The Reading Room

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user185131

8:25 AM

Would it be beneficial to keep a list of past topic challenges updated in the wiki of topic-challenge?

10:25 AM

@Brahadeesh It would be a bit too hard to find there. We keep such a list in the meta post for topic challenge suggestions.

user185131

Sure

user185131

I was just going through the list of tag synonyms we have on Main. Some of them seem to be not needed, such as when the synonym's name is a substring of the parent tag's name.

user185131

I think at some point of time the permissible length of a tag's name was increased, which is why some of these synonyms exist, perhaps? But I was just wondering whether it would be an improvement to remove those synonyms which aren't strictly necessary.

Tsundoku

Are you referring to synonyms that are listed as synonyms but are no longer in use?

user185131

Yes, those ones

user185131

10:38 AM

(Actually, looking at the list I see that only [origins] is a synonym that is still in use, on 2 questions.)

Tsundoku

@Brahadeesh I replaced origins on those two questions. I wonder whether the system will now remove that tag or whether it will keep it because it is listed as a synonym.

user185131

@Tsundoku I'm sure it will retain it, but I don't have a reference for that behaviour of the synonyms system. But retaining it would be the right action anyway, since we'd want users who type in [origins] to have the tag remapped to [inspiration].

user185131

However, I'm not sure that there's an advantage to retaining both [shakespeare] and [william-shakespeare], for instance.

Tsundoku

10:54 AM

@Brahadeesh That was due to a relatively recent question that the OP tagged shakespeare. We normally use the firstName-familyName format (when applicable to the author), unlike Philosophy SE, which uses familyName.

user185131

Right, I see why [william-shakespeare] is the parent tag as opposed to [shakespeare], no problems with that. It's just that it seems unnecessary as a synonym, since "shakespeare" is just a substring of "william-shakespeare", and so any OP should be able to find the proper tag in the suggestions when typing "shakespeare".

user185131

But the fact that the [shakespeare] tag was created recently is an argument against what I just said above, hmm....

Tsundoku

Looking back at the chat from 16 June, it appears that users repeatedly created the tag shakespeare in spite of the fact that the full tag should pop up when the start typing that string.

It's a pity that we don't have any questions yet about Nicholas Shakespeare's works ;-)

user185131

I tried looking up which questions used to have the tag [shakespeare] using this SEDE query: data.stackexchange.com/literature/query/960536/…

user185131

That query shows two questions, so the tag was created (at least) on two occasions. Nothing turns up in this SEDE query searching for deleted questions with the [shakespeare] tag: data.stackexchange.com/literature/query/883845/…

user185131

11:10 AM

The synonym page shows that 2 renames were done from [shakespeare] to [william-shakespeare] after the synonymization, so that's 4 instances in all. A reasonable case for maintaining this synonym, then.

Tsundoku

Several questions that used the tag were off-topic or of very low quality and were deleted.

user185131

@Tsundoku Links to those questions ought to have appeared in this other query, but I admit I do not know how SEDE works well-enough to be sure that there's no mistake in the code.

user185131

@Tsundoku What do you feel about other such tag synonyms, such as [pere-goriot] -> [le-pere-goriot] and [cervantes] -> [miguel-de-cervantes]? There's also [attack-of-the-smart-pies] -> [kokopelli-attack-of-the-smart-pies].

Tsundoku

I don't see what we would gain by deleting them, so it should be OK to keep them.

A full tag for Kokopelli & Company in Attack of the Smart Pies would be too long for the system, so we had to resort to several shorter alternatives.

user185131

Jun 16 at 13:55, by Rand al'Thor

The usual advice is "don't bother creating synonyms for tag names which are a substring of the main tag", because then the main tag will show up when typing in the tag box anyway. But maybe this is an occasion to ignore the usual advice.

user185131

11:20 AM

That "usual advice" is what I was wondering about... But it's not a big deal either way, I'm sure.

user185131

@Tsundoku Oh wow, I misread the tag wiki then. Didn't realise the full name was that long :D

Bookworm

Q: Could we compare a racist world with a dystopian world?

