etc."

Is there some sort of consensus to simply ignore those parts of WP:CAT when categorizing novels by author's nationality? Huon (talk) 01:51, 9 May 2013 (UTC)

My sense is, the by-nationality subcats get a bit of flexibility in terms of WP:CAT, since diffusion by nationality is quite common in many trees. Thus, you might have a poet who is regularly called an amazing poet, and then in another article called a Frenchman, and they may rarely call him a French poet - but if we have reliable sources for the intersecting bits, then we can pull them together into a by-nationality sub-cat. The other question you're asking, which is does it even make sense for a novel to have a nationality, there I don't really know. How would you classify The Picture of Dorian Gray? It seems you're also wading into issues of Irish vs British identity, and that's a little minefield in a teacup... For the vast majority of novels, this categorization-by-nationality of the person who wrote it (or, really, the place where it was first published?) is not debated - but you've run into an edge case. Note that any given novel could be placed in several places - so if you think its a quintessentially British novel, it can be placed there as well. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:21, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
+1. Well explained, and well done on the Categories work more generally! Sadads (talk) 02:49, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I wouldn't categorize the books (as opposed to the authors) by country at all, but, say, by language, unless it's an example of a specific national style or has themes strongly relevant to that country. I don't think that's the case for Dorian Gray, so I'd argue it's better off in Category:English-language novels than either Category:Irish novels or Category:British novels. Huon (talk) 03:14, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
Unfortunately, for that sort of organization to work, it assumes that readers and scholars of the literature understand things as transcending the geographic boundaries in which they are written. This is simply not the case, most scholars specialize in a literature based on the nationality of the author (for instance I am taking a course in Irish literature, in which many of the works are considered Irish by scholarship even though many of the authors haven't lived in Ireland for years). And secondly, the limits of publishing industry ensure that works maintain the artificial and sometimes confusing boundaries of nationality, simply because publishers tend only to distribute works to the country in which they are initially written and/or the author feels most aligned, unless they are a big hit like Harry Potter. Nationality provides one of many meaningful lenses in which, as OWK points out, to capture most works, even if they are blurry with works like Dorian Gray, Sadads (talk) 03:30, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I would also say that literature is generally divided by nationality. The actual tricky point is novelists who changed nationality. What is the nationality of the works Lolita for example?John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:14, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
    • Nabakov s described as a "Russian-American". He spend several years in Germany as well. He had been in the United States for 15 years when Lolita was first published, so most would agree it was an American work. Except it was first published in Paris. I would say, generally where a novel is published has no relationship with its nationality.John Pack Lambert (talk) 05:17, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
      • Last I checked verify was a pillar. We can't guess at what we think is right; we have to source and cite what we add, even at the category level; and we have to use good quality sources - we can't go by what the WP page says. This, in my view, goes to the heart of why diffusion is difficult. Novelists are artists, and to oversimplify, tend to disregard boundaries. Truthkeeper (talk) 09:59, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
I think this gets to the heart of the issue - to what extent is it worth it to diffuse, and if so, to what? We have a similar challenge over at Category:American novelists - some want to diffuse to by-century categories like Category:20th-century American novelists, others are resisting. My case for that is the same as for the novels - by diffusing to the by-century cats, you remove any question of *who* gets to be an unadorned novelist, or which book gets to be an unadorned novel, and you completely eliminate any notion that being in the head cat is some sort of accomplishment or award for literary merit. It is the ultimate in POV to say "Well, this is a great *NOVEL* - no genre attached, whereas this one is a great "war novel" (but it's *not* a novel!). Why can't something be both? If you categorize by century, or year, or etc etc. as you've done in novels and as we're proposing to do with the novelists, everyone is in an undifferentiated, un-adjectivized list, simply sorted by a completely neutral time period. Then, in addition, they can be added to genres or ethnicities or genders as necessary. If you take a look at A Farewell to Arms, it is also in nationality-specific cats, and so-called "international" cats for novels - and is placed in several genres besides. I'm not sure what's wrong with that - it's more like saying "we know this is a novel, and it may fit into 100 boxes, but we've decided to track these 5 boxes for now, so we'll stick it in 3 of those" All categorization is oversimplification in some sense. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 12:03, 9 May 2013 (UTC)
As the discussion here started around whether a novel by Oscar Wilde should be regarded as an Irish novel, my view is that it must; novels may be classified very broadly, e.g. (as Huon mentions above) by the language in which they were written, in this case Category:English-language novels; but when a particular author firmly identifies his nationality, as Wilde did, there is no reason whatever not to classify his/her works as "nationality" novels. Portrait of DG must be categorised in Irish novels and, due to the carelessness of other editors, that automatically includes it in the Category:English-language novels (as though all Irish novels were in the English language). Brocach (talk) 00:40, 13 May 2013 (UTC)
Yes, you've just run smack dab into the partial subset issue; wherein not *all* members of subcategory Y of a parent cat X can also be said to be X. This sort of thing is endemic, and I promise you it is not a slight against the Irish language - it's really because people use categories more to describe relationships and proximity, as opposed to rigid set membership and so on. To further detail why these sorts of things crop up, today Category:American novels is a subcat of Category:English-language novels. Now, if someone were to add a spanish-language novel, written by a US citizen living in California, to the list of Category:American novels, no-one would complain. But due to its presence in Category:English-language novels we now have a logical inconsistency - a member of the subcat is clearly not a member of the parent. Again, this is endemic, it happens all the time, we can try to address egregious cases, but I don't think it can be completely solved. In the case of Ireland, for example, Category:English-language Irish books and Category:Irish-language Irish books could be produced, but this would require a split of the whole Category:Irish books tree, by language. Ugh. --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 01:05, 13 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion at Category_talk:American_novelists#RFC_or_not.3F

