The Reading Room

Alex

00:00

I'm no expert on tagging on Literature, but I'd think the answer to your second query is yes.

Bookworm

01:12

0

Q: What for you are the three quotes that sum up The Great Gatsby?

What are 3 quotes that you think sum up The Great Gatsby?

the-great-gatsby

verbose

01:50

@Randal'Thor Shorter summary, particularly highlighting the C Rajagopalachari version that's available online—easiest way to get people to read something covered by the challenge

@Randal'Thor Do you include Australia and NZ in Oceanic literature?

@bobble Interesting question. I want to say yes? I imagine questions like "Why is Utopia called Utopia" or "Is there a significance to the college in Doonesbury being named Walden" would qualify as well. Or is there an assumption that name-significance applies only to personal names?

If it does qualify, we should edit the excerpt to say that it is not restricted to personal names, I guess?

bobble

Nov 14 '20 at 21:28, by bobble

Does name-significance still apply if you're asking about the significance of an in-universe organization's name, and not a character's?

verbose

@bobble based on the brief discussion there I'd say the tag applies.

@bobble I added back symbolism to the question ... not sure why user111 removed it.

bobble

Do you mind my questions about tagging that I post in here?

Because if you don't, I have two more to ask :)

Or, perhaps those should wait. I've bumped quite a few posts today

Alex

02:09

@bobble Keeps things exciting.

verbose

02:26

@bobble no, why would anybody mind?

bobble

I have followed the three posts I found and will ask 'bout them tomorrow, when I feel less guilty about bumps

Alex

@verbose Personally I'd prefer great existential questions. but I'll settle for these.

verbose

@Alex great existential questions make me wanna go lie down with a cold compress in a darkened room

Alex

The Reading Room?

verbose

Nah, it's full of bright people like yourself

Alex

02:38

I've been accused of worse....

in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Feb 10 '19 at 16:27, by Alex

I've been accused here of being a robot, a bathtub, an offspring of an elephant, but never jelly as far as I know...

verbose

@Alex I've never been accused of being jelly either, though I've frequently been in a jam

Alex

Sounds like a good story is coming.

“How Being Verbose Got me Into a Jam, and Simmering Down Got me Out of the Pickle”

bobble

03:07

Oh I forgot to mention here. Last university decision came through (acceptance) so I got a 5/9 record.

verbose

@bobble yippee! Congratulations! Have you decided where you'll be going, or are you still working out the deets like financial aid and such?

bobble

Prices and relative program strengths, yes.

4 publics and 1 private, and even with the half-scholarship I got for the private it's more expensive than the public.

verbose

@bobble ah

what do you plan to study? I forget whether it was rocket science or brain surgery

or was it rocket surgery?

bobble

@verbose Some combination of biology and computers ;)

verbose

ah

so, like bionics?

You'll be designing the l'lle microchips they put in vaccines?

bobble

03:16

less hardware, more software

More, the algorithms they used to determine how the virus evolved :)

verbose

ah

Rand al'Thor

08:06

@verbose Nice new textual-history tag ;-) Not sure how it will relate to the existing publication. I guess they're related but slightly different topics?

> Questions about the publication of a work, not the text of the work itself. This type of questions asks about how a specific text came into existence as a publication (which involves a publisher), not as a text (which usually does not involve a publisher. Valid examples are when or in what form a specific work was published and by whom. For publishing practices of a specific country or time period, use the [publishing] tag.

^ publication tag wiki excerpt, for the record

If this new tag sticks around, it should probably be added to some more questions too.

Bookworm

08:20

0

Q: Where is Dolphin Island?

Arthur C. Clarke's short novel Dolphin Island is set on an island in the Pacific. Although this Dolphin Island itself is fictitious, the novel includes references to real locations such as Tonga. From information about these real locations, or even about the climate or other facts about Dolphin I...

setting arthur-c-clarke dolphin-island

verbose

08:34

@Randal'Thor I've written up the tag info for textual-history. I think the tag info for publication is a bit confusing, tbh. Why does this question have a publication tag?

