Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Archive 17

Harry Potter Task Force
It appears that the Harry Potter task force covers the entire franchise, and as such WikiProject Novels tags are appearing on biographies of people related to the franchise. Since biographies of novelists are generally not considered a part of the project (I checked on Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Dickens), the biographies of these people should not come under this either. Other suspect task forces include Twilight and Percy Jackson, though I haven't checked on them. These should be moved either to Media or to Children's Literature (not Twilight), or other options should be considered. Bubka42 (talk) 08:45, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
 * link mine, emphasis mine -P64
 * See my reply there. --P64 (talk) 22:54, 31 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Link, please. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 19:45, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * No one else yet participates in the discussion Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Harry Potter task force. I suggest that the Narnia task force banner may be adapted for Harry Potter. Bubka42's rebuts with allusion to the integrity of WP Novels assessment statistics.
 * Note that that HPtf talk begins with a record of the closed discussion "Turning this Project into a task force?" (July 2012). --P64 (talk) 20:23, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Novelists category
There is a discussion at Category:Novelists that would create very significant changes, and I thought people at this project might want to weigh in on it.John Pack Lambert (talk) 01:29, 20 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Here's the direct link: Categories for discussion/Log/2013 June 15. ··· 日本穣 ? · 投稿  · Talk to Nihonjoe ·  Join WP Japan ! 19:44, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Starship Troopers' FAR
I have nominated Starship Troopers for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. GamerPro64 19:20, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Original vs. Revised Edition of The Awakening Land trilogy
Hello -- I have recently been improving the pages describing Conrad Richter’s 1966 trilogy of novels The Awakening Land by adding references, writing style, major themes, images, etc. While doing this, I noticed that the plot summary on the page describing Richter’s second novel in the trilogy, The Fields (which was created by another editor), is different in several major aspects from the plot I read in my original edition copy issued by Alfred A. Knopf.

I have since learned (through Amazon.com reviews) that a “revised” edition of The Awakening Land was issued in 1993 by the Ohio University Press that was rewritten by the publishers to include scenes that Conrad Richter never wrote in the original novels.

I have since re-written the plot summary on this page so that it reflects the original novel, but I also think the whole issue of this original vs. revised edition needs to be addressed on Wikipedia. I think it is important that future users who come to these Wikipedia articles are aware that there is a revised edition of this trilogy out there, because they may wonder (like I did) why the plot summary on Wikipedia may differ from the one they read.

Some examples of plot differences in The Fields that I noticed from the original plot summary include:


 * In the revised edition, the protagonist tells her husband she can no longer have marital relations with him because the midwife told her another birth would be dangerous for her, even though the midwife told her no such thing. Her husband offers to take her to a physician in an Eastern city, but she refuses and insists on abstinence.In the original novel, the wife does not lie to her husband about another birth being dangerous; she just informs him she will no longer share his bed because she doesn't want more children.


 * In the revised edition, when the husband starts an extramarital affair with the town schoolmistress, she knowingly becomes pregnant hoping he will leave his wife for her. He refuses to do this and urges her to have an abortion or move away, but she refuses and marries a laborer in the town, partly to humiliate him. In the original novel, there is no scene like this between the husband and his mistress at all; the wife merely finds out about the affair and the pregnancy through town gossip.


 * In the revised edition, the novel concludes with the husband and wife separating. In the original, there is no mention of separation at all. In fact, the wife ends up resuming marital relations with her husband and ends up giving birth to another child. She feels partially responsible for his affair because she denied him conjugal relations in the first place.

A Teahouse host said that addressing these plot differences on Wikipedia is probably something notable that would make a reasonable addition to the articles. He suggested that I post this issue on the Talk page of the novel and at the Wikipedia Novels forum for discussion. He also suggested that for now I might want to add a brief section to the pages for this trilogy, stating simply that there is a revised edition of this trilogy and that the plots are significantly different.

I plan to find out as much as I can about the revised edition of this trilogy (probably by tracking down a copy at a library and reading it myself; also by looking for independent sources that can be used as references) so that I can address it fully on Wikipedia. Is there anyone else out there who is familiar with either of the editions of this trilogy and can help me? Thanks for any advice. Perpetual Reader (talk) 15:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi thanks for posting here. I think you're completely on the right track and should go about doing this as you've outlined above. I'm not familiar with the series, but given the differences between original and revised editions, I think I'd present a plot summary of the original edition and then a section (similar to what you've written above) devoted to the changes in the revised edition, and maybe a section with an explanation of why the author chose to make the revisions - if it can be cited to secondary sources. Good luck with it. Victoria (talk) 16:31, 11 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Victoria. Since the author of this trilogy died in 1968 and the revised editions came out in the 1990s, that means the publishers are actually the ones who made the plot revisions, not the author. I didn't know they could do that; is that even legal? Anyway, I will start doing some research and keep this forum updated on anything I find.Perpetual Reader (talk) 18:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Read or Dead (novel)


 * Hi, I found it really fascinating that a novel had been written based on such a subject. I hope to learn more about the book. Is someone going to put in the plot summary for the novel? I hope someone does.


 * Best wishes


 * ( Dreambeaver  (talk) 01:54, 31 July 2013 (UTC))

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.pdf
has been nominated for deletion -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 03:42, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Infobox book: streamlining publication details
Changes to streamline the way Infobox book displays the date of publication and publisher from multiple fields into one (using a standardised format) and to remove the "(s)" in "Author(s)" etc. in line with other infoboxes have been suggested. Please read and give your opinion there. -- xensyria T 17:48, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Edogawa Rampo
see talk:Edogawa Rampo for discussion on the name of this novelist -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 05:41, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Jahnna N. Malcolm
Dear readers: This article has been in Afc for nearly three weeks. Would anyone like to review it? &mdash;Anne Delong (talk) 20:53, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

John Barth fans? The End of the Road FA push
I've been working on John Barth's The End of the Road for some time, aiming at polishing it up for a Featured Article nomination (it's now a Good Article). It looks like the following books (that I have no access to) have substantial information on The End of the Road (up to full chapters):



It would be great if anyone who has access tot hese books could use them to contribute to the article. I live in Japan, so I can't access them either online or in the library, and I haven't found copies that fit my budget. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Curly Turkey (gobble) 05:17, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

New Thomas Pynchon novel - Bleeding Edge
As there are now multiple reviews of this available and the release is just days away, I just converted Bleeding Edge from a redirect into a stub. Not my usual subject area, so it would be great if others could jump in now and develop this further given what an important writer Pynchon is. Cheers, postdlf (talk) 16:45, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

List of multimedia franchises
You might be interested in this list, as it includes multimedia franchises with literary components. Cheers! bd2412 T 20:51, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

The End of the Road by John Barth image debate
I have moved the below from the relevant User talk pages to garner wider input :
 * Hi, I have reinstated the preferred first edition image of The End of the Road as per the infobox guidelines, hope that's OK. I think you'll need to tidy up my references though (principally for cover artist, not sure if reference for publisher and pages are really necessary) Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 17:13, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi. "Preferred", I'm almost postive, means that an image from the 1st edtion is preferred to another edition.  Since the image wasn't replaced with one from another edition, there is nothing to be preferred.  I removed it basically because the image doesn't actually contribute to the article—it's not strongly associated with the book, and it doesn't contribute to understanding the article.  Do you really believe the image makes "a significant contribution to the user's understanding of the article, which could not practically be conveyed by words alone"?  Rather than a "significant" contribution, it seems to me that it makes no contribution at all.  Fine if it were free, but hard to justify when it's a Fair Use image, I think. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:30, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I just follow WikiProject_Novels/Style_guidelines which appears fairly clear, or at least always has done till now... GrahamHardy (talk) 21:56, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
 * It does appear fairly clear: "do you know why you are choosing that image and can you justify it?" Why was this image chosen?  Does it improve the article?  Does it improve the reader's understanding of the article's contents?  Does it help the reader identify the book?  If it were out of copyright, there'd be no issue, since it wouldn't actually harm the article, but it's pretty hard to rationalize how it improves the article. Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:41, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Also, as appeasement to the disinfobox crowd, I prefer to keep infobox parameters to a minimum. For example, are there any editions besides the first that are 230 pages?  I have two copies (ISBN 9780553125160 and ISBN 978-0-385-24089-5), neither of which are 230 pages.  This parameter is no more than misleading clutter.  Ditto the publisher:  it's been put out by Doubleday, Penguin, Anchor, Avon, and Bantam that I know of—quite likely several others, as well. Curly Turkey (gobble) 00:52, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Infoboxes should contain info on the 1st edition only, that is my understanding. An image of the first edition shows what the subject of the article looked like in its original form. Of great importance to my mind...GrahamHardy (talk) 11:52, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * In my mind, that's information for the "Publication history" section. I can't imagine why such information should be the first thing a reader sees.  The infobox is for a quick reference/overview.
 * ISBN fails because (a) it's not "overview" material, and (b) it's not quick reference material, as it won't help people find the book, unless they're collectors who insist on having the first edition (a vanishingly small percentage of the potential article readership).
 * The image is unhelpful, as it does nothing to orient the reader to the book and does nothing to help the reader have a deeper understanding of the book. It would do no harm as decoration, but as this is a free-content encyclopaedia, I think it's best to resort to Fair Use only when it clearly improves the article.
 * The page count does nothing to orient the reader, and holds true only for the difficult-to-find first edition. And why would page count even matter?
 * —Curly Turkey (gobble) 12:29, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * These are some strange questions and comments. Why does it matter to a reader whether a novel they are reading about has 150 pages or 1000 pages? I think that question answers itself. And the first publisher of a book is of historic importance to that book. "I don't get it" isn't much of a counterargument. GrahamHardy is correct in saying that the first edition information takes precedence in the infobox, including the cover. That has long been the consensus-supported practice, and until now, I thought, completely uncontroversial (though we don't do heckler's vetoes here). You seem to be interpreting the infobox as it might affect book buyers, but even if we presume the article reader wants to actually get their hands on a copy, the ISBN and other publication data will certainly help them identify the right book at a library, or any number of online book databases such as OCLC. postdlf (talk) 15:46, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Ditto GrahamHardy and postdlf, the infobox information is supposed to familiarize the audience with the original first edition physical form of the book, not to effect buying habits. Books are physical and material objects, and as much as we like to emphasize the content, we should respect the physicality of them as well. That being said their are always room for recording editions as they have been published such as I did in Quicksilver (novel), Sadads (talk) 21:02, 20 September 2013 (UTC)


 * postdlf & Sadads: To the right is the infobox as I had it in the article. As you can see, it has nothing to do with "buying habits".  It is a neutral infobox limited to those parameters that hold true for all editions.
 * GrahamHardy: Do you see why I think just copying & pasting this discussion was a bad idea? The discussion has already turned to gibberish.  Can we reboot and give a little context? Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:01, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * No, I think the rest of us are done here, unless you have a new and different argument to raise. We already know your opinion of how stripped down the infobox should be and all disagree for the reasons given. postdlf (talk) 22:36, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Nobody's given any reason why information that belongs properly in the "Publication history" section should be in the infobox. I also haven't seen a response to "do you know why you are choosing that image and can you justify it?"—not my question, but from the guidelines.  We're talking about a copyrighted image that is not even discussed in the body of the article.

Keep in mind as well that there is no policy impelling editors to include an infobox. Removing it entirely is also an option—as the primary editor of the article, it would be my prerogative. I'd prefer that option to having a pointlessly long infobox that gives tangential details like the Dewey decimal number. Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:54, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I've taken this to Manual of Style/Infoboxes. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:17, 20 September 2013 (UTC)
 * "...as the primary editor of the article, it would be my prerogative." Again, these are some strange claims you're making. Read WP:OWN. postdlf (talk) 00:13, 21 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The example at right may fit the special purpose to provide information common to all editions.
 * Use of preceded_by and followed_by is idiosyncratic because the three books are not in series, only in chronological sequence of original publication. It's also contrary to the special purpose, for chronological sequence is not common to all editions, as is the sequence of a book series. (If a series, that is common to all editions and the series parameter would be used.)
 * Is it true that there have been multiple publishers of this book but all are American --U.S. is common to all? I suppose not.
 * If all editions are print then the media_type parameter would be used according to the special purpose.
 * --P64 (talk) 15:36, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The 1st publication is important, and hence the year should appear, and probably the first publishing company. That's fairly standard in all FAs.
 * I agree with the point about "preceded_by and followed_by".
 * Regarding Dewey, how internationally is the Dewey system used, and what percentage of libraries just put fiction into a separate un-numbered area (as my city does)?
 * Media-type is a strange one, and we should continue the discussion that I just noticed at Template talk:Infobox book. –Quiddity (talk) 21:34, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I've removed the "preceded_by and followed_by" parameters. Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:45, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

All of the things
Some balance is required. No parameters are required. An open mind is required.

Images: Looking at some FA layouts, we can see that there are numerous standard options for image: 1st edition cover, 2nd edition cover, stack of various editions, frontispiece, 1st page, the author, or nothing at all.

Personally, I'm a visually-oriented person, so I'd find the absence of an image to be disconcerting, therefore I'd suggest some sort of image is good, but the choice is up to the article-editors. I'm inclined towards the "stack of various editions" as the ideal choice, unless a book-author was particularly fond of a certain cover.

ISBN: This book was published prior to the invention of the ISBN system in 1965. I've pointed out before, that one of the legitimate objections the "infobox-skeptics" raise, is people trying to shoehorn as many values into an infobox as possible.

E.g. [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Candide&oldid=556821203 Candide] included the parameter "ISBN: NA" for many years. That is exactly the kind of thing that editors who are frustrated by infoboxes, are correct about. That parameter should be hidden/unused there! "ISBN: NA" is a true statement about the first printing of that book, but it's not ideal infobox material. The only two purposes it serves, are: (1) Tangenting a reader's focus into learning that ISBN is a recent invention. (2) As an editor-reminder, to prevent anyone from adding an ISBN that points to some random ("The Definitive RandomPenguin Candide") modern printing.

