The Reading Room

Hamlet

01:08

0

Q: Did Evelyn Waugh see himself as a conservative author, and/or did others categorize him as such?

Directly Did he openly and directly declare himself belonging to the conservative tradition? Indirectly or did he do it indirectly through his view of human nature and his choice of themes in his works? For example in his works about the decline of tradition (in example Brideshead Revisited)...

evelyn-waugh

Probably should be closed as unclear what you're asking. Or at the very least needs an edit.

Hamlet

02:55

literature.stackexchange.com/questions/3409/…

I really don't understand why people are in such a rush to close a question "about a piece of instrumental music, not literature" as off-topic.

I think that the situation here might be similar to our debate about oral literature.

I would encourage those who are rushing to close these questions to at least spend some time learning about the history of music, and the relationship between music--not lyrics, but music--and literature.

Here is an article that might be an appropriate place to start.

“Till the Cows Come Home” (Part One): Towards a Natural History of Megaliths

I worry that by closing and downvoting questions based on a predefined conception of literature, this site may be turning away perspectives that could become crucial in the future if they were given a chance today.

If this site has learned anything, it's that we shouldn't close questions until we give have some examples of how these questions do. I can think of so many examples where people have said that questions should be closed as off-topic without any actual data about how those questions perform on the site. And of course, when someone actually asks the questions (and when they aren't immediately downvoted), it turned out that the questions did quite well and have a crucial place in our site.

What is the harm in letting these questions exist for a while and seeing how they turn out?

You have close votes and can use them whenever you like. Why is it necessary to use them immediately in this case?

user15026

05:18

@BESW the library had a ebook copy of Castle Hangnail so I am reading that now, since our conversation the other day reminded me I haven't gotten to it yet.

BESW

yey!

I read the stage script for The Woman in Black earlier this week and enjoyed it. Might read the original novel some time, but first I have to read Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike for a job. But I dun wanna, so I'm reading Cthulhu Confidential instead.

Bookworm

06:09

0

Q: What does Pudd'nhead Wilson's joke about half a dog mean?

In Pudd'nhead Wilson, by Mark Twain, the character David Wilson makes a remark that results in the townspeople writing him off as a "pudd'nhead". He had just made the acquaintance of a group of citizens when an invisible dog began to yelp and snarl and howl and make himself very comprehen...

symbolism mark-twain

BESW

07:00

@Ash You got re-tweeted by the Wombat Herself.

Gallifreyan

09:25

@Mods - might want to take a look at this answer. I protected the question because it's the third spammy answer by supposedly the same user.

Gallifreyan

11:11

So - who started reading Persepolis?

Gilles

@Hamlet Because instrumental music is not literature?

4

@Hamlet That “predefined conception of literature” is pretty consensual. If you want to argue on a different one, then the onus is on you to provide arguments.

2

Which you haven't done here. All you've done is made snide remarks to belittle people who don't agree with you. I wish you didn't do that.

2

Literature: Written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit. (Oxford)

Literature, in its broadest sense, is any single body of written works. (Wikipedia)

Now I'll grant you that these definitions may be incomplete. For example, it is perfectly reasonable to include oral literature in literature.

But extending literature to forms of expression that aren't based on text is a huge stretch and not a common one.

Gallifreyan

Is a manifesto released along with so abstract art literature? #showerthoughts

Gilles

Furthermore we have a pretty consensual answer (+17/-1, and the opposition may well have been because it's too inclusive rather than because it's too restrictive) that states

> I favor allowing questions about songs as long as they are literary questions. Questions about word choice, symbolism, historical context, or narrative structure of a song should be allowed, but as soon as you get into the musical aspects of the song, it should probably go to Music Fans.

So closing a question that's about non-textual aspects of a song is site policy. If you want to change the policy, give arguments on meta instead of sniping at people in chat.

3

@Hamlet Bullshit. If Stack Exchange has learnt anything, it's that we shouldn't leave questions open if they're unsuited for the Q&A format or if they're off-topic.

@Hamlet The harm with off-topic questions is that they get bad answers because the experts aren't here. Then an expert sees the answers during some routine web browsing, sees that they're crap and concludes that the site is crap.

@Hamlet It's better to close bad questions quickly, then reopen them quickly when the reason for closure has disappeared (typically because the question has been edited).

@Gallifreyan On this site we typically accept any textual work as literature, as long as it's being analyzed for the way it conveys ideas in context (as opposed to the meaning of specific words or expressions, which would be a language question, or a question about the ideas being depicted that doesn't involved the wording at all, which would be about history or philosophy or math or whatever the text is about)

Art is closely related to literature, so I'd expect questions related to art to get more of a pass than, say, questions about the mathematics in a math paper

BESW

12:43

@Gallifreyan For several years now I've started it, then had to put it down for something else partway through and not returned for months or years so I start it from the beginning again.

Some books I just seem destined not to finish. (see also House of Leaves)

BESW

12:57

@Hamlet This looks like a good work for discussing many different kind of citation problems.

user15026

13:25

@BESW I saw, my twitter mentions exploded a little. That was kinda great.

Hamlet

15:35

3

Q: How can the Huexotzinco Codex be read?

I'm reading about the Huexotzinco Codex on Wikipedia. Wikipedia describes the document as a "Nahua pictorial manuscript", and claims that it was used as evidence in a Spanish court case. However, the Wikipedia article also contains several images of the codex. And I have to say, looking at the i...

huexotzinco-codex

@Gilles "The harm with off-topic questions is that they get bad answers because the experts aren't here. Then an expert sees the answers during some routine web browsing, sees that they're crap and concludes that the site is crap." How do you know that are answers about textual questions are expert level?

