This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
It appears another attempt at creating precent for eliminating articles based upon series books is underway with the mass nomination of a number of Hardy Boys novels here. Granted the articles being nominated are extremely barebones with no information other than one-line plot summaries, so if anyone familiar with the Hardy Boys can jump in there and add the infobox, publication date, etc. that would be very helpful. Someone is also expressing the view there that only books with a suitable amount of scholarly coverage should be included, which pretty well disqualifies 99% of all novels. 23skidoo 20:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
hey, i made a change to the redirect for Blackwater (novella) to create a page for Blackwater, by Jeremy Scahill. it's non-fiction, but since i haven't come across any Title (non-fiction book) pages i figured this was appropriate. should i add a redirect on the page (For the novella of the same name, etc)?
thanks for your help. also, if you could remove Blackwater (book) from the Wikiproject Novels, that would help clear up information. i'll be working on the page slowly along the next few days, so it'll look pretty tragic at first.
cheers, -- Chalyres 03:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I think more categories are needed like, Adventure novels and comedy novels , parody novels etc.What do you think?-- Dwaipayanc 06:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure quite quite where to put this, so I'm putting it here. I was running through the James and Conrad pages today putting in some project boxes and in a couple of cases actually writing stubs. These authors are in a terrible state ... really shameful given their prominence. Anyone with some spare time ... -- Sordel 19:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
It is getting large with over 100 entries. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.146.39.190 ( talk • contribs).
I came across this article by chance, and as most of it was concerned with in-depth assessments of Agustin's novels, I created separate articles for La Tumba, De Perfil and Ciudades Desiertas. The original article seems to have been written by someone who had studied the novels and in places reads more like a review or essay. I would like someone who is familiar with Agustin's work to have a look at these three articles and have a stab at eliminating any POV stuff they can see. Deb 17:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm looking to improve a couple of pages about important literary characters. I saw the suggested format for a character page in this project and I'm wondering if someone can point me to an example of where this model is successfully implemented. My thought, reading through it, was that it would be hard to do without a lot of WP:NOR. What are some examples of good character pages? -- JayHenry 18:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on Tklein27's additions to articles such as Empire Falls and The Stone Diaries, which include an external link such as this one. As was stated on the user's talk page, this is a personal website which has pictures and publisher information on bestselling and award winning novels. The common edit summaries for these edits include the note that "This is a reference only site, nothing is for sale." I must say that I'm torn on the subject, since I find this site incredibly informative and helpful in discerning which edition is the first, which in turn may help me to add correct info to articles and their infoboxes in the future. I'm curious as to whether or not these links may be considered spam by some, and/or a violation of WP:EL. Thoughts? (I've also given the user a link to this discussion in case they would like to weign in.) María ( habla con migo) 17:40, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Not sure this is an appropriate place for me to type this (I hope it is though), but I've expanded Black Water (novella), and for some reason the last subheads and the categories won't show up - though they do in the 'edit this page' tab. Any idea why that is? I am slightly dismayed. Zigzig20s 02:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
I was just reading Wikipedia:Non-free content and came across a statement here which is troubling. Check out No. 1 on the list. It says cover art can only be used for BOTH identification and critical commentary. If I read the "letter of the law" correctly, it potentially means cover images aren't allowed unless the article discusses the actual covers in some way. Someone please tell me I'm reading this wrong. I don't recall seeing this rule before, either -- maybe it's been recently added? 23skidoo 15:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Since your subject area is entirely a subset of WP Books (which I've only just discovered) wouldn't it make more sense to share a project banner? Currently you can have articles tagged by both projects which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. -- kingboyk 21:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
The Brothers Karamazov has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. LuciferMorgan 19:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I have noticed that some contributors to Wikipedia copy the blurbs etc. from the back or front of the books themselves onto the novel and novel series articles. Is this a good thing to do or is this deemed to be under some violation. Sorry if this has been asked before etc. etc. Caladon 15:21, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I ran across The Caves of Steel and noticed that the ISBN was N/A. When I looked in the markup, there was a note saying that the book was published prior to ISBNs. This brought up some questions...
