Best Questions & Answers from 1st Quarter of 2017

Question

@Hamlet mentioned in chat that one way to promote this site would be to post links elsewhere on the internet to some of our best content. In order to make this easier to do, I thought it would be a good idea to gather a collection of particularly good posts here so far, so that we have some easy links to show off to people when we need to do so.

Since a collection of good posts "so far" will necessarily go out of date as time goes on and the site evolves, I decided to impose a time limit. Various other sites have a quarterly round-up of best posts; since this site started in January, and it's now April, it makes sense to limit this list to the first quarter of 2017, so that we can get new collections of best posts each quarter from here to eternity without being subject to the FGitW effect on whichever answers get posted here this month.

So, without further ado:

please nominate some exemplary Q&A from the first quarter (Jan/Feb/Mar) of 2017.

Well, just a little bit more ado ...

• When choosing nominations, please remember the primary purpose: to showcase our site to people elsewhere in the hope of maybe tempting them to come here. Let's try to focus mainly on great questions with great answers, and perhaps also great unanswered questions (which we can advertise as "hey, why not come and answer this"), but not anything with subpar answers, which will tend to give a bad impression and defeat the purpose.
• Getting a wide range of different stories represented in our list here would also be nice, but not strictly necessary - feel free to nominate a bunch of Q&A about the same book, if you think they're all outstanding. But don't nominate questions just because they're about your favourite book; please try to optimise for interesting, insightful posts.
• Multiple nominated posts per answer here is fine.
• Feel free to nominate either some of your own posts which you're particularly proud of, or posts from other people which really impressed you.
• Ideally, some explanation of why the nominated questions and answers are so good would be useful - it might give people here some ideas about what to aim for in the future.

Answer 1

The first good answer I think of from the first quarter of 2017 is Gallifreyan's answer to one of my earliest questions on Literature (Does Dr. Manhattan have free will?). It

1. clearly and definitively answers the question
2. with a lot of support from the book and related works,
3. clearly dealt with my side question (and made me totally unable to post that as a separate question!) and
4. suggested a few works for further reading.
5. As a bonus, Gallifreyan also put a lot of work into making sure that the answer, with its many pictures, was accessible to readers with vision impairments. That's a pretty big deal, and also probably took a lot of effort.

Receiving that answer was one major factor (among others) that convinced me to try to remain active on this site.

Answer 2

Any list would be incomplete if it didn't mention robopuppy's answer to the question What suggests Edmund might be gay? It's a brilliantly written answer, it approaches literature from an angle many people don't consider, and it deserves a lot of praise.

Community member Nathaniel has some really good answers, such as Nathaniel's answer to the question Is Deeper Magic something more than God (the Emperor beyond the Sea) in Narnia? and to the question Why does Modesta Gómez demand payment from the indigenous girl?

One of the questions I asked, Why does Robert Frost contradict himself in "The Road Not Taken", brought out some interesting discussion, as well as a truly excellent answer by ShreevatsaR.

I'm sure I'll think of others later, but these answers are definitely in the top ten as far as content goes, and they should serve as examples of what an answer that goes above and beyond looks like.

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Honorable Mentions:

1. HDE's answer in In Wind in the Willows, why is Mole's garden full of Italian heroes?
2. Emrakul's answer in Is House of Leaves' ergodicity preserved as a digital text?, as well as their answer to Why are haiku usually of 17 syllables?
3. BESW's and verbose's answers in Could you actually go around the world in 80 days?

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If you're interested, my criteria for "excellent answers" is the following:

1. Good, clear writing.
2. Is correct in the big picture sense and the little details sense.
3. Broad in scope, meaning that it answers the specific question, but does so in a way that it illuminates a broader aspect of the text or the text's place in society.
4. Bonus points if the answer considers an overlooked perspective.

