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12:00 AM
Aaaand . . . Go.
 
do we want a new question feed for chat now?
 
@Catija I haven't voted enough on main either :-(
 
the first day is over
 
@EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ I've volunteered to curate chat feeds.
 
now vote on the answer that shog mentioned ;)
Yes feed
 
12:01 AM
Reset, I guess.
 
But somebody will have to make me room owner if my offer is accepted.
 
Can one use the noun "coinage" to refer to the coining of words?
 
only 78 questions on the 1st day?
 
Why not?
 
@Randal'Thor There's glory for you.
 
12:02 AM
@BESW ?
 
> '[...] There's glory for you!'
'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
'When *I* use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'
 
Is there really any more reason to label something than ? And, even then, wouldn't make more sense?
 
@Catija To meta!
Personally, I think poems/poetry is a more useful sorting category than fiction.
 
@Catija Why is there even a tag? Do we have any non-fiction questions?
 
It's a genre... and discussing genre tags is something that makes many people upset.
 
12:05 AM
I wanted to burn poetry
 
@HDE226868 Why wouldn't we.... there's a lot of really amazing non-fiction literature.
 
@HDE226868 Shirley we will, at least creative non-fiction.
 
@BESW Darn. Should have got that reference ... especially since I've just written an answer about the Alice books.
 
@Catija Poetry's not, though. It's a format.
 
@Catija If you could apply the tag to half the questions on the site, it's not needed.
 
12:07 AM
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil or The Devil in the Dark City... great, well-written stories... just happen to also be true.
 
Also, can I just remind everyone to please leave a comment when you vote to close? It's private beta - working out why some questions are closed and others aren't will never be more important.
6
 
@HDE226868 The rule is not "half"... I'm pretty sure it's closer to 20%...
 
Erasmus Darwin's The Botanic Garden, “The Economy of Vegetation” is non-fiction poetry.
 
@Catija The point stands.
 
I was the 5th close-voter on this, and the only one to comment.
 
user61230
12:08 AM
@HDE226868 Yes! I've asked one, actually.
 
:( I didn't get any of the upvotes because of the cap
4
A: What prevented Hermione from killing Voldemort?

MithrandirTime Turners can't go back that far. JKR has said that it's impossible for those 1-hour Time-Turners to go back farther than 5 hours. (See quote below.) So: She can't. If you're asking about making sure he doesn't come back, how would she do that? She can't do anything that would prevent him fr...

Thanks
 
Wow, I'm still the only user to have two Nice Questions.
 
@Randal'Thor And? As someone just said... there's only like 78 questions total.
 
^^^
 
@Emrakul Ah, the DFW one?
 
12:10 AM
i still don't have one
 
So upvote me :p
 
9
Q: What is the symbolism of Atticus killing the mad dog?

blehSo in To Kill A Mockingbird, Atticus kills a mad dog. He does it with one shot. Is there some more symbolism to this or is it just an event?

 
6
Q: How did the authors of The 39 Clues decide on a plot outline?

MithrandirThe The 39 Clues series is written by a whole lot of authors, like Rick Riordan, Gordan Korman, Jude Watson, Margaret Peterson Haddix, etc. Each person writes a book, and then someone else writes the next with some authors coming back to write more. Do they decide together what will happen, such...

 
By Sturgeon's Law, we should have at least 5 more Nice Question badges.
 
Congrats to @HDE for being the first to get two Nice Answer badges.
 
12:11 AM
@Shog9 By Grabthar's Hammer, you shall be avenged!
3
 
Wow Rand I'm one point ahead
 
@Randal'Thor Appreciated. I'd have answered more, if there were more questions about books I've read.
 
The rep cap is over, finally.
 
@Randal'Thor you still have not answered to my question about protem mod
 
damnit 5 pts from the new privs
 
12:13 AM
Yesss, review queue privileges!
 
Pull your socks up, @Mithrandir :-P
(also, why aren't you asleep yet?)
 