You are invited to join the discussion at Category_talk:American_novelists#RFC_or_not.3F. Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 02:36, 16 May 2013 (UTC)

Richard Castle

The Richard Castle article is mixing the fictional character history, with the real-life nom-de-plume history. Particularly, real-life e-books and ISBNs are being used to represent the fictional works. While ghostwritten novels have been released, this should be clearly segregated from the in-universe versions of those books. There should be a separate section on how the fictional character has become a real-life pseudonym, instead of making representations that appear to have a fictional character write real-life novels. -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 12:02, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Brady Kincaid

The article Brady Kincaid has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

No indication of meeting WP:Notability – no coverage in independent sources

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. Angr (talk) 22:43, 26 May 2013 (UTC)

Discussion about novelist categories

Greetings! You are invited to take place in a conversation happening Category_talk:American_novelists#Stalemate here about how to move forward with discussion on subcategories of by-country novelist categories.— alf laylah wa laylah (talk) 14:48, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

please come and provide input. Thanks! --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 14:12, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
That other location may be a poor one for such discussion in principle, and also because that page has bloomed. It's too much to comprehend.
What is special about American novelists? Is it that the novel is an exalted class of literary works, as commonly used in the industry (fiction writers, publishers, booksellers, NYTimes reviewers, Professors of Literature)?
• If the novel is exalted, then we have reverse ghettoes as well as ghettoes; the novelists among fiction writers are a subset exalted rather than deprecated such as science fiction writers. Six of the thirteen Fiction writers subcats are for fiction writers by nationality? Who gets classed as a fiction writers by nat rather than a novelist by nat or a short story writer by nat?
• "Historical fiction" is named in the Historical fiction writers preface but that redirects to historical novels, which is thus the main article for both the fiction writers and the novelists subcat.
Oops. Historical fiction does not redirect to historical novel. The latter is the main article implied by the Historical fiction writers preface but the latter uses a piped link; it targets "novel" and displays "fiction". --P64 (talk) 21:36, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
Is the subcat a reverse ghetto for biographies of authors of works that do qualify as novels? (At a glance I see no biogs in both cats; one doesn't get classed as a fiction writer as well as a novelist by the publication of one historical short story, comic book, or chapter book (for young readers) as well as novels. Of course misunderstanding by editors may put some biogs in the higher category alone because their subjects wrote historical fiction including but more general than novels.)
• At least among children's writers and speculative fiction writers we have many {infobox writer} that identify people as Novelists by occupation, some that give occupations Novelist and short story writer. (There would be many many more given an established term for writers of the text for children's picture books but those are not picture book writer by occupation.) Is it honorary to be a novelist rather than a writer or fiction writer? Does a different editor later add short story writer because s/he considers the double occupation better?
• See the Science fiction writers by nationality preface for another problem --more than one problem, but let's pass over the page design and prose quality. The point here is the substance of that pained Note.
• Finally, the "19th-century" novelists, American or otherwise, are no different from scientists or baseball players grouped by century. Experts in the history of science or baseball don't use centuries to period-ize (in American and Oxford English) their subjects strictly by numerical date, no more than do experts in the history of literature. -P64
P.S. What is special about American novelists?, I opened. It may be the number of college courses on American literature, or on novels, and the ready availability of critical works including course reading lists and syllabi. --P64 (talk) 19:46, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

