All Questions
503
questions
101
votes
3
answers
18k
views
Resignation notice
When efforts arise to formalize or corporatize a community, there's often understandable concern that the effort could destroy the very community it seeks to grow. [...] Any effort to grow will fail ...
user80
56
votes
4
answers
3k
views
I no longer feel safe moderating this site
It's been just over five years since I joined the Stack Exchange network. I was awarded my fifth Yearling badge, over at Science Fiction & Fantasy, around a week ago. I became interested in the ...
MithicalMod
- 23.3k
43
votes
13
answers
2k
views
Accepting nominations — Who should moderate this site? [duplicate]
Ideally Moderators are elected by the community, but until the community is large enough to hold a proper election, we will be appointing three provisional Moderators to fill those roles.
We need ...
36
votes
28
answers
3k
views
Suggest your Lit.SE reading challenges here! [duplicate]
A few days ago, I asked about starting up reading challenges, with a particular goal in mind. Many of our questions are about the same authors, the same stories, the same genres, the same cultures. ...
33
votes
4
answers
274
views
Should graphic novels be on topic?
Assuming the question isn't breaking any other rules, should questions about graphic novels/comic books be on-topic for this site?
On one hand, comic-books are books just like any other books. On the ...
- 818
32
votes
5
answers
706
views
What do we think about story identification?
I guess it's appropriate to start with the elephant in the room - story identification questions. Should they be on-topic here?
In particular, what can we learn from the previous iteration of the ...
- 8,365
31
votes
9
answers
801
views
Who are the experts? Not us. We've grown a philosophical bezoar - let's work this through!
Buckle up, this is gonna be a journey.
We're pretty early into the site's existence. Things are rolling along nicely. We're hanging around a whopping 45 questions a day, and we've got the rocky ...
user80
30
votes
11
answers
932
views
Our site can be cold, unforgiving, and unapproachable. We're driving people away. What should we do about it?
This is shaping up to be a bit more of a rant than I meant it, but this is a serious problem, and I'm growing increasingly frustrated. I feel this is something we need to explore.
A good community is ...
user80
29
votes
2
answers
725
views
Moderator Pro Tem Announcement
Throughout the beta, we need members from the site whose focus is to engage the community, both in community-building issues and site management. That's why we select a few members from each community ...
- 101
28
votes
1
answer
201
views
Congratulations Literature.SE!
If you haven't already heard, Literature is moving on to public beta! We've built a great community here, avoided the mistakes of the last Literature site, and sparked useful discussions about the ...
- 4,387
27
votes
6
answers
360
views
Should we allow questions about religious texts?
Science-Fiction & Fantasy has a policy of excluding all religious texts. This makes sense because SFF is about fiction, and stating that a particular religious text is fictional is pretty ...
- 818
26
votes
1
answer
311
views
Literature is graduating on December 16th, 2021!
All of your hard work has paid off: We're officially graduating!
The Community Managers have confirmed that as part of their ongoing work on site lifecycles, as of December 16, 2021, Literature.SE ...
MithicalMod
- 23.3k
25
votes
1
answer
570
views
What are some good (legal) resources for finding the text of books?
Many good answers on this site are going to require quoting passages of the text of a novel, poem, play, or other piece of literature. Thus, knowing where to find such passages is going to be very ...
Rand al'ThorMod
- 71.1k
24
votes
2
answers
148
views
Is literary analysis on-topic?
Should questions like "what does the author mean by saying XX?" or "what is the significance of YY item in this context" be on-topic?
On one hand, they can facilitate opinion-based discussion (and ...
- 8,365
23
votes
6
answers
629
views
Let's design an ad for our site
In 2016 there were a lot of Community Promotion Ads for Literature SE on various other sites around the network, which a few of us posted up during the Definition stage of the Area 51 proposal. Now ...
Rand al'ThorMod
- 71.1k
23
votes
13
answers
298
views
What should our main site chatroom be called?
Every Stack Exchange site has at least one chatroom associated to it. The primary chatroom for the site usually has an interesting name which is somehow evocative of the topic of that site: for ...
Rand al'ThorMod
- 71.1k
22
votes
3
answers
304
views
What do we do with science fiction and fantasy?
It may happen that someone asks a question about some work of science fiction. It may be about a character, plot, or even a story-ID question.
