The Reading Room

Rand al'Thor

04:01

@verbose I sorted the two that don't need any of these interrelated tags we've been discussing (one of them was mine).

Then, according to your list, just Stefan Zweig, Fraktur, Far from the Madding Crowd, Ballad of Songbirds, and maybe Narnia need publishing, and ...

... and Hornblower needs both publishing and textual-history.

Hmm, looking again at that Hornblower question, why does it need publishing? Seems like pure textual-history to me, focused on a specific set of works not about general publishing practices.

bobble

Would anyone mind me opening a meta asking about the differences between these tags? I'm confused, and other people will probably be confused later

Rand al'Thor

Actually I'd ask the same thing about the Far from the Madding Crowd question, @verbose - it's not about general publishing practices but about the textual history (specifically the inclusion or not of an author) of a specific book.

Welp, now I'm disputing three of the six remaining publication -> publishing proposed retags.

bobble

Yep, I'm opening a meta.

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Which tags specifically? There's an old meta about the existing publication and publishing:

4

Q: Tags for both [publishing] and [publication]?

We have the following two tags which, at least from their names, seem pretty similar: publishing, 12 questions Questions about current or historical practices in publishing. publication, 11 questions For questions about the publication of a work, not the text of the work itself. Pe...

With an answer from our very own Tsundoku establishing the current usage.

bobble

[publishing], [textual-history], and maybe [editions]

those are the ones that y'all are re-tagging an' arguing about

Rand al'Thor

04:09

Well, textual-history is a new tag of verbose's creation, but seemingly set to replace both publication and editions.

bobble

replace? then why are you leaving some of those behind?

Rand al'Thor

verbose already wrote a tag wiki excerpt for textual-history, and I'm thinking to write a tag wiki with a bunch of example types of question.

bobble

okay then I won't

sorry for asking

Bookworm

0

Q: How does this joke (?) of Gonff's work?

There's a line by Gonff in Mossflower that's clearly supposed to be a joke, but I just... don't get it. Gonff was conscious of Columbine watching him. Bella had given the little mousethief permission to sing grace, and he stood up boldly and sang aloud, Squirrels, otters, hedgehogs, mice, Moles...

brian-jacques redwall-series

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Because we haven't flooded the front page by editing them all at once? :-) Or haven't quite agreed on which ones to retag how. But our discussion in chat is covering all the questions currently tagged either publication or editions.

@bobble Why? I'm not saying don't ask, just explaining what's going on.

Maybe it's good to have a meta record of this, since it's a fairly big retagging exercise for a site of this size (might create a new 50+ tag and give verbose a Taxonomist badge overnight).

bobble

04:13

I meant more, it seems that the plan is to tag some questions with e.g. both publication and textual-history

Rand al'Thor

No, [publiSHING] and [textual-history]. The plan is to get rid of [publiCATION] entirely.

bobble

ah. me is confused over similar names, it seems

Rand al'Thor

It is confusing to have two such similar tags!

Bookworm

04:37

1

Q: What do superscript circles mean in poetry?

I am reading a book on the collected works of Alexander Pope. Peppered throughout his poems are little superscript circles or degrees symbols, seen in this image of the text (transcribed below) What do these mean? So by false learning is good sense defaced: Some are bewildered in the maze of sc...

poetry

bobble

04:48

@Mithical pokes a Mith I finally pressed the button to submit a Watership Down review, only a few months late :D

Rand al'Thor

05:16

:-D

verbose

05:45

@Randal'Thor Guess you're right about Hornblower, no need for publishing

@Randal'Thor But the Hardy question does ask specifically about the practice of publishing works in serial form.

@bobble Asking is always good

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Not about the general practice, just about why that particular author didn't put his name on his submission. (Turns out the answer lay in a general practice of the magazine, but the question is about a specific story.)

verbose

@Randal'Thor True.

@Randal'Thor Yep, I don't see why we'd need those.