The Flashman Papers

Does anyone else think that there is too much repetition between the lead section and the main article? Discussion here. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:48, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

In fact, could use some more eyes on the talk page - there's a couple of changes that I believe to be reasonable that are being knocked back by the article's main contributor. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:39, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
Are you aware that the WP:LEAD is suppose to summarize the main article and nothing is suppose to be in the LEAD that is not in the main body of the article?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:49, 24 May 2013 (UTC)

Could use some input on the talk page regarding merging some of the information from Harry Paget Flashman. --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:38, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

Derivative works and cultural references templates

NO CONSENSUS
RfC closed as no consensus with regard to maintaining templates on various/derivative multimedia on authors' articles. The guidelines on navigation boxes are the only guide to go on here (although there are many essays available for those interested). Editors in support of keeping the templates cite many of the common advantages: that they aid and organize navigation (as opposed to having to find a Wikilink), and are out of the way for those who don't need them. Editors in support of removing the templates cite many disadvantages: template creep, a general sensation of clutter. In addition, these templates are already available on the articles for the work. Looking ahead, a compromise might be in order where the number of articles per template needs to be at a minimum before inclusion on an author's page. WP:ATC Suggests The Rule of Five, but I'll leave this to future discussion. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 01:48, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

After several weeks, we only had seven respondents which led to further contentious editing. Thus, the issue below regarding the propriety of including derivative works templates on author bios could use further feedback through the RFC process.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 17:34, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

FYI, I have contacted the derivative works template creators and leading editors for the templates at the following novelist pages: Charles Dickens, Stephen King, Jane Austen, H. G. Wells, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert Louis Stevenson, Agatha Christie, Bram Stoker, Felix Salten, Arthur Conan Doyle, Truman Capote, Curt Siodmak, Dashiell Hammett, Émile Zola, Washington Irving.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:59, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Since I am the creator of all the derivative works templates on the following pages no notifications were made although they each have multiple templates: Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Oscar Wilde (mostly plays), Alexandre Dumas, Hans Christian Andersen, Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Edgar Allan Poe, A. J. Cronin, Ernest Hemingway, H. P. Lovecraft, John Steinbeck, Herman Melville, Wilkie Collins, H. Rider Haggard, Thomas Hardy, Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Henryk Sienkiewicz, John Wyndham.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:59, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Yesterday, I contacted all the bio article leading editors to expand our responses.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:07, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

