The Reading Room

1:32 AM

Meh, it doesn't bother me. I'd also not blame that entirely to you. It wouldn't have become an issue if there hadn't been one to begin with.

As said, that discussion seemed to happen a lot on questions and meta, I'm just surprised it happened on that question.

2:08 AM

@Ash There's not much emphasis on Word of God on this site. (And when I say "not much emphasis", I mean that a mod has openly suggested banning questions which ask for Word of God.)

Buahahaha!

user15026

@Randal'Thor I never said there was, I never said there had to be

user15026

I just was merely suggesting that based on past experiences with other places, people could possibly think and vote that way

user15026

because regardless of emphasis or not by the site, every person will have their own ideas and motiviations

user15026

I was just highlighting one possibility that wasn't just "people don't like video game related content"

2:11 AM

I know nothing about Assassin's Creed, but I imagine that question might be answerable (from a Good Subjective point of view) by someone with an intimate knowledge of the text explaining how including present day events would go against the theme of the books or whatever, without considering author interviews.

user15026

Entirely possible.

user15026

I am not speaking with any authority.

user15026

I was just listing a possible thought process that might come up

user15026

I'm not trying to make a ruling either way, I honestly don't care.

@Ash Please don't take any of this as an attack on you or your comments! All I meant was I think it unlikely that many people here would downvote on the basis that there's unlikely to be a Word of God answer. I may be wrong.

user15026

2:14 AM

That's fine, like I said, people vote for a million different reasons, and remember, not everyone who votes will a) explain b) be active on meta/chat c) have vocal opinions on policy

She be true that.

user15026

(I've just seen sites go "oh well in chat people agree about x" thinking that should cover the site as a whole and as communities grow that becomes increasingly untrue

Well, the problem of people mistaking the chat community for the site community is a broader one to begin with.

Lit is still very young. I suspect most of the voters (except on HNQ posts) are active users, including active on meta/chat and aware of policy discussions.

user15026

I'm not sure

user15026

2:20 AM

Rawr, this is one of those sites where not being able to make tags is gonna make things tricky

2

user15026

I need to tag this question as something so I can post it so someone can make the tag for me

@Ash Ping me when you've posted it, and I'll edit in a new tag for you.

Also, get yourself some more rep here! :-)

user15026

@Randal'Thor I'm trying to post it but I can't find just something generic I can slap on it to post

Maybe literature?

wondering if it's worth creating some sort of generic untagged-type tag so that new users can post their questions even if they're about books which haven't been asked about here before

user15026

2:23 AM

There we go

user15026

if someone could pop a the-stars-are-legion tag on that it would be appreciated

But even if we did create such a tag, I guess it would disappear regularly when it wasn't on any questions any more.

Doesn't seem to be an issue on other media-oriented sites, even ones that don't slap the author onto individual work questions.

user15026

I have no idea if american-lit makes sense there or not, feel free to remove it

user15026

@NapoleonWilson we get it sometimes on gaming but not really because most people who are drivebys tend to be asking about bigger name stuff

Q: How does this world increase their population?

2:26 AM

1

The Stars are Legion seems to be an entirely female-society. I've not completely finished the book, so the answer may well be in the last 60 pages, but this book tends to feel very vague on the details of how things actually work in the world. (Part of that is the unreliable narrator, who we know...

> men don’t exist in this world (don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against men in books but it’s SO DAMN refreshing to have an all female cast). And if you wonder how this could be possible, they need to have babies after all, let me tell you, you are in for a ride.

@Ash Looks like there might be a spoilery answer in those last 60 pages ...

(that's from a Goodreads review)

@Ash Sure, it's not that it doesn happen that a tag is missing. But most of the time people at least find some other tag for it.

It's not like you don't have to retag most questions anyway. ;-)

user15026

@NapoleonWilson hahaha

@Ash I think I can piece together an answer from various online reviews, but it may be spoilery.

user15026

Thats okay

user15026

2:32 AM

I dont really care about spoilers and I just want ot finish the book to have it done because honestly I'm not enjoying ti

user15026

but that just kinda stuck out

user15026

(it feels like a lot of the time the author just dances about and intentionally does'nt tell you things to make you keep reading, its a bad way to create intrigue)

Q: What view of marriage is presented in Jude the Obscure?

0

Thomas Hardy's gut-wrenching tragedy Jude the Obscure includes a lot of discussion of the concept of marriage, from various different characters, some of whose views even change over the course of the novel. In some ways, married relationships are portrayed as unloving and unsuccessful (Jude and...

thomas-hardy jude-the-obscure

2:53 AM

-4

Q: Request for a 'novel' tag

As I do not have the reputation to create tags and there was no corresponding tag to the author/book I was asking about, I spent a fair amount of time searching for an appropriate tag and couldn't find any. I think this is a scenario which is likely to happen to new users. So my proposal is, coul...

feature-request tags

@Ash ^^^

user15026

Oh, I know how the system is intended to work, and that I can get people to retag (like I did here)

It seems that the community does not think that untagged is a good idea.