E.g. 2. [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Nineteen_Eighty-Four&oldid=573607949 Nineteen Eighty-Four] (published in 1949) currently has an ISBN pointing to a 2003 edition by the US publisher Plume (founded 1970) - that hurts my brain on so many levels.

Better Documentation: I made specific suggestions at the Arbcom/Infoboxes case, regarding details that should be explicitly stated in places like Template:Infobox book/doc and MOS:INFOBOX. That's what would have prevented the misunderstandings above. In due time, this will be achieved, but everyone has to be patient and willing to engage in friendly open-minded discussion in order to get there.

HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 21:34, 21 September 2013 (UTC)


 * "but the choice is up to the article-editors": the editors above disagree with you. I'm the one who added the infobox, and I'm being told which image I must use. Curly Turkey (gobble) 22:55, 21 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Are postdlf and Sadads not going to respond to this? Curly Turkey (gobble) 21:52, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Respond to what? You continuing to believe you are being told what you must do, rather than other editors disagreeing with you as to what should or shouldn't be in an article? postdlf (talk) 21:55, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * postdlf: No, respond to Quidity's statements above. Curly Turkey (gobble) 23:20, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

I've edited the article itself, to implement some of the suggestions. I suggest we move that specific discussion (if further discussion is even needed) to the article's talkpage. If anyone wants to debate the abstract issues, then continue the threads above here. –Quiddity (talk) 23:25, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Amazon Average Customer Review
Hello, WikiProject Novels. I would like to hear your opinions on noting the amazon.com "Customer Reviews" score in an article, similar to how a film-article sometimes mention the IMDB/RT/MetaCritic score. It would be something like "Amazon.com´s Customer Reviews give a score of 2.6/5, based on 140 reviews (oct 2013)." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 17:24, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Hello Gråbergs Gråa Sång! Wikipedia generally looks down upon Amazon.com customer reviews of products such as books because they are not made by professionals like those at The New York Times, Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, or School Library Journal. The thing about Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores are that they are composites of published, professional review scores. Happy editing! ö   Brambleberry   of   RiverClan  20:05, 5 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:54, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

WT:DAB
Proposal to establish new guideline on treating franchises, characters, and such as broad concepts or primary topics is made. Feel free to weigh in. --George Ho (talk) 04:50, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Requested move at World War Z
Any and all input would be greatly appreciated! See discussion here.  Corvoe  (speak to me)  03:29, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Story collection protocol question
Hi WikiProject Novels! I got here via the Wikify drive and found an entry that needed way more than formatting and citation cleanup. The Ballad of the Sad Café originally only referenced the novella, even though it's actually a collection of short stories. Two of the other stories were published as separate novels that have their own wikipages. The novella by the same name is the only other title in the collection that seems to be particularly notable; the other short stories have little if any critical reviews as far as I can tell. What is standard wiki procedure for an article on a collection like this? Should it get a brief article with each story getting its own wiki page, or a longer one with information on each story kept within the collection's article? I don't want to duplicate information from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and Reflections in a Golden Eye -- do I just point to their pages and be done with it? "Sad Cafe" clearly needs a good writeup as there is considerable scholarship about it, but what do I do with the other stories? Thanks for any help! SarahTheEntwife (talk) 14:10, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * You could create stubs for the separate stories, or you could simply mention them in the main article. I'd suggest for now to keep the stories in the article about the collection and if a the time ever comes they can have their own articles. Victoria (talk) 14:48, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the fast reply! I'll get working on it.SarahTheEntwife (talk) 16:27, 7 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I suppose we have some guideline re when/whether to cover the stories in sequence of publication within the volume (regardless whether some were prev. published).
 * You should provide a level two heading (lame examples: ==Contents== ; ==Stories== ) for the level-3 subsections that are now eight in number.
 * Yes provide subsections for the two stories that were later published separately. Template main is commendable at the top of every such subsection, in my opinion. How much to duplicate presumably depends on whether any such info contributes to understanding the whole, or understanding particular stories that are covered only here. I think you should at least duplicate some facts: identify as historical novella, murder mystery short story, or whatever; state whether/where/when prev. published; state where/when subsequently published (at least first separate edition); state that adapted as film such-and-so; etc.
 * --P64 (talk) 23:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Infobox book series
Editors involved in this project may be interested in a discussion at Template talk:Infobox book series. In short: Should the parameter "Publisher" be wikilinked in the template? Cnilep (talk) 03:55, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

Draft:Novelist
Currently novelist redirects to the novel, but as is pretty apparent that the concept of a novelist is not a topic being covered well throughout that article. I started a draft at Draft:Novelist with some sourcing, and the beginnings of an outline, and would appreciate help writing and researching the topic. Thanks much, Sadads (talk) 21:24, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

A Contract with God Peer Review request
The article for Will Eisner's graphic novel A Contract with God has recently become a Good Article. I'm planning on nominating it as a Featured Article Candidate and would appreciate any feedback to help it get there. The Peer Review is here, so please stop by! Thanks, Curly Turkey (gobble) 08:20, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Archived some threads
I've archived some inactive threads to subsections which were notifications about discussions that have since been closed. &mdash; Cirt (talk) 04:10, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

Invitation to User Study
Would you be interested in participating in a user study? We are a team at University of Washington studying methods for finding collaborators within a Wikipedia community. We are looking for volunteers to evaluate a new visualization tool. All you need to do is to prepare for your laptop/desktop, web camera, and speaker for video communication with Google Hangout. We will provide you with a Amazon gift card in appreciation of your time and participation. For more information about this study, please visit our wiki page (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Finding_a_Collaborator). If you would like to participate in our user study, please send me a message at Wkmaster (talk) 20:24, 13 February 2014 (UTC).

Popular pages tool update
As of January, the popular pages tool has moved from the Toolserver to Wikimedia Tool Labs. The code has changed significantly from the Toolserver version, but users should notice few differences. Please take a moment to look over your project's list for any anomalies, such as pages that you expect to see that are missing or pages that seem to have more views than expected. Note that unlike other tools, this tool aggregates all views from redirects, which means it will typically have higher numbers. (For January 2014 specifically, 35 hours of data is missing from the WMF data, which was approximated from other dates. For most articles, this should yield a more accurate number. However, a few articles, like ones featured on the Main Page, may be off).

Web tools, to replace the ones at ~alexz/pop, will become available over the next few weeks at popularpages. All of the historical data (back to July 2009 for some projects) has been copied over. The tool to view historical data is currently partially available (assessment data and a few projects may not be available at the moment). The tool to add new projects to the bot's list is also available now (editing the configuration of current projects coming soon). Unlike the previous tool, all changes will be effective immediately. OAuth is used to authenticate users, allowing only regular users to make changes to prevent abuse. A visible history of configuration additions and changes is coming soon. Once tools become fully available, their toolserver versions will redirect to Labs.

If you have any questions, want to report any bugs, or there are any features you would like to see that aren't currently available on the Toolserver tools, see the updated FAQ or contact me on my talk page. Mr.Z-bot (talk) (for Mr.Z-man ) 05:19, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Fight Club (novel) is at GAR
Fight Club (novel), an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Tezero (talk) 06:00, 17 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I've delisted the article as my concerns, such as the article's poor grammar, lack of sourcing, unformatted references, and poor organization were not addressed. Sorry. Tezero (talk) 22:11, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Portal:Literature at Featured portal candidates
This is a message to inform you that Portal:Literature (promoted to Featured Portal in 2006, delisted in mid-2013) is currently being considered for relisting as a Featured Portal at Featured_portal_candidates. If you have any questions or comments, or would like to offer your support or voice your opposition, I encourage you to do so there. The FPO criteria can be found at Featured portal criteria. Thank you, Sᴠᴇɴ Mᴀɴɢᴜᴀʀᴅ   Wha?  07:50, 2 March 2014 (UTC)

Task Force: Dune
Hello all.

After some discussion at Talk:Dune (novel), I wondered if there would be support for a Task Force on the Dune universe? To paraphrase User:Sadads, there would be about 600-700 pages in total. Need the support of a fair handful of editors before it would go ahead to prevent it going stale.

Any thoughts? --S.G.(GH) ping! 10:49, 3 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I would definitely be a part of any organized effort in this regard! &mdash; TAnthonyTalk 03:19, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Figured you would, glad to hear that you are game :) Do you know anyone else that would be interested? Do we have any other editors that have frequently worked in that area? is trying to get together a critical mass of people to make sure that it actually does things, instead of being a vacant lot like other WikiProjects/Task forces (I could imagine some really good work, creating something like a Dune portal, etc). Its been a while since I did anything with Herbert, and my current level of commitments wouldn't make me much use, except in building the taskforce infrastructure (tagging with AWB, refining categories, etc.) Sadads (talk) 04:12, 5 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I was on a Wikipedia hiatus for awhile and it seems like the handful of other editors who used to be most involved in Dune-related articles (like, and ) are either inactive or not monitoring those pages these days. And no one really comes to mind as far as recent activity goes. Maybe a notice at the forthcoming Mentats of Dune and other more recent related works will get some attention.&mdash; TAnthonyTalk 23:45, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Sátántangó move request
This discussion may be of interest. --Rob Sinden (talk) 08:54, 7 March 2014 (UTC)

Categories for discussion/Log/2014 March 4
There is a conversation going on at Categories for discussion/Log/2014 March 4 about the gendered categorization of author pages (particularly whether to use "men" or "male" writers). Further voices would be appreciated to develop a consensus on the standard amongst writer articles, Sadads (talk) 19:20, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Deborah Burrows
Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australian literature seems inactive so I'm asking this here: Is the Australian novelist, lawyer, and lecturer Debora Burrows (A Stranger in my Street, Taking a Chance) notable enough to meet Wikipedia's notability guidelines?

Please add your comments near the top of Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Deborah Burrows, using the form
 * [put a blank line here]
 * [put a blank line here]
 * [put a blank line here]

Please place it below any similar comments but above the line. Thanks. davidwr/ (talk)/(contribs)  18:39, 8 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I have boldly moved the page live, it demonstrates more notability than a number of other articles of this type/genre and provides sufficient material to help readers understand her relative importance, Sadads (talk) 17:35, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, in general, those books just barely scrape by in notability, because of the awards, and could be best discussed within the actual author page. Sadads (talk) 18:40, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I did the remaining "manual work" described [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Reviewing_instructions&oldid=560431901 here] that is normally done by the AFC Helper Script described at WikiProject Articles for creation/Reviewing instructions. Consider enabling this "gadget" in your preferences, it greatly reduces the likelihood that steps will be overlooked.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  19:05, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Cool beans! I never really use, or travel around AFC, so that was mostly a procedural oversight on my part. Thank you for all the great work you do there! With articles like that, you all definitely help improve the overall quality of some of the new content coming from users! Sadads (talk) 19:14, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Any experienced editor in good standing who has a good handle on what WP:N, WP:V, WP:RS, and WP:IS really mean in practice and are good judges of whether an article is likely to be nominated and deleted through WP:AFD is welcome to enable the AFC Helper Script gadget in their preferences and join us at WP:WikiProject Articles for creation and start reviewing articles that are in the list found at CAT:PEND. Less experienced editors in good standing are also welcome to join the fun but it would be best if they didn't actually accept or decline submissions except in blatantly obvious cases (e.g. even inexperienced editors are welcome to request speedy-deletion of blatant un-fixable copyright violations).  They are more than welcome to comment on submissions - such comments are very useful in "unclear" cases such as (in my mind at least) Deborah Burrows was.  Brand-new editors are welcome to watch but this WikiProject requires some degree of knowledge of "the way we do things" that brand-new editors probably don't have.  davidwr/  (talk)/(contribs)  19:25, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Wena Poon
Contributors to this WikiProject are invited to comment at Talk:Wena Poon. The article appears to be an autobiography by a novelist. Several of the novelist's works have been reviewed in various publications. Cnilep (talk) 04:24, 13 March 2014 (UTC)

Sourcing help for Ishmael series
Having written dozens of FAs for other projects, I am seriously considering revamping the articles for Daniel Quinn's Ishmael series: Ishmael, The Story of B, My Ishmael, and Beyond Civilization. The hope would be to get them all through FAC. However, I have never written an article that falls under this WikiProject, so I made need help with sourcing. So far, I have found brief reviews at Publishers Weekly and Kirkus. Daniel Quinn himself also pointed me to a book called Roadmap to Sustainability: Interpreting Daniel Quinn by Doug Brown on Lulu, but I'm not sure if I can cite it. If so, it may end up being the most comprehensive examination of the philosophy promoted by these works. Quinn also pointed me to A Companion for Ishmael, a document geared towards helping teachers use the material in schools. Lastly, he sent me a master's thesis for a student at The City University of New York which seems to cite his work extensively, but I strongly doubt it could be used.

Otherwise I can work from the website, ishmael.org. By searching Google Books, I have found many environmental or religious books that make mention of these books, particularly the first in the series. However, most that I looked at simply reiterated the contents of the books (or their interpretations) and then wove them into their own thesis. For the sake of comprehensiveness, I'm not sure if these will need to be mentioned.

If what I've listed is all that's available, and if most of it isn't usable, then I may need guidance on how to organize what may end up being very short but comprehensive FACs.

