The Reading Room

Bookworm

00:16

0

Q: 'Classical' horror short story in which overwork is linked to a supernatural demon

Having just had an exceptionally busy week, I've been trying to recall the details of a relevant short story whose name escapes me. I have the feeling it was a fairly old, 'classical' horror story - probably not by Edgar Allan Poe, but in his kind of style - and also quite famous and well-known. ...

story-identification

Rand al'Thor

00:44

I need some help with a trope.

Does anyone know what it's called when two characters in a book discuss some completely implausible-sounding event from the past?

BESW

Noodle Incident.

Rand al'Thor

That's the one!

Thanks.

BESW

[bow and a flourish]

Rand al'Thor

I was getting mixed up with Lampshade Hanging.

HDE 226868

01:01

[Test message]

Rand al'Thor

@HDE226868 BOOM!

HDE 226868

Oh, great, @Randal'Thor blew up SE.

Rand al'Thor

Dammit HDE, you blew up the chatroom.

Benjamin

Is SE down?

Riker

yes

tha'ts generally what "offline for maitenance" means

Napoleon Wilson

01:04

Apparently.

Shokhet

01:28

Looks like it's back

(at least, it is for me)

Earlier:

Stack Overflow is currently under attack. Currently working on mitigation. Stand by for updates.

Tweeted by StackStatus on February 28, 2017 at 1:16 AM

Now:

Initial mitigations are in place but we're working on the situation.

Tweeted by Nick_Craver on February 28, 2017 at 1:26 AM

@BESW Wally West is cool :) ⚡⚡⚡

...since when did SE chat support emoji? ...I don't remember if they ever didn't, I just never saw it until recently

@Mithrandir Both answers there are also great :)

Bookworm

0

Q: How much of "The Adventure of the Second Stain" did Conan Doyle have planned when he wrote "The Naval Treaty"?

The first paragraph of the Holmes story "The Naval Treaty", from Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, reads as follows (emphasis mine): The July which immediately succeeded my marriage was made memorable by three cases of interest, in which I had the privilege of being associated with Sherlock Holmes ...

sherlock-holmes arthur-conan-doyle

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet Just done the Holmes one. Need to do more research before I can post a version of the Dostoevsky one that I'll be happy with.

Shokhet

03:11

The Librarian is slow today (either that, or it got turned off). Anyway, can I get some help? ...Does anyone have a good example of a question that specifically requests author's intent in interpreting a story?

literature.stackexchange.com/q/1851/481 might be a better example. I'm currently looking for one that asks more about the author's intent regarding symbolism within the text. If you know of one please let me know :) — Shokhet 7 mins ago

...or anything on authorial intent, really

HDE 226868

03:26

@Randal'Thor You couldn't have picked an easy question about Holmes? :P

It's a good one, though.

I never expected to think of Watson as an unreliable narrator, but now I do.

@Shokhet I'm looking.

Shokhet

@HDE226868 Thank you :)

HDE 226868

literature.stackexchange.com/q/1726/71 is a possibility.

Shokhet

@HDE226868 YES! That's a great one. Editing question now

Thank you!! :D

HDE 226868

Cool.

No problem.

Librarian

04:08

1

Q: Do we need an [authorial-intent] tag?

While there are some question-askers that confuse literary interpretation with authorial intent (dealt with elsewhere), there are also some who ask specifically about authorial intent on a specific topic, like this question. Do we need a tag for this? A tag might help to ensure that these questi...

discussion tags

Riker

04:31

Do you intend to ask about Rand's intention, specifically, or about literary analysis of the book (possibly divorced from authorial intent)? I ask partly to make sure I understand your question (I have a copy of the book at hand, and may attempt an answer), and partly because I'm looking for an example to use for my most recent meta post (see also meta.literature.stackexchange.com/q/507/481) — Shokhet 1 hour ago

> ask about Rand's intentio

confusion of the day complete

BESW

@HDE226868 Watson as unreliable narrator is a major theme among Irregular analysis.

muru

04:59

@HDE226868 didn't we already have an instance of Watson's unreliability in a Moriarty question?

BESW

07:42

The Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction.

Bookworm

08:00

0

Q: Why doesn't James Joyce ever use quotation marks?

None of his books use quotation marks for direct speech. For example: —Will he come? The jejune jesuit! Ceasing, he began to shave with care. —Tell me, Mulligan, Stephen said quietly. —Yes, my love? —How long is Haines going to stay in this tower? Buck Mulligan showed a shaven cheek...

james-joyce

BESW

08:14

@Bookworm Because it was all his own original work!