Maybe someone else has some thoughts along these lines or knows more than I do about ISBNs and such. -- Thehighseer23 20:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
And a related question: should we go back and change ISBN 10 to ISBN 13? Doceirias 20:53, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I was hopeing to use this to help me with a book report. instead i found a small amount of information concerning plot and characters. can someone put in a spoiler and character descriptions?
There needs to be a much heavier emphasis placed on using scholarly sources for wikipedia's novel pages; I have recently had to delist GA novel pages because they referenced only sparknotes, cliffsnotes and gradesaver. I think that an explanation of the appropriate sources to use for a novel page needs to be prominently displayed somewhere on this project page. We can have a separate discussion about what to do for novels that have not been extensively studied by scholars, but for those that have been, clearer guidelines regarding the use of the secondary materials need to be established. I have a feeling that many of these problems stem from ignorance rather than from any master plan to destroy wikipedia's novel pages, but nevertheless, editors should be apprised of what kinds of sources will help them learn about the novel they want to write on and what kind of sources can mislead them. I would also suggest that these guidelines be prefaced with the statement: "You should take several months to research the novel you want to write on." This will emphasize that wikipedia novel pages are not book reports. Awadewit 18:46, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Awadewit ( talk • contribs)
When reading the above section, I noticed the line:
My question is this: is it acceptable practice to create an article page and fill in the minimal information that is available to you, with the intention of coming back to fill in more later? Or with the expectation that another editor, if they find the stub, will fill in more? I guess I could be wrong, but isn't that part of the point of a wiki? Multiple contributions making a more extensive article then might be possible from one author? Perhaps it would not cross someone's mind to fill in information on an article or subject until they come across it in its infant form. Or is it instead expected that all articles should be authored as complete treatments from the get-go? I ask because with limited time on my hands, it was my intention to edit articles in smaller installments over an extended period.-- Thehighseer23 22:18, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I have read both books and am waiting for the third. I would like to know your oppion on edward Cullen in both books — Preceding unsigned comment added by ILOVEEDWAEDCULLEN ( talk • contribs)
I would really like to start a task force for Australian novels. I am also a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia and there is no focus on literature there at all. What are everyone's thoughts on this? ( Task force guide) xx baby_ifritah 15:23, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I have listed a proposal for an Australian literature WikiProject with the Project Council. If anyone is interested please go here and register your support or add your comments. Thanks. xx baby ifritah
Should we just get rid of this? It doesn't seem to serve any purpose. -- P4k 02:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
There are an incredible number of biographical articles in wikipedia, many/most of which fall within the scope of WikiProject Biography. I have recently proposed that the Biography project perhaps be involved in a number of subprojects to work on smaller, and perhaps more focused, areas. One such proposal relates to writers of books and short stories. This proposal can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Writers. Any member of this project who would be interested in working specifically on biographical content relating to writers would be more than welcome to indicate as much there. Thank you. John Carter 16:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Members of this project might like to express a view at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies/Wikipedia:Spoiler warning where the concept of spoiler warnings is currently undergoing heated debate. Note that some editors are systematically removing spoiler warnings from articles used as examples in the discussion. PaddyLeahy 19:09, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
The WikiProject Novels template includes a spoiler warning for plot summaries. According to one user (see Moonfleet for one example), AWB recommends removing the spoiler tag--although I could not find anything on the AWB page. So my question is: which is correct? Should we add spoiler warnings or not for plot summaries? I'd rather avoid a back-and-forth editing war. Thanks! :) JordanSealy 21:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Kevin, for moving this here. Sorry that I failed to pay attention to where the discussion is. :) Anyway, I have no opinion regarding the spoiler tag, and I can understand both sides of the argument. For me, it is about project consistency (I'm an engineer, I cannot help it). If the project requires the use of a spoiler tag, then it should be used. The spoiler debate, which I discovered after I asked my question here, is