If anyone knows of other sources that could provide more in-depth analysis, please let me know. Given how popular these books have been and how schools and universities use them in their teaching, I'd think that someone would have written a professional analysis. The problem is that I'm not sure how to find such sources, if they exist. (And FYI, I've already tried everything on your Resources help page.) –  Maky  « talk » 01:16, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I would always recommend using Google Scholar citations for each of the books + interlibrary loan or Google Books. There are a ton of pieces that cite Ishmael (novel) via http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=12942020199090870069&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=en the work. For example, found this interesting discussion on the radical nature of the novel's environmental politics (ecocriticism seems to be much of the scholarship I am seeing). This article] in ISLE (journal) also has a promising footnote pointing to another work. The Google scholar search should do a good job for the stylistic, thematic and other influences sections. I find that most of the style and theme discussions I do for novels articles come from small mentions in passing in larger conversations. If you need any advice on finding or accessing works, I have access to most of the major scholarly databases and a responsive interlibrary loan team. Email me about those if you need them. Also, I am beginning to get a good feel for ecocriticism, so can point in the direction of various conversations or resources if you need. Other routes for research include searching EBSCOHost for reviews in newspapers/magazines at your local library or the MLA Bibliography, which any good university library has access to. Also, try searching prominent newspaper and magazine titles plus the title of the book on google (New York Times, Washington, Salon, Atlantic, Guardian, all have great book reviews). For example, I found this from the New York Times for discussion of the publishing context, Sadads (talk) 19:25, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Realized I didn't do a ping:, Sadads (talk) 20:24, 11 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks,, for posting this. I'll be slowly working through this and compiling notes over the coming days or weeks.  Obviously the first book is cited a lot, but I'm not sure how much I'll find for the latter books.  Hopefully there will be enough to work with.  (Btw, how did you search Google Scholar for a reference the way you did for Ishmael?)  My only concerns is that the sources may note the exact same thematic elements, possibly giving me enough for only a few sentences.  I guess we'll see.  Feel free to continue posting suggestions, either here or on the talk pages for the articles.  –  Maky  « talk » 04:17, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * For finding what cites the original work: when you search for the original work, and find the work you are looking for, there is a "Cited by #" underneath the citation and brief preview of the source. If you click on that link, it gives you the results, and you can search within those works by clicking the checkbox at the beginning of the search results. As for noting the same thematic concepts: all the better for demonstrating a consensus; also you might find that they treat different elements of the narrative or different features of the story as part of that theme, and can be used to flesh out setting, background, and character sections. Also, I often find that they critics apply different critical theories or concepts to demonstrate similar things, which should strengthen the breadth of your discussion (and wikilinks to related concepts in Wikipedia). I bet you will find most of the discussions about ecocriticism and/or environmental spirituality, but they will be addressing different concepts within ecocritical approaches. Its also a good idea to keep track of what other books the critics compare the text to, Sadads (talk) 14:12, 13 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Ach... so used to watchlisting this page, I keep forgetting to . Hope it wasn't put off for too long, Sadads (talk) 00:38, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * No,, you're good. A bunch of stuff popped up in my personal life and I have neither the time nor motivation to work on this at the moment.  I hope to resume soon.  In the meantime, I would welcome your thoughts on the sources I mentioned at the beginning of the thread. –  Maky  « talk » 08:25, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Yep, everything looks good for basic sources as a foundation. However, you will have to do the basic judgement call that goes with any source use "How reliable and insightful are these works?" I would err on the side of using the Masters Thesis and Brown work as supplements to fill in the gaps of conversations in other sources, since neither comes from a peer reviewed publishing context (if some of my peers in my Masters program are a good model, there are Masters Thesis that aren't always as deep in the literature as you would hope). Weighing too heavily on either of the sources would unbalance the commentary away from works with a higher editorial standard. The ishmael.org website might be a strong contextual piece, talking about the book's use in teaching. However, it doesn't highlight the concerns important for strong articles about novels. Sadads (talk) 14:12, 20 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Also, I hope the things in personal life resolve themselves. I too have had a rough 6-8 months of grad school and other life concerns, so I completely empathize with the need to take a break and lack of motivation. I keep finding myself at mental roadblocks, where I know how to do things, but the focus and time required to do them are a bit hard to come by. Luckily our wonderful work on this reference source, is always a WP:Work in progress anyway. Best of luck, hope to see you around, Sadads (talk) 15:15, 20 March 2014 (UTC)

Infobox book request for comment
In August last year, all publication data in infobox book was merged into one new published parameter. Work began on migrating existing uses to the new format, until questions were raised about the effect this had on data granularity.

Any input and suggestions on a proposed fix, which keeps the new one-line per edition formatting while providing full data granularity would be much appreciated (centralised discussion here). Thanks. ‑‑ xensyria T 23:52, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

How We Are Hungry
I've got a dispute with Koavf over the article How We Are Hungry, which is about a novel by Dave Eggers. Koavf apparently feels that it is desirable to include a picture of Eggers in the article on the grounds that it adds "context." I have tried to explain to Koavf that a picture of a book's author explains nothing about the book itself and serves no useful purpose, but he has simply ignored me. Outside comments on the dispute would be welcome. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 22:22, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

Portal:Children's literature for Featured Portal candidacy

 * 1) Portal:Children's literature
 * 2) Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Children's literature

I've nominated Portal:Children's literature to be considered for Featured Portal quality.

This was a joint quality improvement collaboration between myself and User:Wadewitz.

Participation would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Children's literature.

Thank you for your time,

&mdash; Cirt (talk) 17:21, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid GAR
Diary of a Wimpy Kid, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for an individual good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Lucia Black (talk) 20:18, 13 May 2014 (UTC)

About Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2
Hello all!

I was hoping to get this up as a WP:DYK when I started it, but I'm hopelessly caught up with my obsession for adding references for every phrase and punctuation mark. (As obsessions go, it's not such a bad one to have, but anyways.)

Could people with better article writing skills possibly help me out here?

I was thinking that the DYK "hook" could be about the character names: "Creel Zmundzinksi, Cheri Wham, Frank Frink, Sedley Alwen", "quirky characters with names to match - Creel Zmundzinski, Orion Horncrackle, the Rev. Jefford J. Pecker, Sage Brawls, Fiesta Punch, Gilbert Wolfscale and many, many more", and so on.

Your thoughts? Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 13:45, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Wikiproject Novels At Wikimania 2014
Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to: Project leaflets Adikhajuria (talk) 17:00, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Naming conventions for bibliographies
I have proposed naming conventions for bibliographies here. Any constructive comments you are willing to provide there would be greatly appreciated. Neelix (talk) 14:39, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Creating a new article about The Manny separate from author Holly Peterson's page
Hello. I would be in favour of creating a new article for The Manny separate from author Holly Peterson's page. However, I have not read the novel, so it may be better if it were started by someone who has. Has anyone here read it yet?Zigzig20s (talk) 10:11, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * You are very unlikely to find one of our contributors who has read it (the active WP:Novels editors probably number somewhere in the teens or twenties). I would recommend using book reviews to piece together most of the material of interest to the article (that is the model I usually follow with articles like The_Heidenmauer, Sadads (talk) 14:40, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I may read it, if I can find it in Australia. (I used to be active on WP Novels btw.) Do you know what exactly is required for the article to be firmly notable? I don't want it to get deleted if I spend time working on it. It is a NYTimes bestseller--would that be sufficient?Zigzig20s (talk) 14:51, 5 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry, didn't recognize your name :P We often have people active in content area, without seeing them around. Articles usually stick if you prove 3-4 reviews out of sources other than the pay-per-review sites (like Kirkus). Anything that was a best seller and/or has significant critical coverage should have no problems meeting notability, Sadads (talk) 15:14, 5 July 2014 (UTC)

Margaret George
I just nominated the article on the historical novelists Margaret George for deletion. Participation from people in this group would probably help.John Pack Lambert (talk) 17:32, 10 July 2014 (UTC)

Use author name when other novel exists?

 * Run (novel), a novel by Ann Patchett
 * The Run, a novel by Stuart Woods
 * Run, a novel by Eric Walters
 * Run, a novel in the Fearless series by Francine Pascal
 * ...just looking at this, random, dab page. Whom are we benefiting by "(novel)" when other novels exist? In ictu oculi (talk) 04:25, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Le Grand Meaulnes renamed
Le Grand Meaulnes by Alain-Fournier has been renamed to The Wanderer, is this action justified? Just thought I'd flag it up as I know it only by its orginal name, but I may be in the minority...GrahamHardy (talk) 09:52, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks as though it's now been renamed back, so I am happy GrahamHardy (talk) 11:11, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

File:The480Novel.jpg listed for deletion, please help rescue it !
File:The480Novel.jpg, has been listed at Files for deletion. Please see the to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. Stefan2 (talk) 12:49, 21 May 2014 (UTC) Please help save the above image ! GrahamHardy (talk) 13:03, 21 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Image saved GrahamHardy (talk) 11:12, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Swordswoman Riding West on White Horse
I am proposing a rename on this article; join in discussion. --George Ho (talk) 19:37, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Literature Online Access
Hello all! At The Wikipedia Library we are currently in talks with Proquest's Literature Online and Early English Books Online to get Wikipedians access to those databases/collections. They asked us for a bit of information about how Wikipedians might use the research materials, asking us to do a brief survey. It would be extremely helpful if users could fill out the following Google form: Proquest - Literature Online / Wikipedia Library user interest survey. Afterward, while waiting for us to finish talks on Literature Online, we would like to invite editors to apply for already established available partnerships, listed at our partners page. Thank you for all of your help! Sadads (talk) 16:44, 28 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Just reminding everyone that this might be of interest! Calling all survey takers, Sadads (talk) 20:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Renaming more Jin Yong novels
Here are more related discussions: Talk:Other Tales of the Flying Fox and Talk:Blade-dance of the Two Lovers. --George Ho (talk) 05:11, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Study of readers of 50 Shades
is a study of female readers 18-24 of the 50 Shades trilogy. I was wondering how this should be integrated into the article(s). -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 05:42, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Talk:Bridge to Terabithia (novel)
This is overdue; join in discussion before the talk is over. --George Ho (talk) 05:29, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

Fictional character disambiguation
Please join the discussion regarding whether proper disambiguation is Character (character), Character (fictional character), Character (Show name character), Character (Show name) at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Film.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

List of episodes in Mason & Dixon
I'm planning to merge or redirect this page into Mason & Dixon, but I don't know which portions are important to summarize. Can anyone help me on inserting Plot Summary into the parent article? --George Ho (talk) 16:37, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

""
The usage of is under discussion, see talk:epic poetry -- 70.51.46.146 (talk) 05:34, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Notice re: RFC: Are fictional characters people or objects?
There is an RfC concerning whether it is appropriate to use pronouns such as "he", "she", or "who" when referring to fictional characters in out-of-universe portions of articles. The discussion is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Comics Curly Turkey ⚞¡gobble!⚟ 22:46, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal
Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WP:VG comments subpages cleanup
Hi, there is currently a discussion taking place at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games regarding whether it would be acceptable to permanently shift all comments subpages associated with WP:VG articles into talk. This shift would follow the recommended approach given at WP:DCS. The WikiProject Novels articles that would be affected by this action are these: If you have objections related specifically to WikiProject Novels' (or specifically the Chronicles of Narnia Taskforce's) use of these subpages, please make this clear at the discussion so that other unrelated talk pages can be cleaned up where appropriate. Thank you. -Thibbs (talk) 15:56, 16 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Harry Gregson-Williams

Improving User:Zigzig20s/My Policeman
Hello. I have created User:Zigzig20s/My Policeman, and I was wondering if you thought it could be moved to a proper article as a stub, and/or how it could be expanded/improved. I could add a section with a listof characters. I could also flesh out the plot summary a little bit. There have been other reviews in The Times and other publications, but I don't have access to them. Are any of you able to find them? Thank you.Zigzig20s (talk) 22:39, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * It is suitable for a mainspace article. In its current form it would be rated as a stub. maclean (talk) 19:45, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

Organize a Light Novel task force?
Hi. I'm wondering if its possible to organize yet another task force or a WikiProject to improve Wikipedia's coverage of topics related to light novels, as I did with WP:GHIBLI. The task force will be a descendant of WP:ANIME and WP:NOVEL and WP:JAPAN. I've started it in my sandbox. Thoughts or objections? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:31, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

As a follow-up, I've already started the project here. If anyone wants to help with the project, please do so. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 05:38, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Novel and other keyword articles
Hours ago one anonymous visitor remarked at length concerning 'novel' and 'romance'; novel as content genre and as form genre; etc (my crude summary). See Talk:Novel.

I replied at length but in general regarding terms such as 'children's writer' and many others as well as 'novel' that appear routinely, and commonly linked, in the lead sections and infoboxes of writer and book articles. In closing, I asked:
 * "For instance, should this page [ novel ] include a section, or a lead observation, or nothing at all that describes or explains how EN.Wikipedia --especially its WikiProject WP:NOVELS, i suppose in this case-- uses the terms novel and novelist in descriptions and labels?
 * "Let me extend these remarks to WP:CATegories, the subcats of in this case. If articles are cat under {Novels} in a broad sense, should this page somehow feature that broad sense?"

--P64 (talk) 18:19, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I didn't fully understand the original criticism, but Is the root problem here a confusion between the term romance as defined, say by Walter Scott, or more recently by Margaret Anne Doody, and a recent genre fiction usage for a "love story" (see lede: Romance, as defined here, should not be confused with the genre fiction love romance or romance novel. Other European languages do not distinguish between romance and novel: "a novel is le roman, der Roman, il romanzo." ). See also my comments on the Novel Talk page, re the problem with this article.Rwood128 (talk) 17:52, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps we aren't really discussing two distinct types of romance and that the only real difference between say Wuthering Heights and a genre fiction romance is that WH is better written and has better developed characters.

Also maybe the Wuthering Heights type of romance needs to be better defined as a sub-genre of the novel, from which the different kinds of genre fiction romance have subsequently evolved --and not just the love romance. At the moment romance, as defined by Scott and Doody, may be treated in the Novel article too much as a parallel genre and this has led to the confusion voiced recently? I'd suggest that while a romance is always also a novel, a novel isn't always a romance. Rwood128 (talk) 21:14, 8 January 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!


Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Donations
Hello all, there are two recent donations available through The Wikipedia Library that are relevant to this project: WP:Women Writers Online and WP:Project MUSE. Please sign up for the accounts if you think you can use them. Enjoy! Nikkimaria (talk) 04:15, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Category definition
The instructions for child characters in literature state "As with real children, the term refers to characters who are understood to be biologically and/or chronologically under age 21 during the course of a film in which they are depicted." The age of 20 is far beyond the age of childhood for science and numerous religions. The sourced info in our article child states "is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty" and the sourced info in the puberty article gives the ages of 10-11 for girls and 11-12 for boys. I propose that we change the wording in the instructions to give the age of 12 as the cutoff for this category. Now if we want to use 13 or even 14 to error on the side of caution that would be okay but IMO this cat should not be in articles where the young characters are older than 14. Any and all input on this will be appreciated. When a consensus is reached we should add the new instructions to the cat page and to any appropriate MOS's. I am cross posting this at the books project as well. If there is a better place to centralize this discussion let me know and I will move it there. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 20:15, 26 January 2015 (UTC)
 * True, but. One follow-up question and some observations:


 * 1) Do you suggest a new category  or ?
 * 2) Almost all of our  were teens/YA when they wrote their published works. Right?
 * 3) Our  are defined comprehensively, with  a subset. Same for . Same for .  is simply comprehensive --without any teen/YA subset. Offhand I suppose that is generally true under  where the category tree is too big to examine now. At  we imply that  are distinct, but too many awards are comprehensive or multiple regarding audience ages.
 * --P64 (talk) 21:29, 12 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the reply. The reason I brought it here was due to child cats being added to A Clockwork Orange related articles. I was referring to fictional characters so some of your points go beyond that situation. Here is a link to the discussion at the film project about this Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Archive 55. Of course this project is not obligated to follow anything that was decided there. I do like the "child" "teen" separation. I would avoid "young adult" as that is such a subjective term but that is just me. If there is reliable sourcing for it in an article then I guess it might be part of the mix. I guess this is just a "get the conversation started" kind of thing. Anything that this project decides will be fine with me. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 22:02, 12 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I realize that this is splayed out over several projects . Please feel free to move this to wherever you feel is best for centralizing things. Thanks again for picking up on this. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 22:07, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
 * Everyone: I posted notice of MarnetteD's double-post to a third project at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Children's literature and notice of both that action and my reply here at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Books (where the same six weeks have passed with no reply). In the latter location I added that WP Children's lit may be the best place in principle, but not in practice because that project is nearly dead. --P64 (talk) 22:54, 12 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I'm not in favour of having a separate teen category. There is already a recognized problem with characters maturing to adulthood during the book or book series; having to sort out exactly how old a young character is and whether he or she is more "child" or more "teen" on the whole – it would just be silly. Child characters in literature isn't even a very big category. I don't like the wording as it is, though. It should be simpler, even if it means people interpret it variably. Robina Fox (talk) 06:19, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

Southern Cross (wordless novel) Featured Article Candidate
I've nominated the article for Laurence Hyde's wordless novel, Southern Cross (wordless novel), as a Featured Article Candidate. Please contribute to the review here. Thanks! Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 12:03, 11 April 2015 (UTC)

Italics for series titles
Please see  for a discussion on the use of italics for titles of book series. —sroc &#x1F4AC; 05:10, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

R Is for Rocket listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for R Is for Rocket to be moved to R is for Rocket. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 22:49, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Goat Days listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for Goat Days to be moved to Aadujeevitham. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:18, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

God's Mischief listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for God's Mischief to be moved to Daivathinte Vikrithikal (novel). This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Kesavan's Lamentations listed at Requested moves
A requested move discussion has been initiated for Kesavan's Lamentations to be moved to Kesavante Vilapangal. This page is of interest to this WikiProject and interested members may want to participate in the discussion here. —RMCD bot 23:32, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Announcing a new WikiProject for Romance
I've started a new WikiProject for romance and thought I'd see if anyone was interested in joining? Since the scope encompasses more than books< I didn't feel like it could be solely a task force here or on WP:WPBIO. Anyway, I've got the bones set up and will keep working on getting guidelines and tasks hammered out. I'll definitely be pointing people here for the parts that overlap with this WP. Looking forward to getting it rolling and recruiting any interested members! :) plange (talk) 02:34, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Discussion on Work dates in Navboxes
Important conversation going on at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Templates: please join, 15:29, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

Definition of noir
Noir fiction starts with the (to me) surprising diktat that
 * Noir fiction (or roman noir) is a literary genre closely related to hardboiled genre with a distinction that the protagonist is not a detective, but instead either a victim, a suspect, or a perpetrator. I'm not sure who uses this definition, but it doesn't seem to be the readers. See Talk:Noir fiction. Please me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 04:03, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

IP user and plot summaries
The section heading is from WP Film (which i visited for the first time last hour) where it originated as far as I know three months ago, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film/Archive 56.

Six weeks ago, evidently the same person (I posted what follows at WP Film talk too): Contributions by user 2600:1006:B107:50A:B54A:54DC:4A42:DE45 covers a single 200-minute session 2015-05-10 quite destructive in some cases. The big changes reported in red primarily concern plot summaries. Some of the articles have not been changed subsequently (labeled "current" in that report) and I suppose that some others of the massive deletions remain intact. The High King is a novel I know and I reverted its change 15 hours go. (end verbatim cross-post)

Commonly the summaries such as "cut the plot to the perfect size" cover simple deletion of whole paragraphs, as much as 80% of the bloated plot summary in one consecutive swath from its middle. --P64 (talk) 15:20, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Probably I should have linked my companion notice to the current WP:FILM talk, namely WT:FILM. Later that day, User: NinjaRobotPirate replied there in part, "Update: I went through and reverted his edits." --P64 (talk) 15:53, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

GA review
The Sword of Shannara, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by N2e (talk • contribs) 20:25, 3 February 2014‎ (UTC)

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project
A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest (if such a copyvio is present). --Lucas559 (talk) 15:36, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

Percy Jackson Task-force scope change
Just informing all here that the Percy Jackson Task-force, under this wikiproject, is most likely about to change its scope to include all the works of children's author Rick Riordan (rather than just his two series about the character Percy Jackson). It may also be changing its name to the "Rick Riordan Task-force", but this is far from certain. I will post updates here as the changes are finalized. 2ReinreB2 (talk) 03:25, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Expanding WP:NOTPLOT
Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 (talk) 12:15, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

RM: The Notebook (2004 film) → The Notebook
An RM that affects this project is currently taking place. Interested editors may wish to discuss here. Chase (talk &#124; contributions) 17:38, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Are personal pronouns (including "who") to be avoided for fictional characters?
Please take part in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 23:09, 19 August 2015 (UTC)
 * The consensus here is coming out pretty overwhelmingly "No, in fact they're standard." The only issue is whether the MoS or MOS:FICTION should state this explicitly or whether it's so obvious and the problem so minor that it can be expected to go without saying. Contributions still welcome. If you know of any edit wars or other conflicts that have arisen because someone wanted to change "a character who" to "a character, which/that," then please contribute.  If you know that this problem is rare, please come say so. Darkfrog24 (talk) 19:27, 21 August 2015 (UTC)


 * A more neutral notice than the above: Just FYI, this non-neutrally set up reductio ad absurdum RfC has actually moved on to a more serious discussion about whether MoS should advise rewording to avoid particularly confusing uses of "who[m]" and "[s]he" when writing about fictional characters in an out-of-universe way (e.g. as intellectual property). Further input from projects that actually write encyclopedically about fictional characters a lot would be useful.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  03:51, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

RfC on unusual prepositions in titles
Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Capital letters. — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:43, 22 August 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X pilot testing
Hello WikiProject Novels!

Based on the recommendation of Sadads, I am happy to announce that WikiProject X has selected this project as part of a round of pilot testing.

The goal of WikiProject X is to improve the WikiProject experience through research, design, and experimentation. On that basis, we've prepared a new WikiProject design template based around modules. These modules include features you are already familiar with, such as article alerts, but also new features such as automated work lists, a feed of discussions taking place on the 33,179 talk pages tagged by WikiProject Novels, and a new member profile system. To see what this new setup looks like, you can browse the first round of pilot tests: WikiProject Cannabis, WikiProject Evolutionary biology, WikiProject Ghana, WikiProject Hampshire, WikiProject Women's Health.

If there is consensus among the participants of this WikiProject, I will proceed with implementing this interface based on the current contents of WikiProject Novels. Please let me know if you have any questions or requests. Harej (talk) 23:00, 1 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Support as nominator, I am very much in support of this: I have recently (in the last couple years), become really busy, and can't spend as much time as I used to supporting article assessment, categories, etc. I would love to be able to have the WikiProject X infrastructure to strengthen and multiply my impact when I am around. (We also have quite a bit of outdated and historical project pages, that could use a good reorg, so as not to confuse new editors). Sadads (talk) 00:08, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Aubrey-Maturin novels - planned improvement project
A few of us are planning an informal project to improve and clean up the articles on the Aubrey-Maturin novels. We'll take the articles one by one, and work through slowly but methodically. Before we start, it would be useful to discuss generally what needs to be done and where we hope to end up. If you are interested, please have a look at Talk:Master and Commander. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 15:12, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

The Dark Fields RM
Any comments at Talk:The Dark Fields from members of this project would be appreciated. Thanks, Jenks24 (talk) 09:45, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Featured portal candidate: Halo
I have created a new portal at Portal:Halo and nominated it for featured portal status at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Halo. Comments will be much appreciated. Thank you. sst✈discuss 07:05, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Changes to Infobox bibliography
I am proposing some changes to Infobox bibliography. See the discussion at Template talk:Infobox bibliography. RockMagnetist(talk) 01:26, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Request for comment: WP:PJTF rename
The Percy Jackson Task-force is attempting to reach a consensus about changing its name to the "Rick Riordan Task-force". In brief, the proposal is that this new name will generalize its scope, so that it can stay alive and healthy for years to come. Please read and comment on the discussion here. Your advice is appreciated. -- 2ReinreB2 (talk) 03:11, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Update: The project has reached a level of consensus significant enough that it will go through with the move within the next week. Thank all at WP:NV for your support. -- 2ReinreB2 (talk) 23:10, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Navboxes and WP:BIDIRECTIONAL
Please see the RfC at Wikipedia talk:Categories, lists, and navigation templates regarding consensus for WP:BIDIRECTIONAL. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:10, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to create an infobox for fictional conflicts
I am proposing that an infobox be created for fictional conflicts, as currently many articles on fictional conflicts, as well as a real-time virtual battle, use Template:Infobox military conflict. To centralize discussion, please reply, if interested, at the infobox talk page I've linked to here.-- 3family6 ( Talk to me   &#124;  See what I have done  ) 05:40, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

International titles of books
I have been doing a bit of copy editing on Agatha Christie book pages and have noticed a few oddities in the International titles sections of those pages. 1) How literal should the translations be? For example, on Mrs McGinty's Dead we see "French: Mrs McGinty est morte (Mrs McGinty is Dead)" and "Portuguese (Portugal): ... Mrs McGinty está Morta (Mrs McGinty's Dead)". Both of those would literally translate as "Mrs McGinty is Dead", but there is no difference in meaning between that and "Mrs McGinty's Dead". Should we leave them as the literal translations or not? 2) How should we style the translation of the title? Do we use the language in question's standards for title capitalization or the English standards? For example, on Curtain (novel) we see "French : Poirot quitte la scène (Poirot leaves the stage/Poirot gives up the stage)" using the French capitalization rules for the English translation and "Hungarian: Függöny (Poirot utolsó esete) (Curtain [Poirot's Last Case])" using the English rules for the English translation.--Khajidha (talk) 14:49, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
 * As this is the English language Wikipedia and these are novels written in the English language, the international translations are irrelevant. Section should be removed.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:05, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Had thought of that myself, but figured that consensus was to have them. I was just trying to make them not look a mess. If the consensus is get rid of them, I have no problem slashing and burning them myself. --Khajidha (talk) 15:10, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I can't find a specific reference in Manual of Style/Novels, and WikiProject Novels/ArticleTemplate doesn't include this section. I think it's akin to the TV series not showing international broadcasts for non English language countries, per WP:TVINTL.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:22, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm making a start. The only exception I can think of so far is And Then There Were None as it is of interest how different countries dealt with the racist language.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:36, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Although, even that one could probably be cleaned up and tightened up a little. I've started with Sleeping Murder and begun working backwards chronologically. I have gotten as far back as Sparkling Cyanide. After the novels, I will move on to the short story collections and so on. --Khajidha (talk) 15:49, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I started forward chronologically, so we'll probably meet in the middle somewhere! Any truly notable translations can be mentioned in the "Publication history" sections.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:56, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I think we've done them all now. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:33, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