@Ash congrats

user15026

I like tweeting to authors when I enjoy their books. Many of them are quite happy to hear it.

Hamlet

16:04

Well, I'm going to take my own advice and ask questions about music (not song lyrics) to get some data about whether these questions actually work.

I've started with a question about adapting a poem to music, which should be on-topic even if you think questions about just music are off-topic.

The point is to see what kinds of answers this community can write about these questions.

> For hundreds of years, poetry was nearly the only type of literature produced, and some of the greatest works of literature are poems.

(quote from the meta answer that people cite when they say music questions should be off-topic).

Would be nice if someone did some research and determined to what extent these claims are accurate.

Bookworm

0

Q: What changes when you adapt Dickinson's "I'm Nobody" to an acoustic rock song?

I've been listening to recordings of Emily Dickinson's poem "I'm Nobody! Who are you?" on Youtube. And most of the recordings that I've found seem to render the poem in a flat, dry voice. An extreme example of this is this reading by the website "Pearls of Wisdom", which was read in a way that on...

poetry emily-dickinson music adaptations

Hamlet

@BESW people on this site don't see Darwin as a literary figure (although most experts would disagree), so that won't work unfortunately.

Hamlet

16:34

hmmm, maybe instead of spamming links to Darwin's Plots in chat, I should ask a question on the main site.

> One’s relationship to ideas depends significantly on whether one has read the works which formulate them. Ideas pass more rapidly into the state of assumptions when they are unread . Reading is an essentially question-raising procedure.

BESW

16:50

You may find the 2003 article "Tropes, Facts, and Empiricism," by Daryn Lehoux, very interesting.

Hamlet

@BESW yeah, you've mentioned it before.

TBH I looked at the abstract, and it just seemed like a different way of wording (admittedly really cool) ideas that others had already come up with.

But maybe I'll look again.

BESW

I'm sure it's at least building on the work of others, that's sort of what people do.

But it's a very powerful example of a kind of thinking that everyone engages in but rarely recognizes.

It's effectively a more insidious but also more prevalent version of your quote above.

doppelgreener

@Hamlet this site believing differently from most experts seems to be something that should be corrected 🤔

BESW

Some day maybe I'll force myself to slog through Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time again and write an epigram about garlicky magnets and Russian narrative propaganda.

doppelgreener

You round up the experts, I'll get the neuralizer.

2

Hamlet

16:58

@doppelgreener hahaha

Gallifreyan

Um, folks - we have 12 untagged questions.

1. How did this happen?
2. what are we gonna do?

doppelgreener

@Gilles So related to this, Australian aborigines use the didgeridoo as a storytelling and educational device, often but not always accompanied by words or dance or other stuff. There are canonical ways to imitate and portray each animal's calls or behaviour via the didgeridoo.

Hamlet

@Gallifreyan we have a bunch of tags with one question (yay title tags).

doppelgreener

"nonverbal music isn't literature" doesn't match traditional handling of literature, just contemporary western handling of literature.

Hamlet

@Gallifreyan the system automatically deletes tags with one questions.

We got to have a feature request to change this.

Gallifreyan

17:09

This sucks.

Hamlet

@doppelgreener shocking!

doppelgreener

@Hamlet If you add a tag wiki, the tags won't get deleted.

Hamlet

@doppelgreener oh, that makes this less situation less crappy.

doppelgreener

70

Q: Do not expire single-use tags that have a tag wiki

Single-use tags automatically expire after a few months. This is arguably the right thing when the tag is a misspelling (though I'd prefer some way of reviewing the process — but this post is not about that). However, if the tag was clearly deliberate, the default should be not to delete it. I pr...

feature-request status-completed tags tag-wiki tag-pruning

Hamlet

@doppelgreener we copied that question about forum recommendations from y'all. Blame BESW.

doppelgreener

17:11

Do like we do, make sure each tag that comes along has at least a concise wiki or multiple questions. Preferably both. Usually when I see or make a new tag, if it's about a particular product I add a wiki, if it's about a concept I go hunting for something else to tag with it (there's usually something).

@Hamlet Yay! It was a really good idea, so I'm happy to see y'all picking it up too.

Gallifreyan

@doppelgreener Is it a wiki, or an excerpt?

doppelgreener

@Gallifreyan excerpt is fine

Gallifreyan

That's easier then.

Hamlet

@doppelgreener I confess that I know nothing about the didgeridoo; any chance you would be interested in asking a carefully worded question about this?

doppelgreener

Just checked, RPG.SE only has 2 untagged questions. If the excerpt wasn't enough there'd be a few more than that.

Bookworm

17:15

0

Q: To what extent was literary criticism being applied to scientific works at the time Darwin's Plots was written?

I'm reading Gillian Beer's Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. This book is essentially a work of literary criticism of Darwin's theory of evolution. It traces the Darwin's literary influences as well as Darwin's impact on literature. It ...

literary-criticism charles-darwin

doppelgreener

@Hamlet What's on your mind for asking about?

Hamlet

Is there a way to pip in a feed of all questions tagged with untagged to this chat room? That way it would be easy to keep track.

@doppelgreener IDK, I don't know anything about it. Something about how it's used as a storytelling device.

Gallifreyan

@Hamlet Add literature.stackexchange.com/feeds/tag/untagged to feeds.