rather heated, and I don't think it will be resolved peacefully or anytime soon, and perhaps never. Since there is a core group of editors and admins systematically deleting all spoiler tags everywhere on Wikipedia, then my gut feeling says to wait until all the hullabaloo dies down. Already the re-inserted spoiler tag on Moonfleet has been deleted; I don't see any point to adding it back in only to see it deleted again. Personally, I avoid plot summaries for books that I intend to read but haven't yet. Nothing is worse than getting a spoiler in the article's lead (lede?), though. Not sure if it is possible, or even practical, but I wonder if plot summaries could be "hidden" until clicked for viewing--sort of a collapsible-expandable thing like one might see for comments on a blog, etc. Hmm, that might be a bit ugly... Still, if the tag is ultimately deemed unnecessary, there are workarounds and options to consider. JordanSealy 09:57, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
I went away on holiday and came back to find that one editor who has been removing the spoiler tags is continuing to do so. My attitude at this point is remove them all (I assume the movie and TV show spoiler tags will be next) -- and I'm not being snarky; if the book ones go, there is really no reason to have spoiler tags for anything. And when people start complaining, or edit wars break out between people concerned about certain storyline details being or not being included in an article, we know who to point our fingers at. 23skidoo 19:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
I have nominated Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the 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" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Thanks for your time, Atropos 00:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
The creator of the article User:Dr Steven Plunkett has objected to the {{novels}} template being placed on the article. There are some concerns about presumed ownership (see my talk page User talk:SkierRMH... I'd like an official member(s) of the project to please look at the article, determine the appropriateness of the template on the talk page, and if you could, please leave some comment on the article's talk page regarding your thoughts. Much thanks!! SkierRMH 19:46, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I am with the Australian Literature Project and am finding that book covers others have posted are slowly being deleted from the article sites. So i have started sending emails to authors asking for permission to use their personal photo and also book covers. But i am confused as to what is actually needed from them to prove they have given full permission ? Also what would they need from their publishers to have proof that the book covers are allowed to be used also ? If anyone just give me advice it would be appreciated, as i find the pages on copyright long and confusing as what they are actually requiring. Boylo 05:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
On this topic, I've noticed deletion notices appearing on a number of novel-related articles in recent days with a link back to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NONFREE
I'm wondering if part of the problem might be related to this statement: A CD cover, album cover, or book cover used to illustrate an article about the CD, album, or book, when the article does not justify this by reference to attributes of the cover art. The mere fact that a picture has been placed on the cover of an album to sell it is not enough.
Thus, if I'm understanding that point correctly, are we now being told that unless the article directly refers to the cover art, we shouldn't be using an image of the cover? Silverthorn 10:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. I'm an admin with a good working knowledge of copyright law and Wikipedia's image policies, and I was asked to comment here. Let me give you a thumbnail sketch of the issues involved with using book covers on Wikipedia.
First off, all images are either considered "free" or "non-free". If it's free (and you can prove it), you can use it all you want without justifying it to anyone. If it's non-free, you can only use it in very limited ways, as described at Wikipedia:Non-free content. It's free if it's public domain (i.e. not copyrighted), or if it's released under a free license such as the GFDL or a free Creative Commons license. Otherwise, it's not free. Even if the author gives permission for it to be used on Wikipedia, even if you know there's no way we could ever be sued, if it's not public domain or legally under a specific free license, it's non-free. So it really doesn't do any good to ask someone for permission to use the image on Wikipedia: unless they are willing to license it under a free license (for Wikipedia or anyone else to use), we have to treat it as non-free no matter what they agree to. If you, Boylo, or anyone else wants to get permission for an image to released under a free license, you might want to look at Wikipedia:Example requests for permission. But note that only the copyright-holder can license an image this way. Usually an author doesn't hold the copyright for the cover of his book. (Often the publisher holds that, and companies are much less likely to freely license something than individuals are.) He may not hold the copyright to his photo on the back either.