The work of so many Agatha Christie editors undone in an hour or two by the decision of two editors. One of the intriguing aspects of her novels is their popularity worldwide in English and in translation. Sales of her novels and short stories are so very high because of the worldwide appeal when they were written and continuing now, decades after the author died. Such a big decision made by two editors and it seems to be based on the titles being re-translated to English, a rather minor issue. My concern about the titles was no editor gave an ISBN for any title, though the books are reprinted in the era of ISBN. A full web site is compiled with the titles of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin series in various languages and linked to that article in the Publication History section (at this moment it is Ref number 27), as an example of a better treatment of showing the appeal of a novel written initially in English, to people who speak other languages. The Cadfael Chronicles, a series of 21 novels by Ellis Peters, were often translated to other languages. The Publication history section of each novel shows the titles in other languages, with ISBN or at least publisher, again showing the reach of the series, novel by novel. All three examples before us are British authors with an appeal beyond Britain, beyond the English speaking nations, to people who do not speak English, not reading the English version as a way to learn English. I think that is noteworthy, as not many authors have that appeal. Before you toss out all that work collecting the titles, you might consider collecting them in another Wikipedia article showing the extent of the worldwide popularity, and letting those who have mystery novels in languages other than English to organize them and find ISBN if they exist. Or open up the topic on the Talk page of each novel. Here is a third editor with a different view. I reverted the first article I encountered with the section blanking by Khajidha, expressing my views then in brief. Here they are fleshed out. I will not revert, knowing you believe the discussion above to be your authority and basis to alter all the articles on her novels. It would be nice to hear other voices on this. --Prairieplant (talk) 18:13, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Isn't that what the links in the sidebar to the other language wikis are for? --Khajidha (talk) 18:37, 1 December 2015 (UTC)


 * WP:INDISCRIMINATE also applies, see also the essay WP:TOOMUCH. I don't see any problem with saying The novel has been translated into over xx languages, including... (properly sourced of course), but to list the translation to non-English titles is irrelevant.  You could do the same on every article you can think of.  Does it say on the Star Wars article that the film was released as La Guerre des Etoiles in French etc, etc?  It's simply irrelevant and unencyclopedic.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:45, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * you are being a little bit overzealous here: Listing translations makes sense in Publication history sections, but leads only need to include the number of translations--- just like there is value including lists of all of the reprints/editions of a work in a Publication history section. For some authors, even, there is a worthwhile deep conversation about the topic, for example Harry_Potter_in_translation --- similarly there are whole bodies of scholarship that look at these elements of publication history (for example, http://unsworth.unet.brandeis.edu/courses/bestsellers/ ). There is no reason not to include this information: there is just room for making sure the weight isn't too heavy in the lead. Remember, we are WP:NOTPAPER, and some authors with international popularity, need to discuss that global perspective --- which includes multilingual publishing, Sadads (talk) 16:26, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Not at all. The publication history is good for notable English-language printings, but do we really need to know the foreign language titles that The Secret of Chimneys has been translated into?  Should we add something to The Prisoner of Zenda (to pick a random example) that lists how the title is translated as Der Gefangene von Zenda in German and ゼンダ城の虜 in Japanese?  How are these translations notable or worthy of inclusion in a encyclopedia, unless the translations are controversial and have been discussed elsewhere.  And we shouldn't be encouraging this in a list form, this should be a prose discussion of the titles.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:37, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * See also WP:NOTCATALOGUE. --Rob Sinden (talk) 16:51, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * This damage has been done to articles on Agatha Christie novels, where editors have added these lists over the years I have been an editor on a constant basis. You were reverted in one of your section blankings, by an editor who put their disagreement reason in the reversion comment. Though you have so far conceded nothing to other viewpoints, I hope you see this is the sort of action to post for discussion first. Not everyone agrees with you. how will you get the count of translations if there is no list to back up the count? If you want to add the international titles of books by other authors, I say go ahead and do it. But that is a diversion from the topic at hand. The list on the left side of the article page tells one of the other versions of Wikipedia where an article was written on the same topic. It is not quite the same thing as the International titles section you have blanked. My own suggestion is to revert all your section blankings, make sure the International titles section is moved to be part of Publication history, and ask editors to include the ISBN if they can. I am amazed that you were not fascinated to learn that there are usually two Portuguese translations, one for the language spoken in Portugal and another for the patois in Brazil. Or that Iranians read her novels. In short, I agree with Sadads: overzealous.  --Prairieplant (talk) 21:32, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You get the count of translations from reliable sources about such things. Biographies and book blurbs for novelists often include such data. Considering that neither the novel MOS nor the novel Article Template covers such lists, it seems to me that there was no consensus for them to be there in the first place. Just because work has been done, doesn't mean that that work has to stay. An encyclopedic value must be demonstrated for such lists if they are to be included. The bare fact of a translated title is of no use to the understanding of the book. --Khajidha (talk) 22:24, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Neither the MOS or the template are actively updated or discussed since at least 2012: they are not firm policy documents, and it doesn't mean that there are not appropriate reasons to list the translations of works. Moreover, if the MOS and the template don't have something: it just means that they aren't considered standard: it doesn't mean that local consensus shouldn't be used to determine if we include the item. Having information about the publisher, ISBN, title of the translation and translator are all within scope -- just as having lists of editions is within scope of all of our other Publication history sections: many of English Wikipedia's readers are not English language first, so there will be general interest will be in discovery of multilingual items. Rampant removal of non-trivia sections, that don't have consensus as being extra-ordinary, seems like very poor behavior without first achieving local consensus, and is quite consistent with Robsinden's other unfortunate zeal around navboxes and other templates. We shouldn't be removing the titles; instead we should be trying to find reliable sources to cite the information -- as it is non-controversal information, that doesn't defame the work--- so that we can support our readers in effectively engaging with the works we are documenting, Sadads (talk) 23:13, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
 * "removal of non-trivia sections"? These sections are trivial. As for "discovery of multilingual items", I stand by my point about the sidebar links.--Khajidha (talk) 00:05, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Most of these books are not going to have articles in other language Wikipedia's --- simply because English is bigger and makes up ~ 1/2 of all language traffic --- and there are many language reading communities that use English Wikipedia first (for example, Afrikaans's speakers were recently the subject of a study by the WMF, and were found to not use Dutch or Afrikaans Wikipedia, but English, even if their english was very poor). Having the full publication information of translations is relevant AND encyclopedic, because it provides a common knowledge foundation for talking about the books international scope and impact. Sadads (talk) 22:25, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It really is non-encyclopedic trivial information. Lee Child's Without Fail is known as Livvakten in Swedish.  Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice is known as Żyje się tylko dwa razy in Polish.  So what.  That a novel has been translated into multiple languages and has a wide readership is pertinent information.  What it has been translated to is not, unless the translated title has been discussed elsewhere as the point of some controversy or linguistic interest.  But this is generally not the case.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 11:01, 3 December 2015 (UTC)


 * I proposed an alternative that has not received a reaction. Your points are repeated: non-English language titles are trivial in an article about an Agatha Christie novel, and I hear that, I know you have asserted this. I also hear the point strange to me that the actual proof of a translation is of no value to you, unless it was controversial. You have cited lots of WP articles, none of which apply, as I read them. Do you hear my alternative approach to draw out the ISBN, publisher, other verifying data, as a way to add substance to the lists, and allow an intro paragraph about the appeal of the novels beyond English language speakers? Other editors may have access to books listing the translated titles. Sales of Agatha Christie's books are still tallied on the official website, an aggregate for all her books, (behind the Bible and Shakespeare, over a billion, they say) so someone must be keeping track. Can you consider this proposal? --Prairieplant (talk) 13:50, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You mention Shakespeare. You will note that on the Romeo and Juliet page, it doesn't say that it is known as Romeo at Julieta in Tagalog or Romeo ir Džuljeta in Lithuanian.  With or without ISBN and publisher information, adding lists of translations to titles other than English is too much detail for the English-language Wikipedia, unless those titles themselves are particularly notable.  And even if they are notable, they should then be discussed in prose.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:21, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * And, as a post-script, I think the publication histories probably already go into a little too much detail. WP:NOTCATALOGUE.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 14:36, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The number of translations should be easily sourceable to her official website, or her publisher's website, or the blurbs on her books. Such places often have notices such as "{insert author name here} has published 37 books that have been translated into 98 different languages". That is all that is needed to show that her books have appeal beyond the English language. --Khajidha (talk) 15:18, 3 December 2015 (UTC)


 * It seems odd that the section blanking continues, citing this discussion as if it were authority to do it. Perhaps a pause is in order. There is not agreement here. --Prairieplant (talk) 06:50, 5 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The default position is removal: WP:BURDEN says "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source." Opera hat (talk) 10:24, 5 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The issue was not reliable sources, as brought up. It is whether languages other than English are worthy of discussion in an article on a novel by a British author. It seems like you gave so much weight to one side of this discussion, without addressing the underlying differences of view. It is simple enough, if we agree that other languages, translation of books by a British author to other languages is important, to begin the project to add ISBN proving the books are real, and seek out articles mentioning the translations. For Agatha Christie that is easy to do, as the official website for her claims that half or one billion, of the sales of her novels, are in translation. She is claimed to be the most-translated author, and best-selling, after the Bible and Shakespeare. These things are stated in the Wikipedia article on Agatha Christie as well. Neither the official website nor the Wikipedia article on the author include the translations of all of her writings; that seems most appropriate in the article on each novel or short story collection. It is not pleasant that one editor can undo so much effort by so many other editors in a day, and be supported for a wholly different reason than the one given. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:25, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You are assuming that such a list is appropriate for this site at all. As you've said, we already cite that she is the most-translated and best-selling author and that her translated sales number over a billion copies. Those are facts, those are relevant. How is a list of translated titles of books anymore relevant to the book page than a list of translations of the word aeroplane would be to the aeroplane article? --Khajidha (talk) 17:50, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I couldn't have put it better myself. Unless the translated title is notable in itself (a case which could be argued for Ten Little Indians) and the subject of third party coverage, then it is just trivial information that does not belong.  --Rob Sinden (talk) 09:13, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I don't have an opinion on whether these lists should be included or not. You asked why the section blanking was continuing, and I gave you a reason: unsourced content can be boldly removed without discussion. If the lists of foreign-language titles are sourced, as you suggest they can be, this discussion becomes relevant again. Opera hat (talk) 12:05, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

No need to repeat what you said above and. I understand your views. Sorry we have not made much mutual progress in this discussion. Lists are often needed to prove the total, but I am beginning to think you two would eliminate all 'List of' articles or subsections in Wikipedia. List of award winners? Translation is not my big point here, but it is yours. The list is my big point, a list of books translated from one English original. --Prairieplant (talk) 09:48, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Straw man. --Rob Sinden (talk) 10:13, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Again, what value does such a list actually have? How is "list of other language titles for book x" any different from "list of words in other languages for item y"? --Khajidha (talk) 14:12, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Because lists of translations are a standard part of the publication history of a work, and an indication of its cross-cultural penetration. Take for example the professional database for 20th-Century American Best Sellers: its a standard section in documenting its publication history: http://unsworth.unet.brandeis.edu/courses/bestsellers/search.cgi?title=The+Sum+of+All+Fears . Wikipedia book articles are about the work itself, and the work changes when it is translated into a new version of the original work (more than publication histories) --- this is an encylcopedic and scholarly topic, that should be documented with reliable sources (and quite frankly, is easy to do so with RS sources). I think we have hit a point of NOCONSENSUS, lets stop trying to make a blanket policy which can be liberally applied, but do it article by article (thus you can't just blanket remove information editors have already found useful to include). Sadads (talk) 14:36, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * That links to a professional database, this is an encyclopedia. WP:NOTCATALOGUE applies here.  Where are these translated titles discussed in a scholarly manner?  --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:06, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
 * And to draw a similar parallel, see The Sum of All Fears at IMDB.com, listing all the translated titles of that film around the world, something it would also not be appropriate to emulate at The Sum of All Fears (film). --Rob Sinden (talk) 15:29, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. In the article reverted by another editor, I moved the international titles into the Publication history section and used World Cat to find the publisher, translator if known, ISBN and year. I also deleted the title repeated in English -- that is, just the translated title is there. I wrote an introduction for the list with citations taken from the main article on Agatha Christie. Further, in the Edit version, the HTML that most editors will see (is that true, or is the visual editor still used a lot?) with a request to any editor adding a translated title to provide the necessary information in addition to the title. I think that editors who see the list now includes translator, publisher, cit, year, ISBN will follow suit. Further, I put an item in the talk page for the article. I did not find every translation at World Cat, so the notes to editors ask them to fill in the existing list as they can. If no documentation is found after some time (when more have read the article) then those unsourced translations can be handled. I think that is a reasonable way to do this. Yes, we have no consensus, so I understand that this is not a policy for articles about novels, but to be handled case by case. I read that entry for a best-seller -- all the information for a really well-written Wikipedia article on that novel. Plus an effort to explain, why is this novel a best seller? Thanks for pointing out that source. and, I read all you posted, find the last additions to be repeating your points. You might appreciate that I removed the re-translations of the foreign language titles that seemed to offend you in the start of this section, in the one article where I added source information. I hope this is clear and closed for now. I appreciate the discussion, learning much. --Prairieplant (talk) 21:42, 19 December 2015 (UTC)
 * We repeated our points because you haven't answered them. Rob mentioned several policies that indicate that this is not something Wikipedia should be doing. And you haven't shown how this is different from listing translations for article titles. --Khajidha (talk) 20:55, 20 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Although I don't believe we should list each language it has been released in the form of a table or bullet point. It is worthy of mentioning within the English Wikipedia without any issues. Uzumaki for example does exactly that without feeling like "too much". Lucia Black (talk) 15:42, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

help with Millennium (series)
This series an it's individual articles have the ability to being all GA articles, even FA. There's plenty of sources but each time I want to edit, I get lost in what I want to fix. Its mostly need of condensing some plot and reorganizing info. Lucia Black (talk) 21:45, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
 * There are many, many different articles that have the ability (and ease) to reach GA -- and FA takes a certain type of flair and expertise from an editor. However, the biggest deficit in getting articles to those levels of coverage, is the commitment of an editor to spending the time to make that happen. For the Millenium Series: there is a clear audience -- I would love to see these articles get improved. If you would like, I would be happy to do the GA and/or a Peer review to help identify gaps/feedback, etc. Sadads (talk) 15:34, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * sounds good. I'll accept any help I can get. I'm sure we can work it out. Lucia Black (talk) 15:37, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

