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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Tarquin (talk | contribs) at 11:39, 28 October 2002. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Isn't this project just a wee bit ambitious? Nothing wrong with that, but please do not place WikiProject tags in articles. Talk pages are the place for those. There must be hundreds of thousands of novels; I wish you luck. :) --mav

I know what you mean. I don't think Wikipedia needs these standards for most novel articles, yet. --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002

Maybe a little ambitious, yes, but it looks good to me. Maybe you can make this more general for all books, not just novels? Also, why not combine the external links and the review links (they're also external). BTW, it's a bit "dangerous" to include links to reviews, since your choice of reviews may be non-neutral - maybe you can solve that by linking to a few common sources, f.e. Amazon.com. Jeronimo

please not another set of tables! not all knowledge should be summarized into tables! And an article about a novel should not just be the plot & the characters. It should be about the greater context: the cultural impact, the literary style, the artistic impact, the artistic influences & so on. I don't think a rigid scheme of headings is conducive to so wide a grouping. For chemical elements, great. But please, don't let's reduce the great body of human literature to slot-in headings and tables. -- Tarquin

I definitely agree that novel articles need to include that and similar information. How do you think we should modify the WikiProject to advocate this? --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002

I tend to agree with Tarquin that it would be better to follow the article outline given now as a guideline for writing the article, rather than using a rigid sectioning scheme and a table, especially with the many novels around. Jeronimo

Of course! I thought I made that clear on the subject page. --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002

As a fan of tables, I see nothing wrong with giving some key information in a side table, provided that you can find the same information in the text as well. What we (IMHO) don't need is an image of the book cover. Takes up too much space and needs scanning and uploading for little results. If you need an image of the cover, just follow the ISBN link to amazon. --Magnus Manske 22:31 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

PLEASE no table. Tables are great for displaying technical info about an article for a limited set of themed subjects (like the chemical elements or countries). We should not have tables for something as numerous as novels; there simply is no way we could ever be able to convert a significant number of novels into the table format. There are only 109 elements and less than 200 countries so it is reasonable to expect that we will be able to convert those articles over. But doing this for a subject that has hundreds of thousands of possible entries is HTML madness in the extreme. Please don't have a table. --mav

Speaking of HTML madness and tables, whatever happened to a wiki table syntax? --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002

I think that is a long-term goal. What would make me feel a lot better about tables in general is if their HTML/Wiki code where hidden away in a table:namespace (to access the table code maybe the outside border of the table would be clickable to the table page which would only have the table in it). Even a Wiki table would get in the way of the body text of an article and may drive away the mark-up-phobic. --mav

That idea sounds neat. I vote for it. --Ellmist Friday, October 11th, 2002


I am fascinated how Mav and I can agree on something, yet for completely different reasons. Maybe there really is something to this Myers-Briggs stuff after all! (me the idealist, mav the practical, according to our types) Even if there were only 200 novels worth covering in Wikipedia, I'd still be against it, because it's an over-simplification. We are writing an encyclopedia, not a database. (and there's another item for "What wikipedia is not" ;) ) -- Tarquin 23:57 Oct 11, 2002 (UTC)

Yep. This is another valid reason why the table is a bad idea. --mav



Moving the template to talk:



Article Template

Replace text within ~ squiggles like these ~ with the specific information about the novel.

~Short summary of novel~

Larger ~Novel title~ cover image Alternate images

~Novel title~: ~Subtitle~

~Novel title~ cover thumbnail
Genre~Novel genre~
Author(s)~Author name~ (~Author birth date~ - ~Author death date~)
~2nd author name~ (~2nd author birth date~ - ~2nd author death date~)
Illustrator(s)~Illustrator name~ (~Illustrator birth date~ - ~Illustrator death date~)
~2nd illustrator name~ (~2nd illustrator birth date~ - ~2nd illustrator death date~)
Series~Novel series~
Publisher(s)~Novel publisher(s)~
Publication date~Novel publication date~
LCC~Novel Library of Congress Classification~
DDS~Novel Dewey Decimal System classification~
ISBN number(s)ISBN ~Novel 1st ISBN number~
ISBN ~Novel 2nd ISBN number~

Setting of ~Novel title~

Main article: Setting of ~Novel title~
~Describe setting of novel. Give approximate date if applicable. Name and describe the various places that events happened.~

Characters in ~Novel title~

Main article: Characters in ~Novel title~
~Describe and link to characters of novel.~

Chapters of ~Novel title~

Reviews of ~Novel title~

~Link to, but don't include, reviews of the novel.~

~Links to websites about novel~

See also: ~1st related Wikipedia article~ ~2nd related Wikipedia article~

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