So that leaves us with our non-free content policy. Even if a work is non-free, we can use it if it passes all 10 criteria on that page. Criterion #1 requires that the image not be replaceable by a free image that could convey the same information. This isn't a problem for book covers, but it could be for author photos. If the author is alive, presumably someone could take his photo and release that new photo under a free license, so a non-free photo would be considered "replaceable", and would fail criterion #1. (Here's where it might be useful to write the author and ask if he has a photo he wouldn't mind using.) If the author is dead, no new photos can be taken, so criterion #1 isn't likely to be a problem.
Criterion #3 requires "minimal use", so don't use a high-res scan of a book cover when a small image would work well in the article. Also, don't include six different images of different covers of the same book (in different printings). That would fail criterion #3 as well. Criterion #8 requires significance, so if a non-free image isn't really important to an article, you can't use it. (For instance, in an article about economics, you couldn't use a non-free image of the cover of an economics textbook.)
And then there's criterion #10. It requires that the image description page contain the source, an image tag, and a fair use rationale. They're starting to get really strict about having fair use rationales on pages, so it's pretty important. For a rationale, I usually just say something like "Fair use rationale: This image passes all our non-free use guidelines. It is no bigger than necessary in the article it is in, it could not be replaced by a free image, and it is significant in it's article." That usually does it. If you have questions, either in general or about specific images, feel free to ask me. – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 02:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm curious if there have been discussions about bibliographies on author's pages. There's an interesting discussion going on particularly at the talk page for Charles Dickens about how to handle bibliographies or even navigation templates of works. Feel free to join in. -- Midnightdreary 14:46, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
What exactly is a novel? In many articles it will have the name of the book and the (series). In other articles You see the name of the book and then (novel series) after it in the title. Is there any difference between the two? The title and the (series) after it makes more sense to me because it's simply a series, I don't think there are novel series. ~Bella 21:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
It appears another attempt at creating precent for eliminating articles based upon series books is underway with the mass nomination of a number of Hardy Boys novels here. Granted the articles being nominated are extremely barebones with no information other than one-line plot summaries, so if anyone familiar with the Hardy Boys can jump in there and add the infobox, publication date, etc. that would be very helpful. Someone is also expressing the view there that only books with a suitable amount of scholarly coverage should be included, which pretty well disqualifies 99% of all novels. 23skidoo 20:10, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
hey, i made a change to the redirect for Blackwater (novella) to create a page for Blackwater, by Jeremy Scahill. it's non-fiction, but since i haven't come across any Title (non-fiction book) pages i figured this was appropriate. should i add a redirect on the page (For the novella of the same name, etc)?
thanks for your help. also, if you could remove Blackwater (book) from the Wikiproject Novels, that would help clear up information. i'll be working on the page slowly along the next few days, so it'll look pretty tragic at first.
cheers, -- Chalyres 03:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I think more categories are needed like, Adventure novels and comedy novels , parody novels etc.What do you think?-- Dwaipayanc 06:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure quite quite where to put this, so I'm putting it here. I was running through the James and Conrad pages today putting in some project boxes and in a couple of cases actually writing stubs. These authors are in a terrible state ... really shameful given their prominence. Anyone with some spare time ... -- Sordel 19:25, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
It is getting large with over 100 entries. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 172.146.39.190 ( talk • contribs).
