The Reading Room

12:00 AM

@BESW Not sure if I agree with that. SE is supposed to be a resource for getting answers to all sorts of questions about a particular topic, and this site is about literature, not just literary analysis.

BESW

@Randal'Thor So... deliberately leaving out context is good?

It sounds like we're arguing technical limits instead of actual questions.

user61230

@Hamlet There's some interesting parallels here back to Puzzling. A subsection of the site really wanted it to be high level, detailed, "expert" (for want/better word) Q&A. This was a complicated and years-long question.

Rand al'Thor

@Emrakul Ooh, this issue again ;-)

Napoleon Wilson

In light of the welcoming attitude towards "from what books is that story I dreamed of?" questions this discussion is at least...interesting.

user61230

My ultimate conclusions were twofold: first, it's not possible to force the community to be something it isn't; second, in the long term, the group of experts and casual learners actually have quite a bit of overlap, so drawing one draws the other.

Rand al'Thor

12:04 AM

@BESW No, but if I want to know what the author's said about a given aspect of a work of literature, I should be able to ask that on Literature SE without having people jump down my throat because it's not a high-brow literary analysis question. It's still a question about literature, and potentially one a lot of people might find interesting/useful.

4

Bookworm

0

Q: Is the Blue Ajah portrayed as "the good Ajah"?

In Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, the Aes Sedai are divided into seven Ajahs: the Blue, the Brown, the Green, the Grey, the Red, the White, and the Yellow (plus the Black Ajah, which is secret and threaded insidiously through all of the others). Warning: spoilers from books 4+ follow. ...

BESW

@Randal'Thor Okay, now two different conversations have merged into one and I can't handle a Cartesian plane of false dichotomies.

user61230

I genuinely do understand where you're coming from in the push for higher knowledge and attainment of deeper understanding. But I'd caution two things: first, that it's very easy to take the ideal to such an extreme that the site no longer has even an ideal audience; and second, that it's only rarely contributions should be categorically pushed away.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW Sorry, I wasn't trying to confuse the issue. What two different conversations? I thought we were talking about "questions asking for the author's statements without analytical context" (quoting the original message from you which I replied to to start this off).

Napoleon Wilson

Oh, the Blue Raja.

user61230

12:08 AM

Communities are more malleable than one might expect, but that malleability comes over time. We can't suddenly become what we aren't. I think you have a good long-term vision, but it's important to make sure it's not absolute in short-term goals.

BESW

@Randal'Thor This is the start of the conversation and these are the themes you're now bringing to it.

kristan

@BESW That second post was mine, not Rand's

BESW

@kristan Yup, they're blending together.

kristan

That seems relevant to whether one should ban author-intent questions

BESW

I'm trying to argue that such questions as they stand tend to be pretty flat when most of them could be much rounder if we learn how to help their askers delve into what motivated the question in the first place. Helping people improve posts is a major service Stack sites can offer--it's the reason comments exist at all!

Rand al'Thor

12:11 AM

@Emrakul This. If we push away everything that's not high-brow academic-level literary analysis, then we'll end up with ... an empty site. Most of our users aren't literature professors, and we have to deal with that. We need to embrace the audience we have, rather than push it away in the hope of something better that'll never come.

4

BESW

If that's being taken as equivalent to jumping down somebody's throat or banning the topic completely or being high-brow, I've utterly failed at communicating.

Rand al'Thor

As you say, just like on Puzzling back in the day.

kristan

@BESW Hamlet was talking about banning topics, and that's what started the conversation

user61230

@Randal'Thor Incidentally, Puzzling now has those very experts. Bram Cohen responded to a Rubik's cube state analysis question the other day.

BESW

@kristan Aye, but I'm not Hamlet.

2

kristan

12:13 AM

@BESW But you got tangled in Hamlet's conversation, from which he has now bailed out :-P

BESW

> No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

@kristan See above re: false dichotomies. If I'm not agreeing with Rand entirely, I must be agreeing with Hamlet entirely.

kristan

@BESW I don't think anybody said that entirely

BESW

@Randal'Thor Part of embracing the audience we have is working together to improve the site rather than just saying "Welp, you're not a professor so your question can't be improved" seems... like a less than warm and fuzzy kind of embrace.

