Talk:A Shade of Difference

Merge proposal

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Declined: Consensus is against the move at this time. Alpha Quadrant ^talk 14:26, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

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A Shade of Difference → The Advise and Consent Cycle — Coverage of cycle is pointlessly fragmented; new title will suit a right-sized overview of cycle via merging in existing coverage of other sequels, per the following proposal. --Jerzy•t 09:40, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

   We currently have

1. Advise and Consent, re single novel
2. A Shade of Difference, sequel to it
3. Capable of Honor, next sequel
4. Preserve and Protect, covering in separate sections:
   1. Preserve and Protect, yet another sequel
   2. Come Nineveh, Come Tyre, one final sequel
   3. The Promise of Joy, contradictory final sequel

I propose that (above) 1, Advise and Consent, stay essentially as it is, and 2 be renamed, with 3 & 4 be merged into it, producing

1. Advise and Consent, re single novel
2. Sequels to Advise and Consent, or The Advise and Consent Cycle, covering in separate sections:
   1. Advise and Consent, base of the cycle (describing the initial premise and the final situation of A&C, and linking to its article as "Main article")
   2. A Shade of Difference, sequel to A&C
   3. Capable of Honor, next sequel
   4. Preserve and Protect, yet another sequel
   5. The two mutually contradictory final sequels
      1. Come Nineveh, Come Tyre
      2. The Promise of Joy

IMO, the current A&C article serves well, reflecting its status as the (prize-winning and most-read) most notable book of the cycle. But the rest give a fragmented view, via very short articles, of the cycle as whole, tho it is (in contrast with A&C) almost entirely in their context as parts of the cycle that the sequels are of interest.
--Jerzy•t 08:56, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

• [Compound opinion by one editor (amenable to two discussions sets of responses):]
  • Speedy close this is a merge request, not a requested move. 65.93.13.210 (talk) 16:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

        This is a single proposal entailing both a merge and a (potentially controversial) move, that can be rationally considered only in light of the fact that it would damage Wikipedia to effect either the move without the merge, or the merge without the move. It is indeed not a typical move proposal.
        Our editors are flexible enuf to deal with (e.g.) a decision too complex to be worth having a standardized procedure for handling those of its kind; that is arguably why we have an Ignore All Rules policy -- which in this case would seem to mean following the spirits of both the requested move and merge procedures in making the single decision about merging and renaming.
    --Jerzy•t 02:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
    

  • Oppose move If "Preserve and Protect" is the article that covers more than one novel, it should be the one renamed, not the article that only covers one novel. 65.93.13.210 (talk) 16:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

    That's a distinction without a difference. The only effect of stating the proposal that way instead of as it stands is that, in theory, if the proposal is approved the edit history of the resulting merged article -- not A Shade of Difference but e.g. The Advise and Consent Cycle -- would show explicitly the current ed-hist of Preserve and Protect and only implicitly those of the other merged articles. I didn't stop to worry about that detail, and if i had, what i'd have considered saying about it would have been along the lines of

While our familiarity with separate move and merge processes makes it expedient to describe the proposal in terms of merging and then renaming, what requires discussion is whether users will be better served by the sequels appearing as single articles or as sections of a single article, and if the latter, what the single article's title should be. Any editor who could responsibly undertake to implement the proposal would in practice examine all the existing edit histories, and make the decision based on estimating which existing history (other things being equal, probably the one with the most edits) would best serve the users who eventually have occasion to consult the collective edit histories of the various pages where the pre-merge contributors of the content have made their edits.

