The Reading Room

North Læraðr

2:49 AM

Why do we have a tag for [timetravel] ?

timetravel?

Seems extraneous

the video-games seems off-topic now

Alex

@NorthLæraðr It looks like all but one are for story-identification.

May be somewhat useful.

North Læraðr

Doubt it, we don't have tags for specific elements for any other tags

Rand al'Thor

9:25 AM

@North I'm fairly sure Rumi only wrote in Persian. I saw on Wikipedia it said "Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek in his verse", but probably that means he used a few words or phrases from those languages, not writing whole works in other languages. We wouldn't tag Poe stories with [french-literature] or [latin-literature] because of his multilingual quotes.

I'm not completely certain of that so I hedged my bets with "other language tags if applicable", but he was essentially a Persian poet. Despite Turkey claiming him as part of their cultural heritage too because he lived in Anatolia ;-)

Rand al'Thor

9:42 AM

@NorthLæraðr There's only three questions, and two of them could be tagged adaptations or adaptation-comparison instead.

Bookworm

10:18 AM

0

Q: Is Meursault bothered that he doesn't know what day Maman died?

The first line of The Stranger goes like this: Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know. I got a telegram from the home: "Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully yours." That doesn't mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday. Meursault doesn't know exactly what day his mother (...

Bookworm

10:41 AM

0

Q: How is the Czechoslovak traveler's story relevant to The Stranger as a whole?

In chapter II of Part II of Camus's novel The Stranger, Meursault narrates a story that he read in an old newspaper cutting that he found under his mattress in prison. Below is a summary. A man from a Czech village makes a fortune abroad and returns to his village twenty-five years later. He lea...

french-literature albert-camus the-stranger

Tsundoku

11:28 AM

French Stack Exchange has a question on the choice of tenses in a passage from *The Stranger* but without direct relevance to interpretation:
https://french.stackexchange.com/questions/30654/l%c3%a9tranger-livre-et-lemploi-du-pass%c3%a9-compos%c3%a9

Gallifreyan

12:47 PM

@Randal'Thor Should we do that? Seems a reasonable solution

Rand al'Thor

@Gallifreyan The odd one out is your closed question - what do you want to do with that?

Gallifreyan

1:26 PM

@Randal'Thor Remove the tag from it, keep it closed

Rand al'Thor

3:21 PM

Yesterday I finished Narayan's 1982 collection Malgudi Days. To do: write short review for site Tumblr; edit relevant Wikipedia pages.

Gareth Rees

This didn't go very well but I guess we ought not to be surprised by now ...

Napoleon Wilson

I was wondering why it's been deleted. But now I can imagine.

North Læraðr

4:21 PM

I'm listening to this song while I'm grinding out tag wikis....

For the tag 19-days-one-day can I remove the part that says it should be tagged with manhua? We don't normally tag works with its subgenre anymore.

Tsundoku

4:33 PM

Let's stop feeding the trolls.

North Læraðr

?

Am I being too much?

Tsundoku

I'm talking about comments in response to users who are looking for a comment fight. We've had one of those before. Some people just look for a good "fight" in the comments.

North Læraðr

Oh I see

@Tsundoku Regarding my comment on 19-days-one-day, am I cleared to edit that out?

Ugh I want to ask like 50 bajillion topic all at once on this one song

Tsundoku

The last time I asked about genre tags nobody questioned that they should be used. Also, there appears to have been no effort to get rid of them after Rand al'Thor's Feb 2017 question about them. So I'd like some more discussion here about how we move forward with them.

North Læraðr

4:48 PM

okay, then I'm leaving that tag alone for now

Since Rand did say,

Apr 27 at 21:49, by Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr We don't usually use genre tags except for questions (like this one) about the genre as a whole. I'd say gothic-literature looks better, but don't have a strong opinion on it.

Tsundoku

Even though people decided not to use them, I can't see any action having been take to deal with them, i.e. the existing ones.

North Læraðr

Well the problem is, the 19-days-1-day might lead to confusion on usage

It says, "For the Chinese webcomic (manhua) by [old-xian]. Use with the [manhua] and [chinese-literature] tags."

Tsundoku

I think it's fine to remove that part from the tag wiki excerpt.

North Læraðr

Okay

Napoleon Wilson

Are you saying they are used in a way contradicting to what that meta question poses without the community correcting it? Otherwise what action would you have in mind taking on them?

North Læraðr

4:55 PM

Are you talking to me?

Napoleon Wilson

No.

North Læraðr

okay

Tsundoku

@NapoleonWilson Some way of getting rid of them would be consistent with the decision of the meta post. Only I don't know of a way that eventually involves editing the questions that use them.