Rand al'Thor

@Emrakul I don't know who Bram Cohen is, nor do I really follow Rubik's cube questions, but ... sounds great!

But like I said on meta, actual experts and professionals turning up to contribute is a rare and awe-inspiring event on (I suspect) most SE sites.

user61230

@Randal'Thor Bram Cohen is the creator of BitTorrent, and a frequent designer of mechanical puzzles in collaboration with Oskar van Deventer (which may or may not be another name you know, but suffice to say: he's skilled and popular)

BESW

12:17 AM

Tale as old as time https://t.co/l3ExchuUUZ

Tweeted by NicasioSilang on March 8, 2017 at 11:50 PM

kristan

to post or not to post, that is the question

user15026

@BESW I kinda see the point re: improving questions - this is a good goal, but I think we have to also understand that the sorts of improvements you're talking won't always a) occur to someone, b) be what they really want to know

Rand al'Thor

@BESW Hmm, yes. But asking people what motivated their question isn't the same as "gotta add a load of analysis to this because just asking a simple and answerable question isn't good enough".

user15026

maybe they just want a Word of God answer, not one teased from the text.

user15026

Sometimes simple is okay.

user15026

12:18 AM

There's totally room for the simple and the complex.

Rand al'Thor

Sometimes it doesn't hurt to just answer people's questions. I don't think a question without loads of analysis and explanation of motivation is necessarily bad.

@BESW Sure. I never suggested just saying "Welp, you're not a professor so your question can't be improved".

user15026

@Randal'Thor This. Sometimes we will get questions where yeah, maybe we can suggest that they dive deeper or whatever

user15026

but I think there's totally space for "here's an answer to the thing you asked" without needing to perhaps push into motivation or depth of analysis

Rand al'Thor

Exactly.

kristan

Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The downvotes and comments of critical... critics,

user15026

12:20 AM

I think if we are going to effectively push what feels like academic level responses to things, we're going to turn people away before they get a chance to even really engage

user15026

(This is why I've not asked a lot, because the stuff I think about in regards to what I read does not feel "deep" or "academic" enough to post.)

BESW

All of this is quite nice and I agree with it in broad terms.

But, for example, I've been accused of not asking the question I really mean because I didn't accept a "quote the author and move on" answer to a question that wasn't asking for authorial intent.

Rand al'Thor

To take a personal example, I asked a question "how many times did Sherlock Holmes commit a crime?" It got downvoted into the basement and I ended up deleting it. If I recall correctly, people were saying it wasn't 'analysisy' enough; they thought it wouldn't add to anyone's appreciation of the text. They wanted me to rewrite it as something like "do the SH stories promote the message that it's acceptable to commit crimes when it serves a greater good?" ... but that wasn't what I was asking.

@kristan That sounds like "Not as deceiving as a low-down, dirty ... deceiver".

kristan

@Randal'Thor Yeah, that was pretty much then intent. There was a different word there, but I didn't want to target anyone in particular...

user61230

I think I downvoted that one for being an XY problem. It didn't seem like the number was important, so much as whether and how often Sherlock committed crimes in solving mysteries.

BESW

12:25 AM

I'm arguing for a case-by-case response to questions, engaging with querents and learning how and where questions of a certain type can be polished up, rather than a blanket policy about how everything's okay or everything's bad.

kristan

(explicitly, anyway)

Rand al'Thor

@Ash We're already seeing this with people like you and @kristan - people who could contribute great stuff to the site, but feel like they're not high-brow enough to hold their own here. It really bugs me that people are getting discouraged from contributing like this.

user15026

@Emrakul I'm not sure what you mean by "important". If someone is curious about a thing, does that not make it important enough?

Rand al'Thor

@Emrakul It was important to me.

