Portal talk:Speculative fiction/Article announcements

Proposed Wikipedia:Manual of Style (bibliographies)

I've looked at a lot of author pages in Wikipedia now, and it's becoming clear that there is no consistent style when it comes to creating the author bibliographies. Some are high-level, some detailed; some with dates, some without; some with ISBN's, some not; no consistent method for deliniating fiction vs nonfiction; no standard way of formating series.

Seems like we need a supplementary Wikipedia:Manual of Style (bibliographies), similar to Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies). Alvonruff 17:47, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, the Manual of Style currently states that:

If this page does not specify which usage is preferred, use other resources, such as The Chicago Manual of Style (from the University of Chicago Press) or Fowler's Modern English Usage (3rd edition) (from the Oxford University Press).

And the relevant section of the Chicago Manual of Style can be found here. Unfortunately, it's at variance with what most WP pages use at the moment and I don't like it much myself, e.g.:

Smith, John, Bob Snider, and Diane Hill. 2005. A study of physics. New York: McGraw Hill.

especially the way they put the year up front. They also don't list the number of pages in the publication, which can be very useful for our purposes, notably when we know little about it except that it has, say, 8 pages.

Originally, I didn't think it was that important to have a universally agreed upon policy as long as everybody was being reasonable. Unfortunately, Wikipedia being what it is, definitions of "reasonable" vary widely and I can see somebody writing a bot that changes all biblio sections to "standarize" them and makes a mess out of things in the process. I guess it's better to pre-empt things and have something vaguely definite in place to fall back on. Should we come up with a preliminary proposal here and then post it on Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style? Ahasuerus 19:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I vote we come up with a preliminary proposal. Even if not adopted by Wikipedia at large, we can still come to community agreement for "our" authors, and make it a defacto standard amongst ourselves. I think that there are three distinct areas to standardize:

Scope

We need to think about the audience of a general-purpose encyclopedia, which differs from that of a genre-specific encyclopedia like that by Tuck or Clute/Nicholls.

I think the first question that we need to answer is whether we are creating fiction bibliography guidelines or general bibliography guidelines. I suspect that mathematicians, scientists, etc would eat us for lunch if we tried to impose our fiction-derived standards on their tidy little worlds that they have been building up for generations. Ahasuerus 15:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

In general, readers want an overview of an author's works - but not necessarily the complete publication history of each work. The bibliography should be at a high enough level that it doesn't require constant maintenance. For instance, a bibliography of Bram Stoker should be pretty stable, unless some lost work is found and published.

I don't think that WP needs to list every edition of Dracula unless there is a special article called something like List of all editions of ''Dracula''. What is useful (or can be if we do it right) is enough information to make it easier for users to find the books that they are interested in and, in non-trivial cases, understand their publication history. For example, if a book's only English language edition came out in Japan or even Australia, mentioning it somewhere in WP can be quite valuable since it will raise a red flag in the user's mind. Even in this day of near-instant intercontinental Internet orders, information about UK/US editions can be useful as well. Next, we need information about abridgements -- from Jules Verne to Tim Powers, they have been a bane of readers and bibliographers everywhere -- and I would even argue that the word "abridged" needs to be highlighted as follows: abridged.

Next, information about translators, who are important since, e.g., a Stanislaw Lem novel in a Michael Kandel translation is typically superior to a non-Kandel translation. If a book has been translated from another translation, e.g. the English language version of Solaris was translated from the French language version, then the fact should be noted as well since it can have an effect on the quality of the end product. Also, if a non-West European book has only been translated to a non-English West European language, then I usually list that edition as well as the original, since it may help some people find a version that they can read. Thus, I listed the French translation of Georgy Chulkov's biographies of the 19th century Romanovs since they are not available in English.

Next, any and all data about the way different "works" relate to each other can be very useful. This is one area where a "free text" tool like WP can be superior to a database because there are a thousand and one ways in which works can relate to each other which becomes a nightmare to maintain in any kind of structured format. Thus we can note that Mark S. Geston's first two novels share the same background, but are otherwise unrelated and cite his statement explaining that it was due to his fascination with history at the time (in volume 2 of Reginald), etc.

Next, the book's publisher. It can prove to be VERY useful under some circumstances, e.g. small presses, print on demand, e-books, foreign editions, etc. Page counts -- see above. ISBNs -- a must since WP will automatically link it to dozens of stores that you can shop for the book. Price -- mm, I am undecided on this one. It may be helpful to know that a small press edition costs $80 so that you won't bother looking it up on Amazon, but there is always the secondary market. Cover and interior illustrations artist(s) -- I am not big on cover art, but some people are. Definitely a lower priority in my book.