Merge them all into unused-tag? Then you still need to edit unused-tag out of all those questions... (Just thinking out loud.)

Napoleon Wilson

But doesn't that meta question posit that there are still valid use-cases for genre tags (or at least not contradict that by virtue of implicitly assuming the context of work-centered questions)?

It's not quite clear to me if you're saying there's questions that have the tags while not deserving them, and thus practical usage contradicting the apparent policy. Or if you're saying they shouldn't exist at all, something I hadn't gathered as being established.

What would be an examplary question that has but shouldn't have a genre tag?

North Læraðr

3

Q: Why does Zhan Xixi call Jian Yi an idiot?

I've been re-reading 19 Days - One Day1, a webcomic2 by the Chinese author Old Xian. One of the first chapters has me wondering, though: Click for full resolution What does Zhan Xixi mean when he says "What if..."? I'm guessing he's afraid Jian Yi slipped and fell, but it's not clear from ...

19-days-one-day old-xian manhua chinese-literature

It shouldn't have the "manhua" tag, but otherwise it seems like a perfectly fine question to me

Napoleon Wilson

5:07 PM

Oh.

Tsundoku

@NapoleonWilson I just couldn't find an argument for keeping them in Rand's answer.

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku I mean some genres are well-defined

Napoleon Wilson

Hmm, I assumed the entire question was solely concentrating on if they should be used in questions about individual works where the question lacks a direct genre-specific problem and the tag is solely used to classify the work. I didn't take it as generally asking for the existence right of those tags.

Tsundoku

Genres tend to be well-defined until authors start playing around with the genre's boundaries.

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku Hm, but that's why we shouldn't use genre tags with author tags

Like questions about Gothic literatures as a whole is pretty well defined

Questions about (x work) that maybe merges sci-fi and gothicism? Bit harder

specific, definable ones, like language tags should be fine, since it can lead questions to that

but genres when paired with works might be harder to define

and something broad like "romance" perhaps shouldn't exist at all

Bookworm

5:17 PM

0

Q: What historical similarities are there to Burr's characterization in "Hamilton"?

In the 2015 musical, Hamilton written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, Aaron Burr serves as the foil to Alexander Hamilton. While Alexander is rash, hasty, and always on the move, Aaron sits back and watches for things to happen, as a passive bystander. Essentially, Hamilton's philosophy seems to be to "ma...

historical-context hamilton-musical lin-manuel-miranda

Napoleon Wilson

But yes, that might be a lacking distinction in that meta thread.

Tsundoku

@NapoleonWilson Apparently, I didn't see that in that question.

Napoleon Wilson

@Tsundoku It opens with referencing similar disucssions about "broad tags on questions about specific works". I extrapolated from that.

North Læraðr

I think some practicality might be to consider too though

Napoleon Wilson

But this might need to get resolved among the concerned parties before worrying what to do with the tags and questions.

North Læraðr

5:19 PM

How are we supposed to go throught and sift through all of them, removing them? Doable, but extraneous

Napoleon Wilson

@NorthLæraðr Concerns like that tend to distract from the issue, though. There's moderator tools to help with that and I'd doubt there's 5 million questions about fantasy already.

North Læraðr

@NapoleonWilson True

@Randal'Thor A cousin of yours?

Matrim Cauthon, Emond's Field

5.8k 2 23 72

symbolism william-golding lord-of-the-flies harper-lee to-kill-a-mockingbird wheel-of-time robert-jordan

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku Which genre tags are you looking at?

I thought we were OK with using genre tags for questions about the genre as a whole, just not for questions about individual works within that genre. But I don't remember if there's a clear meta policy to support that.

Tsundoku

Well, it started with this question about removing manhua from a tag wiki excerpt.

That sounds like a reasonable policy, but I suppose the tag wiki excerpts weren't updated to reflect that.

Rand al'Thor

Oh, I didn't even know Manhua was a genre. I assumed it was a name of an author or story.

Comics and song lyrics are two sections of questions that I've never touched, or checked their tags.

North Læraðr

6:13 PM

@Randal'Thor I'm just going through every single tag and editing them to either clarify usage or updated outdated tags

I have two pending tags edits btw

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr I think I saw those two and clicked Skip.

North Læraðr

oof

:( They were the new tags

Rand al'Thor

I don't know enough about them to want to approve, especially with a binding vote.

North Læraðr

Do we really need an adaptation-comparison tag and an adaptation tag?

I thought those were considered off-topic anyways?

Rand al'Thor

Look at the tagged questions - they're not off-topic.

It's valid to ask about adaptations of a work of literature in context.