What do we do then? Migrate to Science Fiction and ...
- 8,365
22
votes
10
answers
353
views
I've been told my question is better suited to a forum, but where should I go?
This question was adopted/stolen from the RPG Stack Exchange's Meta.
I asked a question about literature that was closed. Someone recommended that I try posting the question on another website. What ...
user111
22
votes
5
answers
356
views
Should we assume that questions about a book spoil that book, or should we use spoiler markup?
The title pretty much sums it up. It seems plausible to me that an assumption that a question about a book is liable to contain spoilers is enough reason to not use spoiler markup. I wanted to ask and ...
user80
21
votes
4
answers
531
views
Do we want something akin to topic challenges for books outside our bailiwick, to help alleviate the book diversity problem?
Our site's growing a bit of a diversity problem. Most of us have read many of the same books, and so many of the questions we get are... about those books specifically. The top site tags betrays this ...
user80
21
votes
1
answer
173
views
Please don't make trivial edits
The front page of the site was recently flooded with approximately 20-30 edits which did nothing but remove contractions from posts, e.g. changing "I'm" to "I am" and "it's" to "it is".
May I take ...
Rand al'ThorMod
- 71.1k
21
votes
2
answers
359
views
How will we avoid literature snobbery?
Literary analysis, and literature in general, is prone to a lot of cliquish cross-subject sniping and condescension. Bardolatry and the Authorship Question, the validity/dignity of [romance novels/YA ...
- 4,890
20
votes
2
answers
403
views
Should recommendation questions be on-topic?
The previous incarnation of Literature SE included a lot of recommendation questions. I don't have any specific examples to hand from that site, but typical book recommendation questions might look ...
Rand al'ThorMod
- 71.1k
20
votes
1
answer
207
views
What should we do about snarky comments denigrating specific works?
There's a trend on SciFi.SE, where any mentions of works that are less popular with fans (Dune prequels, Highlander II, Matrix sequels, Star Wars prequels) are frequently met with snarky comments ...
- 4,476
20
votes
1
answer
181
views
Please, let's develop our scope, not force it
Coming fresh of another private beta I'm looking a bit worried on some of the meta posts over here. For starters I'll quote what has also been pinned in our chat, what Robert Cartaino the director of ...
- 1,031
19
votes
2
answers
570
views
Please include descriptions of your images
One Stack Exchange website on which I'm active has an ongoing project to fix the alt text all over the site to increase accessibility for vision-impaired users.
I'd just like to ask all of you to fix ...
- 5,940
19
votes
2
answers
401
views
Should reading-order questions be on-topic?
An important topic on other arts-related Stack Exchange sites, giving them some of their most enduring and useful questions, is suggested order. An example question of this kind would ask for the most ...
Rand al'ThorMod
- 71.1k
19
votes
0
answers
248
views
Picking up my diamond once again
In October 2019, I stepped down as a moderator on this site. At the time, the environment in the network and especially in moderator spaces was extremely toxic; I stepped down because I no longer felt ...
MithicalMod
- 23.3k
18
votes
4
answers
267
views
Please stop "pushing" stuff away to other sites
I keep seeing comments left on questions to the regard of:
I think this question would be more appropriate for the Science
Fiction & Fantasy Stack Exchange
or
You should ask this on SFF ...
- 1,733
18
votes
4
answers
471
views
Are songs and poems on-topic?
This question arose from this answer.
It can be argued that songs and poems can be considered literature. Heck, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature for his songwriting. I wouldn't say that ...
- 5,864
18
votes
5
answers
426
views
What types of non-fiction are on topic?
Having read the current tour the "ask / don't ask" is short and vague. Now I would expect that since we are currently in private beta. However, to me a big definition on scope would be a ...
- 3,926
18
votes
4
answers
490
views
Should we embrace non-Googlers?
Common Stack Network policy is to embrace non-Googlers. The Stack Exchange wants to be a place Google sends folks, not a place that sends folks to Google.
Unfortunately, many sites and some of our ...
- 4,890
18
votes
3
answers
149
views
What's going on [behind-the-scenes]?
After the behind-the-scenes tag was recently edited into one of my questions, I realised that I'm not entirely sure how this tag is supposed to be used, and went to check the list of questions using ...
