Talk:The Dresden Files short fiction

Draft

Hey, I figured I'd start this page off so we can have a place to discuss this draft. One thing I'm thinking is that this should be a relatively short article, no matter what we do. Since that is the case, I was thinking one heading for the main body of the page (with a title like "Stories") with subheaded sections for each title. The page looks a little weird, with full sections for each title, don't you think? I'll show you what I mean as soon as I see you've gotten this. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 16:45, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Gotta start somewhere. MinorStoop (talk) 17:01, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Natch'. I'm gonna look into writing up about a 1 paragraph summary of each story (the ones I've read, anyways). The 0-2 sentences we've got look a little bare. I do most of my composing offline, using Notepad++ and my own mediawiki plugin, so I'll make a big revision once I'm done so you can take a look. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 17:52, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Agreed it requires quite some work; you're also likely right in implying that certain editors prefer to turn down as complete a page as possible. It's the first time I write an article for WP; until I know how to compress a few smaller steps in a bigger one, I need to work my way up from the bottom. MinorStoop (talk) 18:08, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

If you want to work on the text offline, you can do it the same way I do, by going to my page on the plugin I use and following the instructions there. I adore Notepad++ for all sorts of script/coding work. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 18:13, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I just found this: Template:Infobox short story. I think we might find it useful. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 18:41, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I'd say, let's go ahead! MinorStoop (talk) 19:10, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Okay, I just made an edit to the page for you to look at. It's not finished yet, but the basic layout and first two entries are pretty much done. Feel free to revert me if you need to get back to what you had before (I tried to build on what you had, but you may have added something since I copied the source out), and let me know what you think. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 19:46, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Naw, it's a pleasure to see an expert at work. MinorStoop (talk) 19:49, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I'm hardly an expert, but I'm glad you seem to like it. I'm going to take a step back for a bit and let you mess with it so we don't end up breaking anything with edit conflicts. I'll check back later today and pick up where you left off. :) MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 20:01, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Let's say you're better at it than I am. :) MinorStoop (talk) 20:12, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Well, infoboxes are in and I will check them at a later time, with a fresh mind. MinorStoop (talk) 20:52, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

I came here today to start beefing up the synopses, but I see you beat me to it. Good job so far, but unfortunately, I can't add any more. I would suggest requesting a review on this page and if there are no major objections, going ahead with publishing. Once it's on the main site, it should get a few people who can add in those synopses we missed. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 15:10, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

The only synopsis I can't provide is for "AAAA Wizardry"; I've got everything else available. Unfortunately, I can't work 24/7 on this page - I've got some thin slices of real life to introduce in edgewise, and had to put the page on the back burner. Hope to finish this evening; I've forgotten how much work writing even a single page can be. MinorStoop (talk) 17:02, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

New article

Just a heads up. I went through the guidelines for article creation just now. The Wikipedia:Articles for creation page is generally considered to be for either IP editors or editors with a conflict of interest. I thought that creating articles willy nilly was frowned upon, but I can't find where it is discouraged. Since this article looks pretty damn good to me, I think we should just go ahead and move it into the article namespace. I can do it if you're not comfortable doing so. Just let me know if you have any objections, and if not, I'll do it today. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 20:02, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Looks like there's no reason not to go ahead. MinorStoop (talk) 20:06, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of The Dresden Files short fiction

The article The Dresden Files short fiction has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

This appears very much like a partial bibliography of the author. A bibliography exists on the author's main page. Even if this is kept, it needs an entire rewrite. But I do not see any necessity for this, as it can be amply handled via the bibliographies on the author's main page.

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. Safiel (talk) 23:35, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

I share some of Safiel's concerns about the degree of duplication between the short fiction page, Jim Butcher's page and the bibliography template. However, the short fiction page includes a short summary of the stories and their position in the series which only awkwardly fit the pages proposed by user Safiel, making it the more complete of the three available, and the best candidate to be kept. Provisionally, I've commented out the versions on Butcher's page and the template - perhaps a bit rashly, I admit; and I wonder whether we can reach some sort of consensus before editing again the pages.

I'm not sure what Safiel intends with the "Even if this is kept, it needs an entire rewrite." sentence, but it seems an indication that the page is a potentially valid one, and that even in her/his mind, a deletion proposal is possibly premature. It would be appreciated if Safiel could expose further her/his objections to the page - I'd be glad to take them into account to improve it. I might add that time constraints will prevent me from editing meaningfully in the next two weeks - the more pragmatic part of the reason why I commented out the deletion notice. MinorStoop (talk) 03:07, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I understand your concerns, however the level of plot and publication information on each of the short stories goes beyond what can be contained in a simple bibliography. The purpose of the page was to provide a replacement for several articles about The Dresden Files short fiction and the article Side Jobs (The Dresden Files). Information such as the synopses and internal chronology placing the works simply doesn't fit into a bibliography, and information on the often multiple publications of the stories fits into bibliographies only very awkwardly. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 13:36, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Working for Bigfoot

If someone is willing to help create an article for Working for Bigfoot, I have an image of the cover ready to go under the standard book cover fair use. I can't upload till a page is created, however, and I'm not sure I have enough time to make anything that's not a tiny lil stub. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 13:42, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

Source for story placement

There are two sources I'm aware of for story placement in the article:

Jim Butcher's web page

and

Goodreads' page

Which one is to be preferred, and how should they be referenced in the page? 87.1.122.76 (talk) 17:15, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Thinking on it, I'd favor butcher's website rather than goodreads; he wrote the stories after all, and is supposed to know, while goodreads is a crowdsourced site. 87.1.122.76 (talk) 17:44, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I think I agree... Goodreads is user generated FWIK, which would be less desirable than a primary source. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 19:42, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Perfect, thanks. I'll deal with the article in the next day or so. 20:15, 3 June 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.1.122.76 (talk)

Best I could manage. 87.1.122.76 (talk) 09:39, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Publication order vs internal chronology order

@MjolnirPants: The first meaningful version of this page is of December 30, 2014, 20:10, a minute or two after the creation of the page. The stories then present are already ordered by internal chronology, rather than publication date, as evidenced by the non-chronological order of the publication date in each story's infobox. The order has been preserved until the addition of "A Fistful of Warlocks", which was added recently.