North Læraðr

6:19 PM

Hm okay.

Rand al'Thor

Sometimes adaptations are even from something on-topic to something else on-topic, e.g. book to play or vice versa.

North Læraðr

I still don't know why there's two separate tags for it though

The tag descriptions are nearly identical

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr We discussed this back in September 2018.

North Læraðr

I mean... it's kind of confusing. Isn't it better to merge it?

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr My idea is that adaptation-comparison is for questions that specifically compare different adaptations of the same work and adaptations could be for other questions involving adaptations, like "has this been adapted" or "when was this first adapted" or "what was the impact of this adaptation on the original work" and so on.

But it could be one of those cases Gareth was talking about where the distinction is fine enough that it's not worth tagging separately.

North Læraðr

6:23 PM

Yeah. You could just have [adaptation-comparison] be umbrella-ed into [adaptations]. I mean, how many users do you think would actually care to know the difference?

Rand al'Thor

Looking at the tagged questions so far, they seem to have been used appropriately according to that distinction. But I don't know how much of that is due to me editing them ;-)

North Læraðr

I mean, looking at it again, I can see your point, but I still think it's better to be merged

Curious on what other users think

hmm don't really know how to modify [aesop]

Since Aesop as an author is kind of dubious in the first place

also, we don't have a tag for aesop's fables, which makes editing little harder

Is it appropriate to put (For questions about Aesop (c. 620–564 BCE), Greek storyteller, credited with the authorship of "Aesop's Fables" and his supposed works. Language tags such as [greek-literature] or [latin-literature] should be used when appropriate (depending on the text in question). )?

Rand al'Thor

Did he write in Greek and Latin?

North Læraðr

He didn't write anything as far as I can tell, but earliest translations of his works seems to be in greek and latin

Rand al'Thor

Sorry, s/write/tell stories.

He was Greek though, right? I thought the original language of the stories was all Greek.

Although it might be hard to know with 2.5-thousand-year-old oral traditions ...

North Læraðr

6:35 PM

Supposedly, yes. It's credited to him, though truth behind that authorship is a bit dubious

It looks like an oral tradition that was written down only centuries after

Hmm

I'm just going to leave it the way it is for now, since adding "For questions about" seems to be superfluous.

I think there's too many variables in the questions that could come up

Rand al'Thor

The truth behind Homer's authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey seems even more dubious.

Even the truth behind Shakespeare's authorship of his plays is dubious depending on who you ask ;-)

North Læraðr

True

Rand al'Thor

hides from angry Shakespeare scholars

North Læraðr

It's about Aesop though. I'd be happy to edit into Aesop's fables, but that tag doesn't exist so (shrugs)

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor pulls out his crossbow

North Læraðr

6:46 PM

Are song-lyrics considered on-topic here because we're considering them to be basically poetry?

It's weird to call song lyrics a work of literature (I see writing and music as two totally different things) but like, I guess it's not wrong in any sense

Mithical

@NorthLæraðr That was part of the original argument for allowing them, yes

Rand al'Thor

There was some rather controversial debate about song lyrics here.

But yeah, like poetry they can be analysed as literature. I think we agreed that questions about the musical aspects wouldn't be on-topic here.

North Læraðr

That makes sense

It threw me off when I first saw Mith asking a question about song-lyrics and then the fact that questions about lyrics in songs were on-topic in general, but then I thought about it

Rand al'Thor

Similar to performance: the written text of plays is on-topic here, and questions could also potentially explore the relation between that and particular performances, but questions purely about acting (or costume, stage design, etc.) would probably get closed.

North Læraðr

Yea

On a different note, I see that we don't have an se dedicated to theatre, plays, or acting (though we have movie and TV se)

Rand al'Thor

6:52 PM

I think it's been proposed on Area 51 but didn't get anywhere.

North Læraðr

Not too surprised. I mean there are a LOT of plays and musicals out there, but being able to see them?

cool! I've got the strunk & white badge now

Rand al'Thor

Congrats!

North Læraðr

Thank you

Rand al'Thor

7:22 PM

@NorthLæraðr I just proposed one.

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor Ooh, cool! Hopefully that gets upvoted more....

Tsundoku

7:37 PM

@NorthLæraðr If an author published in only one language, e.g. French, it is not necessary to add, 'For works of his originally in French...'.

North Læraðr

oh... whoops

SHould I just say add (x language tag) or do I not even need to put that?

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

2

A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

Omenuko (the first Igbo novel) We haven't had many topic challenges for African literature - only one, as far as I remember - and Igbo is one of the most spoken languages in Africa. This novel is particularly well-suited for a topic challenge because: The full text is freely and legally availa...

