The Reading Room

verbose

00:51

I'm sorta wondering whether this question should be tagged textual-history as well. It's a general question about textual history, rather like this other one. What do y'all (especially Randolph) think?

Bookworm

02:58

0

Q: In musical theatre, what does "book by" mean?

In musical theatre, what does "book by" mean? For example, the Bonnie and Clyde 2012 musical has a book by Ivan Menchell. I've tried Googling it and came up with nothing. I often see this a lot for other plays and musicals too. What book?

theater

Bookworm

03:22

1

Q: At what time did the time travel journey begin?

At the end of Chapter Two of The Time Machine, when the Time Traveller provides the brief summary of his journey he says: I was in my laboratory at four o'clock, and since then... I've lived eight days...such days as no human being ever lived before! However, at the beginning of Chapter Three, ...

h-g-wells timeline the-time-machine

Alex

@Bookworm I think I just realized the obvious answer. Should I post a self asnwer, or just delete the question?

bobble

@Alex self-answer works, but remember to back it up and make it a good answer etc. etc.

Rand al'Thor

05:34

@verbose Mm, I hadn't thought of that other kind of versions question. There's no existing versions tag, btw, I just thought it might be a likely thing for people to try when hunting for a good tag about textual history.

@verbose I wasn't sure why you said publishing for one and both textual-history publishing for the other, but I didn't want to quibble about too many of the things in your meta lists, so I just went ahead and edited :-)

@Bookworm HNQ.

verbose

05:55

@Randal'Thor Okay I guess I wasn't thinking. I had some vague idea that one question was about publishing practices ("how does the designation 1st ed. get applied by the publisher") and the other about scholarly ones ("how does one track down bibliographic info") but I don't think that distinction actually makes a difference so Imma go add the question to the list that need that tag

@Randal'Thor I don't seem to be able to roll back this question to have the editions tag. I guess edits by mods are not rollback-able by plebes? Sorry about the confusion and could you please roll it back? Or I could just add the editions tag again

Also, Easter Sunday went by without anybody making a Watership Down reference on here, how odd

@Bookworm Since this question has upvotes and two upvoted answers I'm guessing it'll go HNQ too

Rand al'Thor

@verbose It should be rollbackable, mods are no different there. But I added publishing as well as removing editions - don't you want both tags there, like the other one?

verbose

Oh yes, I do

Rand al'Thor

2 days ago, by Napoleon Wilson

@Feeds A book about bunnies for Easter?

verbose

you're right

@Randal'Thor ah

@Randal'Thor okay I re-added editions

Rand al'Thor

06:11

Ready for publication and editions to be merged?

tag drama intensifies

verbose

@Randal'Thor I am, and I think we got "yea" votes from bobble, prince, and 'doku, so we're good, I believe?

with mith abstaining

Rand al'Thor

publication done, without synonym.

editions done, with synonym.

Now your Taxonomist badge should be on its way.

verbose

@Randal'Thor I can barely contain myself

Oh nice, that sort of change doesn't bump questions I see

Rand al'Thor

Yep :-D

verbose

06:30

I'm actually really glad that's over. It took quite a bit of time and effort, but it was worth it. Thanks for taking care of things! BTW, did you get a chance to look at the history-of-literature suggestions? I realize those will have to be done manually and I'm happy to do them but I do want a sanity check first

Status check: all the questions mentioned in this answer about editions and this answer about publication are fully taken care of, even the ones needing manual intervention. Yes?

What about the ones in this answer about oral-tradition, this one about publishing, and this one about history-of-literature, in which every listed question will need manual intervention? The last mentioned still needs a sanity check, of course.

Okay it seems the questions with publishing that needed manual intervention are also taken care of. So that leaves oral-tradition and history-of-literature. The former have been vetted, so I can go ahead and make the manual changes, but should we set some limit (like three a day) as @bobble does with her changes to avoid bumping too many?

Rand al'Thor

07:11

@verbose No, thank you for doing all the work of going through the tags and questions one by one to compile lists, and engaging so readily in discussion about each edge case. I agree, a lot of time and effort, but worth it in the end.

Yes, all questions from the editions and publication answers are taken care of, and so are the publishing ones, but the oral-tradition ones still need editing, and the history-of-literature ones still need checking and editing.

I don't know what's a good limit to set for bumping old questions. It'd be good to get this finished soon, but OTOH it feels a bit bad to have people asking new questions and then get pushed way down the page; on this site it's hard enough already to get eyeballs and answers.

verbose

@Randal'Thor Part of me thinks getting them over with will mean one day where the top questions are all old ones, whereas doing three or so each day means that every day, there will be some period of time where the questions at the top are all old. Also, there are enough questions that need manual retagging that doing them three at a time would take months.

Rand al'Thor

It's just 21 questions, total across those two meta answers of yours, maybe less since some of them overlap with the editions/publication questions.

On SFF there's a rule that at most five of the top fifteen questions on the front page should've been last edited by the same person. Not that we should copy SFF policies, but I think it makes more sense to follow "n of the top m" rather than "at most n per day".

verbose

07:27

@Randal'Thor SFF's rule is a good one. How is it enforced?

Rand al'Thor

Mostly by pinging people in comments or chat if they start doing loads of edits being unaware of the policy.

