Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of awards and nominations received by William Gibson/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Dabomb87 23:16, 26 January 2010.

List of awards and nominations received by William Gibson

 * Nominator(s):  Skomorokh   03:44, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

This is to my knowledge a comprehensive and well-sourced collection of a highly notable author's awards and nominations. I believe the prose to give sufficient context to a reader unfamiliar with the author, while covering the most salient points of the topic, and written to a professional standard. Comments, suggestions and constructive criticism welcome. Skomorokh  03:44, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Support. As good as the article on William Gibson and List of works of William Gibson which Skomorokh brought to FA and FL standard. Well done, again. -- Quiddity (talk) 20:55, 29 November 2009 (UTC)

Just a couple of comments:
 * 1) Center the dashes in Notes.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 09:36, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * 2) Make the table sortable in year, category and result.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 09:36, 1 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Ciao diaa, and thanks for the suggestions. I've made this change to add sortability to awards table2, the template used for tables in the article. I'm not sure how to make that column-specific. For centering the dashes, the only ways I can think of doing it are to have a default value in the template so that if nothing is entered, a centered dash appears, or alternatively to add  tags manually to the article. I'm not sure exactly how to implement the former, and the latter seems inelegant. Further suggestions welcome! Regards,   Skomorokh   11:18, 1 December 2009 (UTC)
 * Perhaps center is more elegant? Dabomb87 (talk) 00:30, 3 December 2009 (UTC)
 * It would be, but it would have to be added about four dozen times, and I'm not sure the benefits (aesthetic?) are worth the effort or added complexity for future editors. I'm ambivalent on this one, it's not a big deal either way.  Skomorokh   01:09, 17 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Mm40 has centered the dashes; the succession of left-aligned comments with centered dashes looks discordant to me, but again it's not a big deal.  Skomorokh   18:27, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Quick comments –
 * The image needs better alt text than its title.
 * In any tables that have book titles in both italics and quotation marks without italics, the book without italics sort first in the nominated work column, followed by the ones in italics. It would be better if a way could be found to get them to sort alphabetically together.
 * I have several queries and concerns about the sources used (keep in mind that I have no knowledge of the subject) They may well be fine, but I feel it's better to ask now just to be safe.
 * Is reference 2 (randychase.com) supposed to be an online link to a published book? If not, it begs the question of why what appears to be somebody's personal website is a reliable source.
 * Reference 3 (Project Cyberpunk) is definitely a link to information from a book, but does it say that they have the right to republish?
 * Again, does the publisher of reference 5 (brmovie.com) have the right to republish this newspaper article (assuming it isn't some official site of the paper)? If not, it should be converted to an offline reference.
 * The publisher in reference 7 (The Independent) should be in italics since it is a printed publication.
 * What makes Worlds Without End a reliable source? It's crucial that this site be reliable because it is citing a few of the tables.
 * Reference 12 should have the Seattle Post-Intelligencer added to it, since that is where the link comes from. I imagine this should also be in italics, in addition to the newspaper already given.  Giants2008  ( 27 and counting ) 16:39, 20 December 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks greatly for your comments Giants; I've had a go at addressing them so let's see where things stand:
 * The alt text for the infobox image (File:William Gibson 60th birthday portrait.jpg) reads "The head and shoulders of a middle-aged balding bespectacled white man, looking into the distance." Is this sufficient? There may be a display issue with the infobox template itself, but that should not be difficult to fix.
 * Your observation that italicised works and quoted works sort separately seems accurate from what I can tell. The italicised works are standalone works – published books, mostly, whereas the quoted works are short stories that for the most part have only been published in collections. I don't know of a way of having MediaWiki treat italics and quotes the same for the purposes of sorting, but the existing division (books and short stories sorted separately) is not an arbitrary one and I think it is tolerable if nothing better can be managed.
 * Speaking to the references:
 * I've added the missing content (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, italics for The Independent).
 * I've replaced the randychase.com and Worlds Without End references (though I wouldn't give up either as reliable sources necessarily). The new refs are Burning Chrome (the introduction to a collection of the author's works), the Center for the Study of Science Fiction and New Scientist. I hope these pass muster (and that no errors or omissions have been introduced therein).
 * On the issue of links to copyrighted material hosted by third parties, namely Project Cyberpunk and brmovie.com, I have included them as an aid to the reader so that they can verify the content of the article for themselves. I would have thought the issue of rights to republication is an issue for the webhosts – surely the encyclopaedia is not liable or beyond fair use in merely linking to them?