I came across this article by chance, and as most of it was concerned with in-depth assessments of Agustin's novels, I created separate articles for La Tumba, De Perfil and Ciudades Desiertas. The original article seems to have been written by someone who had studied the novels and in places reads more like a review or essay. I would like someone who is familiar with Agustin's work to have a look at these three articles and have a stab at eliminating any POV stuff they can see. Deb 17:25, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm looking to improve a couple of pages about important literary characters. I saw the suggested format for a character page in this project and I'm wondering if someone can point me to an example of where this model is successfully implemented. My thought, reading through it, was that it would be hard to do without a lot of WP:NOR. What are some examples of good character pages? -- JayHenry 18:21, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
I was wondering if anyone has any thoughts on Tklein27's additions to articles such as Empire Falls and The Stone Diaries, which include an external link such as this one. As was stated on the user's talk page, this is a personal website which has pictures and publisher information on bestselling and award winning novels. The common edit summaries for these edits include the note that "This is a reference only site, nothing is for sale." I must say that I'm torn on the subject, since I find this site incredibly informative and helpful in discerning which edition is the first, which in turn may help me to add correct info to articles and their infoboxes in the future. I'm curious as to whether or not these links may be considered spam by some, and/or a violation of WP:EL. Thoughts? (I've also given the user a link to this discussion in case they would like to weign in.) María ( habla con migo) 17:40, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Not sure this is an appropriate place for me to type this (I hope it is though), but I've expanded Black Water (novella), and for some reason the last subheads and the categories won't show up - though they do in the 'edit this page' tab. Any idea why that is? I am slightly dismayed. Zigzig20s 02:28, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
I was just reading Wikipedia:Non-free content and came across a statement here which is troubling. Check out No. 1 on the list. It says cover art can only be used for BOTH identification and critical commentary. If I read the "letter of the law" correctly, it potentially means cover images aren't allowed unless the article discusses the actual covers in some way. Someone please tell me I'm reading this wrong. I don't recall seeing this rule before, either -- maybe it's been recently added? 23skidoo 15:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Since your subject area is entirely a subset of WP Books (which I've only just discovered) wouldn't it make more sense to share a project banner? Currently you can have articles tagged by both projects which doesn't make a lot of sense to me. -- kingboyk 21:20, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
The Brothers Karamazov has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. LuciferMorgan 19:40, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
I have noticed that some contributors to Wikipedia copy the blurbs etc. from the back or front of the books themselves onto the novel and novel series articles. Is this a good thing to do or is this deemed to be under some violation. Sorry if this has been asked before etc. etc. Caladon 15:21, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I ran across The Caves of Steel and noticed that the ISBN was N/A. When I looked in the markup, there was a note saying that the book was published prior to ISBNs. This brought up some questions...
Maybe someone else has some thoughts along these lines or knows more than I do about ISBNs and such. -- Thehighseer23 20:07, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
And a related question: should we go back and change ISBN 10 to ISBN 13? Doceirias 20:53, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
I was hopeing to use this to help me with a book report. instead i found a small amount of information concerning plot and characters. can someone put in a spoiler and character descriptions?
There needs to be a much heavier emphasis placed on using scholarly sources for wikipedia's novel pages; I have recently had to delist GA novel pages because they referenced only sparknotes, cliffsnotes and gradesaver. I think that an explanation of the appropriate sources to use for a novel page needs to be prominently displayed somewhere on this project page. We can have a separate discussion about what to do for novels that have not been extensively studied by scholars, but for those that have been, clearer guidelines regarding the use of the secondary materials need to be established. I have a feeling that many of these problems stem from ignorance rather than from any master plan to destroy wikipedia's novel pages, but nevertheless, editors should be apprised of what kinds of sources will help them learn about the novel they want to write on and what kind of sources can mislead them. I would also suggest that these guidelines be prefaced with the statement: "You should take several months to research the novel you want to write on." This will emphasize that wikipedia novel pages are not book reports. Awadewit 18:46, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
— Preceding unsigned comment added by Awadewit ( talk • contribs)
When reading the above section, I noticed the line:
My question is this: is it acceptable practice to create an article page and fill in the minimal information that is available to you, with the intention of coming back to fill in more later? Or with the expectation that another editor, if they find the stub, will fill in more? I guess I could be wrong, but isn't that part of the point of a wiki? Multiple contributions making a more extensive article then might be possible from one author? Perhaps it would not cross someone's mind to fill in information on an article or subject until they come across it in its infant form. Or is it instead expected that all articles should be authored as complete treatments from the get-go? I ask because with limited time on my hands, it was my intention to edit articles in smaller installments over an extended period.-- Thehighseer23 22:18, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I have read both books and am waiting for the third. I would like to know your oppion on edward Cullen in both books — Preceding unsigned comment added by ILOVEEDWAEDCULLEN ( talk • contribs)