@Randal'Thor Cuz the literature site is too tempting and also he can't let you pull ahead
 
Ummmm
 
12:14 AM
@bleh No one in their right mind wants to be a protem mod. Those are the folks who have to deal with all of the bitter arguments that spring up in the early days of a site, who get all the blame when crap isn't dealt with but called names and spat on when they try to exercise any authority. So rand would be a good fit.
4
 
> so rand would be a good fit
I think he just got rekt
 
@Shog9 Can I quote you on that last sentence? :-)
 
not sure yet hough
 
Everyone upvote me and not Rand
:P
 
@Shog9 So... you're saying that being a pro-tem here would be different than A&C? Because we don't get any of that crap. :P
 
12:15 AM
I'll do a geobits and downvote you all :P
2
 
@Catija Craft folks aren't bitter, spiteful, Machiavellian backstabbers? I'm not sure I buy that.
 
@Shog9 Well, Machiavelli was certainly a crafty character ...
 
Where's the adjective "crafty" come from then, anyway?
 
oh snap shog is starting the burnfest I see
 
stop that
 
12:17 AM
This new site is lit guys
 
@Shog9 I think we've sent one mod message total? I think the mod team has only been referred to as "Nazis" once.
 
I was waiting for someone to make that joke..
 
Mmm, @CHEESE is here. Anyone hungry?
 
I'm being a bit absurd, of course. Some sites have more problems than others, and different mods have different challenges to work through.
'Thing is, you just never know what you're signing up for
 
woah woah Rand....
@fi12 I am happy to oblige
 
12:18 AM
@Shog9 I bet Lit is more on the site of SFF than A&C. Lots more subjectivity.
 
@Shog9 Would you say being a pro-tem is very different from being an elected mod, in general / on average?
 
RPG.SE has, generally, a community that's very supportive of its mods and trusts them to make good decisions. But I wouldn't want to be them.
 
Emphasis bye..... — bleh Oct 9 '16 at 21:02
 
I think the fact that this chatroom is the same as used to be for the old Lit site has made our Talkative badges buggy.
I mean, Adam Lear hasn't even been in here today.
 
Seriously, I got downvotes on that answer? Ha.
5
A: Why was the Obscurus omitted?

MithrandirIt is there... In the Amazon preview of the book, on page 122 there is a chapter on 'The Obscurus'.

 
12:22 AM
thats what happens when you ask for upvotes
 
@Mithrandir I don't quite understand the distinction you're making on that Shakespeare question ...
 
Your asking about the aids he created
*words
Not his works
 
@Mithrandir Shakespeare had AIDS?
@Mithrandir Those words are precisely what make up his works.
 
No, ringworm
 
@Mithrandir For a sec i thought that was an insult
 
12:26 AM
Interesting
An older question was voted a duplicate of a newer one
 
@Shog9 Hmm, I thought the early days would be more calm with respect to troll users and pissed off users.
 
that happens sometimes
 
@Randal'Thor I'mo go with asking about words somebody made up is not the same as asking about how that somebody put them together.
 
You don't have to deal so much with people whose status has grown them arrogant during the earlier phases.
 
@NapoleonWilson Nah, instead you deal with people who import their importance from other Stacks. And maybe fewer trolls, but more people who feel very strongly indeed about guiding the new Stack's formative days.
 
12:28 AM
@Shog9 since you've been pretty active here, will you play the major role in deciding our protem mods (if and when we get out of private beta)?
 
19
Q: Should we always close the newer question as the duplicate?

SQBPreferably, when closing a duplicate, this happens before any answers have been given to the dupe-to-be. However, it can happen that only after editing of the question and multiple answers, it turns out that it's actually a duplicate. Should we then always vote to close the newer question as a d...

 
@BESW Also true.
 
Duping is about siphoning all the answers (and all the people looking for answers) into a single location.
Often that's easiest by using the original location, but if there's a better way to do it there's no need to stand on precedent.
 