Feeds

Hamlet has made a change to the feeds posted into this room

BESW

Many cultures use non-lexical vocables to communicate complex meaning, from Jewish Nigun to the Navajo Yeibichai to "Bow Chicka Wow Wow."

2

Hamlet

17:20

@Gallifreyan any creative names for a bot that posts links to questions tagged with untagged?

BESW

Who Put The Bomp - Barry Mann

►

doppelgreener

@Hamlet I'll see if I can think of some stuff to ask about it in its storytelling roles.

Hamlet

@doppelgreener thanks!

BESW

There are also many examples of cultures preserving vocables that used to have meaning but lost them over time, which can lead to some fascinating archaeolinguistics.

Gallifreyan

@Hamlet 'Guardian of the lost children'?

Hamlet

17:26

@doppelgreener you are probably one of the best run sites on the network.

@Gallifreyan great idea!

Gallifreyan

I googled a bit to see if there was a mythological creature who would take this role, but couldn't find one.

BESW

@Gallifreyan There's a recent literary precedent.

Guardian of the lost children

5

Q: Who wrote the Boxcar Children books after Gertrude Chandler Warner's death?

Gertrude Chandler Warner's story The Boxcar Children became the first in a series of books that she continued writing until her death in 1979. She wrote a total of nineteen books in the series. But there are more Boxcar Children books dated years after that. For example The Castle Mystery, #36 ...

untagged

3

Q: What is the argument for Kuni being a worthy leader, when all others fail?

The Grace of Kings is deeply concerned with the mechanics of power - who has it; how to get it; how to keep it; what price you pay for it. Through its course, the book surveys a great many rulers and would-be rulers. In each case, the book portrays power as a corrupting force, that turns rulers ...

untagged

4

Q: How would the Night Circus have survived the world wars?

The Night Circus must have survived through the wars as the last chapter shows a business card with an email address. There is a commemorative plaque for Chandresh who died in 1932 (after the first World War). If the circus stopped I think problems would occur. How could they continue to run an...

untagged

1

Q: What's the meaning of the ending of "Thirteen Reasons Why"?

Hannah says the words "I'm sorry" and "Thank you" on sides A and B of tape 7. Why did she say "I'm sorry" and "Thank you"?

untagged

4

Q: Do the symbol pages in The Founding and Manifesto of Zardulism mean anything?

The Founding and Manifesto of Zardulism* has several pages that are... filled with symbols without clear meaning. It's only ten pages long, but three pages (5-7) are dedicated to what looks like encoded text. Whether it actually encodes text, or if it's designed to look like it encodes text, is...

untagged

Hamlet

@Guardianofthelostchildren it works, I think

doppelgreener

@BESW I feel that if Prisencolinensinainciusol (best known by this performance or this one) is technically literature -- it has lyrics, but they're deliberately total gibberish -- then so is a didgeridoo melody conveying dingoes hunting a kangaroo.

Gallifreyan

17:30

And the best part about retagging those - it wouldn't be considered as flooding the front page, since they're all about different stuff.

doppelgreener

@Hamlet we had an awful lot of great people helping get it there. :')

BESW

Peter and the Wolf

Peter and the Wolf (Russian: «Петя и волк»; Russian pronunciation: [ˈpʲetʲə i volk]), Op. 67, a 'symphonic fairy tale for children', is a musical composition written by Sergei Prokofiev in 1936. The narrator tells a children's story, while the orchestra illustrates it. It is Prokofiev's most frequently performed work, and one of the most frequently performed works in the entire classical repertoire. It has been recorded many times. == Background == In 1936, Sergei Prokofiev was commissioned by Natalya Sats, the director of the Central Children's Theatre in Moscow, to write a musical symphony for...

doppelgreener

@BESW I love that one! That's a great example of something from Western music we could compare to Aboriginal musical storytelling.

BESW

17:47

And it's not like lexical understanding has ever been necessary for something to gain literary significance.

(Note, that article is not entirely reliable but it's the first one I could Google up on the subject--the broad strokes of it are consistent with other sources I've read, but Allingham is not Australian.)

(That phrase just gets more delicious in context though; in the original novel it's a critique on using literary canon as a status symbol.)

doppelgreener

@BESW I also offer up Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll.

The vorpal blade going snicker-snack became famous in the Roguelike genre, even though nobody knows what a vorpal blade is and what it going snicker-snack means. But it goes snicker-snack!

In Nethack was a weapon which would sometimes instantly kill an enemy via decapitation. The game would narrate your weapon went snicker-snack, and suddenly you'd be keenly aware that this you-thought-ordinary sword in your hands is actually a vorpal blade.

Hamlet

Don't know why people claim any of this is off-topic tbh

BESW

18:02

There's already solid Western precedent that literature doesn't need words at all.

Hamlet

thoughts on this question?

0

Q: Did Evelyn Waugh see himself as a conservative author, and/or did others categorize him as such?

Directly Did he openly and directly declare himself belonging to the conservative tradition? Indirectly or did he do it indirectly through his view of human nature and his choice of themes in his works? For example in his works about the decline of tradition (in example Brideshead Revisited)...

evelyn-waugh

BESW

(It's almost like "literature" is a post-hoc definition that interacts with localized social expectations about the value of different communication mediums.)

2

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor In case the OP or his heirs want to sell the books some day, it will be better to have the jackets. — user14111 Aug 21 at 9:06

@Mithrandir if you don't mind me asking, what pronouns do you use?

Mithrandir

@Hamlet he/him/his, although there's one user who keeps calling me she because of my avatar

Hamlet

@Mithrandir ok thanks.