The good thing is, among the questions asked in the last 48 hours, all of them have been answered except the Alexander Pope theme one. Maybe it's a good time to do some editing, and then afterwards bump the Pope question.

verbose

07:43

I added the textual-history tag to the oral-tradition ones that needed it. I still don't know what to do about the Dandelion question because it's about the textual history of a work within a fictional universe; does the tag still apply?

Rand al'Thor

Heh, I'm living in the edge cases, aren't I.

Maybe easier to remove oral-tradition rather than adding textual-history. At one level removed from the real world like that, the answer is less likely to rely on expertise in the history of oral traditions rather than knowing the world of that particular book.

verbose

08:02

@Randal'Thor okay, I removed that tag from that question, and all the oral-tradition ones are done

Rand al'Thor

@verbose The ten-foot willy question you just edited - probably not history-of-literature, but does it count as textual-history? I'm not asking about variations, just an original source (if possible).

verbose

@Randal'Thor yes, it's in the list of questions currently tagged history-of-literature that need retagging to textual-history

Rand al'Thor

09:15

Wow, TIL there's a URL to see which days we visited the site: view-source:https://literature.stackexchange.com/users/daily-site-access/<USER-ID>

Bookworm

11:00

0

Q: What does "Might be a good deal in that" mean in "The Markenmore Mystery"?

In "[The Markenmore Mystery][1]" (1922) by J. S. Fletcher, the chief constable was talking to two lawyers about a stranger man who had gone to "Sceptre Inn" and booked a room there, but he never come back to it. “Grimsdale asserts that the first man was an American,” remarked Walkinshaw. “We hav...

meaning the-markenmore-mystery j.s.fletcher

Rand al'Thor

11:19

Walt has posted a grand total of 6 answers, earning 5 Revival badges and 3 Necromancer badges. Notwithstanding the Revival/Necromancer volume of people like Gareth and verbose, that's got to be some kind of record in Revival/Necromancer rate.

Rand al'Thor

11:57

@Bookworm HNQ.

Rand al'Thor

12:21

@verbose I'm starting to go through the history-of-literature tag now. Found a few with other tag issues unrelated to textual-history; I'm going to mark them with * in my messages, as those edits can be handled separately.

* Isn't behind the wind a quote-source question?

* Indiana Jones isn't really history-of-lit, just inspiration.

Contradictory poem we discussed before, can't remember if we came to any conclusion. I'm not sure if it should be textual-history since different versions aren't mentioned in the question.

King Cnut should be added to your list.

* Is formal realism really history-of-lit, or more like theory?

* I'm still not sure what to make of walking to the end of the rainbow, but maybe oral-tradition?? We don't have a proverbs tag ...

* Would female role in society be more intertextuality than history-of-lit?

* point-of-view needs narrator

* love for the soul and Carl Jung aren't really history-of-lit, but I'm not sure what they are.

Gilgamesh and Julius Caesar can be removed from your list, since they already have the textual-history tag due to earlier merges.

* assault on rationality needs quote-source

Not sure if I agree that play manuscripts should be textual-history. The question isn't about different versions of the plays, or how they passed from manuscript to printed form - only about survival of manuscripts.

CowperKettle

13:30

Mithical

14:10

@Randal'Thor Since that's a direct comparison between two books, definitely.

bobble

14:21

@verbose what you're trying to do is a bit different. There's a very clear end goal, and a limited set of posts to bump. Whereas I am trying to fix up the tags and grammar of every single old post that needs it. It'll probably never end; 3 bumps/day is as much for my sanity as for the front page.

bobble

16:00

This question may need to be protected; multiple very poor answers literature.stackexchange.com/q/8442/11259

Mithical

> Question Protected by Rand al'Thor♦
occured 5 hours ago

bobble

I'm blind

Sorry for stupidity

Rand al'Thor

17:55

@Tsundoku is now eligible for a german-literature tag badge, as soon as the tag hits 100 questions total.

Bookworm

18:45

0

Q: What is the title of this fictional shortstory? A man is in court because a company wants his prosthesis' back

I forgot the title of the short story. It is about a man who is in court because of his prosthesis'. If I remember correctly he was a famous motorbiker. A company wants all his prosthesis' back, because of financial stuff (don't remember exactly). That includes half his brain, which makes loud no...

short-stories

bobble

Ah! Rand beat me to putting my question in the meta answer

And I'm off to lunch. Let's see if there's any upvotes when I get back ^^

Rand al'Thor

Feb 21 '17 at 16:03, by Rand al'Thor

@muru I took ninja lessons from @ArtOfCode.

Bookworm

19:09

0

Q: When/where was "Mem and Zin" first compared to "Romeo and Juliet"?

Mem and Zin is a Kurdish classic love story written down in 1692 and is based on a true story, laid down from generation to generation through oral tradition. It appears to be often compared to Romeo and Juliet (1597). I first saw a reference in an English translation's Preface But the poeti...

william-shakespeare romeo-and-juliet ahmad-khani kurmanji-kurdish-literature mem-and-zin

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

20:57

0

A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

The works of Stanisław Lem Stanisław Lem was born in 1921, so the Polish Parliament declared 2021 Stanisław Lem Year. Lem published philosophical works, such as Dialogs (1957) and Summa Technologiae (1964), but he is best know as author of science-fiction works. These include the novels The Astro...

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