BESW

Because seriously, statements like this are saying "Leave us alone and don't bother us."

user15026

12:26 AM

@Randal'Thor I feel bad that I keep saying it, but I've looked back at the questions I asked on the old lit site (some of which got sucked up into SFF, which is great), and I know a lot of them would get hammered here for not being analysis-ish or academic or whatever you want to call it enough

user61230

@Ash Important in an XY-problem sense. I might be mis-remembering the question, but iirc it seemed like it was asking about how prevalent the culture of crime in solving crime was in Sherlock.

user61230

Maybe I'm mis-remembering or maybe I mis-understood.

kristan

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by just leaving, end them? To leave, to rest—
No more—and by leaving I would end
The heartache of the thousand downvotes
That my questions are heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished!

...

user15026

@BESW All I read into that is "I'd like to be able to ask questions that aren't always 100% deep analysis of text, and more just "what does person who wrote this thing have to say about this thing they wrote""

kristan

eh, enough about that. :-P

user15026

12:28 AM

I don't think it's a "leave us alone", its more I think we need to allow various types of questions to exist instead of locking purely into this idea of critique and analysis.

user15026

Or at the very least, we need to give that idea a chance.

user15026

Or, we need to be super clear that we don't want anything but analytical stuff, and then take whatever comes of that

user15026

Even if it means knowingly refusing content/users who will be turned off by this

BESW

I absolutely agree with that. But in the context of the conversation it's also saying that any attempt to delve into an intent question with comments that want to see if there's something underneath it are unwelcome "brain trust" intrusions.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW Not really. I'm more saying that we shouldn't chase questions off the site just for not being academic-level literary analysis - nor should we expect all questions to be edited to conform to that standard. If we do, then like I said earlier, we'll end up with an empty site.

BESW

12:30 AM

There needs to be room for prodding questions to see if there's more underneath, and for prodding answers to be the best they can be (great answers "explain why and how").

user15026

@BESW Yes, but there also needs to be understanding that there's not always something underneath.

Rand al'Thor

@Emrakul It was literally just asking exactly what it said - how many times did SH commit a crime in the stories. All I wanted was a number and a list, rather than some vague stuff about themes or a "culture" of crime in solving crime.

BESW

If we've got a knee-jerk "it's okay to be shallow" response in place, then we're filling in the deep end of the pool.

user15026

Sometimes, Word of God is all that's needed, and that itself is the why and how.

user15026

@BESW Why can't our pool have two ends?

BESW

12:31 AM

It can! That's the point!

user15026

It really doesn't feel that way

user15026

It feels like I keep hearing this message that shallow is okay except we need to poke it to be not shallow which really to me comes off as shallow isn't okay.

user15026

Either it's okay to be shallow, or everything needs to be poked deeper.

BESW

I'm arguing against extreme responses which flatten things out by creating a culture that's frightened to challenge the depth of a post.

user15026

It's not about frightening, but if you have to challenge every post, it comes off as potentially hostile

kristan

12:33 AM

@Randal'Thor Yeah, I don't have any problem with suggestions for improvement, but "Asking about author's intentions in this way is not a valid academic lens to understand literature. More importantly, these types of questions lead to very uninteresting answers.", basically bashing my question just because of what it's asking, even though it's a legitimate question about literature, isn't exactly encouraging.

user61230

@Randal'Thor I see what you mean, now. Will think on it.

user15026

@kristan I don't like the use of "uninteresting" there. Uninteresting to who?

kristan

@Ash to Hamlet, I guess. As I said in my response comment, I found the answer quite interesting.

user15026

Do you have a link to your question, or is it deleted?

kristan

10

Q: What was Dr. Seuss's intended message in "Horton Hears a Who"?