I would really like to start a task force for Australian novels. I am also a member of Wikipedia:WikiProject Australia and there is no focus on literature there at all. What are everyone's thoughts on this? ( Task force guide) xx baby_ifritah 15:23, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
I have listed a proposal for an Australian literature WikiProject with the Project Council. If anyone is interested please go here and register your support or add your comments. Thanks. xx baby ifritah
Should we just get rid of this? It doesn't seem to serve any purpose. -- P4k 02:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
There are an incredible number of biographical articles in wikipedia, many/most of which fall within the scope of WikiProject Biography. I have recently proposed that the Biography project perhaps be involved in a number of subprojects to work on smaller, and perhaps more focused, areas. One such proposal relates to writers of books and short stories. This proposal can be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Writers. Any member of this project who would be interested in working specifically on biographical content relating to writers would be more than welcome to indicate as much there. Thank you. John Carter 16:44, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Members of this project might like to express a view at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Policies/Wikipedia:Spoiler warning where the concept of spoiler warnings is currently undergoing heated debate. Note that some editors are systematically removing spoiler warnings from articles used as examples in the discussion. PaddyLeahy 19:09, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
The WikiProject Novels template includes a spoiler warning for plot summaries. According to one user (see Moonfleet for one example), AWB recommends removing the spoiler tag--although I could not find anything on the AWB page. So my question is: which is correct? Should we add spoiler warnings or not for plot summaries? I'd rather avoid a back-and-forth editing war. Thanks! :) JordanSealy 21:14, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Kevin, for moving this here. Sorry that I failed to pay attention to where the discussion is. :) Anyway, I have no opinion regarding the spoiler tag, and I can understand both sides of the argument. For me, it is about project consistency (I'm an engineer, I cannot help it). If the project requires the use of a spoiler tag, then it should be used. The spoiler debate, which I discovered after I asked my question here, is rather heated, and I don't think it will be resolved peacefully or anytime soon, and perhaps never. Since there is a core group of editors and admins systematically deleting all spoiler tags everywhere on Wikipedia, then my gut feeling says to wait until all the hullabaloo dies down. Already the re-inserted spoiler tag on Moonfleet has been deleted; I don't see any point to adding it back in only to see it deleted again. Personally, I avoid plot summaries for books that I intend to read but haven't yet. Nothing is worse than getting a spoiler in the article's lead (lede?), though. Not sure if it is possible, or even practical, but I wonder if plot summaries could be "hidden" until clicked for viewing--sort of a collapsible-expandable thing like one might see for comments on a blog, etc. Hmm, that might be a bit ugly... Still, if the tag is ultimately deemed unnecessary, there are workarounds and options to consider. JordanSealy 09:57, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
I went away on holiday and came back to find that one editor who has been removing the spoiler tags is continuing to do so. My attitude at this point is remove them all (I assume the movie and TV show spoiler tags will be next) -- and I'm not being snarky; if the book ones go, there is really no reason to have spoiler tags for anything. And when people start complaining, or edit wars break out between people concerned about certain storyline details being or not being included in an article, we know who to point our fingers at. 23skidoo 19:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
I have nominated Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the 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" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Thanks for your time, Atropos 00:06, 24 May 2007 (UTC)
The creator of the article User:Dr Steven Plunkett has objected to the {{novels}} template being placed on the article. There are some concerns about presumed ownership (see my talk page User talk:SkierRMH... I'd like an official member(s) of the project to please look at the article, determine the appropriateness of the template on the talk page, and if you could, please leave some comment on the article's talk page regarding your thoughts. Much thanks!! SkierRMH 19:46, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
I am with the Australian Literature Project and am finding that book covers others have posted are slowly being deleted from the article sites. So i have started sending emails to authors asking for permission to use their personal photo and also book covers. But i am confused as to what is actually needed from them to prove they have given full permission ? Also what would they need from their publishers to have proof that the book covers are allowed to be used also ? If anyone just give me advice it would be appreciated, as i find the pages on copyright long and confusing as what they are actually requiring. Boylo 05:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
On this topic, I've noticed deletion notices appearing on a number of novel-related articles in recent days with a link back to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NONFREE
I'm wondering if part of the problem might be related to this statement: A CD cover, album cover, or book cover used to illustrate an article about the CD, album, or book, when the article does not justify this by reference to attributes of the cover art. The mere fact that a picture has been placed on the cover of an album to sell it is not enough.