@Randal'Thor I also wrote the tag wiki info, not just the excerpt

@Randal'Thor I'd not object to a Taxidermist badge. Er, Taxonomist. A taxidermist is a person who stuffs cabs, right?

Bookworm

1

Q: In "Adventure of the Priory School", what is going on with the reward money and the cheque?

In the Sherlock Holmes story "The Adventure of the Priory School", Holmes shows perhaps the most amount of interest in the reward money. Holmes initially confirms the terms of the reward with the Duke who offers it: “The fact is, your Grace,” said he, “that my colleague, Dr. Watson, and myself h...

arthur-conan-doyle sherlock-holmes

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Oh sorry! I missed that. Didn't click through to check, as it's so rare for anyone to write the full tag wiki, but I should've realised that was an opportunity for more verbosity than the excerpt ;-)

verbose

@Randal'Thor heh

Rand al'Thor

06:01

@Randal'Thor But isn't asking for a specific recommendation even of an edition opinion-based? I mean, you might like the Penguin edition for its footnotes and I might like the Oxford edition because it uses the Winchester ordering rather than the Caxton one. Someone else might like an abridged edition because it leaves out the boring or repetitive parts. So it is open-ended. — verbose 11 mins ago

@verbose Maybe you're right (maybe I'm biased because I was able to answer the question, and I did try to list objective criteria in my answer). I agree a plain "what is the best edition" would be too opinion-based, but it can be objectively answerable if the OP includes enough criteria to show exactly what they mean by "best". I remembered the Morte d'Arthur question as including more criteria than it actually does. Maybe another discussion worth having on meta?

verbose

@Randal'Thor Sure

Rand al'Thor

The other edition-rec question has a deleted comment "Best for what purpose?" which inspired the OP to add their second paragraph.

verbose

06:13

See now if that q had a header like "What are the differences between the various editions of How to Read a Book?" I would find it unobjectionable. But as it stands, I think it is clearly asking for a subjective opinion based on idiosyncratic criteria.

Meanwhile, I've answered the meta question about publishing and publication, and will start listing the questions we've been discussing to my answer. Feel free to join in!

Wait, don't join in, we'd be editing the answer at the same time.

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Yes yes, great, a bullet list of possible questions that might be asked in this tag! That's exactly what I was thinking to add in the tag wiki.

verbose

@Randal'Thor in the tag wiki? I just meant in the answer to the meta question

Feel free to edit the tag wiki to add whatever info you think will be helpful; rn I'm working on adding the list of all questions that need retagging to the meta question so we have a list / record.

Rand al'Thor

I meant the list you put in the meta answer of types of questions that might be asked.

CowperKettle

06:42

verbose

06:55

@CowperKettle haha

@Randal'Thor oic

Okay here's a list of questions tagged editions that I think should be tagged textual-history

verbose

07:21

And one of questions tagged publication that I think should be tagged textual-history

Rand al'Thor

Oh, three separate answers?

verbose

@Randal'Thor yeah because I worried the answer would get too long. Also, it's easier to have discussions about moving stuff from one category to another if they are in separate answers. We can always combine the answers later if it seems better to have just one.

Rand al'Thor

Right, maybe people will want to keep one of publication and editions but not the other.

Seem to be very similar types of questions in both tags though.

10 hours ago, by Rand al'Thor

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).

So your editions list is the same 26 plus the Morte d'Arthur edition-rec one.

22 hours ago, by verbose

• 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]

And your publication list is that 18 (21 with Frost/Hesse which you missed at first and Allingham where you changed your mind) plus that 1 (Hornblower) plus Narnia and FftMC which I raised before, plus Fraktur ... but that makes 25 and the list is only 24.

Rand al'Thor

07:44

Oh, got it! You missed the Hesse question again.

verbose

07:59

Okay I'm done with those three answers; one each for changes to questions currently tagged editions, publication, and publishing. The goal is to end up with two tags, publishing and textual-history. The latter is for all questions that are currently correctly tagged publication or editions.