I've seen themes and elements from Dr. Seuss's Horton Hears a Who applied to a variety of things, such as the abortion debate, dwarfism awareness, and space aliens. While I can see how they could apply to these topics, none of them seem likely to be was Dr. Seuss was intending to talk about. But ...

moral dr-seuss horton-hears-a-who

BESW

12:35 AM

@Ash Again with the dichotomies. There's no "have to every time." There's "it's okay when it happens" and "it's okay to decline when it does."

user61230

The rhetoric right now in chat worries me more than the content of the dialog... it seems everyone's hackles are raised. I want to say this, because it feels like frustration without clear focus.

4

user15026

I just don't feel like people are really allowing for people to decline it.

BESW

@Ash Right. That's what I'm trying to argue for.

Rand al'Thor

@kristan I have to say I'm seeing a lot of negativity from Hamlet which I don't feel is warranted.

4

BESW

That's how we can achieve variety.

user15026

12:37 AM

And comments like the one kristan linked really makes me worry

user15026

because that's not the sort of attitude that is going to allow for the shallow questions

Rand al'Thor

For me, part of being a mod (or even an experienced user) has always been to be nice to new users and make them feel welcome - not to chase them all away by criticising their questions.

Hamlet

OK, here's the new version of my comment

I realize that my previous comment was poorly worded, so here is the new version of my comment. I encourage you to check out the meta post Thoughts on “why didn't character x act rationally” questions?. Essentially, the problem with these questions is that they assume that the author is constructing a logically consistent universe, when in fact being logically consistent is usually the last thing on the author's mind. — Hamlet ♦ 1 min ago

user15026

and I think that's why I feel like despite peopel saying "yeah shallow is cool, we got two ends in our pool", and the idea that me and my waterwings can stay in the shallow and I dont have to learn to swim where I cant touch today, that's not really coming across in comments and things.

Rand al'Thor

Again, of course, there's a spectrum here and not just a dichotomy. Some questions do need to be criticised. The question is where to draw the line.

user15026

12:39 AM

@Hamlet This question isn't about rationality or in-world logical consistency, though

user15026

It's "hey did he have a reason/intent for this work"

user15026

And it looks like he did.

user61230

"Those who speak of brutal honesty are more concerned with the brutality than the honesty." Criticism isn't the right framing. There's a way to welcome a new user to the site and encourage them to improve their questions.

Rand al'Thor

And the answer is going to be different on a young beta from a big site, because big sites already have established standards, while by making such comments on a new site you're essentially establishing standards for posterity.

BESW

@Ash We're getting both fanatical extremes at the same time, which is.... confusing and tends to radicalise both even further.

2

user15026

12:40 AM

@BESW I think that's the problem - we've got two very different groups

user15026

Theoretically, I could participate in both

BESW

I'm trying to say I think the spectrum can co-exist.

This seems to be interpreted as saying only one or the other can exist.

I find this frustrating.

user15026

@BESW I agree in theory, I just worry we're not seeing much in practice currently, and that's where my concern is

Rand al'Thor

@Ash Are you getting mixed up between the Seuss question and the Wonka question?

user15026

@Randal'Thor oh, maybe

BESW

12:41 AM

@Ash Absolutely. I'm arguing for a goal, not making a statement of current reality.

user15026

@BESW My apologies.

user15026

I think I'm too tired, and didn't parse that out correctly

BESW

@Randal'Thor Now I want to write a Suess/Dahl comparison question, except Dahl makes my skin crawl.

user15026

I just want everyone to feel welcome at our pool, and to be able to swim where they're able.

user15026

And yeah maybe we encourage people to try taking steps toward the deep end, but we also step back if they go "nope, I'd rather stay where I can touch"

BESW

12:43 AM

Re: being welcoming.

Content is not as important as presentation.

kristan

@BESW Have you ever read George's Marvellous Medicine? That one should be banned!

(y'all, be proud of me, I Googled the fragment of the title that I could remember, instead of posting a story-id question!)

BESW

We can hold new users to exacting standards and expect them to be self-activating contributors, while still being kind and welcoming. RPG.SE has years of practice.

Hamlet

@BESW I guess I didn't do a good job of that. I am sorry @kristan

2

user15026

@BESW Arqade does too. But it does take work on the commenter's part to do so.

