The Reading Room

CowperKettle

00:32

(From "Marginalia" by Edgar Allan Poe)

Peter Shor

02:16

@verbose I'm actually quite amused by all this. But Rand al' Thor is not going to get me to tell him the name of the other person, besides Atiyah, who inspired the poem. (I'm doing this out of respect for him — not that he really deserves it.)

verbose

03:31

@PeterShor Thanks, that's reassuring and good to know. I figured from your poems that you had a sense of humor, so I went for it.

verbose

04:20

Can we please agree not to insist on subjecting authors to the same rules governing answers vs comments as are applicable to non-authors? I agree that the edits/deletions were in keeping with site policy, but it is ... more than a little ridiculous.

An author's feedback/comment on a question asked here is itself a valuable piece of literary history. It's testimony to the quality of the question that the author found it worthwhile to comment. Even if the commentary does not meet our site guidelines—it is deeply damaging to the historical record to modify it. And it's insulting to the author, who has taken time out from their life to come help us, to be told "Thanks, but that's not what we're about."

I am not faulting the editors/mods who have made the changes. Admittedly, the changes were within scope. I'm inviting the community to please think more broadly, and arguing that it would be extremely inflexible to hold authors commenting on their own works to standards that serve us well in general.

Sure, a mod could put in a comment saying something to the effect that while in general the author's post would have been deleted/edited, the author's own commentary is a special case. But come on.

I don't believe @MattThrower is pingable in this room, so I hope one of the other mods will please undelete that answer pronto. Even if a meta discussion is warranted, until such time as that discussion occurs, the answer should stand. And as an answer, not as a comment.

What is SFF's policy, if any, on this? I assume they get a lot more authors dropping in. Isn't their chat room the Slytherin common room?

@Mithical @Randal'Thor ⬆️

bobble

04:44

I don't agree, for the record. Take the recent answer: it was not an answer, it was at best a reaction to the question. Converting it into a comment perfectly preserves the content while also preserving the answer box as a place for answers.

verbose

04:58

"Yes, indeed, this was the first poem I wrote on my arrival to Canada" does answer "does that mean it was one of the first poems he wrote in Canada?". And "it is definitely a very mundane or existential piece of writing" addresses " Is it about space travel or something more mundane?" as well as, indirectly, "What can we tell about his attitudes towards the different places from the way that he personifies them?" So I don't understand your statement that it was not an answer.

And you're ignoring my main point: it shouldn't matter if the contribution from the author doesn't meet whatever criteria we apply to contributions from others.

bobble

I refuse to accept that as a premise, and since you accept it as a premise, this conversation will not be productive.

I have a counterargument against the first chat message reply, but since we disagree on axioms, me mentioning my counterargument is useless, since my argument is not the problem you have with my message.

verbose

🤷🏽‍♂️ Certainly I agree that the conversation will not be productive, if the only way to conduct it is by retreating into our respective corners without engaging with the arguments themselves.

I'm sorry I've upset you; that was not my intention.

b_jonas

05:18

yeah, even if you're in the school that once the work is released the author doesn't have more say on its meaning than others, "the first poem I wrote on my arrival to Canada" is the kind of thing we can usually trust the author on (unless it's George Lucas)

and Rand's question does ask that explicitly

verbose

@b_jonas I voted to undelete that answer; since you have the rep to cast an undelete vote too, I hope you'll do so as well.

bobble

06:08

@verbose I'm not upset. I simply don't believe that even if I continually engaged with your arguments, anything would actually happen, so I refrain from doing so.

verbose

That's good to know. I'm glad that you're not upset. That said, I asked a question: "can we agree to do this." I gave arguments why I think that should be the case. I didn't present it as an axiom. So while I'm not asking you to engage, I ask that you at least refrain from misrepresenting what I said. Thanks!

CowperKettle

08:05

> According to Japanese social psychologist Shōzō Shibuya, the specific causes that trigger a defecation urge in bookstores are not yet clearly understood (as of 2014).

Gareth Rees

08:36

@verbose It's not memory, but looking things up! Investigating Anglo-Catholic privileges led me to Purchas and I skimmed Notes on the judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in the appeal Hebbert v. Purchas to see what was up. (Contrary to what one might guess, it was the prosecution who had appealed, on the grounds that Purchas' sentence was not severe enough.)

Rand al'Thor

10:04

@PeterShor Of course, I wouldn't expect you to reveal the name of that person. This is Literature SE, not Scientific Gossip SE ;-)

@verbose I see your point, and this is definitely worth going to meta (perhaps putting the general "should author's posts be handled differently" in a meta question and your thoughts on how it should be handled in an answer, for clearer voting?) Here's a superping to @MattThrower so that he can give his thoughts too.

verbose

@Randal'Thor Thank you, Randolph, I shall do so anon. In the meanwhile, I hope you (or some other mod) will see fit to undelete the answer?