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr Adding a note about using the appropriate language tag is good.

North Læraðr

Oh okay

Just my phrasing was bad

Rand al'Thor

It does take a bit of digging sometimes to figure out if an author really did publish only in one language or not.

But that kind of research is what helps to make tag wikis useful - making sure we put correct information there for people to see when they want to use the tags.

North Læraðr

7:44 PM

Okay

Tsundoku

I don't know so many modern authors who published in more than one language, outside of Samuel Beckett and T. S. Eliot. It was less unusual when people still wrote both in Latin and their native language.

Rand al'Thor

elif-safak has written in both English and Turkish, for example.

I think isaac-bashevis-singer wrote in both English and Yiddish?

We've actually had questions about both of those authors and their self-translations, which is why I remember it.

North Læraðr

avicenna seems to have used both Arabic and Persian, though he's anything but modern

editing that rn btw

Tsundoku

I didn't claim that they don''t exist :-) Jonathan Littell has published both in English and in French.

North Læraðr

Is the [anne-frank] tag for both the person and the book?

Tsundoku

7:50 PM

@Randal'Thor According to Wikipedia, "Singer always wrote and published in Yiddish".

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr Oh, interesting. I guess he lived not long after the Arab conquest of Persia, when Persian culture was still reeling from Arabisation.

9

Q: Did Isaac Bashevis Singer write only in Yiddish, or also in English?

While researching another question, a couple of us have found what appears to be a contradiction in the Wikipedia page for Isaac Bashevis Singer. The introductory section of the article says: He was a leading figure in the Yiddish literary movement, writing and publishing only in Yiddish. B...

translation yiddish-literature isaac-bashevis-singer

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr Anne Frank is the person; we don''t have a tag for her diary at the moment.

North Læraðr

Hm, okay

should we clarify the book from the author?

even if we don't have one yet?

I mean actually we can just tag one in

5

Q: In Anne Frank's Diary, what does this quote mean? "Who besides me will ever read these letters? From whom but myself shall I get comfort?..."

Full quote: Who besides me will ever read these letters? From whom but myself shall I get comfort? As I need comforting often, I frequently feel weak, and dissatisfied with myself; my shortcomings are too great. I know this, and every day I try to improve myself, again and again. What...

meaning dutch-literature anne-frank

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor If I understand that correctly, only his Yiddish writings were published directly, while his translations relied on other people - to varying degrees.

Rand al'Thor

Another roombaed question.

Lots of decent zero-score questions disappearing :-/

North Læraðr

7:54 PM

there's plenty of questions tagged anne-frank that seems to refer to both the author and the writer

Tsundoku

@NorthLæraðr It would sense if the had written more than one work.

North Læraðr

hmm, good point

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor And two more empty tag wiki excerpts for @NorthLæraðr :-)

North Læraðr

three, it seems

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku you have a Proofreader badge coming your way

North Læraðr

7:58 PM

@Randal'Thor Lol

Rand al'Thor

I always thought it's odd that that badge exists especially for reviewing Suggested Edits, as well as the usual Reviewer badges for all the review queues.

North Læraðr

releases long sigh

okay, all tags starting with "a" have been revised and updated. I'm done with tag wikis for now, that was A LOT

Tsundoku

@Randal'Thor Strangely, I can't remember seeing that one pop up under "next badge".

But now I have it.

North Læraðr

wait why does it say I have 98 posts edited in my profile page but 101 on the "user" list pae under editors?

Mithical

The 101 counts edits on your own posts, I believe?

North Læraðr

8:06 PM

Oh? So I can just edit my posts 10 more times and reach top ten editors? :P

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr And it says 106 here.

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor I think that's both rejected and accepted

Mithical

No, that would be on the "suggestions" tab.

North Læraðr

I am so confused then

Mithical

Possibly something with deleted posts

Rand al'Thor

8:09 PM

> How do I count edits? Let me count the ways.
I edit to the breadth and depth and height
That tags can reach, when on the users list
For the ends of being a top-ten editor.

Mithical

Oh, and tag-only edits.

Rand al'Thor

-- Elizanorth Barrett Browning

@NorthLæraðr I think it counts twice if you edited the same post twice?

North Læraðr

@Randal'Thor I don't know

@Randal'Thor it's so close

I can feel it

And then I can say, I'm the only user under 1k rep in the top ten editors :P

Tsundoku

You can also edit your chat messages, but I'm sure that doesn't count.

North Læraðr

@Tsundoku I've edited my chat posts way more times than I can count :P

I love how it jumps from 55 edits to a 101

Tsundoku

8:42 PM

This blog looks interesting: Short Story Magic Tricks.