Rand al'Thor

Phew, this is a lot of work!

@verbose Your publications answer lists the Fraktur question twice; I think you meant to remove it from the first (big) list. And your editions answer missed the Barnes & Noble question.

Apart from that, our counts agree.

verbose

@Randal'Thor Fixed. Thanks!

Assuming we reach consensus on the categories in my answers, we have only 12 questions that will need to be bumped because of adding or removing tags. The remaining 52? can be handled by mods by merging editions and publication into textual-history

So now what? We wait a day or so to see if everybody agrees?

Rand al'Thor

Someone has removed the editions tag from something. There's only 30 questions tagged with it now, not 31.

@verbose Maybe we can ping a few people to review our work, like @Tsundoku and @Mithical, to get eyeballs and meta votes quicker.

verbose

@Randal'Thor Sounds good. And @bobble

Maybe @PrinceNorthLæraðr if he'sn't too busy these days

Mithical

You can't have my eyeballs, I need them.

@bobble Approved. Do you want to include a "submitted by bobble" line or leave it anonymous?

Rand al'Thor

08:14

@Mithical Too late, you already gave them away:

14 hours ago, by Mithical

@Randal'Thor 👀

verbose

@Mithical "Out, vile jelly!"

Rand al'Thor

@verbose I've upvoted your publication and editions answers, resulting from our discussion here, but haven't yet checked the publishing tag to see if I agree with your 3rd answer.

I see you beat me to adding a clarifying comment on that 3rd answer :-)

verbose

@Randal'Thor k thanks. No rush, obvs

@Randal'Thor Oh I didn't realize you were planning to add one. I'd've left it to you had I known

Rand al'Thor

@verbose No problem. I might've left it until after checking the publishing questions myself, which would've meant a delay as I think my brain needs a break from these tags now.

verbose

the the never-ending story question crops up twice in my answers because it both has publishing (wrongly, IMO) and editions (which needs to be changed to textual-history

verbose

08:45

Are y'all planning to write up your favorites from last quarter? I have been having a lot of fun reading previous entries in the series and have found some gems (particularly from the years that I was not a regular here)

> April is the cruelest month, with his shoures soote

Feeds

09:17

One Minute Reviews: Review: "Watership Down" by Richard Adams

posted on April 02, 2021

I did not expect to like Watership Down. If it hadn’t been for a kind English teacher gifting me the book, I would never have read it. Usually I read dystopias, fantasies, epic adventures. A book with some regular-looking rabbits on the cover would make me move on. How silly I was. Watership Down has dystopias (plural!), a whole in-universe set of fantasy tales, and epic adventures aplenty. T…

2

Rand al'Thor

09:54

@verbose You might not discover any new gems from it this quarter, as a lot of our favourite answers might be from you :-)

Bookworm

10:08

0

Q: When is the story of Dolphin Island set?

Arthur C. Clarke's short novel Dolphin Island was published in 1963. It's clearly set in a somewhat "future" world, probably quite near future, but can we narrow down its temporal setting any further? Is it set in the 20th century or the 21st? When can we start referring to it (or can we already)...

setting arthur-c-clarke dolphin-island

Rand al'Thor

10:45

@verbose Re publishing, I'm thinking the fingerprint question doesn't need any of these tags we're discussing - it's not about textual history any more than publishing practices. Maybe we need a cover-art tag, which could also be used for questions like this. I agree with everything else, including the implication that every question not mentioned can keep publishing.

Prince North Læraðr

19:09

@verbose Depends? What's up?

bobble

@PrinceNorthLæraðr verbose's answers to this meta question: literature.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1033/11259

Prince North Læraðr

I'll read it in a bit - I have Physics work right now

bobble

@Mithical I assumed putting "bobble" for name would automatically do that. Fine either way.