Seriously though that's not really a lit question.

I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's asking about a common punctuation standard. — BESW 48 secs ago

It's kinda like asking why an author uses single quotes or puts punctuation outside of quotes.

BESW

09:22

@Mithrandir Just to be clear, you are saying that it's on topic to ask why an author would use a standard punctuation style. Shall we discuss why Agatha Christie puts periods outside quotation marks, too?

Mithrandir

@BESW I would downvote such a question, but yes, it would seem to be on topic.

BESW

Because the answer is quite simply "That's one way English works."

If we're upset about the site getting "flooded" with "sand" by allowing reading order questions, well. Those seem positively enlightened compared to "Why is this book using a common English style?"

If we're requiring that querents give some reason for thinking it's reasonable to ask if a character is gay, or a reading order is necessary, then "Why did this author use a common kind of punctuation?" shouldn't get a pass.

BESW

09:56

The Sea is Ours: Tales of Steampunk Southeast Asia, an anthology.

BESW

10:16

[gasp] I just realised, I shouldn't be pairing Doctor Strangelove with Revenge of the Sith. Nooo, Ian McKellen's 1995 Richard III is much more appropriate.

Heck, it's even got a Darth Vader reference.

BESW

10:30

And tanks. Shakespeare with taaaanks!

Martin Ender

12:31

I've gotta say this meta post is slightly frustrating. There are at least three downvotes now (or people who unupvoted), but no one actually trying to make a case against the proposal. :|

Mithrandir

Mhhm.

Rand al'Thor

13:44

@HDE226868 I've already discussed Watson as an unreliable narrator here. (That answer was really fun to write, btw. It changed a lot during writing from what I originally expected it to be. I wasn't expecting Watson to be an unreliable narrator either, until I really started thinking about it!)

@MartinEnder Over on SFF, tags are a hotbed of debate. There are several people who hold strong views on tagging but no longer have the energy to present those views in any way other than voting. Might be some of the same people here.

Mithrandir

Without faking.

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet This is why I love Literature :-D Over here, I might even manage not to be the least film-savvy person in the room!

in Maid Café (メイド喫茶), Aug 12 '16 at 15:20, by JNat

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor O_O

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Who dat?

711 notifications?!

JNat

@Randal'Thor Although getting that notification was nice, I can assure you having to manually create 121 accounts was not ;)

Mithrandir

13:59

in Charcoal HQ, 1 min ago, by Mithrandir

How do you have 711 notifications?

Martin Ender

Those are reviews, aren't they?

Mithrandir

in Charcoal HQ, 2 mins ago, by Mithrandir

Never mind, that's the review link.

Rand al'Thor

Oh right.

Stupid new review icon.

Mithrandir

33

Q: Why is the Community user in a close war with a mod?

We have a closed question with 0 sum votes (+2/-2). It got deleted by the Community user. Fine. Then came along DoubleAA (a mod) and undeleted it. Then comes Community and deletes it a few hour later. This cycle is currently in its 20th iteration. Why is the Community user (a robot) fighting ...

bug status-bydesign moderation delete

Heh. Now I know what it's talking about.

@Randal'Thor after the edit that I missed of your Shakespeare's words question, I think it might be worth reopening, but I don't want to hammer it.

HDE 226868

@Randal'Thor Ah, yes, I forgot about that one.

@muru It looks like we did.

Standback

14:16

@Randal'Thor Could I throw a couple of examples at you here in chat, and that might help me clarify/fix/despair-of my proposal?

Let's take the Edmund question, vs. the Frog/Toad question.

Under my proposal, they would look something like this:

> Are Frog/Toad gay? Support: Author was gay, quote from author, New York Times article link.

> Is Edmund gay? Support: List I found on the internet.

Now, this is important: I'm not proposing that either of these questions be closed, in this form.

But I think this formulation makes them soooo much easier to vote on.

Doesn't one of those two questions seem better to you than the other?

Martin Ender

@Standback I like your proposal in terms of what it suggests good conjecture questions look like, but I'm also not 100% sure we need to go to close reasons before this becomes an accepted standard for questions of this format.

Standback

@MartinEnder That makes good sense to me.

I was kind of aiming for "Look how elegantly we can guide people to structure their questions better, and overcome the inherent pitfalls in this type of question,"

but that's definitely less significant than, well, agreeing what kind of questions we want :-)

Martin Ender

Yes. If the question was framed more along the lines of "How can we improve the quality of conjecture questions?" the same proposal would probably find more support as it does right now.