@BESW I thought this site had this conversation when we discussed oral literature. So I was disappointed to see that the issue "weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living"

BESW

18:10

@Hamlet As I've said before, there's a reasonable case to be made for this site evolving a relatively narrow cultural frame for "literature," but it should be a conscious exclusionary choice, not a knee-jerk reaction based on accidentally applying localized standards as universal truths just because they're the ones we're most familiar with.

When we volunteered to participate in a Stack site about "literature," making choices about what is and isn't literature was part of the package deal.

The nature of literature isn't a question we can treat as fait accompli without looking like fools; it's an active, integral element of literary discussion.

Hamlet

@BESW In addition to making literary arguments about the nature of literature, when it comes to decisions about what counts as literature for the purposes of scope, I would strongly advocate letting people ask questions and seeing how they turn out as well.

Like, if we try questions about movies, and it turns out that they don't fit in with the site's mission and that we're unable to attract the expert answers, then that would resolve the debate.

I think it's likely that questions about music will fit into the site's mission (given the interest in song-lyric questions and the history of music), equally likely that games criticism will fit into the site's mission (given the academic connections between the two fields) less likely that questions about movies will fit into the site's mission, and even less likely that questions about paintings or architecture will fit into the site's mission.

BESW

Speaking of intersemiotics, re: your question about "I'm Nobody" above, there's probably a good question about how Simon & Garfunkel changed the theme of Richard Cory when they adapted Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem to music.

Hamlet

But without actual data, given the subjective nature of what literature actually is, we're shooting in the dark, and more likely to shoot ourselves in the foot than hit any actual target.

BESW

(There's also a play based on the poem, which I might try to track down some time.)

Hamlet

#goodmixedmetaphors

BESW

18:21

Anyway, I should go back to bed and try to get a little more sleep.

Mithrandir

G'night!

FWIW, I don't think that literature = all art, but I do think that music should be on topic.

Hamlet

Mostly I just think it's important to make connections between the sound of texts and the actual texts themselves. I don't think you can do that without music.

@Mithrandir well, if Mith agrees :)

Mithrandir

:P

doppelgreener

@BESW goodnight! :)

Hamlet

18:45

@Hamlet I think perhaps the definition of our scope that is most likely to be successful is that we are a site about reading. (Although I don't have the data to back it up, because y'all keep closing/threatening to close questions before we can see how they work). Reading silently is only one way to read. Historically, reading silently is a recent development; it used to be the case that the only way to read was aloud.

user15026

@Hamlet "it used to be the case that the only way to read was aloud" I'm not sure I understand this part of your statement.

Hamlet

Reading is as much about sounds as it is words.

@Ash if you read a book, you would read it aloud. You wouldn't read silently.

Because that wasn't a thing people were taught to do.

user15026

@Hamlet I feel like this needs some backing up, to be honest.

Hamlet

@Ash hehe.

I will find you a source in a bit. (If I was writing an answer, I would have found a source before I made the claim. But it's chat, which is more relaxed and like a conversation, so...)

user15026

I was kinda amused that I'm asking you of all people to back up a claim

user15026

18:55

Like it's entirely possible you're correct, I'm just curious :)

doppelgreener

That would make sense, since before Samuel Johnson's efforts spelling wasn't really standardised beyond "whatever makes you say the right sound".

Gilles

19:20

@doppelgreener Yes, so? We were discussing literature, not storytelling. There's plenty of storytelling through non-textual means.

@doppelgreener This has nothing to do with “western” anything.

@BESW It is, sometimes, but I think on this site there's a fairly broad consensus that we don't judge “value”, e.g. “genre” literature is accepted as literature

@BESW Defining the scope of the site is part of the package deal.

Considering that all storytelling is in scope is not necessarily a bad idea.

But if you think that the scope should be different from what most people expect from the name, you need to make a better case than “whoever disagrees with me is narrow-minded”.

Hamlet

19:52

@Gilles "Considering that all storytelling is in scope is not necessarily a bad idea." that's not what anyone is proposing here as far as I can tell. In practice, what people are proposing may mean that most or all story-telling is on-topic, but that is an effect, not a cause.

@Gilles that has nothing to do with BESW's point, other than the fact that both include the word value.

@Gilles ?

Gilles

3 hours ago, by doppelgreener

@Gilles So related to this, Australian aborigines use the didgeridoo as a storytelling and educational device, often but not always accompanied by words or dance or other stuff. There are canonical ways to imitate and portray each animal's calls or behaviour via the didgeridoo.

in reply to

9 hours ago, by Gilles

@Hamlet Because instrumental music is not literature?

The way I understand doppelgreener's message is, this use of the didgeridoo is relevant to the discussion because it's a storytelling device.

If that's not what you mean, @doppelgreener, please be explicit instead of talking in allusions.

@Hamlet I'm saying that “contemporary western handling of literature” is not relevant to this discussion. We're discussing “literature”, period. Saying that music is not literature is not specific to contemporary western thinking.

Distinguishing literature from art might be, but this is literature.SE, not art.SE.

Hamlet

@Gilles "Saying that music is not literature is not specific to contemporary western thinking." But it kind of is.

Gilles

@Hamlet sigh

just because you say it three times doesn't mean it's true

(see what I did there?)

Napoleon Wilson

20:49

@Hamlet Which is pretty much what I intend to achieve, because frankly, this side has no business talking about instrumental music.