When my phone dies I have to go
 
12:30 AM
@Mithrandir ...a short story by Mithrandir.
 
@Mithrandir and get on my laptop
 
@BESW You've probably heard this one before, but ... the shortest horror story in the world:
> The last person in the world sat down in a chair.

> There was a knock at the door.
 
@Mithrandir The Hardy Boys . . . That was a big part of my childhood. Man, it's been a while.
 
My childhood isn't over :P
 
@Randal'Thor Or...
 
12:34 AM
@Randal'Thor That's actually quite nice
 
@HDE226868 I read Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew like popcorn. The Three Investigators were a cut above, and the Dana Girls were where rejected Nancy Drew plots went to die.
 
@Mithrandir ayy :P
 
@BESW I actually read Nancy Drew a bit - and The Boxcar Children. My mom also has some older books from her childhood, but I can't recall the name of the series.
 
@Mithrandir both in childhood :P
 
12:35 AM
@Randal'Thor shorter first line: "The last person sat down."
shorter though not quite as horror-y
 
@HDE226868 Mmm, the Boxcar Children were actually quite interesting until Warner died and the ghost writers took over.
 
Just add the word ever
 
Although I did have fun inventing retcons for why they suddenly reversed age and then never aged again. (It involved their aunt's uranium mine.)
 
@BESW When was that? I got up to #80 or #100 and never noticed a change.
 
12:37 AM
@BESW I also enjoyed The Three Investigators much more than Nancy Drew (although being male may have something to do with that ...) Haven't heard of those others.
 
@HDE226868 Book 19 was her last.
 
@BESW . . . That's depressing.
 
@Mithrandir @BESW I posted a meta about the Shakespeare question: meta.literature.stackexchange.com/q/103/17
 
After book 19, they got more formulaic and the characters stopped aging.
 
@fi12 probably not
 
12:38 AM
Well, the Hardy Boys had the same issue, as did many other series.
 
> ...And these Hardy Boys books are great, too! This one's about smugglers.
> They're all about smugglers.
> No, not this one! "The Smugglers of Pirate Cove". It's about pirates.
 
Yes, but the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were always ghost written by underpaid anonymous writers. It was the business plan from the start.
 
@NapoleonWilson really depends on the site. Some small sites with poorly-defined topics can get really nasty until they've hashed things out
 
@BESW Point conceded.
 
Have you read Hoff's The House on the Point?
 
12:40 AM
@BESW That second one is chilling.
 
I only really like the first 7 hardy boys books
 
@BESW No, never.
 
@Randal'Thor I've never been either, so... Take everything I say about it with a big grain of salt. That said, I wrote a bit about it here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/284142/…
 
It's a re-writing of the Hardy Boys novel The House on the Cliff, using the same basic plot but as, you know, a book of some substance and quality.
Very fascinating, with introduction and afterwords by the author.
 
@Randal'Thor as per Shog9 ask @HDE226868
 
12:41 AM
@Randal'Thor It's drastically different.
 
@Shog9 I know, but you must have had more second-hand experience of both than most people.
Thanks for the link! reads
 
exactly with mith leaves, I answer his question... :P
 
I have the only cleanup badge :p
 
@Mithrandir You must be a very clean wizard.
Also the only Commentator badge, last time I checked.
 
Yep.
 
12:49 AM
ah well thanks mith
 
2
A: Should we allow questions about a literary work's impact on the language?

blehYES. Whoops, caps lock. Lets try that again. Yes. Literature is about the books. It's the plot. It's the symbols. It's the reading order. Of course, there are some other's about it's influence. Why was The Call of the Wild banned? George Orwell's 1984 banned for contradictory reasons? Bu...

Dang that's one of my best meta posts
 
In payment I want an upvote on clue 21
 
So, I think this is important for us to remember:
 
192
Q: Embrace the non-Googlers

SampsonThere seems to be a knee-jerk reaction to "easy" questions that involve quickly answering by copy/pasting embarrassing links to lmgtfy.com (or similar responses in comments, which aren't downvotable) in an attempt to belittle the questions' authors. I think this comes from engagement in forums, w...