Rand al'Thor

@bobble I already put it on meta credited to you.

bobble

20:07

name-significance? literature.stackexchange.com/questions/977/…

inspiration? literature.stackexchange.com/questions/1156/…

name-significance (or allusions or inspiration)? literature.stackexchange.com/questions/10838/…

Rand al'Thor

@bobble I'd say no: it's about which characters are named, not the significance of their names.

@bobble Maybe name-significance?

bobble

maybe?

when asking about the stuff behind a name the lines get blurry

Rand al'Thor

Do you remember how many questions were tagged name-significance before your recent edits?

That tag's rocketed up the tag list recently, now more than 75.

bobble

No. I do remember that I managed to push title onto the front page of tags

Does it matter in some way?

Rand al'Thor

Just trying to quantify how big your tag achievements are.

bobble

20:19

Could probably check with SEDE? At least find out how many of my edits added the tag

Rand al'Thor

If I knew anything about coding :-) Can't write a Data.SE query to save my life, although I can call on people who can if it's important.

bobble

Let's see if I get can it to 100 to help with Generalist :D

Rand al'Thor

Generalist needs 200.

100 is the threshold for tag badges.

And 50 for Taxonomist badges.

bobble

oh gettin' my numbers mixed up

probably can't make it to 200

Rand al'Thor

There's three important thresholds for tag question counts.

@bobble Not now for sure, but eventually.

A small site like this needs patience for a lot of thresholds.

Puzzling and SFF took years to be Generalist eligible. I was already active on SFF when the 40th tag hit 200 questions, so it must have been at least 4.5 years after the birth of the site.

... blimey, Lit is more than 4 years old already.

Oh well, different growth rates.

bobble

20:24

In my current might-need-name-significance search there are 440 hits. The vast majority are probably false positives, though some need other kinds of retagging ([title] etc.)

textual-history? literature.stackexchange.com/questions/9449/…

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Hmm, that raises an interesting question: the tag name textual-history presupposes the existence of a text, but asking about a story's transition from oral to written form is much the same type of question as asking about transition from manuscript to printed form.

So I'd say yes based on what I feel to be the spirit of the tag, but no based on a pedantic reading of the tag's name.

bobble

ping @verbose for tag-creator's thoughts

Rand al'Thor

Ditto literature.stackexchange.com/q/2142/17

bobble

Are you going to make a list of oral-tradition questions that might need textual-history now? :P

Rand al'Thor

Think it's just those two currently.

@bobble I'm not satisfied with the answers to that, btw. Still holding out hope for a massively researched and detailed answer from someone like Gareth Rees.

bobble

20:37

Do you have a bounty with no deadline set up for it?

Rand al'Thor

I went to check that meta, thinking that I do, but nope.

verbose

21:08

@Randal'Thor h'm I'd say yes. The question specifically asks if there's any significance to the fact that the dog is named

@Randal'Thor Yes, agreed, name-significance

@bobble I'd go with name-significance since that's the focus of the question

@bobble yes, textual-history

@Randal'Thor I think so?

@Randal'Thor oh that's flattering but @bobble had some good answers this quarter as did the usual suspects Gareth, Tsundoku, and you. Plus the person who is new (indigo child)

Rand al'Thor

21:27

@verbose So we're allowing a very broad interpretation of "textual"? I can get behind that.

bobble

Does the wiki or excerpt need to have a note on this?

verbose

@Randal'Thor I think that would be good?

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Ooh, forgot about indigochild. Maybe I'll post a meta answer highlighting a few new users. If I can remember them all ... checks bounty history

@verbose I definitely agree the same tag should cover oral-to-written transition of a story, was just pedantically worried about "textual" in the tag name.

Rand al'Thor

22:26

22

Q: Can you rhyme words in sign language?

In spoken language, patterns of vowels, consonants, and stress are used to feel the similarity of form between two words and create rhymes. Can you do the same in sign language? Also, is there sign language poetry that I could see using the patterns special to sign language?