Calling song lyrics poetry is one thing. But knowing no bounds for fear of alienating any possible kind of esoteric conception of "literature" is another.

user15026

@NapoleonWilson don't we have sites that already handle instrumental music? I suspect they'd handle it better than trying to shoehorn every possible thing into one site

Napoleon Wilson

@Hamlet The harm is in the site thinking they're okay.

user15026

Having some scope boundaries is a good thing, I think. It makes for a stronger site, if people actually know what works, then they keep coming back for that

Napoleon Wilson

@Ash Indeed (as well as literary anylasis of their lyrics, but well).

user15026

if you're just going to throw all the spaghetti at the wall, it's going to get messy

Napoleon Wilson

21:00

A useful lesson certainly is to make sure you ask all your awesome music questions during the definition phase of the next Area51 proposal for Literature.

BESW

narrative folks: I have now obtained a new earliest known gamebook/choose your own adventure—it was written by thes… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/904043273022349312

Tweeted by xfoml on September 2, 2017 at 6:08 PM

@Ash Scope is absolutely necessary and I don't think anybody's arguing otherwise.

doppelgreener

@Gilles The thing going on for me in mentioning Australian aboriginal music is that there's a function the written word serves in contemporary Western society -- probably a decent summary would be recording and transferring knowledge -- and other societies use something other than the written word for the same function. It feels reasonable to say that stuff is analogous to being the literature of the Australian aboriginal culture.

BESW

@doppelgreener There are things in Western culture which are considered literature that contain no written words or are written down only for convenience but aren't intended to be shared that way (hmmmm... ever seen sheet music?).

doppelgreener

21:18

If Literature is defined solely as being about the written word, then this is "Western" to the degree that this definition is solely Western-centric to the exclusion of everything fulfilling a similar role in other cultures.

BESW

@doppelgreener It's also more narrow than the Western conception of literature itself; see The Snowman above and Bob Dylan's prize..

doppelgreener

@BESW Yeah, that's reasonable to assert.

BESW

It's fun and sensitive to bring in other cultures, but even within commonly held Euroamerican notions of "literature" there are glaring examples of how the definition is fuzzy and is constantly molded by (and in turn molds) contemporary attitudes about a variety of social subjects.

doppelgreener

So, while we could pick this exclusive Western definition and go with that, I'm genuinely interested to learn about things that serve as functionally other cultures' literature. If we do go with the written word being the exclusive measure of "literature", I'd add my vote to this just being Books Stack Exchange. (Or Books & Poetry, or Books & Verse, or whatnot.)

@BESW I agree, it would be genuinely fun! I live enough in the Western world and I really do want to learn more about how other cultures do their things.

BESW

If we're going to say "for the purposes of this site, literature is only ever the written word," that's fine so long as we do so with open eyes about the awesome stuff which many consider literature that we're shutting ourselves out of--and all the loopholes we're opening ourselves up for.

If we only take questions about the written word, does that include song lyrics or is "being written" not their default state so they don't count? If written song lyrics count, then so does transcribed oral tradition, speeches, interviews, etc? If not, then how do we justify covering epics like the Odyssey and the Vedas--or even the Brothers Grimm?

I don't think we need a tightly defined scope because we had this debate on RPG.SE and the conclusion was, broadly, to let the community's voting make the choice for each individual outlier with meta as a way to challenge specific cases, and only to mash the mod hammer when something was particularly obvious or had reached a community consensus on meta about its subject already.

"What is literature" is a fun exercise but not ultimately a useful one for the site; no matter what definition we come up with, there will always be exceptions we want to include or exclude from it.

doppelgreener

21:43

@BESW "What is a roleplaying game?" is still a question nobody's been able to answer with a definition, but we still know it when we see it.

I'd be similarly happy with a "we know it when we see it" response to "what is literature exactly".

BESW

Mmm. I'd argue that, scope-wise, for the purposes of lit.se "Literary works are works that we can use literary treatments on."

We can consider both Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas with literary techniques and get something useful, so they're both literary works. It may seem circular, but I think it's the best we'll get--and it's actually kinda practical. A question is on topic if literary knowledge is useful to answer it.

It's possible that literary frameworks don't actually work very well for Aboriginal music-stories, and so they'd be off topic. Certainly questions about gourdwork seem like they would be.

But can we analyze narrative voice in Peter and the Wolf? I think so.

doppelgreener

Mostly I signed on to the site to find out what literary techniques even were. Like I know there are literary analysis methods, and lenses, and stuff like that -- I was interested in learning more about those and how they're applied.

BESW

Can we talk meaningfully about whether Star Wars uses chiastic patterns or if that's just coincidence or a different pattern subject to willful thinking by analysts? Absolutely! Better than movies.se? I'd hope so.

Hamlet

22:03

@Ash again, no one is arguing that scope is not nessessary

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson Firstly, what next Area51 proposal for Literature? I don't think the current incarnation is likely to fail (touch wood). Secondly, the example questions in the Area51 definition phase are often a really really bad indication for what the site actually ends out being. Take a look at this, for instance. I haven't read them all, but a quick skim suggests that the majority would be blatantly off-topic on today's SFF.

Hamlet

What I am trying to suggest is that instead of closing questions immediately, lets give them a chance and see how they do.

Let's take oral literature as an example. I was one of the strongest advocates for questions about oral literature. And now we've given them a chance and they've existed for several months.

Gilles

@doppelgreener This is not about Aboriginal vs Western. Western culture also uses non-verbal forms to record knowledge and tell stories, and many non-Western cultures have an old, rich tradition of written literature.

Hamlet

However, these questions have not thrived. No one is coming to this site to ask questions about oral literature. No one is answering questions about oral literature. That includes me, and I advocated for these questions!