If you are watching pages for many of the most important novels, you have probably noticed that over the last 7 or 8 months I have created hundreds of templates for derivative works and cultural references for novels. Check towards the bottom of User:TonyTheTiger/creations#Templates_Created to see what I call multimedia franchise templates. There has been debate at Fyodor Dostoyevsky regarding the stack of templates at the bottom of the page. For novelists, these templates do two things. First, the sheer number appearing on a page is a very rough metric of cultural significance of the author. To the best of my knowledge, the novelists with the most works templates on their pages are Charles Dickens (11, 6 created by me), Stephen King (9, 4), Fyodor Dostoyevsky (6, 6), Jane Austen (6, 5), and H. G. Wells (6, 4). Those are the extreme cases of what this could look like. Second, if I were studying any of these authors, I think these templates would teach me something that augments the encyclopedic content of the page. Each individual template gives single-click single-glance access to all derivative works that are notable (enough to have WP articles) for the authors works that are notable enough to have such a template (I restrict myself to a minimum of four related WP articles). These templates are of course reliant on the WP beavers having created all the right articles. These templates don't always point to the most notable works by an author. I am sure some Ernest Hemingway fans are a bit disappointed on which templates are available and which aren't. Nonetheless, I think WP is better served by including them on author pages than excluding them.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:01, 2 May 2013 (UTC)