Honestly, I don't see the relation between any of the questions tagged publication and the tag wiki info for that tag ...

Also, manuscripts (which aren't published) are a part of textual-history, so there's one difference.

So for example this question has everything to do with textual-history and nothing to do with publication, since it's specifically asking for manuscript info.

My suggestion would be to go through all the questions tagged publication, add the textual-history and publishing tags where needed, remove the tag publication, and then burninate that tag (or make it a tag synonym for textual-history

Rand al'Thor

To reduce the amount of editing, we can go through all the 29 publication questions and check which ones of them should be textual-history and which shouldn't. We might be able to accomplish most of the necessary tag changes with a merge (where mods press a button to automatically replace one tag by another on all questions without manually editing or bumping anything).

You've found a good solution to the issue of having two tags with very similar names and different meanings (publication and publishing).

verbose

okay, where should I list the ones that need the textual-history tag? And I guess there's no way to avoid bumping the ones that need publishing but not textual-history. That is, if the publication tag has been misapplied to those questions.

Rand al'Thor

08:49

Yes, but I'm hoping those latter questions will be a minority.

I did remove publication from the one you linked about Project Gutenberg.

29 is probably few enough that we can just list them here in chat (there's no character limit on multi-line chat messages, but also no fancy formatting).

verbose

okay here goes, I guess:

IMO, Stefan Zweig needs publishing, not publication

Horatio Hornblower needs both publishing and textual-history, I think

The Gitabitan question needs to be changed to textual-history

I don't think This Dog needs the publication tag at all

Endless Time needs to be changed to textual-history

Wisdom is One needs the change

I think the Narnia question should be publishing, since it's about why a publisher did something and not about the text of the works at all.

Ditto Ballad of Songbirds

The Maupassant question needs to be changed to textual-history

As does Malgudi Days

And Awovals and Denials

H'm, the Dr Faustus question I'm sorta wondering whether we need another tag for performance-history. Dr Faustus wasn't published, as far as we know, until 1604, but it was performed in 1589. The question treats the two as the same thing and/or switches between the two. Since it specifically asks when the play was first published, I'd say it needs to be changed to textual-history

Fraktur needs publishing, not publication

Miyamoto Musashi needs to be changed from publication to textual-history

as does 40 rules of 💘

Far from the Madding Crowd needs publishing, not publication

Shakespeare's Sonnets are a notorious problem in textual-history

Crime and Punishment needs to be changed to textual-history as well

Ditto Dr Seuss

Tsundoku

09:31

@verbose Rocket surgery has been made easy, so I think @bobble will pick something more challenging.

verbose

I think Kenneth Muir also goes under textual-history

Ditto Heine

and Frankl

and Cummings

and Some Answered Questions

I think Allingham goes under publishing

I don't think kingkiller needs the publication at all.

and finally, Gerrit de Vere goes under textual-history

To sum up:

• Six questions tagged [tag:publication] should have [tag:publishing] instead
• Two questions need neither [tag:publication] nor [tag:publishing]
• One needs both [publishing] and [tag:textual-history]
• Eighteen can be changed from [tag:publication] to [tag:textual-history]

That's all 27 questions that I can find. @Randal'Thor you said 29; what am I missing?

Oh it turns out I skipped two by mistake.

Frost can be changed to textual-history, as can Hesse

So that's 20 questions that can be switched over, and nine that need other changes. All IMO of course. Waiting to hear what others think.

@Tsundoku Ah. I didn't know that.

verbose

10:13

@verbose I changed my mind, I think this Allingham one needs to be textual-history too, as it's about how the book's illustrations changed, and that is something a textual editor / scholar would look at.

Rand al'Thor

11:51

@verbose Sorry, I was AFK (well, actually in an online meeting, but AFSE). Going through your list now.

@verbose I think the scope of textual-history should include all kinds of issues about different editions, even if the text itself isn't changed. Sometimes it might even be unknown whether there are any textual changes between editions or not - asking whether there are or not, for a particular book, could make a great question.

