The Reading Room

Bookworm

5:52 AM

0

Q: Why does Rajam Iyer lie about the bully at the end of "Fellow-Feeling"?

The 5-page short story "Fellow-Feeling" in R. K. Narayan's short story collection Malgudi Days (which I've been reading online is about a few travellers on a train in India. Rajam Iyer, the protagonist, sees a meek passenger bullied by a newcomer, and decides to stand up to the newcomer. He prete...

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku Your topic challenge proposal for Guy de Maupassant is restricted to his short stories, right? So e.g. Pierre et Jean wouldn't count as part of it?

Tsundoku

8:13 AM

@Randal'Thor It is currently restricted to short stories, but I can expand it to include his novels.

@Randal'Thor You edited the old proposal; I have updated the proposal in the new thread.

Rand al'Thor

8:30 AM

I've written up an announcement for this as the May-June topic challenge, just waiting to be sure about the exact scope.

@Tsundoku Just because the old one is what I'm linking to and copy-pasting in the announcement.

This will be the last topic decided under the old thread of voting.

Hopefully the new thread will get more votes in the next few weeks ...

Ah, I see you've expanded the scope now. Then I'll edit the draft announcement.

Tsundoku

So the inclusion of Maupassant's novels is OK?

I don't know whether the new list will get more votes, but I think it should be listed as "Featured on Meta" some time soon.

Rand al'Thor

It does have the featured tag. I guess the problem is that there are just too many events and featured posts just now. After the election is done, there'll be more space in the sidebar.

@Tsundoku Well, it's more in line with our previous challenges, which have usually been either a specific work or an author, not a big subset of an author's works. (I would've been happy with it either way, to be clear - just wanted to ping you for confirmation before posting.)

Tsundoku

A wider scope gives participants more choice of what to read. A narrow scope allows more depth of research (which probably appeals only to a small minority). So there are upsides to both types of challenges.

Librarian

8:56 AM

0

Q: Announcing the May–June 2020 topic challenge: Guy de Maupassant

In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is time to announce the May–June 2020 topic challenge. Based on the number of votes (in the old suggestions thread - the new ...

discussion topic-challenge

Rand al'Thor

Wow, @Librarian, that was fast. Usually the meta feed is much slower.

Tsundoku

It's so frustrating when you spend 10 minutes typing up a question and find the answer while researching info to be added to the question...

Rand al'Thor

Self-answer time?

Tsundoku

Based on what I've seen, it's not even worth a self-answered question.

It's a question about who coined a specific term and Wikipedia tells me who "popularised" the term. Unless I can find out if somebody else coined the term before the scholar who "popularised" it, the question doesn't seem interesting enough to ask.

I really need libraries to reopen ...

My book collection on Elizabethan literature is too small to answer a lot of specialised questions.

So I'm off to make some post-Elizabethan tea now.

Rand al'Thor

9:16 AM

@Tsundoku If you can find who popularised it but not who coined it, then surely "who coined it" would be an interesting question? Someone might be able to find the answer, e.g. by online access to good libraries.

Tsundoku

If it's really two different persons, it will be an interesting question. But if it's the same person, the question ends up looking a bit ridiculous, doesn't it?

Rand al'Thor

Hmm. If you phrase it as "was X [populariser] the first person who coined the term?" then the answer could be either "yes" or "no, it was Y" without looking ridiculous.

Tsundoku

You're right. Here it comes.

Bookworm

9:36 AM

0

Q: Who was the first scholar who used the term Henriad to refer to a subset of Shakespeare's history plays?

A recent chatroom discussion about how to tag the question Portrayal of Henry Bolingbroke through different Shakespeare plays led to the question what "Henriad" actually means. According to Wikipedia, Shakespeare scholars have used the term to refer to the sequence Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1,...

william-shakespeare history-of-literature terminology

Rand al'Thor

10:30 AM

Mod candidate review :-)

Next week two of those will have binding votes.

Tsundoku

11:03 AM

If elected, I suppose I'll be writing more comments on how to improve questions, even though Gareth pointed out that such comments often don't help.

b_jonas

@Tsundoku Yes, but it's always good seeing the few cases when they do happen.