Now, where do we put all this data? Ideally, most "publication" details would be in that "work"'s article. The only details that I would leave at the author level would be work-level data, e.g. abridgements, expansion, how it relates to other texts (unless it's minor and then explain that the Bolo mentioned in Night of Delusions is just a throwaway reference and not an indication that the book is set in the Bolo universe), etc. However, at this point in time we don't have standalone articles for most works of fiction that are listed in each author's article. The compromise that I have been using is to dump all the publication-level data that you have on file in the "author" article and then move it to the "work" articles as they get created. More to come :) Ahasuerus 15:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Another thing to think about is just how strict we want to make these guidelines. I think that we can leverage the fact that WP is a free text tool to make the guidelines rather loose. As long as an editor has a good reason to deviate from the "standard" (readability, special circumstances, etc) and as long as the end result does more to clarify things than to confuse the user, that should be fine IMHO. Ahasuerus 16:52, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Proposed guidelines

As such, I'll propose some high-level guidelines for discussion:

• The bibliography should include novels, collections, and nonfiction written by the author, as well as anthologies edited by the author.

Sounds reasonable, but what about poetry collections (list as a separate section?), chapbooks (list with the novels?) and non-book content like music recordings? Ahasuerus 23:02, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• The bibliography should not include reprint information. This level of detail should be reserved for a standalone article on the work itself. Some works have lengthy reprint histories, which can clutter a high-level bibliography. An extreme example of this effect can be found at the ISFDB publication history for Dracula.

See my comments above. Basically, I think that it may be useful to add the most important reprint-related data elements -- "this work by A. Bertram Chandler was originally published in English... but in Japan!" -- to the author's article on a permanent basis. Less important reprint information can be captured anywhere for now and moved to the "work" level article slater, when they have been created. Definitely ignore multiple reprints of classic works, but try to include US/UK/AU reprints when the information is non-trivial or otherwise useful. Perhaps also hardcover/tp/pb info as a weak guideline? Ahasuerus 23:02, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• The bibliography should not include omnibuses, unless significant. An omnibus is essentially a collection of previously published works already available in publication form.

Well, if we are talking about omnibus editions of H.G. Wells' books, then including all of them would likely be a chore. However, information about minor authors' omnibus editions can be quite useful, especially if it is non-trivial -- see M. John Harrison for the publication history of his Viriconium books. Ahasuerus 23:02, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• This one should be controversial: The bibliography should not include short fiction. Exceptions can be made for authors who have published predominately in the short form, but even then should only cover important or representative works. Rationale goes to the encyclopedic nature of WikiPedia, which is not intended to be an exhaustive bibliography of an author.

I am not sure if we can come up with a guideline that would be applicable in all cases. For example, S.P. Meek had a duology published in book form plus some unreprinted SF novels and two dozen YA non-SF novels, but he was not, arguably, a "predominantly short form writer". On the other hand, his most popular SF work was a series of a dozen short stories, which remain unreprinted as of 2006 (see Day). Even so, I would argue that they are worth listing. Also, what do you think we should do with novel length (well, for certain values of the term "novel length") works that were published in the pulps, but never saw book publication? List them in the "Novel" section? With the stories? Finally, what about unpublished works, especially by major authors? I could scrounge up the titles of John Taine's unpublished novel length manuscripts, but do we want them included? Ahasuerus 23:12, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• The bibliography should not cover articles, columns, or reviews from magazines.

Sounds reasonable. Ahasuerus 23:12, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Organization

The overall structure of the bibliography section should be as follows:

• The section should be contained in a level-2 heading:

 ==Bibliography==

==Works== may be a better term since it can easily cover CDs, albumbs (think Moorcock et al) as well. Or would be want that kind of material listed in a separate, non-biblio, section? Ahasuerus 23:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• There should be level-3 sections for novels, collections, anthologies, and nonfiction:

 ===Novels===
 ===Collections===
 ===Anthologies===
 ===Nonfiction===

Where does that leave the non-fiction that the author has edited? As a sub-section of ===Nonfiction===? Or should we change ===Anthologies=== to ===Edited by XYZ===? Also, see my comment re: ===Poetry=== above, although it can get tricky since some folks publish mixed prose/poetry collection :( Ahasuerus 23:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Series names should appear as level-4 sections:

 ====Wandering Jew Series====

The problem with making series a 4th level subsection header is that popular series can (and often do) include short story collections or associated material (A Guide to Xanth/Amber/etc). See Viriconium in M. John Harrison again. We may be better off listing all series stuff up front, followed by standalone novels, collections, etc. Ahasuerus 23:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

• Series entries should be ennumerated if known, otherwise bulleted:

 ====Giant Robot Series====
 # The Day the Robots Got Big (2001)
 # Planet of the Giant Robots (2002)
 # Giant Planet of the Giant Robots (2003)
 * Small Planet of the Not-So-Giant Robots (2004)

That sounds like a reasonable guideline, but do we list them in order of the series' internal chronology or in the order in which they were published? As you will recall, it's pretty much a FAQ on r.a.sf.w. Ahasuerus 23:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Title Format

• The general format for a title is:

 Title (Year) - Optional 1-sentence summary of book with zero spoilers.

