On Thu, Oct 1, 2009 at 1:28 PM, Surreptitiousness
wrote:
FT2 wrote:
The issue for fiction can be summed up within
with one question, almost.
Here is a nice simple book. Obviously any /analysis/ will be from good
quality sources. But what kind of sourcing is appropriate to its plot
summary? Many well-read books don't have plot summaries in reliable sources,
and yet "anyone reading the book can see what its basic plot is", and we
have hundreds of editors to reach consensus on what it says.
(Key issue: any book is a primary source on its own contents.)
You've misread me. The key question is, why should we summarise this
plot. That's what's causing the problems with fiction on Wikipedia at
the minute. Although having said that, the drama does seem to have died
off a bit lately. Which kind of suggests a consensus of sorts exists.
I think plot summaries are OK, as long as there is some real-world
context and analysis. Just a description of what the book is about is
not enough. Links to reviews and criticism is a must, in my view. Some
examples would help here, from stubs, to "only" plot summary (more
like a directory of books), to "mixtures" to "featured articles about
books" (we have a few of those).
Why shouldn't a plot summary or book
description be enough? It's a
fundamental building block for any article. While it would be nice to
have reviews and criticisms a simple tag that we would like these added
should suffice to alert someone else to add them. The people who write
a good summary are often not the same people who condense reviews and
criticisms well.
Ec