Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/GeneralForum/2007ArchiveQ1

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Welcome - to our January 2007 – March 2007 GeneralForum archive

Archives
pre January 2006 January 2006 – March 2006 April 2006 – June 2006 July 2006 – September 2006 October 2006 – December 2006 January 2007 – March 2007 April 2007 – June 2007
Current GeneralForum
updated 26 March 2007 — (changes • edit)

Contents 1 Don Quixote 2 Book series infobox 3 Status of Wikipedia:Notability (books) - historical, proposal, or guideline? 4 Japanese light novels 5 Proposal to police own templates 6 Books notability proposal being used to justify AFD 7 AFD notice 8 William Wells Brown (Clotel) Story 9 Hero/ine lists projectified 10 East of Eden copyright infringements? 11 1st cover images

Don Quixote

I am preparing to embark upon a major rewrite of the article about this very important book, together with User:Yannismarou and we would welcome any contributions, thoughts, ideas, suggestions from editors who have more experience in this area. DQ is, of course, much more than a book - it is a, possibly the, seminal work of fiction in the Western canon with a vast cultural legacy and the article as it stands is woefully inadequate given its importance. Can anyone point us to a guideline or page that might help in the framing of its organisation and structure? I plan to borrow form the current Spanish version (a featured article I believe), but if there are other articles that are similar in scope as a frame of reference it would be useful. Eusebeus 23:58, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course we have our Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/ArticleTemplate which is our generic pattern. You could have a look at Master and Commander as an example of how this can be used. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 09:09, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Also you might like to submit Don Quixote as a collaboration of the month, the current one is the Scarlet Letter for January, if there is a enough support for your novel it could well be adopted as the collaboration for February and you would get more focus on it from other editors. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 09:09, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips. I think we have it covered without requiring formal collaboration although any help is of course appreciated. Eusebeus 18:07, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Per Eusebeus. Any help is appreciated. Maybe formal collaboration could also add feedback, but this is something we'll see, and may be premature now. We'll see!--Yannismarou 14:46, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Book series infobox

Hi, all. A technical issue came up over the weekend that's a little beyond me to solve. I worked a little on the new article Time Quartet, which is about a series of books by Madeleine L'Engle. Someone requested an infobox, but the only appropriate one I found, Template:Book Series infobox, is almost impossible to use. There's no documentation on it, and the code itself is confusing and so complex as to be unreadable. So far it seems to have been used only for a relatively small number of articles, and I can see why. I copied a simplified version from some Dragonlance article or other, but that's not a long term solution. Any chance someone can make a more user-friendly version of this? I can see it being needed in the long run for lots and lots of articles about book series (e.g. Pern, Discworld, etc.). Thanks! Karen | Talk | contribs 01:30, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

This appears to be most used for Comic books that are part of series. In otherwords it is not really designed for the use it suggests - I have suggested a renaming.:: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 09:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, and while we're at it, it would be nice to have a character infobox that's specific to literary characters. The one I've been using is primarily television-oriented. Karen | Talk | contribs 01:32, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Status of Wikipedia:Notability (books) - historical, proposal, or guideline?

The WP:BK talk page discussion has trailed off -- I would be interested in people's opinions of whether the page is now historical, an active proposal, or a guideline. Feel free to respond below or on the talk page. Thanks, TheronJ 19:41, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Japanese light novels

Hi everyone. A question's come up as to whether or not Japanese light novels are considered within the scope of the project. In the past, I know that light novels were considered to have traits in common with manga and graphic novels and as such, weren't included but I'm wondering what critera was used to make that comparison. From what light novels I've read, the story is told through a regular prose narrative (though sometimes it can be irregular in structure such as is the case with the Boogiepop series, which tends to tell the same story from at least five different concurrent POVs), and there is no interaction of art and narrative such as what you find in manga and graphic novels. A lot of them read like YA novels, if I'm to be honest. (I think that's also the target audience in Japan, if I understand correctly.) There are illustrations but they seem to be more for decoration than anything else. So should they be considered in scope or be kept out of scope? It might be useful to come up with a definitive answer now, because many more light novels are coming out in English this year and this will prevent some confusion later down the road. -- 9muses 13:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe this can be the subject of a spin-off "task force" such as the short stories task force? 23skidoo 01:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a good suggestion. It looks like the idea of task forces/working groups has been brought up over at WP:Anime, so maybe that's the way to go since many light novels have been adapted into anime & manga and those adaptations will need to be covered in the pertinent articles as well. -- 9muses 03:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