• Long works (novels, collections, anthologies) should be italized with two single quotes:

 ''A Novel''

• Short works (when necessary) should be quoted with double quotes:

 "A Short Work"

• When wikified, the quotes should be placed outside the link brackets:

 ''[[A Novel]]''
 "[[A Short Work]]"

• Titles should be in the original publication language. Rationale: the first publication title is not subject to change, while translations of titles can be. The summary should describe the English language translation title, translator, and date of translation if known. If the work has not been translated to English, an approximate English translation of the title should be provided if known.

 ''[[Eden (novel)|Eden]]'' (1959) - Science fiction novel; after 
  crashing their spaceship on the planet Eden, the crew discovers it is 
  populated with an unusual society. Translated into English by [[Marc E. Heine]] 
  as ''Eden'' (1989).
 ''[[Wejście na orbitę]]'' (1962) - Not translated into English. Title 
  translates as ''Going into Orbit''.

• What about publication details such as publisher, page count, ISBN, etc? I personally don't like ISBNs in the high-level bibliography, as books prior to the mid-70's don't have them, and many books are reprinted requiring the article writer to select a single ISBN among many. In general, I think all of this data should go into a more detailed publication history that would be part of an article on the work in question.

Alvonruff 02:19, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Very long biblios, e.g. William W. Johnstone

So what should we do about William W. Johnstone's biblio, which is exceedingly long? Should we link his WP article to (William W. Johnstone at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database) or include the whole thing in the body of the article?

I think that WP's governing philosophy should be to try to incorporate as much biobibliographical information as realistically possible instead of linking to it on the Web since Web sites have proved transient over the last 12ish years. Besides, they can be down for maintenance, unavailable due to moves, etc. On the other hand, once you have something in a WP article, it gets propagated all over the Web in days or weeks and from that point on a search on, say, "William Johnstone ashes", will always come back with a useful answer. Online databases like the ISFDB will still be very useful if you want to do more involved searches, sort by title, look up related items, etc. Besides, it's not like we have to spend a lot of time on these time consuming authors right away, we can add it to the to-do list and somebody will get to them. Well, eventually.

However, I'll be the first one to agree that it can also make WP article very large and unwieldy. Decisions, decisions... Ahasuerus 00:47, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

In light of my first pass at laying down some standards above, I'd be inclined to agree with you and add the bibliography. Alvonruff 02:19, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Portal reorganization

It would appear that Portal:Speculative fiction/Article announcements is getting a bit unwieldy and will likely get really unwieldy once we have more "missing articles" and "peer review requested" added. I suggest that we create two more pages, one for "missing articles" and one for "peer review requested" articles, where we could post stubs, bio/biblio cleanup requests and comments, etc.

As far as the proposed biblio standard goes, I have quite a few thoughts on the subject, but even Wandering Jews need to sleep from time to time :( Some time tomorrow, hopefully, unless I get sucked into some silly Polish-Russian article renaming flamewar or some such. Ahasuerus 03:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Two more pages created as per the suggestion above, Portal:Speculative fiction/Article announcements reorganized. Ahasuerus 22:16, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you want the ISFDB hit list moved to the new missing articles portal? Or should names on the list simply be inserted into the regular list that's already there? Alvonruff 01:59, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I think there is value to maintaining the list as a separate entity, although I am not sure where we should put it. BTW, we could compile a few more lists, e.g.: Hugo/Nebula award nominees; Stoker award nominees; etc. Eventually, we could scan the Locus Awards pages for "missing persons". I'll see if I can do some preliminary work on this over the weekend... Ahasuerus 02:25, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Such lists are probably easier to generate via a database script, so don't knock yourself out on that. Since generating a list of Hugo nominees is trivial, and weeding out ISFDB authors who already have Wikipedia links is also trivial, it will be straitforward to create such lists. Just let me know where we should install the lists. Alvonruff 15 April 2006

Actually, WP already has these lists for most Hugo and Nebula categories. See, e.g. Hugo Award for Best Novel, Hugo Award for Best Short Story, Nebula Award for Best Novella, etc. A vast majority of the links are blue, thankfully. There is more red at Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Fiction, but still not too bad. I am not sure if we want to have a bunch of short lists of "missing authors" for every major award or combine them into one big list of "authors who have been nominated for major awards and who don't have an article in WP". Ahasuerus 02:56, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I just wrote one that was specific to Hugos (generated about 200 missing authors) - I could make it look for authors across all of the awards, and then order the list by who has the most nominations. Alvonruff 03:04, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