I was asked to compare Maya Angelou’s work with George Orwell’s literary criticism. So could I say that they both raised awarness of social injustice, and even if Maya Angelou raised awarness of racism and discrimination it could also be compared with a dystopian / totalitarianism world and not o...

history-of-literature

Rand al'Thor

12:06 PM

@Brahadeesh The permissible length of a tag's name was increased from 25 to 35 on the whole network thanks to a request here on Literature. Surprising but true.

@Bookworm I would vote to close this, if I had non-binding votes.

Tsundoku

It occurred to me just now that the deleted question "why. why. why. why. why" is actually a meta question ... that is a duplicate of an existing meta question ;-)

Tsundoku

12:21 PM

@Randal'Thor Jessica's latest response appears to confirm it's not primarily a literature question.

user185131

@Randal'Thor Oh, so it was a recent change and precipitated by this site!

Rand al'Thor

Well, depending what you mean by recent. 2017.

Tsundoku

Considering that we have read literature that is several thousands years old, 2017 was just yesterday.

Bookworm

12:38 PM

Q: Why are there three different versions of the "solid/sullied/sallied flesh" line in Hamlet?

While looking up about the passage asked about in this previous question, I noticed that there are different versions of the same line in Hamlet, Act I Scene II, line 333: O that this too too solid flesh would melt, Oh, that this too too sullied flesh would melt, O, that this too too sallied...

william-shakespeare wording-choice editions hamlet

2 hours later…

Knight

2:22 PM

@Tsundoku What you’re reading these days?

Tsundoku

2:40 PM

@Knight Two books about Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale; a third one will follow soon. I'll continue reading An Outcast of the Islands once I have a new computer.

Knight

@Tsundoku Okay! It will be very nice because the acts of Willems are quite strange and sometimes I don’t understand them.

Tsundoku

3:03 PM

@Bookworm Have fun reading my answer :-P

user185131

@Randal'Thor It's relative, of course — recent for me because it happened after I signed up for an SE account, and I don't feel like a longtime user :)

Bookworm

Q: Why did Mr Jaggers have death masks of two of his former clients, Great Expectations Chapter 24?

This question is regarding Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Chapter 24 (also known as Volume II Chapter V). Mr Jaggers has two casts in his office, revealed by Wemmick to be death masks of his former clients. Wemmick says they are Famous clients of ours that gave us a world of credit. But...

charles-dickens great-expectations

Rand al'Thor

3:49 PM

@Tsundoku Now thinking of a follow-up question "what's the difference between a quarto and a folio".

2 hours later…

Gareth Rees

5:37 PM

@Randal'Thor Folio is folded once, quarto twice

2 hours later…

Tsundoku

7:37 PM

The difference between folio and quarto is a bit more complicated than folded once versus folded twice if you look at it from the point of view of the printing process. The printing of the First Folio was such a big and complicated enterprise that it took roughly a year to complete.

Our QPD has decreased a bit recently: we had at least 3.5 QPD two weeks ago; today we are at 2.2. We seem to be moving back to the level we were at before the moderator elections. The number of answers per day has also decreased in recent days. I blame the summer.

There's also the little-known fact that not all copies from the same print run are identical. Of course, this is easier to find out for editions that have survived in a sufficiently large number of copies (such as the folios). Some editions, e.g. Venus and Adonis, were literally read to pieces; the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust owns a single page from an edition of Venus and Adonis.

(I believe Venus and Adonis was an octavo, not a quarto.)

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku The site analytics show that posts and votes are still above pre-election levels, although traffic is down in the second half of July.

Tsundoku

7:53 PM

QPD varied between 1.5 and 2.6 in March and April (according to my spreadsheet). I'm curious to see what level we'll reach after the summer, though.

Tsundoku

8:04 PM

Philosophy SE has a tag for literary-theory. Do we want to create a feed for questions on literary theory from that site?

1 hour later…

Rand al'Thor

9:10 PM

@Bookworm HNQ.

2 hours later…

Bookworm

11:10 PM

Q: What is the purpose of the redundant book titles printed in the bottom margin every few pages of many books?

I'm reading a book. Every few pages, in the bottom left margin, it repeats its own title, preceded by an increasing number: 24 The Fellowship of The Ring What is the point of this? Surely they cannot think that anyone would forget which book they are reading, and are too lazy to flip it around ...