A lot of the articles on these light novels basically consist of a brief mention that the novels exist, followed by an article on the anime adaptation. If the novel in question hasn't been translated, this is fine, but for the translated novels they should probably be treated like legitimate novels, which they are. It seems to be barely under the scope of the WP:Anime project, and would probably benefit from getting some suggestions from the Novels project. Doceirias 03:41, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Related topic -- I'm going to create a category for light novel writers, but thought I should ask what the category should be called. Light novel writers? Light novel authors? Light novelists? Doceirias 20:45, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

They should be called Category:Light novel writers which should be itself within Category:Writers by fiction subject area :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 11:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to police own templates

As a project, templates of the project belong to us in a sense, so I suggest we establish the precendent of discussing such adminstrative minutia as renaming et. al. without resorting to WP:TFD, which at the moment discusses little anyway!

State your views on that assertion here, and on the specific matter as indicated. Thanks // FrankB

• In line with that, Please see the Template_talk:Future_History#Propose_rename_this_template renaming discussion on RAH's Future history template. Thanks and Happy New Year! // FrankB 00:49, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Books notability proposal being used to justify AFD

Please note that an apparently notable novel, The House of Dolls, is up for AFD here. What concerns me is the nominator is citing the proposed Books Notability guideline as justification. I've added a note indicating it is not an approved policy/guideline and should not be used for justifying AFD until it is. I fear there might be a precedent being set if this article is deleted using a guideline/policy that hasn't been properly figured out. 23skidoo 16:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

• Looks like the article is safe for now, with far more Keep votes than Delete votes. 23skidoo 14:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

AFD notice

• List of characters of La Comédie humaine‎ is currently up for deletion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of characters of La Comédie humaine. Please come and help save (even better, improve) an article about a seminal part of French Literature. —ExplorerCDT 17:12, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

William Wells Brown (Clotel) Story

What are some ways brown criticizes this society in his novel.Kim —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.161.214.103 (talk • contribs) 16:43, 30 January 2007.

Hero/ine lists projectified

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/List of literary works with eponymous heroes
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/List of literary works with eponymous heroines
  • ~ trialsanderrors 05:57, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

East of Eden copyright infringements?

There have been some disputes regarding East of Eden. This has been assessed as "Top Importance" by WikiProject Novels. Please check out the situation and make some comments. − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 08:14, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

1st cover images

Should we have a manual work list/ category for novels that need 1st cover images? My thoughts are it would help clean up Category:Novels with an incomplete infobox and many of the current work lists if we did. Thoughts??? Jask99 17:34, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, yes, a million times yes! I've often thought something along those lines would be quite helpful, speaking as someone who spends a majority of their time in this WP updating infoboxes and adding images. The first edition book cover is just as important as the other information included in the infobox, if not more, and yet a lot of people skip over it because they don't want to hunt the image down. If we had some sort of an image taskforce, or even an automated category/list, that would make my job a lot easier. Not to mention, you know, the articles would look a lot better. Heh. María: (habla ~ cosas) 18:11, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I would find such a list to be very useful, as hunting down first edition cover images is a lot of what I do around here (mostly for science fiction novels, but I could probably branch out). Such a list would help in focusing my efforts. -- Antepenultimate 18:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Good Ideas, ok to support this set of ideas I have created two new settings for the {{NovelsWikiProject}} and two supporting categories. A new parameter "|needs-infobox-cover" which can be set to "yes" or "1st" and use of these populates the categories - Category:Novel has infobox needing cover or Category:Novel has infobox needing 1st edition cover respectively. See how it goes, obviously they both need populating first! :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 10:40, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Is there a particular online source that is best for finding first edition covers that qualify as fair use? A number of potential covers had disqualified themselves either because a) they were too small to use or b) they've been watermarked in some way. 23skidoo 13:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Personally don't know of one - would if there was. Still needs careful research I do believe. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 14:16, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Careful research or someone with a heck of a collection. As you know, some first editions can cost thousands of dollars. Occasionally reproductions of first edition covers are used, maybe with slight alterations (I'm thinking specifically of Souvenir Press reissuing the Modesty Blaise series in paperback with the original hardback artwork). In lieu of actual first editions being unavailable, any objection to using that sort of artwork? 23skidoo 14:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Not at all, I believe we should prefer as close to the 1st edition as possible (reproductions are fine). All I would say is that each usage of "any" image should be clearly marked for what it is. I.e. no reproductions are "passed off" as the 1st edition. It just needs to say it is from the proproduction in the "image caption" parameter. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 15:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I have quite a bit of luck searching through online used book retailers, especially sites such as Abebooks, which allow search results to be slimmed down to just those with "bookseller supplied photos" as well as "first edition." (I do these searches seperately, and compare.) The first edition search, however, really just turns up anything with "first" in the summary, so you have to be careful when attempting to determine the "true first" (especially since there is no shortage of sellers lacking scruples, leading to multiple claims of "true first"). It's often helpful to further organize the "first edition" search by "highest price", though not always, particularly when a book was released as a paperback original - the first hardcover editions are still preferred by collectors, and so cost much more, despite sometimes being released years later. I always try to rectify my finding on Abebooks (or Biblio, sometimes - I find eBay to be a pain (watermarks) and Amazon is flat-out completely unreliable, IMO) with other online sources that list bibliographic info (FYI - I have found the Internet Speculative Fiction Database - a site that claims to contain biblio info - to be woefully incomplete in almost all cases). This method has been pretty successful for my purposes, largely focusing on SF novels from 1950 - 1980. I doubt it would work very well for classic novels published before the age of dustjackets, though. Also, many of the images require straightening and/or cropping. -- Antepenultimate 16:35, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