Thus, if I'm understanding that point correctly, are we now being told that unless the article directly refers to the cover art, we shouldn't be using an image of the cover? Silverthorn 10:07, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
Greetings. I'm an admin with a good working knowledge of copyright law and Wikipedia's image policies, and I was asked to comment here. Let me give you a thumbnail sketch of the issues involved with using book covers on Wikipedia.
First off, all images are either considered "free" or "non-free". If it's free (and you can prove it), you can use it all you want without justifying it to anyone. If it's non-free, you can only use it in very limited ways, as described at Wikipedia:Non-free content. It's free if it's public domain (i.e. not copyrighted), or if it's released under a free license such as the GFDL or a free Creative Commons license. Otherwise, it's not free. Even if the author gives permission for it to be used on Wikipedia, even if you know there's no way we could ever be sued, if it's not public domain or legally under a specific free license, it's non-free. So it really doesn't do any good to ask someone for permission to use the image on Wikipedia: unless they are willing to license it under a free license (for Wikipedia or anyone else to use), we have to treat it as non-free no matter what they agree to. If you, Boylo, or anyone else wants to get permission for an image to released under a free license, you might want to look at Wikipedia:Example requests for permission. But note that only the copyright-holder can license an image this way. Usually an author doesn't hold the copyright for the cover of his book. (Often the publisher holds that, and companies are much less likely to freely license something than individuals are.) He may not hold the copyright to his photo on the back either.
So that leaves us with our non-free content policy. Even if a work is non-free, we can use it if it passes all 10 criteria on that page. Criterion #1 requires that the image not be replaceable by a free image that could convey the same information. This isn't a problem for book covers, but it could be for author photos. If the author is alive, presumably someone could take his photo and release that new photo under a free license, so a non-free photo would be considered "replaceable", and would fail criterion #1. (Here's where it might be useful to write the author and ask if he has a photo he wouldn't mind using.) If the author is dead, no new photos can be taken, so criterion #1 isn't likely to be a problem.
Criterion #3 requires "minimal use", so don't use a high-res scan of a book cover when a small image would work well in the article. Also, don't include six different images of different covers of the same book (in different printings). That would fail criterion #3 as well. Criterion #8 requires significance, so if a non-free image isn't really important to an article, you can't use it. (For instance, in an article about economics, you couldn't use a non-free image of the cover of an economics textbook.)
And then there's criterion #10. It requires that the image description page contain the source, an image tag, and a fair use rationale. They're starting to get really strict about having fair use rationales on pages, so it's pretty important. For a rationale, I usually just say something like "Fair use rationale: This image passes all our non-free use guidelines. It is no bigger than necessary in the article it is in, it could not be replaced by a free image, and it is significant in it's article." That usually does it. If you have questions, either in general or about specific images, feel free to ask me. – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 02:13, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm curious if there have been discussions about bibliographies on author's pages. There's an interesting discussion going on particularly at the talk page for Charles Dickens about how to handle bibliographies or even navigation templates of works. Feel free to join in. -- Midnightdreary 14:46, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
What exactly is a novel? In many articles it will have the name of the book and the (series). In other articles You see the name of the book and then (novel series) after it in the title. Is there any difference between the two? The title and the (series) after it makes more sense to me because it's simply a series, I don't think there are novel series. ~Bella 21:20, 29 June 2007 (UTC)