(And it would maybe also result in more interesting answers than "I like your proposal"/"I don't like your proposal" by prompting people to come up with their own ideas for what makes a good conjecture question.)

Standback

No matter how much SE helps crowdsource problem-solving, there's always one step more :-)

@MartinEnder Do you think it would be helpful to reframe at this point? Or would that just be stepping on everybody's toes all over again?

Martin Ender

If anything, at this point I'd move the relevant parts to a new question and close the old one as a duplicate.

Standback

14:31

TBH, "What is a good conjecture question" is worth asking even independently of "here's a proposal to fix them."

Martin Ender

True. :)

Standback

Maybe I'll start with that, then.

Martin Ender

I think having that discussion and then having some active users who are aware of that discussion point out possible improvements in the comments of future conjecture questions might already help a lot with quality issues.

If we then find that some of the things we consider important for conjecture questions are missing all the time and/or people refuse to follow the suggestions, we can still talk about closing policies and custom close vote reasons.

Standback

That's a really good point.

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir And I can't vote to reopen because I already did before :-(

Standback

14:37

I might be leaning too hard on "let's establish policy." I've seen building consensus around policy as pragmatic community-definition - nothing sets a site's tone like policy does - but that definitely could be premature.

Rand al'Thor

@MartinEnder Right, exactly. Much of my answer is addressed specifically towards the proposal of creating a close reason for such questions.

Standback

@Randal'Thor Creating a close reason? Or advocating for closing them?

Like, if I voted to close (on my own say-so) and commented "please explain what led you to ask this question" --

Rand al'Thor

@Standback Well, if we were closing them, we'd need a reason to do so. I don't think they fall under "primarily opinion-based" or any of the other existing reasons.

Standback

Good? Un-good?

Rand al'Thor

May I point you to A close vote is not a super-downvote, and in particular "Close votes are used by the community as a whole, and [...] reflect whether or not the question is on-topic according to the objective standards decided by the community on meta."

Standback

14:42

@Randal'Thor Ok, so you're saying you don't think such questions should be closed, or put on hold to get more information, right?

Rand al'Thor

@Standback Right. Until they become a more pervasive problem, let's stick to using up/down votes and asking people to improve them, e.g. by adding support, if necessary.

Standback

@Randal'Thor I agree entirely! What I want to see here is 100% a close-vote, NOT a downvote. ...is that not clear?

Rand al'Thor

@Standback Yes, that's clear from meta. I was more responding to your comment here about voting to close on your own without a custom close reason.

Martin Ender

@Randal'Thor you can always write your own close reason

Rand al'Thor

@MartinEnder True. But if there's community support on meta for closing questions of this type, we might as well create a custom reason for it. It's not as if we're running out of room for them at the moment!

Standback

14:54

Well, I'm off. But I'll take @MartinEnder's suggestion and try to get a more positive meta post up, get a better sense of what improves conjecture posts, what good things to suggest and watch out for are.

Bookworm

0

Q: Seveneves - lack of genetic diversity [Spoilers]

In Seveneves by Neal Stephenson towards the end of part II the human race is reduced to 7 people (all women) who contrive to rebuild the human race by use of Parthenogenesis. Due to various mishaps (and the uninvited and unwelcome US president) the pre-prepared 'Human Genetic Archive' has been de...

neal-stephenson seveneves

Librarian

15:13

0

Q: When dealing with stories set in a shared universe, how much weight should be placed on information found in the other stories?

I think shared universes raise a few questions: What do we do if works in a shared universe contradict each other? What do we do if a question can be answered only by reference to another work in the shared universe (i.e. is this a valid answer to the question)? Does the situation change at all...

discussion answer-quality

b_jonas

18:16

8

Q: Are there English translations of works of Manfred Langrenus?

Does anybody know of any English translations of Manfred Langrenus's books? I have read Empire on the Moon (subject of this story-identification question) translated into Croatian a long time ago, now I would like to find the translation of the sequel Im Banne des Alpha Centauri, preferably in En...

story-identification translation

^ Nice! A question looking for translation of a book that seems to be well-received (though I might have to wait a few days to determine that).

Shokhet

18:51

writers.stackexchange.com/q/26954/10027 is probably on topic here, right?

Mithrandir

@Shokhet I think so.

Shokhet

Ok

Napoleon Wilson

Really?

Shokhet

It's probably just a special case of libraries, now that I think of it

Mithrandir

@Shokhet I was thinking more of this:

17

Q: How are graphic novels different from comic books?

