Talk:Strange Tales (pulp magazine)

Comments
I have a couple of comments that I'd like to get your feedback on. First I should say it's a pleasant surprise to have someone else edit one of the magazine articles I work on; I don't often find anyone else interested in these. Anyway, here are a couple of comments. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:37, 28 October 2014 (UTC)
 * You've removed some of the material about Weird Tales. I take your point that this is not an article about WT, but not only do the sources make a point of comparing the two, but it's necessary to give the reader a bit of background.  See Unknown (magazine), which I wrote, and which discusses WT for the same reason.  (In fact, I took the text almost verbatim from there.)  Would you mind if I re-added this, or something similar?  It would have to be part of a larger discussion; I left that section half-done, not realizing someone would come along so quickly and clean up after me.  (As I said, I rarely run into anyone else editing these magazine articles.)
 * Any objections if I switch back to instead of ?  There's really no benefit to  unless its parameters are used, whereas is much easier to work with in VE.  I've no objection to using  when we need to use its parameters.
 * I'm not sure what is deprecated about the referencing approach I'm using, but I'd be glad if you could clarify.


 * Hi, Mike. And may I say it's a pleasure as well. I find articles improve rapidly when more than one editor is involved. I'm not sure how much more there is to say about Weird Tales other than that Strange Tales was meant to compete with it, but certainly anyone can add something and other editors can trim it so we might bat the ball around a little. There's a phrase we use in journalism: "throat clearing" a.k.a. "spinning gravel," which means content that prevents us from getting to the point of something quickly. We also ask ourselves, "Do we need to say this or that? Is the gist of the point the same without it?" My thinking is if we can find quotes or citations that directly compare WT and ST, that would be pertinent. Deep background on WT strikes me otherwise as original-research essaying.


 * Not sure if the two reference templates do anything different, but the older one has been deprecated for the sake of consistency throughout Wikipedia. I would look at WP:ASL.


 * OK, now let's knock this one out of the ballpark! : )  --Tenebrae (talk) 18:28, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan to me! I'll try to put something together in a sandbox and we can review it; maybe later this week or this weekend.

I've done quite a few of the magazines on the ScienceFictionFantasyWeirdPulpMagazines template and the section format I've been using is as follows: For most of the magazines that covers everything; every now and then there's some reason to add an extra section, but I don't see that happening here. This is going to be a pretty short article -- I think a good comparison would be Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories, which is a GA. So far all I can really find on Strange Tales is the Tymn/Ashley chapter and a few comments in Ashley's Time Machines. I'll look through some other refs and report back. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:36, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Publication history - Background to the launch (competitors, genre history); information about the launch; editorial succession, financial and circulation information if known, changes of ownership.
 * Contents and reception -- Well-known or well-received stories, well-known authors who published frequently there or who published their first or significant stories there; cover art, interior art; awards; non-fiction departments if any. For really short articles this sometimes gets combined with the publication history section.
 * Bibliographic details -- table showing volume/issue numbers by date, editorial succession summarized, any reprints (Canada or UK, usually); reprint anthologies if any; price and page count history.


 * Your categories and organizational structure sound eminently sensible. I would only caution to avoid the temptation &mdash; we all have it with subjects in which we're well-versed &mdash; to do OR essaying. But it's great to see this magazine rescued from just being a small section elsewhere! --Tenebrae (talk) 22:47, 29 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I filled in the biblio details section and added a couple of refs to support a couple of points. I also put back the instead of  ; if you think it should be changed back to  again, can it wait till we're done working on the article?   is a pain in VE.  I looked at WP:ASL, by the way, and as far as I can see is not deprecated -- I think the main reason people use  is to get the column output for the footnotes, and we don't need that yet.
 * I'll have another go at the publication history next. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:06, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

Draft of publication history done
I've done a rework of the publication history section. There are quite a few references to Weird Tales but I think they're supported by the references -- to be honest, pretty much every source I have makes a point of comparing the two magazines, so I think we need to do the same. I haven't tried to polish the text much since we're still discussing what should be there. Let me know what you think.

I'll have a quick go at the lead next. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:06, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
 * OK, lead is done, and I've done some linking. Let me know what you think.
 * Also, I have a question. I think we should mention the three (at least) facsimile editions that Wildside reprinted; see here: Jan 33, Mar 32, and Oct 32.  Can you think of a better way to cite this than to simply include the three as references, and cite them directly? Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 02:29, 31 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I've made mostly copy-edits, trimming redundancies, condensing wordy phrases and polishing for encyclopedic WP:TONE. Since we're showing a cover that contains the subtitle, it's more specific and less vague to say "cover-titled such-and-such."


 * The Wildside content is in there and cited, so I guess that's a moot point.


 * WP:LINKFARM also applies to laundry lists of References and Further reading. The References section should not contain books that aren't cited as reference in the footnotes, and having two uncited book by an author who already has two books cited is appears promotional and unnecessary.


 * Otherwise, a very nice job in giving perspective and context to the place this magazine holds in popular-literature history! --Tenebrae (talk) 16:37, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the copyedit; definitely an improvement. I re-added the Encyclopedia of Fantasy; it's used in a footnote.  Otherwise, no disagreements with your edits.
 * The Wildside question actually isn't moot yet -- Wildside brought out three more issues, numbered 8-10, and those are mentioned and cited. However, they also brought out three facsimile reprints of the original magazine, and the article doesn't mention those.  I found a page on Wildside Press's website that mentions these, so I'll cite them to that -- I think that's good enough.  Ideally I'd like to find a third-party source for this sort of thing, but I think it's fine to use the website just to demonstrate existence.
 * Anything else needed for GA, do you think? I think this is ready to nominate at GAN.  Oh, and I saw your self-revert the other day; we can go back to the reflist template now if you like, since I'm no longer editing the article actively.  You asked what VE was; it's the visual editor, which I use for almost all my article editing these days.  Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 22:20, 31 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks like I was mistaken about the web page; I had to cite them to the books themselves. Does that look OK? Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 22:34, 31 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Article looks pretty good &mdash; not sure how much more there is to say on the topic other than adding vintage interview quotes from the original editor and writers themselves, if they ever discussed the magazine. I have to admit the footnoting format looks weird &mdash; or perhaps strange! : ) &mdash; since the book sources could be in the footnotes, thus saving space, avoiding repetition, etc. But if this is an accepted footnote format, then I guess it's proper to use and just a matter of taste. Overall, I think we, mostly you, did good work on this article. --Tenebrae (talk) 21:31, 1 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks -- I appreciate the compliment, and your edits (and input) were definitely helpful. I'll go ahead and nominate for GA.  Not sure what you mean about the footnotes; can you give me an example of an article with the footnote style you're used to? Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 21:36, 1 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It's OK -- it really doesn't matter since Wikipedia accepts both types of formatting. I find it less redundant, simpler and easier to read to have the book information right there in the footnotes, as at, say Jack Hill, rather than spread across two sections, but both ways are perfectly fine. This is a good article, you did a nice job, and I'm happy to have supported you with copy edits and an extra eye for perspective. It's been good teaming with you. --Tenebrae (talk) 23:39, 1 November 2014 (UTC)