"Hero", "Heroine" and "Heroism"
The usage and naming for Hero and and Heroine is under discussion, see talk:hero -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 05:34, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Jesse Haynes
Articles for deletion/Jesse Haynes Joeykai (talk) 04:35, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Fairy tale FAR
I have nominated Fairy tale for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Sadads (talk) 14:01, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Spirit Animals
Hi. I am slightly new to Wikipedia (about a month) and have only been working on horse articles. Recently, I have created a novel article and I might need some help. If anyone could help, please do so. Thanks. Horsegeek (talk) 23:09, 14 February 2016 (UTC)Horsegeek

Link:User:Horsegeek/Spirit Animals (novel)


 * I read your page. Totally new topic to me. For basic structure of the article, you might want a section in the article called Structure of the series or something similar to that, where you state each title and its authors, and how the books are connected -- same characters, I think. Is there a time line? Do the events in each succeeding book happen after the previous book? Or is time irrelevant in these fantasy stories. From your words so far I could not figure out the 'various authors' -- I needed to follow your links to the google book version to see what "various authors" meant. Can you explain why the series has one name and a common pool of characters but not one author as one might expect? Was it the idea of the Scholastic Press or someone else? The lead, the part that summarizes the article and shows before the table of contents box, is a summary of the article, not new information said only in the lead. The other addition might be a section on how the series was received by reviewers, assuming there are published reviews you can cite. After you have filled in some of that, you might want to enrich the references, using cite web or cite book format. For me, it was easy to learn the basics of those formats from other articles. Now if I have questions later on some unusual reference, I search for cite web or cite news or cite book template in Wikipedia. There are many articles on novel series, which you might like to see. I am not familiar with fantasy books, but The Cadfael Chronicles is about a series of historical mysteries, with a good format. Just one author, however. Patrick O'Brian wrote the Aubrey–Maturin series, historical fiction set in the Napoleonic Wars. Veronica Roth wrote the Divergent trilogy, and there is a short article about the trilogy of dystopian fiction. Some suggestions, I hope they might be useful to you.  --Prairieplant (talk) 07:57, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

(Monica Dickens novel) etc.
Spot survey: There was a recent RM to have Monica Dickens at (Monica Dickens novel). How much opposition is there to recognizable author names on all 20th Century book dabs? per (John Lennon song) not (Lennon song) etc. Most writers after Tolstoy are not recognizable as mononyms, how many editors are strongly opposed to full names? In ictu oculi (talk) 13:05, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Good question: Within the improvements to Wikidata and the Search tool, I am less inclined to make major changes to the standard practice for our articles: the summaries coming out of Wikidata (and likely going to be intergrated into Search, in hovercards, and the See Also tool in Beta), should relieve any confusion that readers have about the right one, when clicking through on links. As someone who has edited our assessed something like 1/3 of the articles in the novels scope, I can say our standard is to only use last names, and there are about 3 situations in the last 2-3 years, where I can recall disambiguating novel titles, with the same author last name. Unlike songs, which have a lot of adaptions, derivative works, and less creativity on titles, I am not convinced that we need to make so many edits, to make the disambiguator more complex. Is there central guidance for these kinds of disambiguations in policy? Sadads (talk) 13:38, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is a central guidance beyond the 5 WP:CRITERIA which also rule parenthetical parts of titles. Monica Dickens is an unusual case to some extent where a surname only is simply misleading - Dickens being a mononym for Charles Dickens. What is more common would be Smith / Jones type surnames where (Wilbur Smith novel) (Tom Rob Smith novel) (Sherwood Smith novel) (Betty Smith novel) is more WP:RECOGNIZABLE than (Smith novel) and where the author is virtually never known by surname-mononym. I believe if we were starting from zero we wouldn't be clipping names for 20th and 21st Century writers. There's also a third case where with double barreled surnames or three part names it isn't always clear where the surname break comes. I recently created The Village (Mulk Raj Anand novel) and an editor removed the first part of the name - in this case he removed the break at the currect break between given name and surname, but it's not clear that readers will always search or recognize on the correct break in something like Diana Wynne Jones ... (Wynne Jones novel or Jones novel). It's only a very small number of novel articles as you say that are even disambiguated at all. So the amount of work involved in making all consistent with other media product titles such as songs, albums, is minimal. Probably 30 minutes work for one editor. And then the whole lot would be consistent with the much larger wikipedia media categories. In ictu oculi (talk) 17:56, 19 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Thats an interesting proposal. I will have to think on it more. In the meantime, it looks like there is some guidance at Naming_conventions_(books), which reaches beyond just novels. Sadads (talk) 03:39, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Removing "needs-cover" from ~700 pages
Hi there,

Here is a list of some ~700 books that have covers, but are listed as not having covers. I'm planning on going through them semi-automatically to remove the tag, unless someone here raises issue with it.

Tim 1357  talk 23:18, 23 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a great idea. Did a spot check of ~10 articles, only found one error:, and I don't think you could have anticipated that with a machine. My request, if you do do this: is that it would be great if you used the same logic, to add infobox/cover missing criteria to the template for articles not already in the backlog. I know that there are at least several people that regularly go through, and add first edition covers and infoboxes, and it would be great to have the backlog both reduced of false positives, and queued of "work neededs". I have been doing much of assessment over the past year, and I know I haven't been very careful on checking those boxes (typically moving fast because of the backlog). Thanks for looking into this, Sadads (talk) 00:10, 24 February 2016 (UTC)


 * My long-term plan is to have something like that. I was trying to find some external database of book covers, so that I could semi-automatically upload and add covers too. But this is the lowest hanging fruit. -- Tim 1357  talk 14:50, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a great plan. You might find more support for working on the Infoboxes, by making our Infobox Book templates, draw from Wikidata. I am pretty sure there are various people trying to pilot more of the structured metadata in templates. As for databases, I would recommend Open Library: https://openlibrary.org/ . Sadads (talk) 16:29, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Also what do you think about this example. The image isn't a cover, but it is a pretty good image I think. Tim  1357  talk 14:53, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Tim1357: part of the reason we use book covers, instead of illustrations about the plot, is that we want to focus the reader on the Book as a real world cultural object, more than its fictional elements. By including an illustration of the plot in the lead, we prioritize the fictional elements, obscuring the gaps in favour of the plot. This dynamic obscures the really important bits and how we want editors to work on the articles, per WP:MOS/Novels. Does that make sense? Sadads (talk) 16:29, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree that "needs-cover" should routinely be used to mean "lacks-cover". Exceptions may be explicitly noticed and generally explained on the maintenance category page. People who work on the backlog may compile somewhere in the back pages a list of known book and series(?) articles where {inbobox book} without cover image --that is "needs-cover"=yes, if i understand correctly-- does not really "need" to be fixed. --P64 (talk) 17:47, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

P.S. Here is a gallery of the "needs-cover" articles with their respective cover images. Tim 1357  talk 19:15, 24 February 2016 (UTC)

Question about Novel covers
What should be done about novel articles which don't have or (perhaps?) don't require a front cover? For example, Sanditon, which is an unpublished book by Jane Austen, may not have a cover at all but is still notable. Ciridae (talk) 07:02, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Infobox character
You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Infobox character&. There is a request to add mother and father parameter aliases to Infobox character, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. Ahecht (TALK PAGE ) 15:12, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Birdy (novel) related move discussion
Please see Talk:Birdy (singer) In ictu oculi (talk) 17:40, 23 March 2016 (UTC)

Invitation to our April event
(To subscribe, Women in Red/Invite list. Unsubscribe, Women in Red/Opt-out list) --Rosiestep (talk) 02:05, 25 March 2016 (UTC)

Trouble finding references? The Wikipedia Library is proud to announce ...
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RfC notice: In-universe name details of fictional characters, in article leads
Please see Village pump (policy) (concerning fictional characters as article subjects generally). — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  01:23, 27 March 2016 (UTC)

"The Outsider" or "The Stranger"
I asked a question as to whether the primary name of the page describing Camus' novel should be The Stranger or The Outsider; not receiving a response on the talk page, I thought this might be a better place.


 * both titles are used in English, but WP:DIVIDEDUSE doesn't help much in how to choose between them
 * the situation is currently (13 April 2016) a little confused; the article is named "The Stranger", but the infobox is entitled "The Outsider" and the opening line "The Outsider or The Stranger (French: L’Étranger) is a novel..."
 * Google hits around three times as many for [//www.google.com/search?q=%22the+stranger%22+camus The Stranger] as [//www.google.com/search?q=%22the+outsider%22+camus The Outsider]; so perhaps (WP:GOOGLETEST) we should go with "Stranger"
 * the primary translation used for thirty years from 1942 was called The Outsider; so perhaps (WP:NCBOOKS) we should go with "Outsider"

What do you think, Team Novel(la)s? U+003F? 07:56, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Personally I would err on the side of The Stranger for the reason that it is a much more common contemporary translation -- so our major audiences for literature articles (students and folk reading the book at the moment), find it with similar ease. Also, etymologically L'etranger is more similar to "Stranger", according to Wiktionary it has French/Latin origins -- part of me is betting that the English "Outsider" is Germanic in origins -- each with similar connotations -- but the ability of someone fluent in English, to see the similarity between Stranger and L'etranger seems beneficial to me. I would actually do some flipping of how "The Outsider" is used throughout the article, and insert more information about the translation differences, into the translation and lead sections. Sadads (talk) 13:25, 13 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I'm a bit confused, as I thought the book "was called" The Outsider, and I'm more contemporary than I am 1940s. Digging into this a bit more, I think the difference may just be between the British and American markets. The first, 1946, Gilbert translation was called The Outsider in both countries. The next big translation by Laredo in 1982 seems to have been called The Stranger in America but The Outsider in Britain. And this has stuck, with a [//www.penguin.co.uk/books/182322/the-outsider/ 2013] British translation called the The Outsider. U+003F? 17:18, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Why don't we move it to the original French: L'etranger (novel)? Almost all of the sources I am consulting mention the French title, even when they refer to one of the English language titles is present in the source -- its actually common enough throughout the literature that I would call it an English language title -- and we can start the article "L'etranger, frequently translated as The Outsider' or The Stranger'", Sadads (talk) 18:36, 13 April 2016 (UTC)


 * The article, whichever title is used, needs a Publication history section, now lacking. The various titles in the US and the UK can be listed with ISBN if 1970 or later, and publisher, translator, regardless of the year published. Then some text on the different titles in English language markets. The section on translations into English is not very useful; its only source is the 1988 NY Times article for the first paragraph, and that would be better as part of a new Publication history section. The second paragraph has no source at all. The fantastic fiction web site shows both titles (I searched for The Stranger by Albert Camus Fantastic Fiction and their page came up titled The Outsider, so perhaps a British slant there), and will give a start on Publication history. Cursory look down their list makes it appear to be a US (The Stranger) / UK & Canada (The Outsider) split, but I did not study each entry. The first edition cover used is the French one, so it would seem the French title might go above that image. I never saw it titled The Outsider, here in the USA, so I would like to see it listed with that title and a publisher, a translator. When I think back, I read it in French, in a literature class. I think we said The Stranger if we discussed it in English, however. How odd. All three titles ought to point to the article on the novel. There is a risk in using the French, no? People thinking they stumbled into French Wikipedia? Looking at the brief discussion of how it is translated, I think I am glad I read it in French. Not totally germane to the question posed, if a section on translation fine points is kept, it will need sources, not just a list of comparisons of French sentence followed by English sentence in two different translations.  --Prairieplant (talk) 21:36, 13 April 2016 (UTC)

The Blade Artist
Greatly appreciated if someone wants to add a picture of the cover and expand this article. Thanks!Zigzig20s (talk) 14:50, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * I added a pic. U+003F?</tt> 18:59, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Number of words
Are there any (preferably reliable) sources for the number of words in books? Articles where length is important (say those at list of novellas) could benefit from this info, and it allows for better comparison than number of pages. <tt style="color:gray">U+003F</tt><tt style="color:red">?</tt> 19:02, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Auto-assessment of article classes
Following a recent discussion at WP:VPR, there is consensus for an opt-in bot task that automatically assesses the class of articles based on classes listed for other project templates on the same page. In other words, if WikiProject A has evaluated an article to be C-class and WikiProject B hasn't evaluated the article at all, such a bot task would automatically evaluate the article as C-class for WikiProject B.

If you think auto-assessment might benefit this project, consider discussing it with other members here. For more information or to request an auto-assessment run, please visit User:BU RoBOT/autoassess. This is a one-time message to alert projects with over 1,000 unassessed articles to this possibility. ~ RobTalk 01:20, 4 June 2016 (UTC)

WikiProject report for Signpost
Hi! I'm working on a report for the Signpost. Would anyone on WikiProject Doctor Who like to talk about their work here? Please ping me or reply here. Thanks! :) Megalibrarygirl (talk) 03:24, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of The Children's War


The article The Children's War has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * A work by non-noable author (no article); No RS sources on this book can be found. The article has been marked as a stub since 2000

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on |the article's talk page.

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Proposed deletion of The Afrika Reich


The article The Afrika Reich has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * A work by a non-notable author (no article); the article appears promotional in nature; Reception section has been tagged as empty since 2013.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

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Proposed deletion of The Madagaskar Plan


The article The Madagaskar Plan has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * A work by a non-notable author (no article); Article appears to be promotional in nature as only sources cited are to the author. No independent RS sources can be found to confirm notability.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

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Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:56, 25 June 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of December 7, 1941: A Different Path


The article December 7, 1941: A Different Path has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * A work by a non-notable author (no article); the article has been tagged Unreferenced since 2010. No RS sources to confirm notability can be found.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on |the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. K.e.coffman (talk) 01:19, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

Lois Lowry- New Taskforce?
Who agrees that we should have a new taskforce concerning Lois Lowry's books? I mean, two of them have Newberry Medal awards. KangisLOL (talk) 15:15, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of 1945 (Gingrich and Forstchen novel)


The article 1945 (Gingrich and Forstchen novel) has been proposed for deletion&#32; because of the following concern:
 * Article tagged Unreferenced since 2014; no RS to confirm notability can be found

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on |the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. K.e.coffman (talk) 19:17, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

Notice to participants at this page about adminship
Many participants here create a lot of content, have to evaluate whether or not a subject is notable, decide if content complies with BLP policy, and much more. Well, these are just some of the considerations at Requests for adminship.