Rand al'ThorMod
- 71.1k
18
votes
2
answers
396
views
Submit your literature reviews to our Tumblr!
Most of you probably aren't aware that Literature.SE has an unofficial Tumblr blog, called One Minute Reviews. This is supposed to be where Literature.SE users can submit short reviews of basically ...
MithicalMod
- 23.3k
17
votes
4
answers
184
views
Quoting from non-English literature
When quoting a book in a question that was originally written in a language other than English, is it preferable to quote it in the original version or in an English translation, or both? If one ...
- 103
17
votes
4
answers
251
views
How do we feel about using other people's answers on a different site as a source?
I gave this answer yesterday that basically summarizes Valorum's answer from Sci-Fi to the same question. There has also been Cheese's answer
to a question about the reading order for Sanderson's ...
- 6,588
17
votes
2
answers
274
views
Why was the previous Literature SE closed?
What's the history behind the first Literature StackExchange? Why was it closed? How can we avoid the same thing from happening to this one?
- 633
17
votes
1
answer
128
views
Reading requirements
Do I have to read a book before I ask a question about it? Can I ask questions about books I haven't finished reading yet? Do I have to read a book several times before I ask a question about it?
- 4,890
17
votes
3
answers
372
views
Thoughts on "why didn't character x act rationally" questions?
A big pet peeve of mine about Stack Exchange's Science Fiction and Fantasy website is that's filled with questions that I describe as "why didn't character x act rationally" questions. Recently, ...
user111
17
votes
4
answers
272
views
Does Oral-Literature count as literature here?
I got into a small discussion with Hamlet (site mod), over this answer of mine. In the comments Hamlet said:
Oral literature counts as literature. Just because people don't write things down doesn'...
- 6,198
17
votes
3
answers
761
views
List of bounties with no deadline
One of the problems on Stack Exchange sites is that questions don't always receive good answers. While unanswered questions are easy to find, this is not the case with questions that have one or more ...
- 44k
17
votes
1
answer
270
views
A reminder to those with 500+ reputation: please remember your close/reopen votes!
This was originally an old announcement, but still relevant today for different reasons.
On this public beta site, every user with 500+ reputation has the ability to help with closing and reopening ...
Rand al'ThorMod
- 71.1k
17
votes
2
answers
182
views
Is this site focused on Literature Analysis or literature in general?
There seems to be two conflicting opinions about the purpose and scope of the site that I trace in Meta (and Area51) discussions and comments.
Is this site focused on Literature Analysis as its ...
- 4,476
16
votes
4
answers
147
views
2023 Community Moderator Election Results
Moderator election #2 on Literature has come to a close, the votes have been tallied, and the new moderators are:
They will be joining the existing crew shortly — please thank them for volunteering ...
- 120
16
votes
2
answers
498
views
Can we increase the maximum tag length?
Is there any way we can increase the maximum tag length to something bigger than 25 characters?
Right now, our site tags questions by book titles. Unfortunately, many book titles are longer than ...
user111
16
votes
1
answer
87
views
Are questions about the process of creating specific literary works on-topic?
Just to be clear, I'm NOT talking about generic "how to write" questions; that would be on-topic on writers.SE (and imho should be off-topic here).
I mean things like:
What did this specific ...
- 4,476
16
votes
2
answers
363
views
Should this XKCD question be closed, and why?
What were the original two results for 'died in a blogging accident'?
This question about an XKCD comic currently has three votes to close, and Hamlet♦ has left a comment saying he'd be happy ...
Rand al'ThorMod
- 71.1k
15
votes
22
answers
3k
views
New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread
Topic challenges for Literature SE were first proposed and enacted in March 2017. The motivation for these, as well as to bring our users together in a community activity of reading the same books or ...
15
votes
3
answers
112
views
Should we accept questions asking to compare a book and its adaptation?
There are a few question on Sci-Fi and Fantasy SE asking for a comparison of a book and its adaptation. Off hand, I could find a question about The Martian, and question about Harry Potter with an ...
- 8,365
15
votes
3
answers
278
views
How should we deal with authors who use pseudonyms?
We currently have tags for a few authors (or groups of authors) that wrote under pseudonyms, such as lemony-snicket and franklin-w-dixon. In the case of Snicket, the author has written other works ...
- 5,864