There are many "good" and "great" answers that I upvote. I tend to give "excellent" answers bounties. It should go without saying that no one expects every answer to be "excellent". These answers are something to strive for and should be examples of how to do things right, but wanting every answer to be "excellent" is like wanting everything to be "perfect": it's impossible.

Answer 3

Ok, here are my nominations!

I have to mention our highest voted question How do we know Humpty Dumpty was an egg? and the fantastic answer which showed some amazing research by Terriblefan, and definitely deserved the bounty.

Mithrandir wrote a great answer (and currently our highest voted one!) in reply to Why was 1984 set in 1984?

This answer by DJMcMayhem was one of the best I've seen.

Some of my personal favourite questions:

1. What is Hobbes?
2. Why are haiku usually of 17 syllables?
3. Is there any textual evidence that this death in Deathly Hallows symbolized the end of childhood?

Although I have to say, the quality of questions so far has really impressed me. It has been hard just choosing my favourites.

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I'll follow in Hamlet's footsteps and define my criteria of a 'good answer'

1. Is clear and precise, and answers the question
2. Shows good and extensive research and includes relevant information (quotes or facts)
3. Makes good and viable deductions if the answer is not explicit
4. Covers all the points necessary
5. Maybe provides a different view or opinion

I am pleased to say that I have seen many answers that meet my above criteria.

Answer 4

^{Warning: self-promotion follows! This is not an attempt to gather the best of all answers from 2017 Q1, but rather a collection of my own posts that I'm most pleased with. I'm sure others have written even better answers than these.}

There are a few different types of answer on this site: those based on online research (e.g. finding interviews, reviews, any other relevant material to be quoted); those based on careful reading (simply taking the text of a story and examining it carefully, pulling out quotes to support one's conclusions); and those based on subject knowledge (which don't necessarily need to be supported by any kind of quotes, but simply by a deep knowledge and expertise on the material of the story).

Online research is, in my view, the least interesting of these. Subject knowledge is of course a great thing to use on any SE, and careful reading is a literary skill which can be honed to great effect, but Googling up some quotes is a skill which isn't really very literary. I don't say this to be snobbish - Googling is a skill, and a useful one, and a lot of my own answers are based on online research, especially from my early days here when I was still too influenced by SFF - but to justify my choices in this post. I've mostly ignored online-research answers when hunting for favourites here.

I've gone through my own answers from 2017 Q1 to pick out the ones I'm most proud of. Great questions are harder to judge, and great answers from other people are harder to find. Sorry.

Favourite answers:

• Is Professor Moriarty really Sherlock Holmes' arch-enemy in the way some people think? - I was particularly pleased with this answer because it involved looking at the story on at least two levels: small-scale careful reading suggested one answer, but looking at the big picture and using some subject knowledge gave a different result.
• What is the foundation of the religion in Watership Down? - again, multiple techniques used here: careful reading of a few passages, then subject knowledge for some character analysis, and finally an author interview to confirm what I'd already worked out.

Subject knowledge:

• Moral of the Hunger Games Trilogy - I very much appreciated the chance to wax lyrical about the excellent ending of the Hunger Games series, which seems to confuse a lot of people about the protagonist's real motivations.
• In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, what is the purpose of this character's resurrection? - another interesting question about endings, and chance to discuss the moral of the entire book.
• Did Ratty have a housekeeper? - a simple question which allowed the opportunity for some nice and detailed character analysis.

Careful reading:

• Did Winston and Julia oversleep? - putting together a lot of different sentences from the same chapter to create a convincing argument.
• What is the greater meaning of the thrush? - looking at the way the thrush is described and its significance to the story in order to build up an argument.

Honourable mentions:

• What was a “ward in chancery”? - an opportunity to show off my knowledge of chancery law and its history.
• What do “Sedgemoor trade-mark” and “white-sleeve badge” mean? - another chance to use some subject knowledge from outside the field of literature.
• What is the origin of this unidentified contradictory poem? - this one was based on online research, but it was so fascinating to trace the poem and its variations back through the mists of time and oral literature.