They are disturbing and avoid opening the main navbox. They are simply not needed in the main article. If someone wants to see film adaptions, he can read to the novel articles. The film adaptions are not even discussed on the article. Readers are not interested in the film industry when reading Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky never wrote screenplays nor directed any of those films. Some of them differ significantly from the original works. Regards.--Tomcat (7) 10:16, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
WP:Novels is the third largescale project where some of the editors questioned whether my templating efforts were being properly used. In the prior cases, the consensus was to keep deploying them as I suggested. If these templates keep the main navbox from opening, you can set the collapsibility of the main navbox so that it remains open in the presence of other navboxes. Dostoyevsky is an author who at all times seems to have a current, upcoming or recent adaptation. Thus, there is probably some interest derivative adaptations of his work among people who are interested in him. The fact that the article does not mention derivative adaptations of his work is very likely a deficiency of the article and nothing to promote as an argument. Most biographies of authors include content related to the "legacy" or "cultural impact" of the subject's work. The fact that this biography does not is not something to boast about. Until you are able to cobble an appropriate section together these templates are somewhat of a substitute and once you do, it will still be a complement by adding further detail. There is no reason that the reader has to want to see every link on a template for each link to belong on the template or for the template to belong on the page. There are some derivative works that are remote enough that it is unlikely that a reader of the main bio is directly interested in that subject. However, readers of other subjects on the template will find them interesting. I don't buy the "disturbing" argument. What does that mean? Do these templates cause nightmares? They don't have any popup feature. They are not jumping off the page. Wikipedia has a longstanding tradition where the racists run around behind me and make sure that no significant change that I try to make to the project gets implemented. It is as if they don't want me to outshine them in some way and will take any action regardless of its detriment to wikipedia to do so. Please assess this debate based on its merits to WP:Novels and WP as a whole.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:41, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
TonyTheTiger: I completely agree with your rational and sentiment. It is very important to build the network, and though cultural reference sections are often impossible to maintain, navboxes provide a robust way of drawing the readership's attention to the larger context of the works. Furthermore, it helps in building the web of links, and deorphaning articles which have strong cultural relevance. I am completely unsure what Tomcat7 is refering to when he says that "Readers are not interested in the film industry when reading Dostoyevsky". By and larger, most of the people reading content on Wikipedia, will be focused on popular culture, not high culture artefacts like works by Dostoyevsky. If anything, by including reference to the list of derivative works amongst various articles, especially those with the popular culture focus, we get the opportunity to enlighten our main audience that popular culture is extremely dependent on a tradition. I greatly appreciate your work Tony, and would like to suggest that most of us that do regular works in the Novels area would agree with that sentiment. Curation of Novels on Wikipedia is rather poor, and any work that supports the organization and better networking of the content should be applauded, Sadads (talk) 19:54, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
I think these nav-boxes are an excellent resource, just because someone might not know adaptations exist doesn't mean they won't be interested when they see the link, and they are not intrusive into the main body of the article. GimliDotNet (Speak to me,Stuff I've done) 20:03, 2 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm not a member of this project, but TonytheTiger asked me to comment, so I will. It's my view that the navboxes for individual works are fine in the articles about the works themselves but inappropriate in the articles about the authors. To my mind, a mess like that at the bottom of Charles Dickens is both unsightly and pretty much useless. A reader who's potentially interested in characters/adaptations/songs-from-the-musical of Oliver Twist is likely to be looking at Oliver Twist (either before or after looking at the Dickens article), and may thus have a use for the box. A reader who's looking at the Dickens article for biographical information about the author, not so much. Deor (talk) 10:54, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
Though I understand the impulse to reduce excess at the bottom of articles, the real question is who looks there? Generally, its two types of people: Wikipedians, who know how to do a quick one over and decide what they are looking for; and users who want more information related to the page, whether in the form of sources, external links or other material on Wikipedia. Both of those groups aesthetically, don't have very high demands: as long as the links and the information is organized both groups benefit from additional links; it allows them to navigate to what they deem appropriate for them, instead of what we deem is related to that particular article. As long as all of the navboxes are not open, but rather are collapsed, it provides a choice of expansible menus of items to our audience who may have objectives other then what we anticipated. I know many cases in my own life where I have gone to an Author page looking for information about an adaptation, and had to click through a chain of links, when it is significant enough for the author's page to have information about it
There is also a another series of questions: do we, as individuals who regularly spend excessive time thinking about items often accepted within proper literary discourse, have the proper perspective to judge what is "useful" for our audience? Why not make the Author's page a portal to everything related to them, instead of limiting it to those things which have reached the place of canons? Canons are radically controversial because they assume certain works are aesthetically or thematically superior because of an arbitrary set of values created by publishers, editors and academics (in this case, whether or not it is by the first author in that branch of literary tradition). Why privilege the canon, when most of our readership is looking for media outside of it? Wikipedia is a populist item and is distinctly not paper. Therefore we should create as many opportunities for information to be reasonably connected and may help the public. These connections force readers to meaningfully think the relationship between distinct knowledge items instead of relying on some filter that we place on it through tradition. When I do outreach, the thing most people talk about is the