On the other hand...

Gilles

Furthermore, just because literature plays some role in Western culture, and something else plays that particular role in another culture, doesn't mean that this something else is literature.

Hamlet

22:06

When I have asked questions about how to pronounce poetry (e.g. scansion), these questions have been enthusiastically answered and have inspired other people to ask similar questions.

When people have asked questions about the sound of music (not lyrics, but the sounds), they've been downvoted and threatened with closevotes. No one gave those questions a chance. I bet if we gave them a chance, it would turn out that they would add something to the site.

Because reading silently is only one way to read.

Gilles

@Randal'Thor Area 51 has improved a bit since then but still has a long way to go. Nowadays it's kind of reasonable for defining the very rough boundaries of what's on-topic, but still very bad at highlighting good questions. But with SFF, Area 51 completely missed out on the topic definition: nobody on Area 51 thought of asking a fantasy question, but that came up on day 1 of the site.

BESW

@Hamlet cf Psalms, Odgen Nash.

Hamlet

Y'all are debating the definition of literature. Some of you are doing this using examples. Some of you are doing this using dictionary definitions.

Gilles

@Hamlet Oral literature is a pretty small fragment of what the English-speaking general public knows. But we do have 9 homer questions.

Granted, most people today consider it written literature.

Hamlet

@Gilles yep, that is most likely why this site has 9 homer questions.

Some of you keep talking about some vague harm if questions about the sound songs make are asked. If there is harm, it's pretty easy to close/delete.

BESW

22:13

@Hamlet I think a primary missed note in these discussions is the difference between "What is literature" (ultimately unactionable but useful to discuss) and "What is the scope of literature.se" (ultimately actionable but not super useful to discuss without practicum).

Gilles

@Hamlet the problem about bad answers due to lack of expertise is that it tends to perpetuate: no experts → bad answers → experts aren't interested in the site → no experts → the bad answers continue

BESW

Because no Stack site maps its scope exactly to its topic.

Hamlet

@Gilles we have plenty of bad answers about topics that no one is disputing are on-topic, such as novels or poems.

Gilles

@BESW “What is the scope of Literature.SE” is what we're discussing

The a priori scope of Literature.SE is literature. If you want to argue for something different, the onus is on you.

@Hamlet It's a matter of degree. The world is not black and white.

Hamlet

Someone mentioned Music Fans. If you want to see what bad answers look like...

BESW

22:16

@Hamlet We had years and years of bad answers when RPG.SE tried to include a subject that we ultimately realized was a bad fit for the Stack. They did not significantly impact the rest of the site's quality, and when we finally did away with them, the problems that decision caused were limited mostly to meta drama.

user15026

@Hamlet putting another site down is rude and unproductive

Gilles

@Hamlet I'm not at all familiar with the site. But I wouldn't expect expert answers from a site called “X Fans”.

Hamlet

@Gilles me neither.

BESW

The average user of the site never noticed except that one kind of question wasn't askable anymore.

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan Let's fix this problem permanently:

0

Q: Can Literature be an exception for the SE rule that removes single-use tags?

Part of the general network-wide SE code involves automatically removing single-use tags from the system. If a tag has no tag wiki and has only been used on a single question, it automatically disappears after a certain period of time, leaving that single question either with whatever other tags ...

feature-request tags

doppelgreener

22:18

@Gilles It doesn't work that way, man. You don't get to say "the scope of the site is what I think it is, I already win this debate, it's on you to change it & overturn me." It's not set in stone like that. We can have an ongoing discussion about where to draw the various lines we can draw, and it isn't a finalised thing or anything that ever necessarily gets finalised. It's not something anyone "wins" either, except hopefully the whole community.

Hamlet

@Ash someone mentioned that we shouldn't ask questions about the sound songs make because there were sites on the network that would do an excellent job of answering them.

Of course, the existence or nonexistence of other sites should not impact how we define our scope in any way. But I thought I would respond anyway.

Rand al'Thor

@Gilles There was an interesting meta discussion about oral literature (which you've probably already seen). At least one of the answers was really clueless, and the top-voted answer ended up being a sort of "mu".

user15026

The thing is, everyone says yes we need a scope, but no one seems to be able to say what that is, and I feel it just keeps expanding and expanding, and I don't think that is tenable.

BESW

Having seen some pretty amazing sites, it's my experience that bad topicality doesn't harm a site, and bad answers need to have a significant critical mass to harm a site--which can be reversed. Bad faith practices, however, will harm a site very quickly and be nigh impossible to heal regardless of the quality of topic or content.

2

Gilles

@doppelgreener That's not what I'm saying at all, so please stop the strawman arguments.

doppelgreener

22:20

@Gilles That's what you said.

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet Can we not diss other sites, please? I'm sure the good folks over at Music Fans put effort into their site just like we do.

5

Gilles

@doppelgreener sigh No, it isn't. Your statement is in such bad faith that I am not going to continue this discussion.

Hamlet

@Ash A scope isn't bad because it is big or small.

doppelgreener

Fine.

Here's what I read there: we're having a long discussion here on what the scope of the site should be and what literature means. You introduced to that this concept: the scope of the site is defined, and it's defined as literature, and literature is defined already as what you think it is.

Gilles

@BESW Counter-examples: Super User, Puzzling

user15026

22:22

@Hamlet I never put a value judgement on it.

doppelgreener

You then introduce a concept of burden of action and place it firmly in not your hands.

That is a shutdown tactic, and it's not a good faith entry either.