 * Thanks again for your perceptive review, and look forward to seeing more. Regards,  Skomorokh   17:55, 27 December 2009 (UTC)

Otherwise, a interesting and well-presented list upon a topic about which I knew nothing! BencherliteTalk 16:36, 12 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Comments from Bencherlite
 * To sort alphabetically by name and avoid works in quotations marks sorting after works in italics, you can put HS Dogfight"Dogfight", and that will sort it under the letter D, not under a quotation mark. I think that the list ought to sort by name, not by whether the title happens to be in italics or in quotations marks.
 * TRM's comments above included "If tables are sortable, we'd normally relink things each time as they are not guaranteed to appear top of the list if the table is resorted." I don't think you responded to it, but he's capped his comments as resolved, so I'm unsure what's happening with this one! I'd agree with TRM, as it happens.
 * "Notes" columns aren't usually sortable, so I've tweaked Awards table2 for this.
 * "Related pages" would normally be entitled "See also"
 * WP:LINKVIO, part of the Copyrights policy, says that "if you know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work. An example would be linking to a site hosting the lyrics of many popular songs without permission from their copyright holders." So the issue of rights of republication is not just a matter for the webhosts, but also for this FLC.
 * Thanks for the helpful comments Bencherlite! I'm not sure on the linking issue (per WP:OVERLINK), but I hope to address the rest of your suggestions in the coming days. The copyrights link is interesting, but in the case of the websites, I don't "know that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright" or if it's with their permission. Do we default to assuming a violation (as with images and text from website used as part of an article) or not? Like I said above, I'd prefer not to make such an assumption for our reader's sake, but will follow whatever convention the rest of the encyclopaedia uses. Mahalo,  Skomorokh   13:18, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