Now, there are two possibilities I can think of: 1) keeping everything ordered by internal chronology or 2) order everything by publication date. I favor the first, since 1) it appears to be the order established by whoever wrote the article first, and 2) the Jim Butcher bibliography template orders novels chronologically. On a second thought, the publication order and the internal chronology of the novels coincide, for obvious reasons, so choosing one or the other order is quite arbitrary.

Preferring an internal chronology order for its existence for 2 or 3 years rather than a publication date order is flimsy-ish, I admit, and I can let it go if given a reason stronger than the suggestion to edit the Dresden Files wiki. However, keeping "A Fistful of Warlocks" last in a mainly internally chronological list makes for an untidy list; let's keep a strictly chronological order until such a time it is decided to switch over to the publication date. If we so decide.

Thanks. 82.50.204.85 (talk) 00:37, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

First off, Your edit also removed over 5kb of information. Since it's extraordinarily difficult to discern what you removed (as opposed to merely moved) because you've re-organized much of the article, there's no way for me or anyone else to see that you're not removing good information. So you'll be reverted again, and our policies are quite clear that you need to establish consensus before restoring an edit which has been reverted. So please discuss without the edit warring.

Second, the fact that the article used to be a certain way, and the fact that you prefer it that way are worth exactly squat when deciding how to order the article. You need a consensus, and I know there are at least two other editors who work on this page who would very likely oppose re-ordering it now. So convince them (and ideally, convince me as well), and you're golden. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 06:21, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

• Why don't you put together a list of all the short stories in internal chronological order, and we can add that list to the article? I doubt anyone would have a problem with that. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:33, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

This was supposed to do exactly this, the removal of the "unfilled" infobox fields compounding the attempt. 82.50.226.41 (talk) 17:10, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Should elaborate a bit on the removal of content. What I object to is a number of infobox instructions such as these:

"| image =

| caption = "

present, but without anything attached to them. Useless and cluttering, and amount to 5000 or so bytes of material. 82.50.226.41 (talk) 17:17, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Maybe so, but as I said above; It's extremely difficult to tell what you removed because you reorganized everything at the same time. You haven't responded to my suggestion of adding a list yet. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 17:49, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Apologize, wanted to let the dust settle a bit.

The idea might be useful, but a table which can be ordered by title, internal order, and publication date is probably a better idea.

However, the way the article is now, all the titles under "Works" are ordered by internal chronology, except "Fistful of Warlocks" which is last - in my eyes, a spot of untidiness. Unless it's decided to order the catalog by publication date, or alphabetically by title, I'd move "Fistful" in first place, before "Restoration of Faith". 82.50.226.41 (talk) 20:19, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

If you want to move one section without deleting a bunch of stuff, I'm not going to revert, even if I disagree with the ordering. But I still don't think internal chronology is the way to go. We can establish internal chronology with a list (a sortable list is, I agree, better). But the DF isn't all that notable, as much as we may love it. Hell, an AfD on this page would be a bit of a coin toss. Which is to say that part of the reason I think publication ordering is better (and which I will take care of as soon as we settle on something here) is because it helps establish that this article is about the publications. I want to keep this article, so the less fancrufty it is, the better the chances of it surviving or avoiding an AfD. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 22:16, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Publication date, it is then; I care more for the stories be put in a consistent order than for what order it is. 82.50.226.41 (talk) 22:56, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

I've re-ordered based on publication (it was more or less in that order already, with a handful of out-of-place entries) as well as adding a non-free cover image of Working for Bigfoot. I'm still open to a sortable list, though in giving it some thought, that might be difficult. Internal chronology is formatted as "between title and title1". I think that HTML comments are sortable (not going to try right now, maybe later this week), and if that's true, it's going to be easy enough. But if not, it'll be a pain to do something that's both sortable and looks encyclopedic. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 23:45, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks.

Worst case, we can always add a subsection with the titles ordered by internal chronology. 82.50.226.41 (talk) 05:39, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Follow-up. Found a suitable wikitable on another page, copied it and filled it. Feel free to revise it if needed. 82.50.226.41 (talk) 08:22, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Fix the italicized article title?

Greetings and felicitations. When I tried to fix the article title's italics by placing {{DISPLAYTITLE:''The Dresden Files'' short fiction}} at the top of the article, I got the error message "Warning: Display title "The Dresden Files short fiction" overrides earlier display title "The Dresden Files short fiction". in the "Side Jobs" subsection. Unfortunately, I can't find the markup code that is causing this. Would someone please be so kind was to (at least) point me in the right direction? —DocWatson42 (talk) 06:52, 22 June 2018 (UTC)

The {{Infobox book}} template contains {{italic title}}, which essentially unpacks to {{DISPLAYTITLE:<i>[article title]</i>}} when it is not given any parameters. I added the proper parameter and the displaytitle with the more precise italics, so it should look good now. See the diff for exactly what I did. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 01:50, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

EDIT: I had to go add it to all of the book infoboxes, but no biggie. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 01:51, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. ^_^ —DocWatson42 (talk) 09:21, 29 June 2018 (UTC)