Rand al'Thor

I'm in two minds. On the one hand, the author's words should definitely be preserved, and we don't want to deter him from contributing further. On the other hand, they are still preserved on the page, in a comment, and I'm a bit reluctant to directly countermand another mod in a case where there's not a clear policy to follow. (And Mith won't be around today for a 3rd opinion because it's Saturday.)

verbose

@GarethRees Thanks! That's good to know. Did your researches lead you to discover whether this Purchas was related to Samuel Purchas of Purchas his Pilgrimage? Or is Purchas a common enough last name that this is an unpromising speculation? I had come across it only in relation to the 1614 work prior to this.

@Randal'Thor Well, let's hope you and Matt are able to duke it out; if not, it'll have to wait till after havdalah, which would be the end only of shabbat, not the world.

Rand al'Thor

10:21

@verbose You could also raise a flag on the post, which Matt would be able to see even if he doesn't come to chat.

Speaking of difficult flags to handle, I'm still wondering whether @CDR's edit here was too much of a rewrite, turning a borderline NAA into something quite different.

verbose

It's also worth noting that the Portelli question was yours, so you probably have some thoughts on whether Portelli's brief post constitutes an answer. (I've defended short answers before if I thought they adequately addressed what I was asking.)

@Randal'Thor IMO it's still not an answer, even with the rewrite. We have no indication that Garner had Nash in mind at all, and failing that, the new "answer" adds nothing to bobble's already complete one.

The Nash poem would be an amusing comment, no doubt.

@Randal'Thor damn. You mean I've been bating my breath for naught?

Rand al'Thor

@verbose Since you asked, SFF has had a few metas: Should we accept "Word of God" type answers from users claiming to be Authors/Producers of a franchise? (2017) duped to Should we assume celebrity users are who they say they are? (2016) duped to What kind of proof is necessary when someone claims to be one of the creators of some work? (2013).

verbose

oh well, it's effin half past two in the AM, and I'm going to bed. Portelli, schmortelli.

Rand al'Thor

See, that's another concern which I don't think has been mentioned here yet: on the internet, anyone could say they're the author and troll us by posting random stuff. (I don't believe this has happened here, but ultimately it's either a judgement call or requires mod PII access, which I haven't done on Prof Portelli's account.)

Bookworm

0

Q: Why was "The Love Detectives" not included in Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Mr Quin?

Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Mr Quin, first published in April 1930, included 11 short stories that had appeared in various British and American magazines between March 1924 and October 1929. However, it omitted one previously published story featuring Mr Quin: "At the Crossroads." This story...

Rand al'Thor

10:30

@Randal'Thor I always suspected that something similar happened with the second answer here: someone was annoyed that the first answer was upvoted without any evidence beyond purported personal experience, and posted a contradicting answer with equally little evidence to make a point.

@verbose Goodnight! Let's see if you'll wake up to windfall HNQ rep from your self-answered question :-)

CowperKettle

I wish there was a free-of-charge alternative to DeepL Write.

It offers marvelous reformulations of English sentences and phrases

Clara Diaz Sanchez

10:48

@Randal'Thor But are we not neglecting the inspiration provided by Robert Palmer?

CowperKettle

@PeterShor Does it include "This pleasant tale is like a little copse"? litscape.com/author/John_Keats/…

I should read up more Keats. I memorized some poems of his, but there must be some I haven't read

I can hear a woman on the floor below giving a gobful to her husband

"I return from work, blin, and .." was all I could discern. Blin is pancake but here it's used as minced blyad, an expletive

Gareth Rees

13:00

@verbose I did not uncover anything about the ancestry of John Purchas so who knows? "Purchas" is rare but possibly a variant spelling of the more common "Purchase"

Peter Shor

@CowperKettle No, it doesn't include that one, either. I general expect books titled "Selected Poems of ..." to contain the best poems of the titular poet, but ...

Gareth Rees

@Randal'Thor We have had a couple of posts from Stephen Sakellarios, who claims to be the reincarnation of Matthew Franklin Whittier (brother of the better known John Greenleaf Whittier) who was the original author of such works as The Raven (supposedly plagiarised by Poe) and A Christmas Carol (supposedly plagiarised by Dickens)

b_jonas

13:39

@verbose no, on Lit I only have the rep for close and reopen, not for undelete. also the answer is converted to a comment so I think we may need a diamond to reverse that anyway

@Randal'Thor yes, that depends a lot on which creator. some are easy enough to identify using their contributions on other places on the internet, but I expect it isn't that easy for John P Portelli

@GarethRees what

b_jonas

14:10

That reminds me of a short discussion thread from a year ago on what people from more than a hundred years ago would you like to see reincarnated: datasecretslox.com/index.php/topic,8535.0.html

Matt Thrower

14:42

@Randal'Thor OK, so I took that decision on two points. Firstly, the question opens with "This question seeks an analysis" and closes with "What can we tell about his attitudes towards the different places from the way that he personifies them". The answer as posted doesn't seek to address either point and therefore, in my opinion, does not constitute an answer.