(And i'd have decided that should be obvious enuf that it wouldn't need to be said unless and until someone else raised the question.)
--Jerzy•t 02:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Advise and Consent won a Pullitzer. That alone makes it and its sequels sufficiently notable to deserve their own articles, in fact in time I expect we'll have articles for all of Allen Drury's novels. Andrewa (talk) 18:00, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

    Your admiration for Drury is your own business, but MMV. We've had 10 years to work on covering this 50-year-old novel and its sequels, so we need to weigh your assessment against its implication that you've at long last uncovered a serious instance of neglect.
    I read A&C when it was new (perhaps as a condensation), and it impressed me enough that i occasionally say "They'll know it in Kansas City", and did a main-namespace search yesterday on a colleague's user name, to refresh my memory as to whether the name was that of a US senator or (as is the case) a fict-char in A&C. Nevertheless, it was only my then seeing the article that first alerted me to either the Pulitzer or the sequels.
    Churchill won a lit Nobel (1/year worldwide for all of Lit, not 6/yr nationally for "letters and drama"), apparently for nothing so much as his magisterial 6-volume history of WWII. We have an article on it, but apparently none on The Gathering Storm, Their Finest Hour, etc., etc.
    It would be of more interest to see Google tests, Amazon ranks, and library holdings testing your belief in the contagious power of A&C's notability.
--Jerzy•t 02:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

    If the proposal is approved without substitution of another title in placed of "The Advise and Consent Cycle", the two titles that currently Rdr to sections of Preserve and Protect will become Rdrs to sections of The Advise and Consent Cycle, and the pages that are currently articles on the other sequels will become Rdrs to their corresponding sections.
    In any case, even a deletion process does not per se prohibit eventual recreation of an article with the same title. In this case, the old title would become a Rdr to the merged article, and (in the hands of any merge/rename-implementing editor who is sufficiently experienced for the task) specifically to the corresponding section of the merged article.
    In fact, notability is not identical with suitability of the topic in question for an article; it is closer to say that it is about suitability for being covered in WP. The term cycle exists because readers and critics want to discuss not only the individual books of a cycle, but also the cycle as a larger work. The function of an article on a cycle is to discuss the larger work, and its existence does not preclude individual articles on its constituent works. The logic of this proposal is that at present we have a good-sized article (16kb) on A&C, and several articles that are for now appropriate in size to be sections within the appropriate overview article on the cycle. The first novel may deserve more than minimal coverage in the cycle article that what i've suggested, but that will be decided by routine editing and routine discussion. What i can say is that it can't be covered in the cycle's article to the same extent that it's covered in its own (presumably not overly detailed) article (even if "there's room" in the cycle's article). Likewise, that its own article's existence means that the cycle's article can't duplicate coverage except to the extent that readers who want to roughly understand the cycle without studying A&C still need certain information about it.
    There is no need to discuss here whether the sequels can support more content than we yet have in their individual articles. The proposal i've made reflects the fact that we now have enuf content to support the appropriate article on the cycle, and don't yet have more content on them than that article can tolerate. That situation calls for the titles of the sequels to redirect to corresponding sections in the cycle article, as long as there is interest (like mine) in the sequels or in the cycle as a whole.
    I favor expansion of our coverage of each of the sequels. It would be possible for a dedicated contributor to take a copy of the current content on any or all of them, and spend a month, or perhaps a long night, expanding it/them to more than 32kB/5 = 6kB (average) size. At present we have 4kB or less on each sequel, so until that happens those who see more thoro coverage as worthy of their effort should probably proceed by piecemeal expansion of the existing content, whether it is found in articles on the individual sequels or in the sections of the proposed cycle article; each time the cycle article approaches 32kB or otherwise becomes unwieldy, MoS for summary style is applicable, perhaps as follows:

1. the bulkiest portion corresponding to one sequel should split out to become an article replacing the Rdr that points to it,
2. that sequel's section on the cycle article should be replaced by a much shorter summary of the points about that sequal that are most important to supporting the overview of the cycle, and
3. that section should be headed with a {{Main article}} template linking to the revived article.

But at present we lack both

a coherant article on the cycle, and
content for individual articles that is extensive enuf to require separate per-novel articles that will add anything non-redundant to the cycle article,

so creating the cycle article will, until expanded coverage of the sequels requires individual articles, mean conversion of the existing article pages (hopefully temporarily) to Rdrs to sections of the cycle article.
--Jerzy•t 02:58, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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