User talk:Dewey

Quotation mark discussion

Hi, could you put quotation marks around the bits you include verbatim from that DS author profile comm? I find it hard to distinguish which is original wikitext that you can edit also on the phrasing level and such, and which is a quote to leave there to not distort the quoted part. Without the quotation marks I only recognize that when suddenly an first person pov or the like crops up.--RatCreature 08:28, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry - I slipped up with the first person pov in last night's edits. I have been trying to paraphrase the comments and so they are not, for the most part, direct quotes but they're still pretty close to it. I've tried to follow the Citation Policy and PPOV and not direct quote. As long as I paraphrase are they okay for the most part as we've been doing? China Shop and I had quite the discussion about whether to use quotation marks or not and decided on paraphrasing with reference footnotes, but I'm starting to wonder if that was the best way to do it. Altering wording often makes it too stiff sounding. Should I be using quote marks and inline citation instead? It seemed it would be wordy and long and I didn't want to take up large chunks of the page. Or I could use block quote format (like Dollhouse). If I used block, do I still have to say "Soandso said..." at the beginning or is that implied with the footnote? Any example pages you can direct me to would be wonderful. I rather feel I am reinventing a wheel and shouldn't be! If it is easier, feel free to email me: dewey at orcon dot net dot nz. Thanks! I'll fix things when we come to a consensus. Also if I've been doing anything else that is annoying, please let me know. I think there will be about 10-15 profiles a month so I will be doing a lot of editing! --Dewey 05:11, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not a gardener nor a citation expert, but the citation policy as I understood it was to mark cited part somehow whether as a quotation or as a paraphrase, and then put in the reference in a footnote, but so that you can easily tell what exactly the bit of text the footnote sources.

Like say the text you use as source says "She writes awesome female characters, and I love her lyrical prose." You could either put that in like this as "Jane Fangirl describes the stories as: 'She writes awesome female characters, and I love her lyrical prose.'[1]" (with [1] standing ref footnote), or paraphrase to make it part of the text and say something more integrated in the text like "Fans like her female characters and lyrical prose.[1]" that is both fine, but a problem with the paraphrasing starts if the source bit taken from is long, not just a sentence, because then, if it is made part of the text but with only one citation, you can't tell what the reference is without intense comparison, and people may feel misquoted if the next person changes things, because they think for example the reference was only for one sentence/statement but it sourced two. Like take the above example, and it was included as "She writes awesome female characters. And fans love her lyrical prose.[1]" and then the next person expands it and the text will look like "She writes awesome female characters. Especially in her story A the librarian is a feminist icon. And fans love her lyrical prose.[1]" With the bit of the librarian as feminist icon being the wiki editors opinion, and there is no further effort made to distinguish, because they thought the [1] only was for the "lyrical prose" bit. But you can't really tell, and the next reader might think instead that Jane Fangirl said that the librarian was a feminist icon, but she never did. I find that problematic. And maybe there's some academic footnote/citation ninja skillz, but with multiple wiki editors it's hard to keep track so that attributions remain correct.

I mean, if the DS author profiles were licensed like text you write as a wiki editor here is (i.e. a CC license for copying and others are allowed to change your text), then it might not be an issue, though I still think not ideal, because wikis have editing histories showing the names of who said what and attribute automatially, and I think in that ase there should be maybe more a general notice like "a DS author profile was used as base" like you sometimes see on wikipedia when they took the initial article from a public domain version of an older Encyclopedia Britannica and built on that, but I'm not sure about the mechanics in this case.

In any case, I don't think longer quoted bits are a problem, if you look around the articles you see that many have quite long quotes, and there are several approaches for formatting these. Some use the template (the one that puts the box around it), other just indent. I think quotes would be better than paraphrases for intitial inclusion, not least because you can go from a quote to making it a paraphrase as part of a text easier than the reverse.--RatCreature 07:48, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

ETA: for example the Slash article uses several strategies. There are several very long quotes, because the author of these wanted to include them unchanged, most in the quotation box template and usually have the intro of "Klangley researched" or something like that, then are are shorter quotes, some also in boxes, like the one with the footnote [7], that for example only gives the name of the quoted author in the footnote, no intro sentence, some are paraphrases like [6] that only include the name in the footnote, so really there is no single style, people use whatever fits best. --RatCreature 07:58, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to think about all this with me. The librarian in me likes to get things "right" even though I know there is no absolutely correct way for most of this! I haven't been comfortable with the paraphrasing since it feels like I'm changing the author's intent too much; that's probably why I drifted into the more direct quoting without really realizing it. Using direct quotes will actually make my life much easier as I won't have to edit as much or ponder viewpoint - just pop them in there.

What I think will work best for the ds_Profiles quotes is to do something like the change you did on Pares with maybe going to a block quote - without the box - for things over three lines or more than one paragraph. Hopefully that will be clearer and not too intrusive. (I shall ponder further the use of italics, but I'm thinking they're not necessary if I include the "soandso says" part.) Once I get a form I like, I'll go back and standardize all the entries I've done! I want to go back to the source and make sure I quote correctly, but probably won't have time until this weekend.