Uugghh, I just remembered we have an editions tag too, with 31 questions. That's going to have a load of overlap with textual-history and publication too, isn't it? :-/

Anyway, I agree with all of your retag suggestions except for the Narnia one that I replied to above.

Rand al'Thor

12:28

Among the 31 questions tagged editions, I think most of them could be changed to textual-history, but the following 12 I'm not so sure about:

Morte d'Arthur and How to Read a Book (edition-recommendation questions)

How can I find information about the editions of a book? and Which first edition is the “true” first edition of a book? (very broad)

Der bestrafte Brudermord (what happened to the original manuscript)

Barnes & Noble (are their editions reliable)

recommendation question (maybe just delete it?)

First Folio (number of copies)

Nietzsche (which works were edited by his sister)

Derry/Londonderry and Kongens Fald (OP wonders if their edition is different or not)

Tempest (which source is correct)

Could they be textual-history too, or something else?

Bookworm

13:23

0

Q: How do you make a long book concise?

When I look back at reading the Lord of the Rings as a child I was astounded at how every chapter in the book is almost a self-contained story. Yes, the three books do operate as a collective, but I'm often drawn to reading my favorite chapters in the book in isolation. Each chapter in some ways ...

j-r-r-tolkien

Tsundoku

14:15

@Randal'Thor Is that like tsundoku in browser tabs? ;-)

In old news: Wole Soyinka To Publish First Novel In Almost 50 Years.

Philip Roth — most meta of novelists, and most honest in the upcoming issue of The Spectator.

@frandude Let me know if / when you've found something.

> In all seriousness I learned Ancient Greek because after reading multiple translations of Nichomachean Ethics, and realizing how different they were, I knew I wanted to read texts in the original language for clarity’s sake. That’s also why I’m learning German, Hebrew, and more.

^ On Twitter

@bobble Too few pings again? ;-)

bobble

:D

Okay, the tagging questions, as promised:

title? literature.stackexchange.com/questions/6764/…

name-significance? literature.stackexchange.com/questions/8957/…

name-significance? literature.stackexchange.com/questions/8492/…

Tsundoku

@bobble Would be valid, but then we would need to remove one or both of the tags related to Livy.

bobble

ah, the tag limit

curses!

Tsundoku

@bobble Seems relevant. Isn't that name some sort of soporific spell?

@bobble Done.

bobble

14:31

Nah, that goes

Mar 4 at 23:17, by Prince North Læraðr

Sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

Tsundoku

Too early!!!

bobble

darn, accidentally linked the answer for that last one, didn't I

I shall ping @Randal'Thor, since the middle question is his

Tsundoku

Stack Overflow isn't having an unicorns this year.

Bookworm

15:29

0

Q: Is there "Joker interviewing on a talk show" in DC comic books too?

There are two scenes in movies that the Joker had interviewed on a TV channel. One in the Joker (2019 movie) and one in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part 2 (2013 animated movie); and in both Joker killed the interviewer. Is there the same incident in comics too?

comics movies

Rand al'Thor

15:41

@bobble I guess so.

@Bookworm That needs retagging.

bobble

17:40

Just noticed that my top 4 answers are all to Rand's questions

And the fifth got a bounty from him :)

Rand al'Thor

17:58

And your top 3 questions all have accepted answers from me.

We're not socks though, right? :-)

bobble

18:28

Definitely not. Why would you even ask?

@Randal'Thor 4 out of top 5. You didn't answer the "three-part moon" question

Mithical

@Randal'Thor 👀

verbose

21:23

@Randal'Thor Agreed

@Randal'Thor I'm not seeing anything about the Narnia one? Sorry if I'm missing something

Rand al'Thor

12 hours ago, by verbose

I think the Narnia question should be publishing, since it's about why a publisher did something and not about the text of the works at all.

10 hours ago, by Rand al'Thor

@verbose I think the scope of textual-history should include all kinds of issues about different editions, even if the text itself isn't changed. Sometimes it might even be unknown whether there are any textual changes between editions or not - asking whether there are or not, for a particular book, could make a great question.