144
Q: How should we deal with Google questions?

Nils PipenbrinckI've seen a lot of questions that can be answered with a simple Google search. For these questions, an answer can be found by just cut'n'pasting the question directly into the Google search field and scanning the first few hits. Every new user wants to try out the feature and ask a question jus...

 
12:53 AM
@bleh Apart from the fact that it is entirely unclear which of the two positions you even take? ;-)
 
@NapoleonWilson I might need to edit
more'
 
@bleh Less rhetorical flourish, more explicit and clear answers.
 
I think no questions by rand should be closed
 
You say "Yes" to the literal question but then spend a lot of time implying that you disagree the context of the question is actually related to the question being asked.
 
12:54 AM
@TrojanByAccident They should all be auto-upvoted by the system.
 
@NapoleonWilson +1
 
@BESW I disagree that it should be opened because the words of an author isn't literature
the story, plot, and other elements make it literature
I'm reading my post again, because this happens
 
@bleh Thus far you and I seem to be in a minority on this.
 
But the words are an important part of the literature
 
@bleh Maybe not, but that doesn't mean the question isn't still about literature and its impact on society and its language.
 
12:56 AM
without words, there is no literature
 
@TrojanByAccident That's a reductionist argument which will quickly lead to questions about grammer and papermaking.
Napoleon's argument is on more solid ground.
 
Everyone stop arguing and serial upvote me
 
@Mithrandir On what lol
 
Everything
 
@Mithrandir Certainly not when you post more acceptance-begging comments saying how the user whose answer was accepted liked yours better. ;-)
 
12:59 AM
:p
 
@Mithrandir actually, thats a bad idea. If someone serial upvotes you to the cap, the you cant earn actually earned rep, and you'll lose the reputation anyway
 
I know
I was just kidding
But it's 3am
My phone is dying
Bye
 
It's 2 am and I am dying.
 
0
A: Should we allow questions about a literary work's impact on the language?

BESWFrame challenge: the question about Shakespeare's words is not a good example of the general principle the meta's asking about. That question is not, in fact, "about the wider impact of a literary work." It's about counting the new words an author coined. Answers will not talk about, for example...

 
1:02 AM
That's...undeniably reasonable indeed.
 
We can get really overeager and reach for important questions before we've got the site experience to make useful decisions.
 
user61230
@HDE226868 Yeah!
 
@Emrakul ? Did I miss something?
 
What's the word for a story which sort of 'surrounds' the main story of a book? The main story might be a flashback or a play-within-a-play or something, but is there a good word for the outer 'shell' story?
 
1:06 AM
Story arc?
 
Framing device.
 
@Randal'Thor A frame story?
translate: Rahmenhandlung
(from German) Frame story
 
@Randal'Thor That's an interesting question.
 
Thanks, that sounds right.
 
@NapoleonWilson It has ramen, I approve.
 
1:11 AM
@Mithrandir I'm writing up a detailed answer to your Redwall question.
 
@bleh I originally interpreted your answer to be my frame challenge: that "yes," questions about a work's impact are on topic but "literature is not only about words" and a question just about counting words is not on topic.
 
yes i finally got the nice question
 
I kinda want to ask "What is Mary Poppins?" but I'm afraid I'll get answers in Zalgo text.
 
@BESW whats wrong with Zalgo? ;)
 
I find it twee and smugly self-satisfied.
Funny font does not creative horror replace.
 
1:21 AM
@bleh He comes :)
 
@BESW Is this a jab at House of Leaves? ;-)
 
You want a horror font, try Albertus in The Prisoner. Perfect marriage of typeface and context to produce the effect of an oppressive, all-seeing regime.
@NapoleonWilson Nah, House of Leaves uses font as just one tool in its design of the book as an artifect in its own right.
That's the key to House, that the book you're holding is an artefact of the story it's telling, and thus makes YOU part of the story too. To achieve that effect you need a lot more than typeface gimmicks.
(I'm a graphic designer with a specialty in print media. It may show.)
 
whoa i got the blue things for the 1st time
the spam flags
 
Grats.
 