Hamlet

@Ash but to be fair, both BESW and I (who are both arguing for an expansion of our scope) have suggested some limits to the scope that might be useful.

Rand al'Thor

@doppelgreener The current Lit.SE consensus as decided on meta is that questions about the musical non-lyrics aspects of a song are off-topic. The onus is on whoever wants to change that policy.

BESW

@Randal'Thor That is accurate. It is not the same as claiming the site's scope "is literature."

Hamlet

@Randal'Thor that is a horrible consensus. (1) The person who wrote that answer told me in a comment that they disagreed with it, and only suggested it as a "compromise". (2) That scope decision is not backed up with any data or evidence.

doppelgreener

22:24

@Randal'Thor That wasn't what was being referred to. (As BESW just said.)

Rand al'Thor

@BESW Agreed on bad answers. This is why I'm more sanguine than @Hamlet about the bad answers from this site's private beta: sooner or later (if not already), they'll be outweighed by the later good answers.

Gilles

@Hamlet So get off your ass and propose something different. On meta, not just in chat where about 5 people will see it.

user15026

@Hamlet data or evidence? What are you looking for there?

Rand al'Thor

@doppelgreener It's the specific issue which started this whole general debate about topicality.

Hamlet

@Gilles I think I will.

doppelgreener

22:26

@Randal'Thor And it isn't what Gilles referred to just then.

Hamlet

I've been putting together a few test questions right now as a matter of fact.

BESW

@Randal'Thor RPG.SE's first year has some absolute conkers that were joyously heralded as excellent examples of the site's value for years to come.

Hamlet

@Ash Letting some questions be asked and seeing how the site handles them.

BESW

Many of them are now under historical lock.

Rand al'Thor

@BESW 'Conkers' meaning bad?

Hamlet

22:27

@Randal'Thor yes

user15026

@Hamlet that's not the same as proposing a scope on meta, which I think is what Gilles is referring to.

doppelgreener

Yeah, conkers being a bunch of questions we later recognised were extremely unworkable.

Hamlet

@Ash but that would be a complete waste of time, because we have no data with which to make a decision.

Gilles

@Ash Having sample (good!) questions is a good idea to discuss topicality.

user15026

Eventually you are going to want to have meta posts or other signposts you can point to so people understand the topic

Hamlet

22:28

@Ash yes, those will get written once we have actual evidence about how these questions do.

Gilles

Post the sample question, and then post a meta question to discuss the topicality issue that it illustrates.

doppelgreener

12

Q: Character build for Gandalf in D&D3.5?

In my groups next campaign I am hoping to be a PC instead of the DM and I want to play a character who is like Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. I began looking at options; he would probably be a bard, but what race would he be? I want him to be proficient with a sword, and he sh...

dnd-3.5e character-creation

15

Q: How can I make realistic looking potions as handouts

I'd like to give my group some realistic looking potions as handouts. Does anyone have tips on how I could make these look awesome?

magic-items props potions

BESW

@Hamlet So, make a meta saying you want to put a temporary reprieve on [subject] until more is known about it so an informed decision can be made. We've done that on RPG.SE.

Hamlet

@BESW I might do that, then.

doppelgreener

49

Q: Are there any good tabletop RPGs for young beginning players?

I'm looking for a fun, easy to get into RPG for my kids. It could be simple and card-based, or more "normal" tabletop style. I'm looking for something less bloody and dark, and more fun and easy to get into. What games have you played with pre-teen children that they could easily uptake and enjo...

game-recommendation kids

Here's some of those conkers.

Hamlet

22:29

But I do think this chat conversation is becoming less and less productive. At the beginning, some excellent points were made, so I'm happy that this conversation happened. But we've gotten to the point where everything has been said, and we're just repeating stuff. (This includes me).

Rand al'Thor

@BESW @doppel Is RPG another exception to the "nuke single-use tags" rule?

Hamlet

Anyway, credit to Gilles for jolting me awake on this.

BESW

17

Q: Save our system tags!

According to this meta suggestion, single-use tags will no longer expire if they have a tag wiki. We have a historic problem whereby users will ask about a game system (and a tag will be created for it), but that will be the only question on the system, dooming the tag to later be obliterated an...

support tags game-systems

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor We just give them tag wikis (just a tag wiki excerpt is fine too).

5 hours ago, by doppelgreener

@Hamlet If you add a tag wiki, the tags won't get deleted.

70

Q: Do not expire single-use tags that have a tag wiki

Single-use tags automatically expire after a few months. This is arguably the right thing when the tag is a misspelling (though I'd prefer some way of reviewing the process — but this post is not about that). However, if the tag was clearly deliberate, the default should be not to delete it. I pr...

feature-request status-completed tags tag-wiki tag-pruning

Rand al'Thor

@doppelgreener And you actually manage to catch them all? Wow, you must have a diligent community.

doppelgreener

22:32

@Randal'Thor I checked earlier today and we had 2 untagged questions. I retagged them and added wikis.

Anytime we get a tag about a specific game, I give it a quick google and add a brief excerpt describing its topic, publisher, and maybe year or author. If we get a tag about a gaming concept, I search through our archives because there's almost always 1-2 other questions to add that tag to. Other people seem to do similar, so we don't see many tags expiring.

Rand al'Thor

Awesome!