Second - and I could be about to make myself look foolish here - are we certain that poster is the author as claimed, or is it possible it's an imposter? I felt the dismissal of it as "mundane or existential" sounded odd: it's very self-effacing and existential things tend not to be mundane

Either way, I fully agree this is a topic for meta and worthy of wider discussion and, since it's a @Randal'Thor question, I'm entirely happy for him to decide whether or not this constitutes an answer to his question and undelete it if so.

Gareth Rees

15:14

@b_jonas See Reincarnation Can Be Proved: An exploration of Mathew Franklin Whittier's return as the author, Stephen Sakellarios (2019)

Rand al'Thor

15:53

@MattThrower My question is interpretation and contains a bunch of sub-questions, some of which the answer actually addresses as verbose noted. That, more than anything, is drawing me towards undeletion. If it was an answer from a random person, it'd be low-quality for sure without evidence; if it was an answer quoting the author from somewhere else, it'd be perhaps a partial answer.

Quotes from authors about their own work can be useful information in any discussion (Death of the Author notwithstanding - it's still interesting even if we need to take it with a pinch of salt), and SE comments are ephemeral so it might be better to preserve that in an answer if it at all tries to answer the question, even partially. Your second point is very fair though, and something we'll need to take into account in any general meta discussion about this.

Mithical

16:18

The question asking so many sub-questions does throw a wrench into the works a bit.

Mithical

16:30

I think Matt made the right call here. As it stands, the answer doesn't cover most of the question - it addresses a couple parts of it, but even the line "it is definitely a very mundane or existential piece of writing" doesn't give much information; we'd expect any other answer to expand on that, give examples from the text, explain a bit how that comes through...

It's definitely an interesting and useful comment from the author, and so preserving it as a comment is good - and I don't think most people not familiar with SE are going to recognize or care too deeply about the difference between comments and answers.

I would encourage Rand as the OP to respond to the comment and ask if he'd be willing to expand on it. If he decides to give some more info on the other aspects of the question, then I think it'd be worth editing into the answer and undeleting it, even if it's shorter than we'd like from most other answers.

b_jonas

17:07

this on will be a tough judgement call from the diamond moderators

Feeds

19:19

0

Q: Who claimed Alexander had a hairy heart?

From Avellaneda's Continuation of Don Quixote, chapter 6, p. 34 (circa 1614, translated by Yardley 1784 apparently after the French of Le Sage 1705 but it all seems very confusing). Don Quixote says: [...] you should see your undaunted master deliver himself up to the most dreadful dangers with ...

sources literature death alexander-the-great

Bookworm

20:07

0

Q: Is Djuna a single person?

I just learned about Djuna, a South Korean pseudonymous writer of novels, short stories, and film critique. Their identity is unknown, but I'm wondering if they are definitely one person, or could they be a group of writers operating under a shared pseudonym? Wikipedia says that "Djuna prefers th...

korean-language pseudonym djuna

Rand al'Thor

@Mithical I'm typing a response, but bear in mind that there's nowhere he can comment now: with 1 rep, he can't comment again on my question, and can't comment on a deleted answer either. So my best bet is probably to comment on his deleted answer and suggest that he can edit it (I assume that 1-rep users can still edit their own mod-deleted posts?)

Mithical

20:43

@Randal'Thor Sounds about right

Rand al'Thor

@Mithical Done. I hope I struck the right balance between being appreciative of his contribution and his time and pointing out that it would need to be a bit longer to count as a full answer.

@Bookworm The mysterious love of HNQ.

Rand al'Thor

21:03

@verbose Also, I rolled back the edit and converted that answer to a comment. Felt weird to delete an answer with a score of 3, but it only got those 3 upvotes after someone who wasn't the original answerer edited in some more answer-like content.

CDR

@Randal'Thor - I assume you're referring to this. Would you discourage such edits?

Rand al'Thor

@CDR Don't get me wrong, your edit made the post way better. But it also made it kinda your post. This version contextualises the Nash poem, includes a dictionary link, explains the relevance to the question, but all of that content is yours - the original poster just copy-pasted the poem and nothing else. If you're going to create that much content, you deserve the credit for it and you should post a separate answer.

CDR

21:41

@Randal'Thor - Like we've all agreed, though, it doesn't really need to exist as a separate answer, because it adds little to what bobble already said. I thought the poem was kind of funny and somewhat relevant, and as a non-mod, I don't have the ability to commentify stuff. I built the edit around the original answer (or tried to, at least), and I don't think it changed the meaning of it so much as it fleshed it out. What I'm wondering is whether that edit counts as unnecessary turd-polishing.

Rand al'Thor

22:21

@CDR Sort of unnecessary turd-polishing, when we look at the final outcome, but when the answer's been around for 7 months without getting deleted, it's reasonable to think "looks like it's here to stay, let's make it better". The problem is that your making it better was a total rewrite.

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