Tsundoku

Even though I voted to close that question, I admit that it's not so easy to argue for or against it based on previous questions tagged publishing. My impression was that changes in copyright information in this example don't reflect (changes in) publishing practices but mergers and/or acquisitions.

@b_jonas I agree. I prefer writing such comments because they are more welcoming than close votes and downvotes. They also set an example to the rest of the community for how we behave towards new users who are unfamiliar with our site or SE generally.

Tsundoku

11:47 AM

Today, on what is called Shakespeare's birthday (it isn't really), I learnt that there is an online World Shakespeare Bibliography.

Rand al'Thor

2:09 PM

Review from a site newcomer: "I must say, the quality of this SE is impressive!"

Tsundoku

Wow!

So Mith's question about up themselves is an HNQ.

Mithical

2:35 PM

17 hours ago, by Mithical

@Bookworm This also just went HNQ.

:)

Tsundoku

I looked for that but overlooked it. So it's still HNQ.

Rand al'Thor

And gathering more answers by the hour.

Tsundoku

Yes, but I'm still not sure whether one of them nailed the correct explanation.

Rand al'Thor

3:12 PM

Now 100 people voted in the election.

Skooba

6:12 PM

@Randal'Thor only if we choose to use it as such

Mithical

@Skooba What do you mean? A moderator can't cast a non-binding close or reopen vote.

Skooba

I think we all understand just like you do that reviewing habits must be altered once a binding vote is in play.

Yes I mean whether we choose to cast it in the first place

Mithical

Rand's statement was that out of the people who reviewed that item, by next week, two of them will be moderators and have binding votes - commenting on the fact that all the election candidates reviewed it.

Rand al'Thor

And, at the time of that message, only the election candidates.

Your review was later.

Skooba

@Mithical Yes, that was quite interesting

North Læraðr

8:41 PM

It's weird to think that community moderators also vote in these elections

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr Do you mean community managers (SE employees)? Because there's only one community moderator here at the moment.

Mithical

s/moderators/managers

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Moderators, managers, same thing

Not really but like yeah

That's what I meant

My dad used to say that death is the great equalizer. I see now that voting is too

Skooba

Yeah I think its nice to see them voting because it means they actually participated in the site.

North Læraðr

That's pretty neat, actually

@Mithical ?

Tsundoku

8:52 PM

Learning sed, @Mithical ?

Or text replacement in Perl?

North Læraðr

strikethrough?

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr The s/oldtext/newtext syntax is used in several command-line tools to replace text in files etc. Mithical's example replaces only the first instance (or in this context, it would replace the latest). The syntax s/oldtext/newtext/g would do the replacement throughout a file.

North Læraðr

say what now

I have no idea what you just wrote

Tsundoku

sed is probably one of the best-known tools for this.

You typically do that sort of things on the command line or in a programming language that supports that type of syntax.

@NorthLæraðr Nerdspeak ;-)

North Læraðr

I can tell

I have zero clue on anything remotely related to computer programming

I didn't know what a copy-paste function was until like fourth grade when I took a class on html

That's also the only thing I remember from the HTML class

Mithical

9:03 PM

I have no idea where it comes from, I've just seen it around as "instead of <first thing> it's <second thing>"

Tsundoku

It comes from ed, a precursor of sed. But I have also seen it in IRC chatrooms, where it can be used to correct mistakes in older messages. (Directly editing those messages is not possible, hence those text substitution tricks, that you can run over the chat logs later on.)

Used by people wearing t-shirts saying "I drink my coffee #000"

Tsundoku

9:22 PM

Aha, we have a new tag wiki editor :-)

North Læraðr

Hehe :)

Tsundoku

> We are not hypocrites in our sleep. (William Hazzlitt, The Plain Speaker).

Mithical

@Tsundoku good, we needed one and I'm lazy

Gallifreyan

I'm still bummed SE wouldn't allow us to get rid of the tag roomba

It's a drag to go around author tags and write things like "use for questions about X". And there isn't much else to be written either, it's just an author tag.