BESW

@Ash It's a lot of work, yes.

I've got dozens of formula phrases that I've developed over the years which I can combine to meet common situations.

user15026

12:46 AM

It's doable, though, if we commit to making it happen.

BESW

For example:

Hamlet

From my perspective, I feel that these authorial intent questions don't leave room for someone to write an expert answer. Because the questions ask for a quote from an author, answers that don't quote from the author aren't answers at all.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW I wonder if it would be worth making a meta post here on Lit to gather and curate a collection of such phrases.

user15026

@Hamlet Not every question needs that sort of expert answer. If you read an authorial intent question, and find yourself going "okay, but what does the text say", why can't that be a separate question?

user15026

They can totally co-exist.

user15026

12:47 AM

Pushing those answers in where they don't fit doesn't help people.

BESW

> Welcome to rpg.se! Please take a look at the [tour], it's a useful introduction to the site. I'm not sure what you're asking. Can you please [edit] the question to describe the problem or challenge you're facing, rather than just asking for help with the solution you've decided is best.

I've said hi, I've directed them toward a general resource, I've described a problem in terms of my own inability rather than theirs, I've suggested a solution and offered further reading.

user15026

That's the sort of comments I'd love to see here, tailored of course to whatever Lit stuff (because I'm sure some of your formulas are RPG specific, because it would make sense if they were) if needed

BESW

A surprising number of them aren't RPG-specific, actually!

user15026

Awesome, that just makes it easier :)

BESW

[rummages for link]

user15026

12:51 AM

oooh, if you have a link, that might allow more of us to add helpful comments to our mental SE toolboxes.

BESW

It's a little out of date...

11

Q: We could use some more pro-forma comments

I'd like to brainstorm some possibilities for the modal comment-interventions that we tend to do: Welcome to the site, but your question needs work because reasons Welcome to the site, but your answer needs work because reasons Please stop arguing in comments! Please don't answer in comments. R...

discussion comments

user15026

And I think the sort of kind but direct/guiding thing you've got going is really what we need.

BESW

16

Q: Pre-made comments: A resource-gathering & workshopping thread

Pre-made comments are awesome. They're also super powerful tools. Let's workshop some new ones and improve the old ones! You've probably seen pre-made comments[i] used across the site by moderators, both diamond and not. They're efficient and help reduce the busywork of moderation[ii], but they'...

discussion comments

Hamlet

@Ash because questions aren't just for the OP. If I google "Dr. Seuss meaning," and I get a question on this site, the answers shouldn't just be about author's intentions

user15026

@Hamlet yes, but you're kinda going the opposite way, and saying we can;t have author intentions, just text

user15026

12:53 AM

At least, that's the impression I'm getting

kristan

@Hamlet Well, if I don't know where to find a quote from the author, and someone else does, I don't see how the question is inherently bad or promotes low-quality answers. But then, where I come from, most of the questions can be answered by a quick search in one of a handful of references, so perhaps my perspective is skewed.

BESW

The second link has two answers from me: one's just a list of comment fragments, the other's a discussion of philosophy and strategy.

user15026

And maybe we can't have both on one question (maybe we can) but I think we can totally have both in some way.

Hamlet

@Ash what would happen if I edited a question asking about author's intentions into a question about meaning?

kristan

@Hamlet I didn't say "meaning" anywhere in the question.

user15026

12:54 AM

@Hamlet I'm really not sure what you're trying to get at here

2

user15026

All I am saying is that tehre is room for both author intent and text analysis

user15026

Anyway, I'm out for a bit. I hope I've not offended anyone, I'm jsut trying to shed some light on some potential issues I've seen cropping up. :)

kristan

@Hamlet Then your edit should be rejected for changing the meaning of the post. Or would that be changing its intent?

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet "reject -> clearly conflicts with author's intent"? (I know you're beyond the stage of suggesting edits, but a good rule of thumb for whether an edit is appropriate is whether it would be rejected as a suggested edit.)