Any other tips? Things I'm consistently doing differently than the majority? and much thanks again, I really, really appreciate it! --Dewey 08:26, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

eta - and thanks for the clear examples of how wiki editing can change author intent. I knew the way I was doing it wasn't quite the best but that sold me! --Dewey 08:36, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Notable Works heading discussion

Any other tips? Not so much tips as mostly general ramblings that might be useful for some articles. *g* Fanlore does not have requirements for notability of material. This is good because anyone can make a page about anything. However, not having notability criteria causes conflict when it comes to "notable" fanworks. Claiming something is notable often puts it in a position where it is seen as representing a fandom, a genre, a certain type of fanwork, etc. (That's why I don't use "notable" although official Fanlore policy seems to encourage it. I prefer simply saying "fanfiction" or "examples", etc.) People seeing a page with notable something X or Y often feel slighted because they see it as a misrepresentation of their own experience. The solution that in my experience seems to work best is to name the criteria for inclusion in an article (all fanworks by creator C, random examples, most often recced stories, etc.) and to give the reader some idea as to why the fanwork is there. May it be because it uses a particular romance trope really well, because most fans of a pairing loved it and there were thousands of comments, because it was the first story to do X or Y, or just because it's a good example of whatever. I've seen you've added summaries for the stories and I just wanted to say: Yay! \o/ That's the way to go. ^_^ There may not be notability requirements for the material but including it on a page that isn't about the material still needs a reason. Readers need that information to put these links into context and it makes for better articles. (Also, I have some editing tips on my user page. *g*) --Doro 11:54, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

First - thanks! I've been working in a vacuum and it's nice to know that our pages have been noticed! (That's so you don't think I sound whiny below.) I really feel at sea much of the time doing this stuff on the wiki, but China Shop wanted help and I raised my hand *g*

I spent a long time looking at People pages before starting these pages for ds_profiles and only saw the terms Notable or Influential works used. After contemplating your comments above, I think that I am still comfortable with using Notable Works in this way for People pages. I outline why below. I also think, however, that it could be up for discussion. Maybe on Fanlore's Journal? I am willing to have my mind changed if there is a consensus.

including it on a page that isn't about the material still needs a reason - well the stories really are about the page because they are works by the fan author. It is what makes them a fan author. They are 'their' material more than the 'fandom's' material in my view. The works are notable because they are examples of the author's work. (Maybe not notable in the fandom in general when compared to all other authors, but notable for a particular author.) Usage of these terms would be slightly different on a Fandom or Community page, but for a People page they seem correct to me.

The works I am adding to the pages are ones that have been given by the profiler as stories which stood out for them for some reason. Maybe they made them laugh, or cry, or see the characters in a new light. So in the mind of the profiler they are 'notable'. I do not choose the stories, I'm only the archiver. I also don't feel it is my place to change their choices, I only edit the summaries a bit, sometimes adding information off the original story website or LJ to make it as useful for wiki users as possible.

I realize since it is early days on the wiki that these things take on great importance as it can set usage in stone. So while I'm happy with the terms I used, if you feel it isn't the best then, as I said above, I would not mind at all to hear more discussion on this. --Dewey 05:54, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, you asked for "tips" and I answered with "general ramblings that might be useful for some articles", meaning some articles on this wiki and not specific articles you have been working on (the same way I pointed you to my thoughts on subpages and explanations on how to add images and format galleries; not something particular useful for the ds fan pages but maybe helpful for other pages. *g*). I agree that if there is a type of page where the concept of notable might work, it's a fan page because the fan identity is usually defined through fan activity. :) Nevertheless, adding summaries/additional info is something I think is necessary there too. If someone has written 300 stories and 3 are mentioned as notable, a reader would still want to know why. However, I didn't say you were doing anything wrong, on the contrary! So I'm not quite sure what to say. :/ --Doro 11:51, 18 February 2010 (UTC)

Oh! Sorry! I think I read some articles as meaning some of your specific articles. Sort of missed the general part... *headdesk* I didn't mean to sound like I didn't appreciate the points you raised. I did because it made me examine again what I was doing and think it through. I just sort of did my thinking out loud about the terminology and why I was using it and may have come off with the wrong tone. It's late here so my brain is fried. Thanks for letting me know I am doing okay with these. I get a bit insecure, obviously! *g*

And I agree that summaries are really, really Good!Things and will continue to add them to the bits I add. Hopefully people will see what I've done and do something similar when they add works to the pages. And I did go check out your recommendations on subpages, etc. It will be very handy! And I never would have found it without being pointed at them. Little gems are just hiding all over the wiki! If you know of any more, point me at them. I promise not to take it as criticism ;-). Thanks again! --Dewey 12:46, 18 February 2010 (UTC)