Actually, not even the tag, just the excerpt

I think I used to add birth and death dates (where available), but still.

North Læraðr

@Gallifreyan Eh, I add birth and death, and some famous works, and a genre they are famous for (if available)

Tag roomba?

@Tsundoku Hurry up and approve my tag excerpt edits then :P

Gallifreyan

9:35 PM

@NorthLæraðr Excerpts are supposed to be short and concise, and only contain usage guidance for the particular tag. Adding background info about the author or a work doesn't make much sense there imho, but there isn't also much guidance to be added, other than the sort of self-explanatory "use with X author tag" or "use with X-literature tag"

North Læraðr

Mm

Gallifreyan

@NorthLæraðr Tags with only one question and no excerpt/wiki get automatically deleted once in a while

6

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 status-declined tags

^ We tried to change that, to no avail

North Læraðr

@Gallifreyan Ohhh, I've been mixing up tag-wikis with tag-wiki excerpts

@Gallifreyan Ah

I misread this meta post

8

Q: Tag wiki format for author tags

Right now, the tag wiki excerpts for all of author tags are a confused mess: we really have two main formats for these types of tags that currently exist. The first is something like this: For questions about the works of T. S. Eliot or his life as a writer. The second, which is one the fo...

discussion tags tag-wiki

Gallifreyan

@NorthLæraðr I was initially going to enter this conversation with "I don't thing tag wikis are needed at all", but that's not a hill I'd like to die on

2

North Læraðr

Ugh, do I need to revise all my tag-wiki excerpts

Gallifreyan

9:41 PM

It's not too bad if you've added extra info in the excerpt, as long as it includes some usage guidance

North Læraðr

what is the point of a tag wiki anyways... I don't think I've ever really used a tag wiki before

Gallifreyan

It becomes a problem if the excerpt is bloated and the pop-up takes up too much space for no good reason

North Læraðr

Ah

Gallifreyan

^ Not a bloated excerpt, but an excerpt that is nice

@NorthLæraðr Exactly.

North Læraðr

Also... our most used tag doesn't have a wiki. Like how was I supposed to know that I can find tag wikis through clicking the really small "learn more" line

Also is it a problem that our #1 tag [meaning] doesn't have a wiki

Gallifreyan

9:44 PM

I see tags as useful tools for finding/sorting/filtering posts, and nothing more

@NorthLæraðr xDD what does it mean anyway?

Pun intended

North Læraðr

Har har

Ugh I want to refine the "symbolism" tag but I'm not sure how

Gallifreyan

5

Q: Should we remove the meaning and symbolism tags?

I've been thinking about symbolism and meaning, and I've come to the conclusion that they aren't worth having around. I wrote an answer on a meta question about a different proposal arguing such, and that answer got a few upvotes. I'm creating a new meta question to get community feedback. Shoul...

discussion tags

North Læraðr

It just seems too

Plain

Gallifreyan

Well crap, we actually voted to burninate those two a long time ago

Time flies

And they grew back like weed

North Læraðr

Hm, we have terminology... what is "meaning" for?

Gallifreyan

9:47 PM

I'm not going down that tag rabbit hole at night

I'm going to sleep now and come back to this tomorrow

North Læraðr

I mean, I could see the use of meaning, but I would think symbolism and meaning are two totally different concepts

Gallifreyan

Maybe the tag will destroy itself spontaneously overnight and rid me of the trouble, who knows

North Læraðr

Eh, is meaning really that bad of a tag though?

Gareth Rees

I use meaning to find questions that I can answer — contra Hamlet I think it is possible to be good at meaning

No-one reads the tag wikis, I think — the links to them are a bit obscure

Bookworm

11:49 PM

0

Q: What is the meaning of the word "incident" in the following sentence? ... "she brought color and incident into my life."

This sentence is part of a paragraph of a book titled "The Almost Perfect Murder" by Hulbert Footner. Here is the complete paragraph: My employer, Madame Storey, who knows everybody in the great world, had become acquainted with Fay, and through her I had met the girl. By degrees, I can hardly ...

meaning translation terminology

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