@BESW And you're not on Graphic Design? For shame!
Oh wait, you are, but hardly.
 
1:28 AM
Yeah, they focus very heavily on digital output.
And for other stuff, well. My specialty isn't just print media, it's navigating contact zones in Pasifika cultures.
There's not a lot of space for indigenous design or epistemological conflict on graphicdesign.se.
Shall I assume that I've been downvoted because lit.se doesn't want to embrace non-Googlers?
 
Meesa be no knows.
 
I specifically asked that question because it shows effort without using Internet resources, which is something the Stack generally should be okay with but gets met with a lot of pushback from individuals.
I'm off to a client. Be excellent to each other.
 
Sorry, @EᴀsᴛᴇʀʟʏIʀᴋ, I'm pretty sure I've trumped your answer :-)
 
yep you have
 
I'm voting to reopen this.
The dupe target isn't "how should we handle overlap with other sites", it's "how should we handle overlap with SFF".
 
1:41 AM
why?
 
@BESW I'm worried that 3 people decided to upvote a minimal-level-effort answer that required someone to visit Wikipedia page for the book. I don't begrudge people the rep, but vote inflation makes it harder to separate truly excellent answers from meh.
 
@Randal'Thor eh, I personally think the SFF question should be broadened then.
 
@Randal'Thor And copy it for every other possible site?
 
yeah, I think that's going to be a problem
I think we should just edit the SFF one into an all-site version
 
'nneed.
 
1:42 AM
Even if the answer to both is "overlap is fine, just carry on", IMO it's still worth having both so that in the future we can point people to either of them individually.
@NapoleonWilson I don't think many people are going to be worried about overlap with, say, Seasoned Advice or Stack Overflow ;-)
 
@Randal'Thor However, the answers regarding overlap with SFF are nearly 100% independent of SFF, and can apply to other sites as well, so it really is a good dupe.
2
 
Or even Movies & TV for that matter.
 
Hmm, I might have an idea for a question, but that requires me to seriously refresh my memory of Melmoth the Wanderer and Faust.
 
@Randal'Thor Cookbooks aren't ontopic?
 
^ I mean, what it's a classic cookbook
 
1:44 AM
@Randal'Thor I voted to leave that one open because the relationship with Mythology is a bit different than the relation ship with SFF, but I don't know if I'd vote to reopen.
 
@BESW That link gives me a 503 error, but I'm a fan of The Prisoner, so I know exactly what you mean :-)
 
@BESW I think that "minimal research effort" these days automatically involves at the very least front page of Google and the main topic's Wiki page. The assumption is, if you're posting on StackExchange, you have access to both Google and Wiki. I apologize but I'm downvoting as well.
 
@DVK-in-Florida Are cookbooks on-topic at SA?
 
@Randal'Thor Well, you already have Science Fiction & Fantasy, Anime & Manga and Mythology as obvious targets. But the underlying concepts are entirely site-independent.
 
Anyway, I'm just one reopen voter. If everyone else votes to leave closed, fine.
 
1:46 AM
@HDE226868 How (is the relationship different)?
 
@Randal'Thor Beats me. I rarely show my nose on SA, I'm a complete zero when it comes to cooking expertise and I'm rather ashamed to prove it.
 
@NapoleonWilson Virtually no scope overlaps, for one.
 
@HDE226868 Oh?
 
@NapoleonWilson Do you honestly think Literature will get mythological questions?
 
@BESW The tooltip on the downvote button does say "This question does not show research effort" ...
 
1:47 AM
@DVK-in-Florida If encyclopedias about film characters are, I'm sure cookbooks can be, too. ;-)
 
@HDE226868 Beowulf?
 