All works now sorted alphabetically, thanks to Bencherlite's hs suggestion, and Notes are no longer sortable. Further discussion needed on link density (see OVERLINK) and copyright (presumption of violation or innocence?). Skomorokh  18:25, 16 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Comment on linking: Per WP:LINK, "tables, in which each row should be able to stand on its own" are a listed exception to the rules on overlinking. Thus, each row should have its information linked. The use of multiple tables, though, is an intriguing little monkey wrench thrown into the works. I honestly don't think it would be overlinking to have each title and award name linked, and regardless, I do believe that&mdash;using the Nebula Award table as an example&mdash;that the names of each award must be linked at each occurence. The Hugo Award table is a bit different, given that the link appears right above the table, but I honestly think that it does no harm to include the links and is better for the integrity of the article as a whole if links are included throughout. Other than that, I reviewed this entire list and found no errors that I could see. Well done on the list as a whole. KV5  ( Talk  •  Phils ) 19:36, 16 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yo KV5, thanks for the comment. I agree that it's something of a complex case. Taking Neuromancer for example, there are 19 mentions in the article (excluding references + navbox). As it stands, the article is linked twice; once in the lead, and the second time in the first section. Linking each title would add eleven extra links to a total of 13 in an article with 12 kB of prose/tables (6.4 kB readable). On my cramped laptop monitor, the article is five screenfulls long, which means an average of two and a bit links to the same article for a given view of the page...anywhere else this would be a definite link violation. I suppose I don't understand the rationale for the exception for tables ("each row should be able to stand on its own"). What's the benefit to the reader of so much identical blue?  Skomorokh   09:24, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * You have sortable tables, meaning that it's indeterminate which row will be first at any given time. That's why they all need to be linked. KV5  ( Talk  •  Phils ) 18:59, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Right, I understand that the sorting tables can result in different works coming first, but that does not address the link density problem.  Skomorokh   00:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Support Mm40 (talk) 23:57, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Support with one comment. Could you include a "XX out of YY" or something in the poll section? Currently it's unclear to me how impressive say... The 4th place polling for "The Winter Market" is. Is that 4 out of 10 candidates? 25? 100? Staxringold talkcontribs 20:22, 16 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, I see what you mean. The Locus Awards don't seem to have a fixed number of nominees per category (click here and browse chronologically to see). "The Winter Market" coming 4th means it was chosen as the 1987's fourth best novelette out of however many novelettes the voters read that year, so from one point of view it would not matter if 16 more novelettes were listed subsequently or 86; the number of candidates = number of works published that year it would seem. Reading the self-description, I'm not sure how the threshold for inclusion in the poll results (i.e. 27 novels one year, 22 the next) is set, so the best we could do is XX of YY for every single poll entry. Would that make it easier for the reader to understand or more complicated?  Skomorokh   08:45, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I think it's worth either including the info (so year by year) or putting in a note describing what you've said here. Staxringold talkcontribs 06:05, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll have to look for sources to verify my hand-waving theory, and if they are not forthcoming I'll do the year by year. Thanks for your valuable help.  Skomorokh   15:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Comments
 * General
 * Alt text, contributors, dabs and external links all check out fine.
 * Lead
 * Since first being published in the late 1970s, Gibson has written more than twenty short stories and nine critically acclaimed novels. -- Are you trying to say, 'since first starting to publish in the late 1970s?'
 * Several of these garnered critical attention, receiving Hugo and Nebula Awards nominations in the categories of best short story and best novelette and featuring prominently in the annual Locus Awards reader's poll. -- IMO, being featured sounds better here than featuring
 * His most recent novels – Pattern Recognition (2003) and Spook Country (2007) – put his work onto mainstream bestseller lists for the first time,[7] with the former being the first of Gibson's novels to be shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. -- these should be emdashes (the long dash) without spacing.
 * Either one works, per WP:DASH: "Spaced en dashes – such as here – can be used instead of unspaced em dashes". Mm40 (talk) 16:59, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
 * List
 * Gibson's only Nebula Award was for Neuromancer in 1985, though he has received seven other nominations. -- the comma should be a semicolon when using however/though.
 * Gibson has been nominated twice, but has yet to win -- sounds a bit POV-ish. Maybe reword to but has not won one. or to simply Gibson has been nominated twice. Gives the same message.
 * Same thing here: The British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) annually presents four awards, traditionally on the basis of a vote of its members. Gibson has been nominated for an award on six occasions,[8][14] though he has yet to win
 * Why not center the wording as well, and not just the dashes?-- T ru  c o   503 16:52, 18 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yo Truco, thanks very much for your comments. I've reworded "being featured" and "has yet to win". "Since first being published" rather than "since first starting to publish" is an intentional wording choice, as Gibson is not a publisher but an author. Could you expand on the rationale for using a semicolon rather than a comma in the "though" case? Following a semicolon with "though" seems odd to me; redundant perhaps. The centering I am not crazy about, so I'll leave it to other commentators to decide which of all-centered, all-left-aligned, and dashes-centered-only is optimal. Regards,  Skomorokh   18:57, 19 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Support-- resolved issues, meets WP:WIAFL.-- T ru  c o   503 03:08, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Support as the points below are fixed.--Peter cohen (talk) 00:51, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment I'm on the verge of supporting, but:
