The Reading Room - 2017-10-23

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1:22 AM

I find it both amusing and rather distressing that I can't state that people have opinions without folks assuming I share those opinions. Especially folks I know I've spoken with at length on the subject before.

5 hours later…

6:46 AM

@Hamlet thanks :}

8 hours later…

2:35 PM

0

Q: Book about young S.W.A.T. agent that falls in love with a woman that has a child (Wattpad)

I am looking for a book/short story on Wattpad about a young man (22-27) who is a sniper for a S.W.A.T. team. In the beginning of the book he is forced to take a kill shot due to something silly that one of his team members did. He later falls in love with a woman who has a small son (3-5). At t...

story-identification short-stories

3:22 PM

@Bookworm originally posted on SFF scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/172475/…

6 hours later…

9:46 PM

The Kebra Nagast (var. Kebra Negast, Ge'ez ክብረ ነገሥት, kəbrä nägäśt), is a 14th-century account written in Ge'ez, an ancient South Semitic language that originated in modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea. Wallis Budge, an English Egyptologist, Orientalist, and philologist who worked for the British Museum created an English translation called The Glory of the Kings. It is considered to be genealogy of the new Solomonic dynasty in Ethiopian Christian studies. It contains an account of how the Queen of Sheba (Queen Makeda of Ethiopia) met King Solomon and about how the Ark of the Covenant came to Ethiopia...

10:03 PM

@Hamlet Not sure why you're so confident in this statement as to issue it as an "fyi", but even if you're right, SE regulars coming to this site for the first time are going to form a large part of our userbase.

user15026

@Hamlet I've seen people on Arqade read it who aren't regulars....

user15026

Like enough that I remember it as a non-unique occurrence

user15026

like sure not everyone will but still

@Hamlet Each of us individually can take political stances. But the site as a whole taking a political stance? We don't want to do so in such a way that people who disagree with that political stance are less welcome here. I'm reluctant to be part of that sort of community, and more importantly, SE is reluctant to host that sort of community.

We have a community consensus that all kinds of literature from all over the world is on-topic? Great! But we can make that clear without being hostile to those who didn't/wouldn't support that stance.

Brb, editing my meta answer to try to pinpoint more clearly the source of my concern.

user15026

What answer is this?

10:22 PM

@Randal'Thor we have that consensus? Great, then I guess we don't have to debate whether music is off-topic.

@Ash This one. (Just edited.)

@Hamlet Well, clearly the meaning of "all kinds of literature" is still under debate. But that comment seems to miss the point ...

@Randal'Thor "If you're gonna talk Politics, you must respect those who disagree" is a textbook example of a political stance

Look up liberalism

@Hamlet Yeah, but can we state that all cultures' literature is acceptable on this site without being hostile and judgemental towards anyone? Yes, we can. So why don't we?

@Randal'Thor "I'm reluctant to be part of that sort of community" says a moderator of SFF

@Hamlet Do we have to make this personal?

user15026

10:26 PM

@Hamlet why the personal attack of sorts?

@Randal'Thor ? I'm just skeptical that any community about a topic such as literature can avoid taking political positions.

Also, I call people out in SFF chat when they make snarky remarks about neighbouring sites such as M&TV or Lit - could you perhaps do SFF the courtesy of not being snarky about it in turn?

I didn't mean that comment to be a personal attack. And I certainly wasn't trying to insult SFF with that comment. I'm just trying to point out that Stack Exchanges take political positions all the time.

At the end of the day, the only thing I actually care about with regards to the help center page is that anything said on that page isn't used to make site policy.

> as well as how this debate has been politicized in many instances to exclude certain cultures

TBH I don't really get the opposition to that sentence. This sentence isn't actually accusing anyone of anything. It's written in the passive tense.

It could be referring to anything. It's pretty neutral. It just explains one of the many reasons why we find scope decisions difficult here.

It might be a different thing if the sentence said "In 1973 culture x used [definition y of literature], which caused ____"

@Hamlet Its tone doesn't sound neutral. "Politicised" is a negative word, and making a political statement to the effect that your opponents are "politicising" is kinda hypocritical too.

@Randal'Thor (1) how is "politicised" a negative word?

(2) the sentence is literally in the passive tense. It does not refer to any particular group, individual, or "opponent"

10:36 PM

Tbh, the sentence sounds very Hamletty. I haven't even checked the meta where that help centre page was agreed on, because I can already tell it was you who wrote that bit. And I'm sorry, but a lot of your comments, while well-meaning, do come off as more blunt and unfriendly than you intended them to be.

(3) yeah, it's a political statement. I don't deny it. It's just one of the many political statements that Stack Exchange communities/Stack Overflow the company has made.

@Randal'Thor I'm really not sure how that statement is blunt tbh. Like, if you have a better word that's different from politicising, I would love to hear it.

If you want, we can use

> as well as how this debate has been politicized in many instances to exclude various cultures

which makes the sentence even less specific.