North Læraðr

9:26 PM

Oh by the way, it seems like this question hit HNQ for a brief period of time

Oh I can see vote counts now (yesssssss)

Rand al'Thor

Congrats.

Although that's probably the second most boring rep privilege ;-)

North Læraðr

Well yes, but it's kind of annoying NOT to have it

what's the most boring rep privilege?

Site analytics?

Rand al'Thor

Question protection.

North Læraðr

Hmm

I guess that would be a boring privilege in lit se considering answer to question ratio is quite low

Rand al'Thor

Site analytics are at least interesting for people like me who love to pore over numbers and graphs and statistics like that :-P

Jan 22 '17 at 13:30, by Rand al'Thor

in Mos Eisley, Oct 4 '15 at 21:21, by Praxis

@randal'thor : 10k is when you get instant healing, x-ray vision, and the ability to see 15 seconds into the future. 20k, you get improved stamina, and 25k you get a Starbucks gift card.

(10k, 20k, 25k for graduated sites - 2k, 4k, 5k for beta sites)

North Læraðr

9:36 PM

Lol

I did always think the "see vote counts" was a rather anti-climatic privilege

They're like, "you've been here for a while now, here you can see how many people downvoted this!"

Mithical

It should really be given at 200 rep, not 1000.

Rand al'Thor

@NorthLæraðr It's a bit interesting sometimes with very controversial posts. (This post, for instance, has a lot more votes than meets the eye.)

The catch is that you can get that privilege with a script even without earning it.

North Læraðr

Oh that's funny

@Randal'Thor Hmm very controversial, I see

I'd upvote it if you put it on the new list :P

Rand al'Thor

I already did.

North Læraðr

Oh okay. I'm not exactly sure what questions I can ask though/

I mean any question about meaning is just out the window

The computer meant what the computer said

Okay, I would love to read it, I'm not sure I would want to ask questions about it :P

"There once was a furry brown noun
Had window shades which could not pound
They excreted and boggled
But still always goggled
But please sadly call them a crown"

Okay but in this case, are limericks supposed to make sense?

Mithical

9:46 PM

Limericks never make sense

North Læraðr

Exactly

Rand al'Thor

Limericks never make sense -
This opinion, Mith, came whence?
I'll prove you wrong,
It won't take long,
The meaning in this one's immense.

North Læraðr

I do have to say, the texts seem to have a very consistent (and boring) length/meter pattern? It's rather (and now I know what this word means) uncanny

Mithical

@Randal'Thor "writing challenge #2: proving mith wrong"

North Læraðr

@Mithical Is this like a replacement for SE or something?

Mithical

9:55 PM

Uuhhh. Sort of. It's a bit complicated.

It has slightly different goals than SE.

The org home page does a decent job of explaining: codidact.org

North Læraðr

Hmph, it's blocked

Stupid school laptop

Mithical

...do you have a list of allowed sites or what?

North Læraðr

Nope. My school (or rather the district) has the most inconsistent algorithm that blocks certain websites but allows some

Mithical

(And why would the .com TLD work but the .org not? I'm confused.)

North Læraðr

So apparent writing.codidact.com/questions/74854 works but the main page is blocked because it's "non-managed"

Literally I can't access like 80% of all websites because it's "non-managed"

Even though the websites I'm trying to access are completely legitamite

I can't tell you how many times I've been denied access to an author's webpage because it's "non-managed"

Oh, and they can remotely shut your laptop off. And if you try to access certain sites (like Discord) they actually put your entire browser on lockdown for a certain length of time

Discord is the only website I know that actually locks your browser down, though. I'm sure there are others, but I'm not stupid enough to look for other websites that would lock me out.

If you really want to talk about inconsistency though, just go to Youtube. I have zero clue on how they filter through Youtube. Apparently I can watch some videos posted by like Alpharad, but they block some videos from my school's own performing arts Youtube channel.

Napoleon Wilson

10:10 PM

Rough rocks
drowning in water;
and black gold.

Alex

11:43 PM

@Randal'Thor -1 for not using a deeper nesting.

Such as:

in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Jul 21 '19 at 21:19, by Rand al'Thor

Oct 15 '18 at 9:08, by Rand al'Thor

in Charcoal HQ, Mar 7 at 22:12, by Rand al'Thor

in The Sphinx's Lair, Sep 17 '16 at 17:23, by Rand al'Thor

in Mos Eisley, Oct 4 '15 at 21:21, by Praxis

@randal'thor : 10k is when you get instant healing, x-ray vision, and the ability to see 15 seconds into the future. 20k, you get improved stamina, and 25k you get a Starbucks gift card.

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