 * "Several of these garnered critical attention, receiving Hugo and Nebula Awards nominations in the categories of best short story and best novelette and being featured prominently in the annual Locus Awards reader's poll." This could be read as if the Hugo and Nebula nominations are symptoms of attention from professional critics, (or at least "semi-pro" ones in the sense used by WSFS when defining certain Hugos). The Hugos are voted for by SF fans/convention attenders and the Nebulas by SF authors. Both of these categories include critics, but I think it is better to avoid the implication that they are are awarded by critics.
 * You mention who vote for certain awards (jury panels for the Dick, writers for others.) I think that you should include indications for others. I can tell you that the Hugos and BSFAs are both fan awards, shortlisted and voted for by the members of Worldcons and of BSFA respectively and the Clarkes are shortlisted and judged by a panel. I'm not sure about some of the others, but people at WP:SF will. --Peter cohen (talk) 14:34, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Good points both Peter, thanks for the review. I'll have to dig around for independent sources, but I don't think this ought to be too difficult to fix.  Skomorokh   15:11, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I have added the selection methods for each of the awards and clarified the implication that Hugo/Nebula/Locus awards were tied to critical attention.  Skomorokh   00:31, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Question for the directors/delegates: is there a time limit on this review? It seems as if there are but a few resolvable issues to attend to, and one or two bullets to be bitten so barring new concerns it ought not take too long, but I've noticed that this review is the oldest on the books at the moment and I wonder if there's a chance of sudden archiving? Skomorokh  15:20, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * There is no time limit as such but all nominations will last at least 10 days. Afro  ( Not a Terrible Joke ) - Afkatk 18:21, 20 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Unless there is a sudden wave of opposes or the FLC stagnates for a long time I'll keep this open. Also, I'm contacting a few reviewers to revisit this FLC. Dabomb87 (talk) 01:14, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks to you both; I hope to have it wrapped up by the weekend.  Skomorokh   23:41, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Remaining issues from Bencherlite
 * Minor prose issues noted by
 * More linking, as has been mentioned above.
 * Remove links to copyvios. I've had a look at the site and can't find any indication that the works (or others) are hosted with the permission of the rights holders.
 * Fix sorting of the problematic Locus table as suggested at the Village Pump - I had an interim solution but reverted myself when I saw the more elegant solution, but don't have time at present to do this for you.
 * I don't agree with Truco's suggestion about a semi-colon before "though".
 * Apart from this, I think we're done. BencherliteTalk 08:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yo Bencherlite, thanks for returning; I've addressed the sorting and Peter and Staxringold's suggestions for adding context. The linking issues (which I am not to concerned about either way) remain. The issue with internal links has yet to be comprehensively stated (i.e. the happy medium between helpfulness and overlinking), while in the case of external links to copyrighted material, WP:LINKVIO seems to indicate that only links to pages which are known to be in breach of copyright ought be removed, and I'm not sure anyone here has claimed such knowledge. Cheers,  Skomorokh   00:44, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Yo Skomorokh. Well, copyvio sites are hardly likely to say "we're hosting this in breach of copyright", are they? There is an awful lot of material on the site with no details of copyright given. I can't believe that Gibson has consented to lots of his work being hosted for free. Using common sense, I think we can fairly say that it's a linkvio site. At the risk of sounding like the lawyer I am in my day job (!), knowledge can be taken to include shutting one's eyes to the obvious... On linking, I could understand if you were linking once within the awards section and once within the polls section, but you're not: some are relinked in the polls, others aren't.  If people read through the tables and think, "Oh, I wonder why that book won? What's it about?", they then have to hunt back to see if there is in fact a link, and if so where it is.  At present, you're assuming that people will "jump off" the first time that a book/story is mentioned, when they may not want to until later on. I think the list as it stands is too light on helpfulness. Even WP:LINK allows relinking  "where a later occurrence of an item is a long way from the first." Regards, BencherliteTalk 01:09, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The legal and moral angles are interesting here, but I think ultimately we are in a grey area ultimately pitting copyfighting against respectability. As it happens, Gibson does not mind unauthorised reproductions and derivative works as long as they don't make any money (my income from the list has been disappointingly flatlining so far) . The linkvio issue has come up at another peer review I have a hand in so I think I will cave on this one and remove the links in deference to what seems to be the prevailing convention. I don't see an easy answer to the link density issue with the unforseseen complexity of multiple repetitive small tables, but I will revisit it shortly.  Skomorokh   15:58, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Support, all issues resolved. Well done for all your hard work before, and during, this FLC. BencherliteTalk 20:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Support I see no further problems. Reywas92 Talk 01:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Support - I see nothing really wrong with it, though the article could do with internal linking some of the stuff in the References as by example you don't link the British Science Fiction Association at all within the references. Afro  ( Its More Than a Feeling ) - Afkatk 15:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)


 * I've removed the links to the questionably-hosted copyrighted works and increased the internal link density of the list such that each work is linked approximately once per screenful or major section.  Skomorokh   16:08, 24 January 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.