So, please consider taking a look at and watchlisting this page:


 * Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll

You could be very helpful in evaluating potential candidates, and maybe even finding out if you would be a suitable RfA candidate.

Many thanks and best wishes,

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:04, 4 July 2016 (UTC)

Novel sales
Is there a reliable way to find the number of copies that a particular book has sold? I've been struggling through unhelpful web sources for a while now. Regards, Vanamonde93 (talk) 10:20, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I find sales numbers occasionally in reviews by Publishers Weekly, or in news articles at the time a book comes out and is very successful, or is late in a successful series. Other than that, I have not found where the publishing industry keeps its sales figures. --Prairieplant (talk) 18:24, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Hmm, okay. I'll do a search for things from Publisher's Weekly. It's such an odd thing, though, you would expect publishers to keep better track. Thanks, Vanamonde93 (talk) 04:48, 9 July 2016 (UTC)


 * As far as I'm aware, sales figures are most accurately collected through Nielsen BookScan. I don't know where you access the info, though. maclean (talk) 16:00, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I did try that; but it seems that their charts are protected by a paywall, which I'm not currently willing to invest in. If somebody happens to have access, that would be great. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:47, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
 * It depends on the title, when it was first published, whether it's been republished in other format/s (i.e softcover/paperback) and so on. Sometimes the first edition print runs can be found and info about which formats. But the sales numbers aren't generally available. Victoria (tk) 11:47, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm looking for info about The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), if that helps. And at this point info in any form would be useful. Vanamonde93 (talk) 12:51, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The Wray interview (already cited in the article) has her describing how she is in a higher rank than other authors she names, but no numbers. If that pay wall cannot be broken at a library, this may be difficult. When she dies, her obituaries may indicate sales in addition to her impact on other authors and her jumping about in genres, acceptance as a literary writer. So far, sales are not included in her interviews, as sometimes happens with an author. Publishers Weekly reviewed her 1969 novel in 2000, noting her awards, but no comment on sales. You could see if her novels ever made the best-seller lists. That still will not give you sales of a novel out since 1969, but it might indicate the relative size of her audience. I am thinking of Patrick O'Brian, writer of historical fiction, for whom sales totals were revealed in the year of his death and then the large increase in 2004 to 6 millon sold noted by Publishers Weekly, reviewing his last book published posthumously. The sales of one volume were not revealed, it was the series of 21 novels in whole that was quoted. Alexander McCall Smith, still living, had an abrupt increase in sales when his series, The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency was published in the USA as well as by UK publishers. Huge increase, fan sensation, reviews by famous people, are words easy to find, but no numbers come with those words. Sales of books written by Agatha Christie are estimated at 2 billion. Your question piques my interest, because the best seller lists presume someone has access to sales data week by week. The ranks are published but not the sales volume. Someone must be aggregating the weekly sales, if only to pay the author their royalties. How secret are those numbers?  --Prairieplant (talk) 06:51, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks; this is actually useful because it confirms a hunch I had. I've been trawling through interviews as well, and I'll probably keep doing that; but given my current location I'm not likely to get past a paywall anytime soon. Thanks anyhow! Vanamonde93 (talk) 09:21, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
 * As far as I can tell, its quite rare to publish sales numbers outside of internal materials, unless it used for marketing. The publishing industry's sense of scales (10s of thousands of books is quite a success), frequently seems disproportionate to the impact that works have (especially as the internet and novelistic television series have become more popular). Like Prairieplant, my best point of reference is usually dead folks, and claims being made by reporters or academics about those dead folks. If you look back before the 40s and 50s, I am pretty sure that publication/print run information is more common, but you probably have to dig into local newspaper archives -- which are always hit or miss. I find the Unsworth Bestsellers database to be really useful, but scope of coverage is very limited -- and is only worked on when Unsworth has graduate classes about book history. Its a very nice source though: its edited book histories, compiled by graduate students. Sadads (talk) 13:26, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
 * That doesn't contain the book I'm working on now, but that is an excellent resource, thank you! Vanamonde93 (talk) 14:58, 11 July 2016 (UTC)

Curse Workers series
Hi everyone - I am working on sprucing up the Curse Worker's series by Holly Black (stumbled upon them one day, and as Wiki-things go, they pulled me in, wanting to improve them a bit). In any case, I am starting with White Cat by adding a reception section to the article. My question then is this, as I haven't really worked on book articles before: are there any particular places that the project looks for good critical reviews? I have pasted a few in my sandbox, but I am not sure if these will pass muster, as some of them seem a bit bloggy... In any case, any guidance provided will be of much help! I've also posted this question at WT:BOOKS. - Pax  Verbum  02:48, 2 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I look for fiction reviews on Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, and major newspapers. Library Journal reviews young adult fiction, too, marking it as such. In doing a google search, I have found I need to name each editorial review source or newspaper, along with title and author name, to find a review if one was written. Possibly that is because I do not have a subscription to newspapers.com, but I have found that newspaper archives do keep moving about. Blogs are not considered as reliable sources for reviews, in general. Sometimes I find reviews that have been published elsewhere, reprinted on the author's homepage (author of the review) with full citation information. I work on articles by some British authors, but I never can get hold of a review from The Times or any other newspaper in the British Isles. Not sure why that is. I hope that some enterprising Britain-based Wikipedia editors will find a way to fill that need. I know the British press does the reviews, as blurbs from them are so often on the book covers. Have fun fixing those articles. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:27, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe half a year ago, I updated Manual_of_Style/Novels to reflect the best practices that I am aware of including the most useful sources from The Wikipedia Library (which you should apply for). Most of the time a simple google search, with the author name and title will find a number of the newspaper reviews that Prarieplant mentions. The first three links you have in the sandbox are probably good -- since they have a very good reputation in the Sci-Fi/Fantasy communities. I highly recommend getting WP:EBSCO since they frequently have sources like Voice of Youth Advocate indexed, which willl have at least a couple short reviews. Sadads (talk) 13:10, 2 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you both! This is exceedingly helpful. I've been considering applying to the library for a while now. I guess it's time to do it... - Pax  Verbum  16:55, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:Lesbian novels and Category:Transgender and transsexual novels
Category:Lesbian novels has been nominated for. You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for discussion page.

Category:Transgender and transsexual novels has been nominated for. You are encouraged to join the discussion on the Categories for discussion page.

Thanks.— TAnthonyTalk 23:06, 17 August 2016 (UTC)

Category:Nineteen Eighty-Four locations has been nominated for discussion
Category:Nineteen Eighty-Four locations, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for upmerging to Category:Nineteen Eighty-Four. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 00:42, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

NEA big read
Folks, what are current opinions regarding as a source? I'm not convinced about its reliability, but I want to be sure before I disregard it. Cheers, Vanamonde (talk) 09:07, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
 * It is the NEA/Arts Midwest and it was designed for use in the classroom alongside reading groups at librariess, so I would expect at least a minimum level of expertise and quality in the production of the source. Typically government/non-profit-produced teaching tools are designed by educators -- so its likely fairly good for what it is. How much you pull from it though, might be another question: minimally it verifies the work was part of the Big Read, and can help sketch and confirm some of the themes and/or give you high level articulations of them. I don't know how much "new" information I would pull from it however, in terms of production and background on the work. But if the page hints at this information, I would try to confirm it in interviews or research by other more journalistic sources. Sadads (talk) 12:28, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Sadads. I was looking at in the context of writing about a book that had an entry there, and was wondering if I needed to give it any weight, so your answer is helpful. Cheers, Vanamonde (talk) 12:48, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Help with an article?
I'm going to post this in a few places just so it gets a good amount of people looking at the article in question. The article for Animal World, the first published book by Antonio di Benedetto, is up for deletion. It looks like there should be coverage out there, as there is mention here and there about the book getting various accolades including a national prize, but I can't really find much. This is partially because of the language barrier, as most coverage is going to be in Spanish, but it's also likely because most of the coverage predated the Internet and as such may not be on the Internet as a whole or in places that we'd all know to check.

Anyone here want to see what they can find? It might be a good chance for a WP:HEY rescue. (I promise that this is the last forum I'll post this at. It's just that I don't want this to get deleted if it's possible that it could be notable.) Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)  10:01, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
 * From the deletion nominator: it would be nice if someone could look through the rest of User:Wolfboy21's articles as well. It appears that in 2004 he was an editor at Xenos Books, and created extremely subpar articles (by our 2016 standards, that is) for the books they published. Most of them don't look notable to me based on a cursory search, but from the AfD, I don't trust even my deep searching any more. Thanks, ansh 666 04:34, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Did a quick look at it -- quality is not a justication for deletion: its a justification for revision. AFD is a process for establishing Notability, and the scholarship is a pretty clear indication of that. Sadads (talk) 13:45, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Make more use in infobox of preceded by/followed by for authors with multiple books
Can it be advised to editors to make more use of the parameters preceded by and followed by in the infobox for books by the same author? I have seen the feature used on articles about books by one author that are not a series. I find it helpful, even when the article has a template with all the articles about the author or the books written by the author down at the end of the article, and never thought it was for series only, rather to link to the next book published by that author. Now that I use a mobile phone on occasion to read articles, the feature in the infobox shows up and can be used to navigate to the prior or next book by that author. Those handy templates do not appear on the mobile version. A point for discussion, as another editor keeps undoing the links in the articles on the six novels by Jane Austen, saying that only a series can use that feature. I posted this question at Wikiproject Books, as well. --Prairieplant (talk) 06:56, 29 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Read this section in WP:NOVSTY, which has been there for as long as I can remember. I think it's good to differentiate so that we know a single book from, say, The Lord of the Rings belongs to that series, or A Song of Ice and Fire or Magic Tree House, to name a few, from novels that are clearly standalone and not part of a series. Others might disagree, but to change it, we'd need consensus. Victoria (tk) 17:31, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Interview invitation from a Wikipedia researcher in University of Minnesota
Hello all,

I am Bowen Yu, a Ph.D. student from GroupLens Research at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities. Currently, we are undertaking a study about turnover (editors leaving and joining) in WikiProjects within Wikipedia. We are trying to understand the effects of member turnovers in the WikiProject group, in terms of the group performance and member interaction, with a purpose of learning how to build successful online communities in future. More details about our project can be found on this meta-wiki page.

If you are interested in our study and willing to share your experience with us, please reach me at bowen@cs.umn.edu. The interview will be about 30 - 45 minutes via phone, Skype or Google Hangout. You will receive a $10 gift card as compensation afterwards.

Thank you, Bowen Bobo.03 (talk) 23:08, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages
Greetings Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:


 * Fix and improve Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, — Delivered: 18:05, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Just So stories image deletion
Hi, Can anyone help rescue or replace this image :File:JustSoStories.jpg ? Thanks GrahamHardy (talk) 18:49, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

Template:Nobel Prize in Literature at WP:TFD
Please comment at Templates_for_discussion/Log/2017_January_2.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:58, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Plot template move request
Please take a moment to comment at Template talk:Plot. --Izno (talk) 19:06, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Left Hand of Darkness at FAC
The Left Hand of Darkness, a well-known science-fiction novel, is at FAC. The review page is here. Additional input would be welcomed. Regards, Vanamonde (talk) 07:43, 9 August 2016‎
 * A hand-typed "Today" is no damn use on a Talk page. That's why we use  ~ . I've inserted the actual time and date from the History page. --Thnidu (talk) 04:30, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Popular pages report
We – Community Tech – are happy to announce that the Popular pages bot is back up-and-running (after a one year hiatus)! You're receiving this message because your WikiProject or task force is signed up to receive the popular pages report. Every month, will post at /Popular pages with a list of the most-viewed pages over the previous month that are within the scope of. We've made some enhancements to the original report. Here's what's new:
 * The pageview data includes both desktop and mobile data.
 * The report will include a link to the pageviews tool for each article, to dig deeper into any surprises or anomalies.
 * The report will include the total pageviews for the entire project (including redirects).

We're grateful to for his original, and we wish his bot a happy robot retirement. Just as before, we hope the popular pages reports will aid you in understanding the reach of, and what articles may be deserving of more attention. If you have any questions or concerns please contact us at m:User talk:Community Tech bot.