The only problem I have with that method is many of the images I've found have been too small for use. I don't know if any actual style rule is in place for this, but the general rule I've always used is the book cover (at least for infobox use) should look reasonable at 200px. Occasionally you will find a website that actually does specialize in putting up book covers for a particular author. There's one for William S. Burroughs for example. My personal project to create articles based on the Simon Templar series was dealt a setback when a website that had terrific cover images of almost all the first editions for that series shut down literally days before I was planning to make use of the images (with permission) in the infoboxes. The only other place I've found images pertaining to that series are little thumbnail-sized images on a Saint fansite so I've had to rely on my own collection of paperbacks from much later. 23skidoo 16:42, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I rarely have this problem with Abebooks or Biblio... you have to click through to the book's individual seller listing and find that "display larger image" link. It's not a definate, but in my experience, it works for a conservative estimate of 70% of the novels I'm looking for. The odds are better if the book was very popular or award-winning, of course. Sometimes, even if the image quality is too low at Abebooks, it at least will tell me what the image is I'm looking for, making a Google image search a viable tool in the hunt for first edition covers. -- Antepenultimate 19:37, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I took a look at some of the Simon Templar books, and the fact that the earliest were published in the '30s does make it kind of hard to apply this method. I was able to find mostly first American edition images for the earliest novels (Wikipedia pages state that the first editions were the British for these). For instance: The Last Hero first American edition (info)(image - shrinking it a little would clear up the compression problems, I think - but it's real boring, anyway, and not the true first, so why bother?). Skip ahead a couple of decades and luck improves - Here's a pretty nice image for the first edition of The Saint Sees it Through (info)(image - needs a slight straightening and a crop, but real nice quality). If you want me to try and find some more, I'd be glad too, although I'm kind of busy for the moment - It'd have to be a "when I get around to it" kind of thing. -- Antepenultimate 20:25, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

(Responding to above but starting a new thread column). Were you able to find any of the British editions for those Saint books? They were published in the UK first so we should use those images when possible (though I wouldn't complain about a first US edition being used). 23skidoo 22:07, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

This is getting pretty specific, so I've replied on your talk page. -- Antepenultimate 23:14, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Is there any discussion anywhere of why this is desirable, or is it taken for granted? Notinasnaid 10:15, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

There is somewhere, but enough to say that in the publishing world the 1st edition is "the" event. It is the occasion when the publication, literary work etc., first sees the light of day. So it is this edition which has more importance than any other it is the focus of news and the main point of history for any book or similar work. Thus the cover to that edition is the one to have. I hope that answers your question. Any more queries do ask! :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 11:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)