Matrim Cauthon

As a general fan of a bigger rather than a smaller scope, I am really surprised at the witch hunting some questions are getting. If someone wants to ask a question about a book without blowing somebodies mind, Let the have at it!

kristan

1:00 AM

@Hamlet Apologies accepted :-)

Hamlet

OK, here's what I've been saying but worded in different language.

I don't think that questions should specify one lens over another unless there's a specific reason to prefer one over another.

BESW

I don't think author statements are a lens. They're a kind of text.

Hamlet

@BESW I agree, but people are calling them lenses, so I'm going to call them lenses for the purpose of this discussion

BESW

[skepticles]

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet Does "because that's what I'm interested in" count as a specific reason?

kristan

1:09 AM

@Hamlet Well, that bars the possibility that the poster wasn't looking for a lens. My question was basically "A lot of people have different takes on this book. But what did the author say about it?" I didn't say anything about meaning, or lenses, or textual interpretation.

I asked because I was curious about whether Dr. Seuss said anything about it, not because I was looking for any profound literary interpretation.

kristan

1:30 AM

@Hamlet I think we would both agree that, for example "Are Frog and Toad gay?" and "Did Arnold Lobel intend to depict Frog and Toad as gay?" are two different questions. The question is whether one is a more valid question than the other. I'm saying they're both valid questions, and one doesn't have to include the other.

4

muru

1:53 AM

How does one manage to type Slytherinth multiple times in the first place? O.o

Rand al'Thor

2:26 AM

Three more HNQs.

Three of the last seven questions posted. Not bad.

@kristan Absolutely agreed.

3:02 AM

3:29 AM

Uh, I don't know what that is, but it appears to be an hour long. Who has time for an hour-long video in a chat?

My phone can't even load it

Hamlet

@kristan OK, you have been persuasive. I will try taking questions that asks about author's intentions and writing new questions that ask about author's meanings

chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/55042/…

Napoleon Wilson

The title is a little confusing, though.

Is that supposed to discourage discussing literature in the Literature main chatroom?

Hamlet

No, this is just me as a user creating a chatroom where I can post links

And where other can comment on the links if the so wish

I want a chat room where I can go if I want to talk about literature (and other stuff): I think I might enjoy chat more if there's someplace where I can go and not have to read about site policy

user15026

It feels like you are dividing things into "site related" and "not"

user15026

(Not judging, just guessing)

Hamlet

3:43 AM

I keep forgetting that as a moderator, when I state my personal opinion everyone interprets it as me laying down the law.

This includes casual comments in chat.

user15026

Not necessarily all of the time, but I was more trying to figure out because the room title's a little unclear

Hamlet

If I have a place where I don't talk about site policy, then I can make casual comments and not worry that they'll be interpreted as a site policy statement. Because this chat room is explicitly not about site policy, I won't have to worry about making casual statements.

That's all

Bookworm

4:13 AM

0

Q: Ray Bradbury says Fahrenheit 451 isn't about censorship. Is he right?

According to this question about Ray Bradbury's intentions, Ray Bradbury did not intent for Fahrenheit 451 to be about government censorship, and went so far as to say "Fuck you" to someone who argued that Fahrenheit 451 was about government censorship. This raises a few questions: Is Bradbury...

fahrenheit-451 ray-bradbury

user61230

8:49 AM

@Randal'Thor I will get back to that 1984 answer, I promise you.

b_jonas

11:14 AM

12

Q: How did Wonka's Golden Ticket sweepstakes ensure that children would win?

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wonka says I don't want a grown-up person at all. A grownup won't listen to me; he won't learn. He will try to do things his own way and not mine. So I had to have a child. I want a good sensible loving child [...] and Charlie responds, So that i...

roald-dahl charlie-chocolate-factory

Hehe, nice question. And this one would work well for Sci Fi SE too.

b_jonas

11:25 AM

meta.literature.stackexchange.com/a/564/139 - oh nice! a homework question got reopened because it's not the lazy "do my homework for me, but I won't bother to tell any context about what the homework is, only the last sentence from the exam sheet" sort of question, but an actual well thought out question. This site is going in the right direction. Thank you, Emrakul.