Warm regards, the Community Tech Team 17:16, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

RRTF's John Rocco Edit-A-Thon
Annnouncing RRTF's first Edit-A-Thon! In honor of his July 9 birthday, the Rick Riordan task force will be hosting an editing event focused on author/illustrator John Rocco. The event will last until the first day of August, when the most helpful contributor will be featured on RRTF's forums. More information can be found here on the talk page, where you may also post questions and comments (as always). Please consider helping out! -- 2ReinreB2 (talk) 03:39, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Please comment
The spelling of a character's name was changed from Cathy to Kathy between editions of Killing Mr. Griffin, and there's been some disagreement about which one to use. I'm hoping some members of this project will weigh in on the article's talk page: Talk:Killing Mr. Griffin. Thanks, Argento Surfer (talk) 17:38, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Question about pronouns for a genderfluid character
WP:RRTF has a draft in progress for a book which contains a gender-fluid character. There's been some discussion about how to describe the character, as they make a point in the books of discouraging the use of "they" or "she/he". Does anybody know of a policy to guide us? Or an example? Please leave suggestions on Draft talk:The Hammer of Thor. Thanks! -- 2ReinreB2 (talk) 22:53, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

Input requested on characters section in novel articles
Hi, I don't know why I didn't put this here straight away, apologies. I've started a discussion here. Any input would be gratefully received. Scribolt (talk) 05:59, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Notice about Country novel by year categories
Hi all. An isse was reported in WP Films about a series of "Country film by year" categories that were created without prior notification, and it was also mentioned that the same has happened in novels. I checked your Category hierarchy and it seems to me that such categories do not follow your categorization scheme. So I though of notifying you that up to now there have been created 59 Canadian novels by year categories populated by 488 articles, and 36 Swedish novels by year categories populated by 48 articles. Best regards, Hoverfish Talk 18:41, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

Note: the above also means that these articles have been removed both from Category:Novels by year and Category:Novels by country. Hoverfish Talk 22:01, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Nomination of Elijah Daniel for deletion
A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Elijah Daniel is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Articles for deletion/Elijah Daniel (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Sagecandor (talk) 04:20, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

The Obelisk Gate wins Hugo
Hey all, I've just created an article for this year's Hugo-winning novel, The Obelisk Gate. I'd love any help in expanding it. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 21:57, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

The Mirror Thief
Hello. I've started The Mirror Thief. Please expand it if you can. Thank you!Zigzig20s (talk) 21:33, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Error in Fantômas
There appears to be an error in the Books section of Fantômas. See Talk:Fantômas. (This note is going to WP:WikiProject Fictional characters, WP:WikiProject France, WP:WikiProject Comics, and WP:WikiProject Novels.) Thnidu (talk) 01:53, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Request for comment on His Dark Materials
Editors are needed to help resolve a disagreement on the His Dark Materials page. Talk page discussion: Should we keep the Terminology and Pronunciation sections? Thanks. Popcornduff (talk) 11:49, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Katie Kazoo


The article Katie Kazoo has been proposed for deletion. The proposed deletion notice added to the article should explain why.

While all constructive contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, pages may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the page to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion.

Noah Kastin (talk) (🖋) 06:31, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Disambiguation links on pages tagged by this wikiproject
Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Novels

Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.&mdash; Rod talk 17:43, 3 December 2017 (UTC)

Notification of WP:RFC regarding including historical figures in navboxes
Join the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Templates.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:59, 5 December 2017 (UTC)

Help improving The Book of the New Sun
Hello! I'm working on improving The Book of the New Sun. What areas should I expand upon, what sections should I add, and do I need to trim any sections? And if anyone would like to help directly that would be much appreciated. Thanks! Pagliaccious (talk) 15:51, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

BookExpo/BookCon
Hey book editors,

I'll be attending some of this week's BookExpo and BookCon. There will be an awful lot of well known authors there and I hope to take a few pictures. If there's an author article you've been working on that needs a photo, check bookexpoamerica.com and thebookcon.com to see if they'll be there and then ping me if so. No promises, of course, and unfortunately I don't have time to attend the whole thing, but if I'm there I'll do my best. &mdash; Rhododendrites  <sup style="font-size:80%;">talk \\ 18:53, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject
The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template Transclude lead excerpt.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background
On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you. &mdash; The Transhumanist  07:50, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

RRTF is hosting an Edit-A-Thon with prizes
Announcing RRTF's second annual Edit-A-Thon! The event is being held June 23 through July 28 in honor of author Rick Riordan's June birthday and author/illustrator John Rocco's July birthday. The focus of the edit-a-thon will be on expanding Wikipedia's coverage of these two authors in an encyclopedic manner.

The Edit-A-Thon is open to all Wikipedia users - you do not need any experience with Riordan, Rocco, or RRTF! Help is needed in a variety of areas, including referencing, copyediting, and new page creation. Prizes will be given for first, second, and third place and will consist of a barnstar and Amazon gift card. To enter, please visit this page. The winners will be announced by July 31.

More information on rules and scoring can also be found on the contest page. Questions about the subject material should be left on the RRTF forums. Questions about the contest should be left on the contest Q&A. Good luck and happy editing! -- 2ReinreB2 (talk) 22:34, 23 June 2018 (UTC)

Naming the murderer and the victims in the Character list
A discussion began recently on this topic, of the character list in an article about a mystery novel. Specifically, one editor reverts if I identify the murderer in the character list -- thought the murderer is named in the Plot summary. The discussion is here. There is a bit of reverting going on, for this novel and other mysteries, which is not good. What is your view on this topic? What do you think of the view of the other editor who posted views in the discussion? Or of my views regarding WP: SPOILER? What resolution do you suggest? --Prairieplant (talk) 10:21, 9 August 2018 (UTC)


 * The editor in question is . If there is no resolution soon, I will need to ask for mediation, or some higher level editor to step in, as so many articles get changed without discussion or more important, agreement. --Prairieplant (talk) 09:45, 11 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I looked at the article in question, and IF the article maintains the several sentences describing each character in the list, identifying the murderer shouldn't be a problem. There may be a question as to whether the character info in the list for each character belongs in the article at all, and that's a separate question.  But if it remains, a person who reads each description should go into it with the same attitude as reading the plot summary.  If they read it at all, it means they aren't sensitive about spoilers.  The lead should only have the story premise for style reasons anyway, so spoilers are usually avoided naturally (but not just because they're spoilers), but, yeah, once a reader gets into the bulk of the article, WP:SPOILER applies.--MattMauler (talk) 12:05, 11 August 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree with & ., have you read the Wikipedia policy on WP:SPOILERS? ‑‑ Yodin T 12:11, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I have read WP:SPOILER, but there is one point to put here. The info on who is the killer is listed in the Plot Summary. I understand that according to SPOILER "It is not acceptable to delete information from an article because you think it spoils the plot", but the question for these guys to note is this - does highlighting the murderer in the list serve "an encyclopedic purpose"? GUtt01 (talk) 13:54, 12 August 2018 (UTC)
 * But in any case, I'm gonna concede defeat and accept what would like done, before I escalate this into an Edit War. GUtt01 (talk) 14:53, 12 August 2018 (UTC)

Infobox for novellas
For something like N. (novella), neither the short story infobox nor the novel infobox seem to be fully suitable. The title should be italicized (as with novels) but it still needs the "published in" parameter (as with short stories). I could just add a "published in" parameter to the novel infobox, but didn't know if there was an accepted method for this. Thanks. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:51, 28 August 2018 (UTC)
 * I created and used it in N. (novella). -- JHunterJ (talk) 14:11, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That is just right, and very handy, .  --Prairieplant (talk) 03:06, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

More info needed for these books... anyone willing to help?
I've just created these stubs:


 * Tosser, Gunman
 * Riggermortis (book)

and


 * Robin Hood (author).

If anyone could help expand these I'd be grateful, I'm not an expert in novels, but am trying to add new books to this wiki as I research about them. --Chelston-temp-1 (talk) 23:27, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Page Improvement
Cat in the Rain

Hi, I'm completing a university course on Wikipedia and I would like to make changes to the above page. I wish to add a 'Themes' section to the page. In this I will talk about the metaphors and allusions to androgyny which could be argued to be a precursor to Hemingway's later novel, The Garden of Eden (novel)

Here are some sources I intend to use:

West, Kevin R. (2015). "What He Says about “the Cat”: Enrique Vila-Matas on Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain”." The Hemingway Review, 34 (2), pp. 105-110

Griffin, Peter (2001). "A foul mood, a dirty joke: Hemingway's A Cat in the Rain". The Hemingway review 20 (2), p. 99

Chatman, Seymour (2001). “‘Soft Filters’: Some Sunshine on ‘Cat in the Rain.’” Narrative, 9 (2) pp. 217–222

Please leave any feedback you have on my talk page. --Joshharper1 (talk) 05:15, 18 September 2018 (UTC)


 * Very interesting to learn you are taking a class on Wikipedia. You have your Reliable Sources lined up, so I encourage you to write a new section on Themes for that book. --Prairieplant (talk) 11:21, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

Harry Potter
Someone keeps inflating the supporting characters page. Maybe it should finally get a lock. LordAtlas (talk) 01:15, 30 September 2018 (UTC)

Plot needed
The Partner by John Grisham had it's plot completely removed months ago, leaving the page essentially a blank stub. Recent attempts to re-add the plot, both the original version with an improvement tag and an improved version have also since been removed. A very brief, sub-standard "place holder" had been added in the meantime. If someone here could make the effort the add an appropriately written plot section, that would be appreciated. Thanks - wolf  23:00, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

Artemis Fowl task force
Should there be an Artemis Fowl task force in this project? There was a WikiProject, but it's defunct: WikiProject Artemis Fowl. I was thinking maybe it could be revived as a task force in the Novels WikiProject. Fcbcampnou (talk) 19:23, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * You may revive it if you wish. This is a completely volunteer driven project so it won't be revived unless you do it. Just remove the defunct tag and assume a leadership role for it. If nothing happens, then it may be re-tagged as defunct. Pretty low stakes. That said, the goal here is article quality improvement, so please ensure that this the task force's goal. Thanks. maclean (talk) 06:36, 28 October 2018 (UTC)
 * WikiProject task forces with the scope of 10 or 15 articles don't work that great as they don't function very well to gather people, which is the function of a WikiProject. As better stated elsewhere, a WikiProject is the people, not the topic. "Reviving" it doesn't fix the root problem, which is that you need the people to go along with it. Really, it should be redirected and it's template removed/replaced on the pages its located with e.g.  as is already present at Talk:Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox. --Izno (talk) 17:24, 28 October 2018 (UTC)

Featured quality source review RFC
Editors in this WikiProject may be interested in the featured quality source review RFC that has been ongoing. It would change the featured article candidate process (FAC) so that source reviews would need to occur prior to any other reviews for FAC. Your comments are appreciated. --IznoRepeat (talk) 21:35, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

Merger of individual articles of books in The Edge Chronicles series
I have suggested that the individual book articles of the series be merged into The Edge Chronicles. Please discuss the merger at Talk:The_Edge_Chronicles --<i style="font-family:'Rock salt','Comic Sans MS'; color: Green;">Tyw7</i> (🗣️ Talk) — If (reply) then (ping me) 20:10, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Pachinko
Hi friends, Might any Pachinko fans be available to help trim a plot section that's gotten a bit unwieldy? I'd do it myself but I'm afraid this NBA finalist is still in my to-read stack! Innisfree987 (talk) 23:08, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

request for article review: The Coffee Trader
I've been working on fixing up the article for The Coffee Trader, previously rated as Stub-class. I'd be grateful if someone would review the rating and see if it can be upgraded now, and/or make any suggestions for further improvement. Thanks! Kenirwin/ (talk) 13:32, 10 October 2018 (UTC)
 * ✅ and very nice work, sorry you've had to wait so long for a response! It looks great to me--worth considering taking to GA? Since you've clearly delved well into the available sources! If there's any area I might be curious to read more about, it might be the publication history and the background on the author's development of the book (along the lines of what's mentioned in the last sentence of the entry)--but you know better than I whether that info is available! I checked our entry for the author in case there might be leads but there wasn't much there, unfortunately. In any case, already great work and IMO worth submitting to GA as is! A fine contribution! Innisfree987 (talk) 02:49, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Children's Lit Wiki Project
Hi. I am currently working on reestablishing the Children's Lit Wiki Project and figured some members of this project might be interested in joining our efforts over there. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:17, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Page move request
There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Mary Poppins (musical) that would benefit by your input. Please come and help!  Paine Ellsworth , ed. put'r there 16:23, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

where is the list of reliable source for novels at?
Is there a list somewhere of what websites count as reliable sources for book reviews? Other wikiprojects have that and a custom Google search to make finding things easier.  D r e a m Focus  19:07, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That would be handy. I know of no such list. I look for newspaper reviews, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal as sources, searching anew for each novel, already published or new. Many newspaper reviews are behind paywalls. --Prairieplant (talk) 03:23, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I just made one at https://cse.google.com/cse?cx=000940472126197254432:ojqph5ir04q with the three places you mentioned and one more. If you think of any more ones that count as reliable sites, just post their web address please, and I can copy and paste it easily to add to it.   D r e a m Focus  03:49, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
 * The style guide includes suggestions: Manual_of_Style/Novels. Please continue to expand that there-- its the most visible page documenting how to write about Novels on EnWiki, and is linked on every stub template and WikiProject Novels page. Sadads (talk) 22:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
 * That seems a better place to put it, as nothing shows up for me besides the title Google Custom Search, using the link above. I will make a try at modifying the Finding Sources section of Novels. --Prairieplant (talk) 07:40, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
 * and, the suggestions are in Manual of Style/Novels, which has a cynical (and unsourced) view of reviews appearing in newspapers. Whoever wrote the text thinks that publishers pay the named authors of reviews in newspapers, just so much advertising. I disagree, those reviews are so scarce! In 2019, a few newspapers are considering adding more book reviews, having stopped publishing their book review sections in a past year in this bumpy century for newspapers. I personally have a very hard time imagining that the New York Times or Chicago Tribune or Los Angeles Times takes payola to write book reviews, nor can I imagine that all the British newspapers that published reviews of Agatha Christie's mystery novels for about 50 years were doing that for a fee. The section immediately above the one I cited directs an editor to sources best found via a public library or a university library, like JSTOR for journal articles, or for books about the novel that is the subject of your article. Once in a great while I find the abstract of a JSTOR article from a google search. Thanks, Sadads, I did not know about that second section; I think I was daunted when I first found JSTOR as top of the list for sources in the first section. I have not mastered signing up for access through Wikipedia as yet. --Prairieplant (talk) 08:04, 15 January 2019 (UTC)