@Hamlet I actually did suggest an alternative. Did you see the latest edit to my meta post?

> We accept questions about literature from any culture or country in the world.

@Randal'Thor but we don't unfortunately

That's a clear statement about site scope, without being negative towards anyone.

@Randal'Thor and it doesn't explain why this community has difficult defining literature. So it really isn't a replacement. And again, it isn't really true either.

If you want to include that sentence, that means having a conversation with the community about whether questions about the didgeridoo are on-topic.

@doppelgreener sorry for bugging you again, but any chance of a didgeriddo question?

10:42 PM

@Hamlet We've already spent half a paragraph explaining that:

> Unfortunately, we haven't been around for that long and therefore don't have an authoritative definition of what is and what isn't on-topic. Given the extensive philosophical debate over what counts as literature, we expect it will be quite some time before we can make any sort of authoritative determination regarding our scope.

@Randal'Thor yeah, it's not just a philosophical debate, it's also a cultural/political debate.

@Hamlet No, because nobody would argue against such a question on the basis that Aborigine literature is off-topic. They might do so on the basis that music is off-topic, but that's a separate debate (and they'd likely do the same for a Beethoven symphony).

2

@Randal'Thor so it's literature, but it's off-topic because it's music?

Not really following here.

@Hamlet No, they'd say "it's not literature because it's music".

NOT "it's not literature because it's from Aborigine culture".

@Randal'Thor but if you ask Aboriginal Australians...

10:47 PM

In other words, there might be debate about whether a particular medium can count as literature, but not a particular culture.

Nobody here is arguing with the statement that:

> We accept questions about literature from any culture or country in the world.

mediums are inseparable from culture

similarly to how works are inseparable from their medium and their audience

If you want to make it even more pedantically clear, how about:

> No work of literature is judged to be off-topic based only on its country or culture of origin.

I get the sense we're having two separate conversations here.

Can you seriously not see the difference between "it's not literature because it's music" and "it's not literature because it's from Aborigine culture"?

Nobody here votes to close questions on the basis that they're from the wrong culture.

It's impossible to separate the medium of "novels" from the cultural history of novels.

10:52 PM

0

Q: YA book involving disappearing subatomic particles?

I think it involved some sort of romantic subplot, but I'm not sure. I also remember it having the discussion of death, maybe of the main characters mother? The most significant thing I remember is the main character talking about an experiment: A large amount of water was put in a vat, and it w...

story-identification

@Hamlet So what?

It's impossible to separate mesoamerican codices from their mesoamericanness

It's still true that nobody here votes to close questions on the basis that they're from the wrong culture.

@Randal'Thor perhaps one thing to take away is that definitions of literature are culturally specific?

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

@Hamlet Sure, and nobody is expecting to pin down a definition of literature for the help centre. That's the whole point of most of that paragraph.

10:58 PM

But I'm sure people are voting to close questions on the basis of a definition of literature.

But we can all agree that we're not excluding any literature on the basis that it's from the wrong culture.

@Hamlet Yes, of course. So?

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The problem occurs when it turns out people don't share the same definition.

If someone posts a question asking for advice on growing tomatoes, I'm sure as hell going to VTC it on the basis that it's not about literature. (If someone else says it falls under their definition of literature, I'll listen, but I might be sceptical.)

@Randal'Thor how would you define literature?

@Hamlet I don't have a clear definition. (I suspect you don't either, but that you'd also VTC a question asking for advice on growing tomatoes.)

11:03 PM

@Randal'Thor then how would you decide to close questions about music, to pick one example?

user15026

@Hamlet I'm not sure what this has to do with the politicalization stuff tbh

Or how would you know that poetry is on-topic?

@Hamlet On the basis of whether or not I think it's relevant enough to be on-topic. Which may involve, at least implicitly, comparing it to some definition of literature.

user15026

It feels like a distraction from the discussion @Randal'Thor seems to actually trying to have

At the end of the day, which questions get closed and which remain open is something decided by the community's votes.

11:06 PM

@Ash oh. I've made all my points with regards to that, there's no point for me in continuing to talk about that specific sentence.

@Ash I feel like nearly all the discussion since I first raised this issue yesterday has been going off on various tangents instead :-)

But I suspect that this is due to a fundamental difference in how we approach literature, so...

@Randal'Thor ok, what's the definition?

6 mins ago, by Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet I don't have a clear definition. (I suspect you don't either, but that you'd also VTC a question asking for advice on growing tomatoes.)

3 mins ago, by Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet On the basis of whether or not I think it's relevant enough to be on-topic. Which may involve, at least implicitly, comparing it to some definition of literature.

I don't need to have a rigorously bounded definition of literature to know that it doesn't include advice on growing tomatoes.

I'm not sure what you're having difficulty with here, or indeed why you're quizzing me about this in the first place.

2

Would you VTC a question asking for advice on growing tomatoes?

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Oct '1723

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