usefulness of the links between Wikipedia pages and with the rest of the internet. Why not encourage those items on each page? Sadads (talk) 13:16, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  • I think the navboxes in themselves are great additions but I think they should be applied judiciously. For instance, I came into this because of a Divine Comedy navbox in Dante's article, and I have no objections to that, as I stated in that discussion. For the Dickens page, I don't think that half a dozen or more boxes is the right way to go, because I think that a. Dante, for instance, is much more identified with the Comedy than Dickens with any one of the novels now navboxed, and thus b. one is forced to put in a large amount of such boxes in the Dickens article leading to the clutter currently at the page (Tony, I don't mean clutter pejoratively--there may be a better word). Imagine what it would look like on Shakespeare's page! For Harper Lee, for instance, it's a different issue and compares to Dante's case. Sadads, sure, we're populist, but that's not the issue here: if a member of the populus (such as students who aren't literary specialists) are looking for such information they're just as likely, if not more likely, to go the article of the novel--I think we can certainly expect them to do that, that's not too much to ask. Drmies (talk) 14:12, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
    • If having a "half a dozen or more boxes" leads to "clutter" why not just collapse them as above rather than remove them entirely from the page?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 23:12, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove - agree with Deor and Drmies. They're ugly, and not necessary. Can go to the individual articles if necessary but not stacked up in bios. Truthkeeper (talk) 18:38, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
  • The people that want to remove the navboxes, forget one crucial aspect of navboxes: they aid navigation. On a medium such as Wikipedia, navigation is essential, and all related articles should be linked. That is not always possible in the prose, so navboxes are a good substitute. You cannot expect al (new) visitors to know to get to the right articles fast, so navboxes helps those to navigate more easily. A page like Charles Dickens is a central hub to all his literary works and derivatives, so those navboxes are appropriate. To remove them just because there are so many in some instances ("cluttering"), breaks consistency between all articles in general. — Edokter (talk) — 09:38, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm not unaware of the navigational usefulness of the boxes, but everything doesn't need to be crammed into the highest-level article. Look at Solar System. Though there is a navbox for each planet (and for some of the other bodies), those navboxes aren't present in the general article; rather, they are used in the articles Mercury, Venus, etc., and the navbox {{Solar System table}}, which is in the Solar System article, serves as an aid to navigation to the articles containing the subsidiary navboxes. The same arrangement should apply in the case of these biographies. Deor (talk) 11:25, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
IMO, it would not be wrong to have the planet templates collapsed at Solar System.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:36, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
Edokter, the law of diminishing returns applies here. Having a navigational template for Dickens's works is proper on the Dickens page; having one for each one of his works is not. I stand by my earlier point that this should be a matter of judgment. Tony, in response to your comment above, my point was about already-collapsed boxes, such as I found them on the Dickens page when I looked at it a few days ago. For my taste, that's already too much. Look at the bottom of Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands (I'll never get used to having a king)--five boxes, besides a bunch of other stuff. Five, maybe six, that's about as much as I could stand for--maybe less. Drmies (talk) 15:13, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
I don't recall Dickens ever being collapsed, but if you say so. In terms of every work having a template. There is almost no novelist for whom each novel is notable enough to have a navbox. I only create navboxes for works with at least 4 related WP articles in addition to the work's article itself.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 15:30, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
This thought just came to mind. When I see advertisments for Dickens' movies they always say something like "A Charles Dickens Classic", "A Charles Dickens Tale", etc. Thus, outside of the classroom, the way most people are introduced to Dickens is in this type of media exposure. When those people come to WP, what do you think they are looking for?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 16:40, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
I don't think the nested navboxes are a problem at all, any more than, say, the ton of awards navboxes at the bottom of movie pages. My perdonal view is that there's no compelling reason to get rid of them. Kuralyov (talk) 03:55, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Does anyone know how I can get broader participation here. Tomcat7 and I continue to disagree on this issue. Following this discussion, he has removed the templates from Fyodor_Dostoyevsky. Above 2 people agreed with him, 4 agreed with me and Drmies (talk · contribs) sort of said it depends. Tomcat7, has proclaimed that this result is meaningless because it is 1.) a few users, 2.) a "wikiproject talk page, instead on a talk page of a policy or guideline" and 3.) templates for an author's works are unrelated to the author.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 12:58, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
  • remove from author I agree that these have no place on the author's page, especially since in many cases, the author had nothing to do with them, and they just add additional clutter. I'd leave it up to editors on the article pages whether the adaptations are ok on the novel --Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 13:08, 26 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Keep. If you don't open (i.e. intend to use or at least watch) them, they are (in the worst case) 11 bluish lines at the very bottom of the article. On the very non-negligible chance that an editor or reader may be interested in a somewhat related article, such as an adaption of the authors work, they can easily open the relevant navbox and find the links they are interested in. Even if someone finds them completely useless they should not be to quick to project their mindset to others. What "damage" do they cause in their collapsed state that means removing should outweigh a benefit for some (possibly small) number of users? In conclusion, they are useful to some editors, and are so unintrusive that if you don't use them they should be easily ignorable. 