I always get confused between the terms comic-book and graphic novel. What makes a comic-book be referred to as Graphic novel? What is the difference between both of the terms?

terminology comics

Standback

19:29

Not that I'm planning to make a habit of this, but our open discussion of the Nebula Novelette shortlist is up! :)

http://squeeandsnark.com/index.php/2017/02/28/650/

Hamlet

@Standback will take a look over the weekend.

What feeds do we want in this chat room? Does anyone have any objections to adding a feed to squeeandsnark.com?

Standback

@Hamlet Oh, feeds into chat are a thing? I had no idea. That's... pretty cool. :)

BESW

20:06

There are two kinds of feeds; ones that post directly in chat as if they were a regular user, and ones that appear as small links in a dismissable box at the top left. Folks tend to have almost irrationally strong preferences for one over the other.

rpg.se general chat likes "ticker" feeds (the box at the top of the chat), while scifi.se chat prefers in-chat feeds.

As for choosing the feeds that go in a chat, it's a matter of balancing frequency with value. rpg.se's general chat has a meta post for suggesting and voting on its feeds.

Mithrandir

Jan 27 at 16:19, by Riker

Jan 19 at 16:51, by Mithrandir

NO TICKER

BESW

20:26

#VeryRealisticYA

Hamlet

22:01

-1

Q: Seveneves - lack of genetic diversity [Spoilers]

In Seveneves by Neal Stephenson towards the end of part II the human race is reduced to 7 people (all women) who contrive to rebuild the human race by use of Parthenogenesis. Due to various mishaps (and the uninvited and unwelcome US president) the pre-prepared 'Human Genetic Archive' has been de...

neal-stephenson seveneves

thoughts?

Mithrandir

It looks fine to me.

It should not be migrated to SFF.

@Emrakul why'd you close it?

Hamlet

(I personally lean towards closing it, but can be persuaded either way)

Also, just found out this is a thing

Dog Agility Competition (in HD)

►

Mithrandir

I feel like reopening with a message:

We currently do not have a policy on closing such questions. Until we have a policy, I am going to reopen this question. To help create a policy, visit [here](http://meta.literature.stackexchange.com/questions/91/thoughts-on-why-did‌nt-character-x-act-rationally-questions)

.'

@Emrakul ^

Hamlet

@Mithrandir before doing anything, I would wait for Emrakul to give his explanation for closing it

Mithrandir

That's why I pinged them.

Hamlet

22:09

k

But regardless of whether that question is closed, I am happy it's downvoted

HDE 226868

@Hamlet Not exactly a great question. I'm neutral about closing because I don't think there's a consensus on just what should be done about such questions, but I also think that the question's not something that we should strive to have on the site.

Hamlet

@HDE226868 my thoughts as well. If it was brought up on meta, I would support a "no questions about what if x happened/why didn't x happen" rule

HDE 226868

@Hamlet Yeah, I think a meta post would be nice, and I agree with your logic.

Napoleon Wilson

That would seems a little too restrictive and easily abusable, though. It's often a question of phrasing if your question is reasonable or not. A proper case by case analysis goes further than an auto close reason.

Hamlet

@NapoleonWilson yeah, I guess something to consider is that a lot of these questions can be easily edited

user61230

22:33

I put it on hold because I think it has issues that need to be resolved via editing before it's answerable, and both meta and comments seem to agree.

user61230

Closing prevents answerers from answering the unanswerable, and is an indicator to the author that it needs editing to be workable. That's why I VTC'd there.

user61230

I'm not necessarily the final say, though. And I probably should have left a comment.

Catija

Comments are always recommended when closing stuff - particularly if it's a mod hammer.

2

user61230

Yeah, it slipped my mind. I'll do that now.

user61230

(@Mithrandir & @Hamlet)

Mithrandir

22:39

Sure, okay, I get it now.

in The Sphinx's Lair, 22 secs ago, by Mithrandir

Anyway, it's 12:38 AM here, going to bed.

user61230

Okey-doke, 'night!

Hamlet

23:51

@Emrakul sounds like a good reason to me

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet I just voted to reopen.

I haven't read this book, but I can't really see anything wrong with this question as it stands. It may not be answerable, but it's hard to prove a negative, and "we don't know" could be a perfectly valid answer. Voting to reopen. @Emrakul What do you mean by "workably answerable", and what sort of editing does it need? Constructive criticism please! :-) — Rand al'Thor 1 min ago

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