HDE 226868

6:57 PM

Waves to nobody in particular

Bookworm

1

Q: How much weight should we give authors' declarations of their intent after the fact?

Very closely related: How much weight is given to authors' intentions in literary analysis? Related (as an example of what I'm talking about): Is there any textual evidence to support that Dumbledore was gay? Loosely related: Should Go Set a Watchman change our view of Atticus defending Tom Rob...

theory

0

Q: The author of a work disagrees with critics about meaning—who's right?

I've just come up with a conjecture on what a piece of literature means, but the author has said that they didn't mean for their work to suggest that. For example, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 is often considered an iconic book about censorship, but Bradbury says that he didn't write the book a...

meaning

Hamlet

I've decided to try Shog's advice and ask site policy questions on meta, not on chat.

0

Q: Duplicate questions about authorial intent?

We currently have three questions about authorial intent on this site: How much weight is given to authors' intentions in literary analysis? The author of a work disagrees with critics about meaning—who's right? How much weight should we give authors' declarations of their intent after the fac...

discussion

Aurora0001

7:39 PM

@Hamlet My question seems to have caused far more trouble than I was expecting/hoping. Sorry about that—I really wasn't trying to cause anything like this...

Librarian

8:00 PM

-3

Q: Duplicate questions about authorial intent?

We currently have three questions about authorial intent on this site: How much weight is given to authors' intentions in literary analysis? The author of a work disagrees with critics about meaning—who's right? How much weight should we give authors' declarations of their intent after the fac...

discussion

Hamlet

@Aurora0001 huh? You've done nothing wrong

Aurora0001

@Hamlet Oh, perhaps I'm misreading the feeling—it just seems as if it's caused more issues than I thought it would do. If not, no harm done I suppose.

Hamlet

@Aurora0001 you haven't caused any issues

I wrote a meta post asking if three questions were duplicates; the answer seems to be no

Aurora0001

Thanks for the comments on my answer by the way—I wouldn't describe myself as any sort of professional literature critic, so I appreciate any corrections.

Hamlet

@Aurora0001 I wouldn't describe myself as a professional literature critic either

Aurora0001

8:12 PM

In that case, great. Thanks.

Rand al'Thor

9:40 PM

@Hamlet Judging from various things you've said, I suspect that even if not professional, you're at a higher level of literary criticism than most users of this site. Your deleted comment on this post, for instance - I was going to respond to that pointing out that not everyone necessarily has the same standards of discourse as you, but you (?) deleted it before I got there.

3

Most, not all, of course. Joshua Engel, for one, may be professionally involved in literature - he mentioned having directed several Shakespeare plays.

b_jonas

@Randal'Thor Hmm. Then sooner or later we'll have a meta.scifi.stackexchange.com/q/2474/4918 "Have we had ANY professionals participate in SFF?" equivalent on meta.

@Randal'Thor Did he earn money from directing?

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas No idea. I'm just going by this comment:

OK. I hope somebody comes along and writes a more detailed answer. I have not directed this play; I only played a minor role. So my answers about it will be less detailed than ones about plays I directed or was otherwise intimately involved in. But I think it's helpful enough for me to leave it up, so I won't delete it. — Joshua Engel Feb 16 at 21:14

b_jonas

In general, I'm also sure that we have some professionals on the site of course.

BESW

I'm going to attend a research conference later today, and will try to make it to the presentation "Examining Yapese Dances as Literaturen."

@b_jonas If we go by whether folks get money for doing it, I'm a professional author, ghost writer, content editor, copy editor, and English-as-second-language instructor.

Hamlet

10:17 PM

@BESW let me know how it goes

BESW

I'm also gonna attend a presentation where three researchers present conflicting interpretations of Chief Hurao's speeches.

BESW

10:53 PM

@b_jonas ...oh, and I'm also professionally involved in theater production.

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