@HDE226868 I'm not sure. There is lots of mythology that is, in Napoleon's terminology, "bookifications" of the myths. Take any book of Ancient Greek myths - that would be ontopic here.
@Randal'Thor I misread your comment as "Beofett" and started wondering when he got upgraded from a moderator to a myth.
 
@HDE226868 Well, I'm admittedly not too firm in Mythology's scope, but once he get into territories where the line between folk tradition and individual authorship blurs, it gets interesting. The Illiad would be an example.
 
@Randal'Thor I suppose there will be overlap with some pieces of that period. Perhaps some Norse sagas.
 
And even stuff that doesn't seem to have an author might well be called Literature, but I don't know. Is Gilgamesh literature?
 
1:50 AM
@NapoleonWilson @DVK I may be taking an overly strict interpretation of what literature is, which is likely not a good thing.
 
@NapoleonWilson That might need to be hashed out on Meta. I'm unsure either way to be honest.
 
Apparently, songs are literature, which I disagreed with.
 
@HDE226868 ^^^ same comment
 
@HDE226868 The Edda is an entirely creatively designed piece of literature, from a culture that did not actually worship those things anymore.
 
@NapoleonWilson I would call some of Snorri's works - maybe all of them - literature.
 
1:51 AM
@DVK-in-Florida Ha! :-D He's not a mod though, or at least not any more.
 
At least the Snorra-Edda is.
 
Oral mythological traditions, though, are what I think I was originally getting at.
 
@HDE226868 Song lyrics are definitely literature, since they are basically poetry, which is literature. Heck, in Russian literary tradition they are basically one and the same, e.g. Vysotsky.
 
And even the older poetic Edda, while maybe from a time where the actual stories might have been believed to be reality, is definitely creative poetry through and through.
 
@Randal'Thor Mod flags are sticky (ok, I'm up to making Unix jokes on Literature chat. Time to sleep).
 
1:52 AM
@DVK-in-Florida "Call Me Maybe", then is literature?
 
Would this answer look better with the outer layer of bullet points converted to big headers instead?
2
A: Do I need to read the Redwall books in any specific order?

Rand al'ThorI've already posted about this on another SE site. Let me try to go into even more detail here. There are two obvious possibilities for the ordering: publication order and in-universe chronological order. These do not agree, but in most cases where they do agree, they should probably not be cont...

(I'm trying to make a really exemplary answer here, to support my own argument on meta.)
 
@HDE226868 It's not (presumably - never actually heard that song) good, quality literature, but sure, it is. So's "50 shades of gray" - and I shudder to realize that it's ontopic and WILL get asked about :(
 
As said, once songs are as an extension of poems, movies are as an extension of plays, too.
 
@NapoleonWilson Movies themselves, no. Movies scripts, yes, as far as I'm concerned. They should be ontopic.
 
@DVK-in-Florida I'm still skeptical.
 
1:55 AM
@Randal'Thor I appreciate that it contains prose and is not just a collection of bullet points.
 
@HDE226868 Flagged for migration to Skeptics.SE
@NapoleonWilson I'm wounded. Bullet wounded.
 
@Randal'Thor I think it's hard to write a good answer. I'm still not sure how to mix personal experience with other recommendations.
Yours is a nice answer, though. The first upvote was mine.
 
@DVK-in-Florida I wasn't referring to any particular counter-example, though. If you're a fan of bulleted order recommendations that was entirely unintentional.
 
@NapoleonWilson Oh, I thought you meant the style of Meta answer itself, not recommendations. Then again, my answers are very frequetly bulleted, Meta or main, recommendations or not. My CDO demands bulleted or numbered lists.
 
@HDE226868 Did you see my meta Q&A about this?
 
1:58 AM
@DVK-in-Florida Now that you say it, I might have noticed that. But no, I wasn't referring to that.
 
@Randal'Thor I did, yes.
 
I was more thinking of a huge bullet list on main I saw today, but forgot what question it was.
 
@Randal'Thor THAT Q might be ontopic for Writers.SE
 

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