Mithrandir

That's impressive. I guess SFF was just lazy ;P

Rand al'Thor

A wild @Mithrandir has appeared!

doppelgreener

It helps that RPGs are easily discoverable (we have a site called rpggeek which catalogues every single one in existence), easily summariseable, and generally any RPG question has some value for a broad audience.

user15026

@doppelgreener how do you find the untagged ones?

doppelgreener

22:37

Trivia about {series I don't read} is basically gibberish to me, so that could change things. Questions about the rules of a game are similarly incomprehensible and boring, but anything else -- social issues, game management, etc -- are all stimulating.

Mithrandir

@Randal'Thor I've been lurking for the last forty minutes

doppelgreener

@Ash When all the tags on a question expire the system tags it with untagged, and that's a real actual tag.

Mithrandir

@Ash they get tagged untagged

doppelgreener

e.g. stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/untagged

Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir Watching the, er, spirited discussion? ;-)

@doppelgreener But there's no way of catching the questions which had a single-use tag and a commoner tag and now only have the commoner one, right?

user15026

22:39

@doppelgreener I knew that they got the untagged tag, wasn't sure if it was treated as a normal tag

doppelgreener

@Ash Yeah, normal-ish enough

@Randal'Thor Yeah I think so. Tag expiration is done retroactively as if the tag never existed at all. The revision history of this question makes it look like a moderator just applied the "untagged" tag themselves, but actually they applied a different tag which then expired and so the revision got...revised.

Rand al'Thor

@doppelgreener Only 8 on SO ... I was expecting to see some ridiculous figure in the thousands.

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor Same!

Rand al'Thor

@doppelgreener Rewriting history! Down the memory hole!

doppelgreener

@Randal'Thor Whoosh!

Hamlet

22:48

@doppelgreener I think a didgeridoo question would make a great test case.

I already asked this question (literature.stackexchange.com/q/3463/111) as a way to get people used to the idea that sounds impact meaning, and as a way to see what kinds of answers people can write, if they write answers at all.

There are a bunch of examples here (thanks @BESW) that I <s>might</s> will steal.

And I have a few ideas, I'm just trying to write them in a way that wont get them immediately rejected.

6 hours ago, by BESW

Many cultures use non-lexical vocables to communicate complex meaning, from Jewish Nigun to the Navajo Yeibichai to "Bow Chicka Wow Wow."

Prob the best way to work the site into this topic.

Hamlet

23:29

@Ash so remember my claim that people used to only read aloud.

Napoleon Wilson

@Hamlet Well, they probably won't get much better now either.

Hamlet

Looking through the scholarship on the topic, (1) it is a lot more complicated than that, and (2) there is a lot of uncited claims and bad scholarship.

It's very possible that I am wrong.

(Something something something always cite your sources)

Napoleon Wilson

@Hamlet Noone argues they will add something to the site.

Hamlet

There is a popular book titled Space Between Words that argues that books were only read aloud, because written text didn't have spaces at the time. This is probably the source of my claim. But most scholars today argue that it's a bad source.

BESW

@Hamlet Yeah, any time you see something making claims about how backward or simple folks used to be, give it a good hard side-eye.

(see Neanderthal glue.)

Hamlet

23:34

@NapoleonWilson oh no, I used a vague word ("something") rather than a more specific word in a fast paced conversation. What ever will we do?

BESW

Hamlet

In case it wasn't clear, I am arguing that there is a possibility that questions about sounds will add a critical perspective that will enhance our understanding of all topics on the site, including topics such as novels that we all agree are on topic. But of course, we won't know until we try.

user15026

@Hamlet Thanks for letting me know what you found :)

Hamlet

Here's an article titled Silent Reading in Antiquity that might be interesting

BESW

@Hamlet Here's a poem by AA Milne which has been sung by Robin the Frog and Amy Lee.

Hamlet

23:40

@Ash np my pleasure.

BESW

Loreena McKennitt sometimes sings Shakepearean monologues.

Hamlet

@BESW thanks

but I got to find good questions that are about songs that aren't just adaptations, because those questions miss the point as far as scope pushing questions go.

They're good questions to get people used to the idea, but they aren't the endgoal or the point.

BESW

I think McKennitt would be a good introduction to performance as interpretation--it's roughly the same as asking about an actor's performance of the play, but musical.

But then, yeah, you could ask about how Dylan changes his own songs over time.

...Blind Guardian has written original songs based on "classic" oral traditions like the Illiad.

Hamlet

Friendly reminder that stars are not an "I agree" button. I've been removing stars where the message doesn't make sense out of the context of the conversation, or when two messages are starred that say the same thing, etc.

4

@BESW part of the problem is that I know next to nothing about music

Napoleon Wilson

@Hamlet ?_?

Hamlet

23:50

So it looks like I'm going to have to learn some stuff on the fly.

If I admit that's been what I've been doing for 90% of the topics on this site, will you all loose your respect for me?

Rand al'Thor

@Hamlet I've done that for a lot of my questions here :-)

BESW

Eh, the main reason I'm not asking a lot of questions is that I can't/won't do that.

Rand al'Thor

The history behind several Rand questions has been "hey, we don't have any questions about X yet!" <goes to do some research on X>

And I don't mean ayn-rand questions :-P

Hamlet

Also, is anyone surprised that emily-dickinson only has two questions

user15026

@Hamlet Not really

Rand al'Thor

23:56

Will I have tomatoes thrown at me if I ask who's Emily Dickinson?

Hamlet

I thought she was pretty popular.

@Ash "not really" is a good example of a message not to star. It makes no sense out of context, and therefore it's confusing to anyone perusing the list of starred messages.

user15026

Um....okay?

Hamlet

@Ash it was starred but I removed it.

user15026

okay

user15026

sure

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