Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels

Derivative works and cultural references templates

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. —Bruce1ee^talk 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)

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)

Harry Potter Task Force

It appears that the Harry Potter task force covers the entire franchise, and as such WikiProject Novels tags are appearing on biographies of people related to the franchise. Since biographies of novelists are generally not considered a part of the project (I checked on Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Dickens), the biographies of these people should not come under this either. Other suspect task forces include Twilight and Percy Jackson, though I haven't checked on them. These should be moved either to Media or to Children's Literature (not Twilight), or other options should be considered. Bubka42 (talk) 08:45, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

link mine, emphasis mine -P64

See my reply there. --P64 (talk) 22:54, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

Link, please. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:45, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

No one else yet participates in the discussion Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Harry Potter task force#Covers the Franchise. I suggest that the Narnia task force banner may be adapted for Harry Potter. Bubka42's rebuts with allusion to the integrity of WP Novels assessment statistics.

Note that that HPtf talk begins with a record of the closed discussion "Turning this Project into a task force?" (July 2012). --P64 (talk) 20:23, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Novelists category

There is a discussion at Category:Novelists that would create very significant changes, and I thought people at this project might want to weigh in on it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:29, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Here's the direct link: Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2013 June 15#Category:Fiction writers. ···日本穣^? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 19:44, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Starship Troopers' FAR

I have nominated Starship Troopers for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. GamerPro64 19:20, 27 June 2013 (UTC)