200 missing Hugo nominated authors? That's a lot! Are you counting missing Fan Hugos and other second tier Hugos? (No offense to Hugo nominated fans, of course!) If so, then I think it may be more important to get other "major major" award nominees first. Also, it occurs to me that Locus polls can be quite useful for our nefarious purposes -- if an author is consistently mentioned there, it may be more important to create an article for him/her rather than one for Norman Kagan, who had a short career decades ago and was only nominated due to the bizarre rules then in place. Ahasuerus 05:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

It's not as bad as you think. Those were Hugo nominations of any type including editors, artists, fanzine editors, and fan writers. There are 17 Hugo winners alone without articles. Most of these won lesser awards for fanzines, but there is 1 novel, 1 novella, 1 novelette, and 3 nonfiction books in the list. One could argue that 6 Hugo wins, even for Best Fanzine, is worth mentioning:

1. Nicki Lynch (6 Best Fanzine wins, for Mimosa)
2. Dena Brown (4 Best Fanzine wins, for Locus)
3. Ray Van Houten (2 Best Fanzine wins, 1 for Science Fiction Times and 1 for Fantasy Times)
4. James V. Taurasi (2 coeditor wins with Van Houten)
5. Wally Weber (1 Best Fanzine win, for Cry of the Nameless)
6. Tom Weller (1 Best Nonfiction win, for Science Made Stupid)
7. Ron Ellik (1 Best Fanzine win, for Fanac)
8. Jeanne Robinson (1 Best Novella win, for Stardance)
9. Frederick C. Durant (1 Best Nonfiction win, for Worlds Beyond: The Art of Chesley Bonestell)
10. Emily Pohl-Weary (1 Best Nonfiction win, for Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril)
11. Elinor Busby (1 Best Fanzine win, for Cry of the Nameless)
12. Burnett Toskey (1 Best Fanzine win, for Cry of the Nameless)

Missing Nebula winners are more writer-oriented, of course:

1. Mike Connor
2. Jeanne Robinson - Aha! In 2 lists!

Alvonruff 10:12, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Several of these missing persons have now gone blue. Should we delete them, or is it more appropriate to leave them as historical artifacts of where we were?--Orange Mike 22:19, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I would certainly suggest cleaning up the lists. Their history is always available under, well, "History" :) I'd do it myself, but the ISFDB is taking up most of my time at the moment... Ahasuerus 01:58, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Tips, tricks and templates for bibliographers

Something else that comes to mind is that we may want to have yet another page, which may be related to the proposed biblio policy page. It would list all the "standard" biblio sources that one should consider checking for a typical speculative fiction article, from Bleiler and Reginald to the online list of corrections/addenda to the Encyclopedias of SF and Fantasy by Clute et al. It could also have useful tips on finding bio-bibliographical data on the Web (print.google.com, used.addall.com, catalog.loc.gov, etc) and in paper sources, etc. Make it into a template-ized checklist that editors could use either on this Portal's pages or on the respective articles' Talk pages, perhaps?Ahasuerus 03:23, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

One sample tip would be to check for pre-existing (or even missing!) article for other people with the same last name (or, for common names, "first name last name" combinations) when you have created an "author article". For example, when I uplifted S.P. Meek, I ran a WP search and discovered that there were half a dozen "Meek" articles already, but there was no disambiguation page. So I went ahead and created one and things are much tidier now. Another tip would be to run a search for the newly created author within existing Wikipedia articles (probably using Google rather than the built-in engine) and link them to the new article. Also, think of any other articles that should link to the newly created one and check them out. And, of course, always create redirects for different forms of the author's name, e.g. with and without the middle initial(s), different capitalization, pseudonyms, etc. Be extra careful with pseudonyms that are sometimes used individually and sometimes collectively -- you may want to create a dab page for them. Ahasuerus 05:10, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Existing biblio templates

There is at least one relevant pre-existing template that we may want to look into:

{{cite book | last = | first = | authorlink = | coauthors = | year = | title = | publisher = | location = | id = }}

It's a citation template as opposed to a bibliographical one, but it's something to ponder. Ahasuerus 16:33, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Hit lists

Bibliographies that we can use to identify high profile missing authors:

1. List of Ace Double Novels
2. Hugo/Nebula nominees as posted above
3. The ISFDB lists posted here
4. List of science fiction authors
5. User:Alvonruff - I constructed a list of all award winners; author's with the most wins are at the top of the list. The blue links still need to have Wikipedia links entered into the ISFDB.
6. Jeff VanderMeer's fantasy canon
7. Anything else?