(meaning that I think that Narnia question should be textual-history too)

verbose

@Randal'Thor I think those should have been closed as opinion-based. kimchi lover's answer to the Morte question is factually correct; whether one chooses the Oxford edition or the Penguin one (or any of the others) is a matter of opinion, not fact. "which is the best" solicits an opinion.

@Randal'Thor oh I see

@Randal'Thor The former is textual-history, the latter publishing.

Tsundoku

@bobble Stockings, then?

bobble

I assure you, I am a normal human typing with my human hands, not a bot of Rand's

verbose

@Randal'Thor That one falls under publishing

bobble

21:33

Would it be worth opening a meta about the bounds between the tags?

verbose

@Randal'Thor well, it's fine to leave on as a closed question, but it really is opinion-based and so close-worthy. As for tags, I'd say publishing

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor Is there a rule for deleting closed questions that have an answer?

bobble

They're not auto-deleted if the answer is upvoted/accepted, I think

Tsundoku

No, so deletion would require five deletion votes.

verbose

@Randal'Thor Definitely textual-history. There are variations between copies of the First Folio, so....

@Randal'Thor Nietzsche would be textual-history

Rand al'Thor

21:41

@Tsundoku Not really any strict rule; the most relevant thing I can think of is this guidance from then-CM Robert Cartaino:

72

A: When should I vote to delete a question?

Questions should be deleted when their content no longer adds anything to the site. Questions are closed for a variety of reasons, so let's look at each close reason and whether they should likely be deleted: Duplicate: It depends; Look at the context of how they are asked. You'll want to keep th...

It normally takes three delete votes to delete a question, although that number can increase if it has many upvotes or upvoted answers.

verbose

@Randal'Thor yep, textual-history

Rand al'Thor

@verbose you missed replying to one :-)

9 hours ago, by Rand al'Thor

Der bestrafte Brudermord (what happened to the original manuscript)

I guess textual-history?

verbose

@Randal'Thor yep

Rand al'Thor

Maybe my second Ur-Hamlet question could also be textual-history.

Summarising your comments on the editions questions that I wasn't sure about, we have, among the 31 questions with that tag, 26 which should be textual-history and just 5 others (two edition-recommendation, one pure recommendation, definition of first edition, Barnes & Noble reliability).

verbose

@Tsundoku do we have a policy on what language we use in tags of non-English works? Why ab-urbe-condita-libri but discourses-on-livy? We seem to translate most of them, e.g., we have the-plague and not la-peste

Rand al'Thor

21:51

In addition to your list from publication (possibly reducing that 6 to 5 according to my comment on the Narnia question), it seems like we have a total of 13 or 14 questions to manually edit and then two mod merges.

@verbose There was an old meta discussion about it, but very little consensus:

15

Q: Translations, and books with different titles with respect to tags

I recently answered my first question on Literature, Yaay! Why does Meursault kill "the Arab" in The Stranger? The question is about a book by Albert Camus. The book was originally written in French, with the title "L'Etranger." Now the French title translates to different things. Many books of...

discussion tags translations

verbose

@Randal'Thor I actually like the top-rated answer on that meta question

Tsundoku

@verbose As a rule, we use translations of titles, but Wikipedia uses the title Ab Urbe Condita Libri, which is why I didn't bother translating the title in this specific case.

verbose

22:18

@Tsundoku ah.

Librarian

22:47

0

Q: Announcing the May–June 2021 topic challenge: the Mahabharata and its adaptations

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 2021 topic challenge. Based on the number of votes (+6), the fifth topic challenge of the yea...

discussion topic-challenge

Tsundoku

My copy of The Lusiads arrived on the last day of the topic challenge. Obviously, it rounded Cape Horn instead of going through the Suez Canal. But I can still read it because The Lusiads is an evergreen.

verbose

23:30

@Tsundoku It would be odd if your book had come via the Suez canal, considering the canal wasn't built until 362 years after da Gama's journey,

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