85.167.109.26 (talk) 09:59, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author - They don't belong on the author's article. Also just too much clutter. Charles Dickens is a perfect example for that. Garion96 (talk) 23:40, 29 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author The question of collapsing is a red herring. Acceptable size for articles is limited by practical considerations. Authors that have been much written about in sources can get large articles here, and there's often an issue of what to leave out. Adaptations and lists of characters for individual works are secondary on main author pages -- they are clutter in terms of article content, regardless of their occupancy of screen space. I think these navboxes are usually a good idea on pages about individual works, though I think this should be left to article-specific consensus, and such consensus should not be pre-empted here. --Stfg (talk) 12:23, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author As others noted, this is a pragmatic decision rather than one with any strong Wikipedia policy basis. If a navbox has significant utility for readers - then it is allowed. The problem here is that cluttering a biographical article with dozens of possible navboxes each with dozens of possible links makes the likelihood of any given reader actually using them near zero. Thus having navboxes for individual works in those specific articles is of far greater utility than having a catenation of them under the author's article. Also those works which are only secondarily derivative of the original work likely should not even be in those navboxes. (else we could have a "A Tale of Two Kitties" linked to Dickens, etc.) Collect (talk) 13:16, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author's page, per Deor and Drmies. They're ugly, confusing and unnecessary. These templates may appear on the pages for the works that are in the templates, and on pages about the cultural impact of these authors or pages about derivative works (e.g. the page on Cthulhu Mythos for the author H. P. Lovecraft). FurrySings (talk) 11:13, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Keep These are useful. Template:Navboxes could be used if there are multiple navboxes present, as in the Dickens article. This is done in actor articles like Meryl Streep, and athlete articles like Alex Rodriguez, etc. This would help to avoid any perception of clutter. INeverCry 17:06, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Keep per Sadads and IP 85.167.109.26. They aid in navigation, reducing the need for back-and-forth link-clicking (or opening multiple pages/tabs), and in their collapsed state are unobtrusive enough down at the bottom of the page. There is considerable value in collecting certain information and placing it all together in one place, where it can be reviewed at a glance. Rivertorch (talk) 18:14, 25 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Keep: TonyTheTiger asked me to comment. I personally like them. If you don't want to use a nav box, you don't have to open it. -Classicfilms (talk) 06:55, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author. Too much clutter IMO. If the reader wants to see more about the author's individual works, the main navbox has links to the respective articles. —Bruce1eetalk 06:59, 26 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author pages. It's too much. It can be overwhelming having such a mass of boxes. I don't see that it would aid navigation for someone looking for a movie of a certain book. I also think it is ugly. Polequant (talk) 08:29, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author pages, per Drmies and others. There is no need (and little use) for them there. The use on pages for individual works should be determined locally, and care should be taken that they are not overwhelmed by trivia (such as trivial "cultural references"). Kablammo (talk) 12:55, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author pages. Too much clutter and too many choices ultimately become counterproductive to navigation (paradox of choice). Choess (talk) 13:31, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author pages, per Drmies, Choess, and others. They add a level of detail that hinders navigation rather than aiding it. -- Khazar2 (talk) 15:51, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
    • Exactly how do they hinder navigation? Rivertorch (talk) 18:26, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Keep. I have no strong feelings, but I like them a bit more than lists, which are more common anyway. Upgrading them to templates is better; even if such templates are going to be big... so what? Keep them hidden with optional show, and they are still more useful than not. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 20:38, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Deeper consideration is needed: IMO we can't debate this without discussing what we want the "highest-level article" about an important novelist to achieve. For example, when a naïve reader searches for Jane Austen should they reach (a) an article about her life [with links to her works], (b) an article about her works [with links to everything else including their life], or (c) an overview page [that summarizes their life & works very tersely and links to everything]? - Pointillist (talk) 22:37, 27 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Keep. They provide added value. They are unobtrusively at the very bottom of the page. I find them quite useful. — SpikeToronto 06:07, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author. The bibliography (or equivalent) navbox will have the individual works on which can be easily navigated to. Only when you are reading about that work will the related topics be directly relevant. They are not directly relevant to the author, and cause clutter on the author's page. --Rob Sinden (talk) 13:21, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Remove from author pages. I was asked to comment by TonyTheTiger. I agree with what some critics have already said here, and though well-intentioned, I think they are unnecessary clutter. Hohenloh + 21:00, 28 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Question: Is there a physical (as opposed to a policy) limit on article length? If there is a physical limit, the number of templates placed in an article might have to be considered on a case-by-case basis. If there is no physical limit, there perhaps need be no arbitrary restriction on templates or their number. Nihil novi (talk) 00:33, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
    • As recently as 2011, I know there was a limit to the number of wikilinks on a page, making adding templates problematic. I.e, suppose the limit is 2000 wikilinks. If I want to add 5 templates that each have 100 links to some pages, I might cause some to pages to break. However, looking at some pages like Michael Jordan, I am not sure if the limit is what it use to be or if it even exists anymore. The other consideration is load time for mobile and the dwindling number of dialup users.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:47, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
  • Keep, until and unless a rational, as opposed to esthetic, reason is found to restrict or bar the templates, which provide more efficient access to related material. Nihil novi (talk) 12:29, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
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