If you have better suggestions, post them on Meta :)

@Ash Right. Anyway, you're now 5 points closer to 150 ;-)

Although...we may have to have a discussion if/when this site draws close to graduating. The new tag privilege is set at different amounts for some sites (I think SFF is one of those)...because Qs here are tagged with [author] and sometimes [title], questions that are the first of their tag might occur more frequently than on other sites

But that's a long way away, IMO. Right now, I think 150 is a good number

@Randal'Thor I might have missed that suggested ban. Please link to a Meta post, if there is one, so I can downvote it :)

user15026

Banning Word of God would be a terrible idea

I know, right?

@Shokhet Not proposed on meta, as far as I can remember. There was a long debate about it in chat, starting around here:

Mar 8 at 23:31, by Hamlet

Questions I wish this site would ban: (1) questions about author's intentions, (2) questions about logical inconsistencies, and (3) story-identification questions.

user15026

3:08 AM

Oh right Iremember this

@Randal'Thor Thanks

I'll have to read thru the transcript sometime. It's getting late over here.

See y'all later :)

I'm off too, so goodnight! :-)

Gnite :)

3:44 AM

FYI I've been making a conscious effort to move debate about site policy to meta, on the advice of Shog.

This is also so that everyone can see it easily and vote

user15026

That's fair. We weren't super debating site policy or anything though.

@Ash no worries

I just created a meta post about the assassin creed novelization question

user15026

I mean discussions of questions and things are naturally going to come up here

@Ash yeah, I know, that's perfectly natural and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not trying to discouradge that in any way

user15026

And not everything needs to have a meta codifying it, sometimes people just want a quick sort of "hey I had a thought let me rubber duck it" sort of moment

user15026

3:48 AM

Okay, it just feels like you're trying to make a weird feeling sort of division the moment anything site related comes up

I'm just letting you know that there were some good points made in chat, and that I'm creating meta post based on some of the ideas in chat so that everyone can participate in the conversation

user15026

@Hamlet well, everyone who looks at meta

user15026

(which will not ever be the whole site, and might not even be the same people who are in chat)

user15026

(basically, you're never going to catch everyone)

@Ash but it's easier to find meta posts than it is to find chat posts

user15026

3:49 AM

I'm not arguing the usefulness of meta, far from it

user15026

I'm just pointing out that not everyone is going to be in any/all/every/etc aspect of the site (like chat/meta/main) and also that...conversations happen organically sometimes

user15026

It just feels like you're basically saying the only place to even remotely discuss this stuff is meta

user15026

when sometimes the live action of chat can solve a question/query/issue quicker without a need for a meta and wide input

user15026

(aka different tools for dfferent jobs)

@Ash I never said that

user15026

3:53 AM

@Hamlet Alright my apologies

But I do think that if a debate is getting heated, or if people aren't agreeing, the solution is to go to meta, not to keep using chat.

4

Or if the conclusion is that "this is a problem that we want to fix", then the solution is to go to meta, instead of keeping the discussion on chat where it's harder to see.

2

But, as you said, if there's just a brief issue that can be fixed with one or two people (e.g. you're not sure what tags to use), then chat is a good place for that.

Q: Did Twain mean the coin should be enlarged or not?

4:49 AM

0

In Twain's quote about government's ostensibly trusting in Gold and asserting that on their currency, I have seen it reproduced both this way: But I think it would better read, "Within certain judicious limitations we trust in God," and if there isn't enough room on the coin for this, why enlarg...

mark-twain

Librarian

9:16 AM

3

Q: Should this question about the Assassin's Creed novilazation be downvoted?

Recently, someone asked a question about the Assassin's Creed novelizations that was heavily downvoted. I'm curious why this question was downvoted, and if people think that it's a good question for the site. Are the downvotes because people don't want questions about Assassin's Creed novelizat...

discussion

2

Q: What should new users do if they're asking a question about a book that doesn't have a tag yet?

On chat, Ash, who doesn't have enough reputation [yet :) ] to create tags pointed out a problem with our tagging system. Given that we use title and author tags, it's hard for new users to ask questions about obscure authors and books, because the tags haven't been created yet. How can we fix th...

discussion tags new-users

Q: Looking for a specific passage by Nabokov

10:58 AM

0

I remember reading this specific (germanophobic, sorry about that) bit in one of Nabokov's works but I just can't find it now. It described several bürgers drinking beer and casually laughing at someone's death. At first I was pretty certain it was from "The Gift" but I'm not too sure about that...

russian-literature quote-identification vladimir-nabokov