Talk:Mechademia/Archive 1

Reception: Anti-POV addition
The article quoted only a negative comment by Sizemore about the Review and Commentary section, so I added a positive comment about the section, by Raiteri from Library Journal, to balance the otherwise POV tone. Now the Reception section records both pro and con viewpoints, which is what NPOV is all about. Timothy Perper (talk) 15:12, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Full Title of Journal
I included the full title in the first sentence, since that is the official name on the masthead and on the website. After that, I left all the shortened versions, that is, "Mechademia". I also corrected the infobox so it matches the masthead and website. Timothy Perper (talk) 08:35, 17 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks Tim! I think the wrong name was my fault when I used Hairston's article for Marimite, sorry - I've gone through all the mainspace pages which used to refer to it by the wrong name and corrected them to the proper name.  I hope this makes some small amends. --Malkinann (talk) 09:00, 17 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, Malkinann! No problemo! Slowly but surely we fix the problems... Timothy Perper (talk) 16:02, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Reception section

 * This section is overly long, it is not necessary to quote something from each review. Something like "The journal was well received", with perhaps a few words on some criticisms, seems sufficient. --Crusio (talk) 17:44, 3 March 2011 (UTC)
 * You're entitled to your opinion, and I am to mine. I see no consensus on this particular issue, and I know that I as a user prefer to read the more detailed quotes, especially when opinions are both positive and negative, as they have been for Mechademia. Otherwise, your suggestion -- "The journal was well received" -- is POV. Timothy Perper (talk) 00:07, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I don't think you understand POV. It would be supported by sources and therefore not my POV, but that of the reviewers (which we are supposed to present in a neutral manner). Cherry-picking some bits of phrases from much-larger reviews is something else altogether. --Crusio (talk) 07:48, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I wish you were right. But review and receptions sections do that kind of cherry-picking all the time, opening the floodgates of POV selection of only certain kinds of material. I personally don't like it, but remember tilting at windmills. It's not something that any of us are going to change soon, at least I don't think we will. The factual -- that means reliably sourced -- basis is that Mechademia has had mixed reviews, and I don't think we have the right to erase these divergent opinions using Crusio's expression "The journal was well received." So how about we just leave it as is. Timothy Perper (talk) 13:26, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Mechademia table of contents
Have started an annotated bibliography / table of contents for Mechademia here, to help people to locate Mechademia articles that are relevant to use as citations. Please feel free to add page numbers, annotations, anything you'd find useful as a researcher, to that page. --Malkinann (talk) 00:48, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

general comments
Guillaume asked me to comment on several points.
 * 1) The list of issues would be better sourced to their own web site, which is likely to be more reliable.
 * 2) The specific contents of each issue do not belong on Wikipedia, but their own eweb site, unless there is some particularly famous article.
 * 3) I am very pleased that we do have a section giving sourced reviews, which is rare for journals and very important.  Normally, the way of presenting the quotes from them is in footnotes, especially if there are many of them. The general import can be given in the text.
 * 4) Project MUSE is the  site for the electronic version of this and many other humanity journals. If you are going to cite the journals contents, it's the place that must be cited. As for linking, we need to say where the material is available--it's basic content for a journal article. It falls under the same exception as giving the publisher's home page, which we do for all companies and organizations. That the content is paid is unfortunate, but we cannot help that.
 * 5) There are two ways of accessing the journal, print and online. Accessing it in print requires either going physically to a library that has it, or paying for a personal subscription. Accessing it online requires going to a library that subscribes to it online, or being a member of an institution that subscribes and makes it available throughout the institution (or a patron of a public library that does), or paying for an electronic subscription. There is no way of accessing this journal without somebody paying for the access. Such is the case for almost all journals in the humanities. That one person prefers it in print, does not mean that we should not give information about the access otherwise also.    DGG ( talk ) 01:56, 5 January 2012 (UTC).


 * Mechademia is available free online and for download at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/mechademia/. This website also has a complete list of all tables of contents. Timothy Perper (talk) 17:55, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's not free, only volume 4 is. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 18:05, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yup. All the ToCs are available. Timothy Perper (talk) 18:11, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Edits by Guillaume2303
Recent edits by cited this talk page as the reason for them. Unless you can point out where in this page such edits can be supported you should not cite it as the reason for them. – Allen4names 18:17, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you want us to do or not to do. I didn't make any edits to the article itself, but added some additional information here. Timothy Perper (talk) 18:19, 5 January 2012 (UTC)


 * The edits were made in response to DGG's comments in the foregoing section. DGG is a librarian with a large experience in anything concerning (academic) journals. Please restore the edits, as it is clear that references to Amazon.com are not really called for here (and consolidating the other references into one single one seems just good practice to me). --Guillaume2303 (talk) 18:30, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * This has nothing to do with me, so I will leave it up to you two. Timothy Perper (talk) 18:45, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If any references are needed in that section I feel that they should be secondary sources whereas, in the context of this article, the source you would use is a primary one. That said if you feel that those references are unnecessary (because of the ISBN links perhaps) then I will not revert your removal of them. – Allen4names 16:39, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Amazon is not really a very reliable source. And primary sources can be used to source non-controversial stuff. I don't think that an issue listing is controversial... --Guillaume2303 (talk) 17:01, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If that is what you think about Amazon.com being a reliable source you should read Special:BookSources/9780816677344 one line below the Google Book Search link. I still prefer the direct links to Amazon (or another secondary source) but unless the ISBN links are also removed there is no real harm in removing the Amazon references. – Allen4names 06:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What it says there is that you can use amazon to verify citations within books (because they often who -partial- book content), not that amazon itself can be used as a bibliographic source. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 10:16, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * If Amazon.com is not WP:RS then it should be removed from Special:BookSources regardless of any extra information provided and relegated to the external links section if used at all. Do not expect me to respond if you are just going to go over this over and over again. – Allen4names 18:38, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's simple: amazon gives access to scans of books, which is why it is linked at "booksources", because sourced to the books, this provides a mean to verify book content. You only need to browse Reliable sources/Noticeboard a bit to see several instances where people are being told that amazon is not a reliable source. The confusion is perhaps because booksources talks about "citations" here, whereas "quotations" is perhaps more appropriate. --Guillaume2303 (talk) 18:57, 8 January 2012 (UTC)