Talk:Dark Places (novel)

Hello everybody! I hope you enjoy my new article. Just to let you know this is part of project that I am doing for college course at IUPUI. I am a student and will continue working on this article.

TrinaBeena (talk) 01:25, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I hope you can still do the work on the article for your course, it seems that Mukkakukaku has really expanded the content a little too boldly, especially if he had known you were a student an assignment. That being said, this article could use more work on expanding a section on themes, more critical responses, such as the one found at The Guardian and greater discussion of the background and development of the book. Also, I can help you find more articles that need work, I have several listed on my User Page which have plenty of sources, but no-one has taken the time to write as an article. Please contact me here or email me if you need help figuring this out, Sadads (talk) 21:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm prety much done. I ran into this article while on new page patrol, where a lot of the sections were copy-pasted straight out of the WP:Novels template. A template had been erroneously applied due to a malfunctioning script, so I kind of hung around to clean it up a bit, wikify, and add references to establish notability. Since this is pretty much far beyond my area of expertise or usual editing, I'm not going to be sticking around for much longer.

In terms of further expansion, you may want to mention this recommendation from NPR (which is where I remember first hearing about it), or this one from New York magazine, and this USA Today article that talks a little bit about the screenplay and upcoming film.

Best. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 21:43, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Plot

I've pretty much rewritten the plot section as it is right now, since it previously was pretty much a copyvio of this site and others like it. I haven't actually read the book, so it might not be 100% accurate, but I did my best with what I had to work with. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 02:01, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually I didn't copy it from any site since I have actually read the book. I was trying to start at the beginning of the novel and work through the plot points. Just didn't get to everything last night. Thanks for putting in connecting links. Wish you would give me more time to actually write the plot out.

TrinaBeena (talk) 17:14, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Well I'm required to remove copyright violations as soon as I notice them. Usually I just blank the section in question; in this case I rewrote it. It was practically word-for-word the plot provided from the author's website (and other promotional websites, awards sites, and so on.) Besides, it should summarize the plot and the ending in general terms without being a "short form" of the novel.

Consider these Featured Articles' plot sections when writing: Le Père Goriot, To Kill a Mockingbird.

And for future reference, the copyright policy: WP:COPY. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 18:12, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Again, I didn't get to finish it last night and I was trying to be thorough and make sure I got the correct plot points. I don't really appreciate being told that I copied something when I sat down at my computer last night and wrote it myself. TrinaBeena (talk) 18:27, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Well I'm sorry I've offended you, but if you look at the old version prior to my changes and the author's official webpage, there's just too many similar or same sentences. Consider:

In this article: "She lost some fingers and toes but survived to testify in court against her teenage brother, Ben."

On the website: "She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer."

That's just one example. One could argue that's it's pure coincidence, but coincidence or not, it's ended up a copyright violation. I think it's great you've decided to devote your time to this article, and being thorough is great. It's just very important to be careful when it comes to copyright and licensing. Best. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 18:42, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Mukkakukuakaku, this was clearly not copyvio, you need to be more friendly, and not bite the new users. The talk page was very clear that this is a student working on classroom work, and students are particularly responsive to feedback and advice. It is better to mentor, and do minor clean up and let students experience the process instead of outright assaulting their work, and deciding to rewrite the page. That being said, good job in the rewrite and please consider participating in WP:Novels we could use more users who understand how to write articles on Novels, Sadads (talk) 21:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

On second look it's probably not a direct copy-paste sort of copyvio, but it's awfully close. (Really -- 13 out of 20 words in the sentence appear in the exact same order.) The two sections do follow the same train of thought, using similar sentence structure and sequence, to portray the exact same information in the exact same order.

(Of course one could argue, "it's a plot summary, of course it's going to follow the same order," but in both cases the plot summary doesn't even start at the beginning.) But what's done is done and it's over now.

I do try to be avoid biting newcomers. The original statement in this section was just supposed to be a "by the way I rewrote the plot section to remove fluff, make it more general, and introduce thematic elements." And if students needs to write an article for a class, wouldn't it be better to sandbox it for the semester and then move it to article mainspace?

Oh, and trust me, you don't want me anywhere near articles about novels -- I'm an engineering student. I haven't taken a literature class since high school. ;) This was just my project-of-the-minute. Best. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 21:36, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

On the sandbox point, yes that is what we recommend for most classes, but unfortunately, it doesn't look like this student is working directly with WP:Campus Ambassadors or WP:Online Ambassadors, so we were not able to head that off. And yes, I know the problems with WP:OWN, but if you provide collaborative feedback for stubs, which no-one really trusts anyway, then it gives them a slightly better experience. In the future, if you do encounter this issue, perhaps userfy the page into a sandbox or provide feedback, so that the person can make changes! The policy on the copy paste thing, could have been explained in a slightly less aggressive way. Thanks anyway though, Sadads (talk) 22:10, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Dark Scribe Magazine

Are this magazine, Dark Scribe Magazine, and its awards really notable? I noticed that the magazine itself doesn't have an article, and their website is rather amateurish and bloggish (from my perspective as a programmer and web developer, that is.) Is this Dark Quill Award really notable? Obviously it's not in the same league as the Caldecott Medal or the Newbery Medal or even the New York Times Best Seller List, but is it notable enough to include in this article?

I've included it for the sake of completeness in the Awards sections, but I was just wondering about the overall notability of the award as a whole. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 19:16, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

It appears reliable as a source and several other pages use it, check out the LinkSearch. It is not entirely user created, so it seems, so it seems reliable. And some other online magazines with editors, such as here and here treat it as an authority of some reputation, Sadads (talk) 21:03, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

OK thanks. I was kind of worried there, since cluttering up an awards section with a lot of "fluff" awards (that is, awards that are not really notable) makes it seem like the writers of the article are scrambling to find stuff to put into that section. --Mûĸĸâĸûĸâĸû _(blah?) 21:18, 23 February 2011 (UTC)