Talk:Main Page

Added Annotation by Page

Hey, I've started to add a different type of annotation that the Alphabetical Index. I like this method because it gives the reader all the references on the page, as he reads, in a non-spoilerish fashion. No idea if this will take off aside from my contributions, and also no idea how to integrate it with the Alphabetical Index, but these problems I leave to future Pynchonwiki contributors as well as my future self.

I also have not followed the naming guidelines on the main page, for the simple reason that I don't know how...! These pages can be renamed and moved by whoever knows how to do so.

Bleakhaus 08:51, 22 November 2006 (PST)

I would name the page-by-page pages eg: ATD 1-25, etc. Ultimately, all Pynchon's works will be in the Wiki, so it's important to establish this convention. I have moved the three pages you created to reflect this naming.

I changed the page number headers to a 2nd level from a 1st level, to reflect semantically their heirarchy on the page (they appeared at the same level as "Pages 1-25"; thus, for example, I changed

=Page 1=

to

==Page1==

I would suggest that eventually we have a link to the ToC for the page-by-page, as it will be a very long ToC!

Tim November 22, 2006

good call! I'll handle that ToC soon. Bleakhaus 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)

I think the page-by-page (can we now call that the PbP?) is a lot more fun to edit, since it follows the way I am reading the book. --Fblau 09:03, 25 November 2006 (PST)

PbP Annotations added to sidebar - 11/30/06

This should make things a bit easier, nav-wise. I set up a template that can be accessed by entering in the search box "Template:ATD PbP" - so that's where all the edits get made.

WikiAdmin 18:22, 30 November 2006 (PST)

What can the Pynchonwiki do better than Amazon.com full text search?

I note that Amazon.com's full text search of Pynchon's novels does exactly the same thing as one function of Thomaspynchon.com's previous guides: giving the page numbers where a given character or thing is mentioned. That said, I think we need to articulate what the guides and Pynchon wiki do in addition to justify all the human labor involved, and then communicate that to potential wiki contributors. (also, Amazon doesn't do this for AtD yet, but since it's available for all his other works, I assume it's just a matter of time). Thoughts? Bleakhaus 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)

Change of logo/cover image

Shouldn't we change the cover image/logo for Pynchon wiki (upper left corner) to the final version of the cover? And, for accuracy's sake, shouldn't we include the white border around the cover? Torerye 01:21, 24 November 2006 (PST)

agreed-- Tim will have to take care of that, though. Bleakhaus 14:17, 24 November 2006 (PST)

Tim sez:
This brings up the general branding of this site. I would like to have Wikis for all the works, and use the Category namespace to separate them. Having them all in this wiki means that a user can search in all the novels.

So, I'm thinking I just create a "logo" image that's general, for "Pynchon Wiki".

I'd surely love to hear anyone's thoughts on this so we can brainstorm the best decision. Email me directly at tim (at) hyperarts (dot com).

--WikiAdmin 15:00, 24 November 2006 (PST)

Missing caption?

Um, was the picture caption removed as a spoiler, or what? Bleakhaus 22:49, 27 November 2006 (PST)

No, I just took it off to free up the image, jettisoning signifiers. As I looked at it, I just thought it worked better if the reader just sort of recognizes it as that Chums of Chance bit without being too literal.

WikiAdmin 23:28, 27 November 2006 (PST)

The impending anarchist miracle

The following is copied from A. A.'s message on PYNCHON-L.

Jasper Fidget <jasper.fidget@[omitted]> wrote:

> [...]  I anticipate the wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's 
> half-baked opinions and
> Kinbote-esque commentary (i.e. worse than useless).

In reply to which, pynchonoid <pynchonoid@[omitted]> wrote:

> That's Pynchon-l you're describing, certainly.
>
> I think you're wrong about the potential for
> http://pynchonwiki.com.  So far, it is nothing like
> your description and is instead a useful resource that
> will grow more so as more people contribute useful
> information.
>

And in reply to the above, I say:

First of all, Kinbote's commentary isn't "worse than useless". His digressions on Zembla have blasted little to do with John Shade's Appalachia, but leaving aside the value of the Forward (which gives the reader their first brush with Shade and, in some respects, a more complete visual impression), the Commentary and Index provide a counterpart and complement to the 999 lines of the poem itself. The book in its entirety is an artifice, deceptive and illuminating; if pynchonwiki.com produces anything like Pale Fire, its authors would have every right to be proud.

"Ha ha, only serious."

Second, the pynchonwiki has the potential to become something I wished Wikipedia could provide: a place to provide factual material of scholarly use, backed up with pointers to papers and books, plus the opportunity to generate new literary talk with kindred folks. You can't do that over at WP. Even applying the bread-and-butter methods of lit-crit one learns in the undergraduate years is a sin, or in the argot, Original Research. In WP territory, you can't discuss a new book, even with old methods, only report what other people have said about old books. This is appropriate for an encyclopedia, but it can't constitute the whole of discourse.

Human behavior implies some basic facts about wiki life. Foremost is the under-acknowledged issue that in any situation where the wiki grows by people contributing their free time, the majority of edits will be minor ones, affecting (and affected by) only their immediate environment. Lists can grow item by item, for example, much more easily than entire articles can be overhauled. Thus, even in cases where a page contains all the facts one needs, the organization will often be poor. Also, ensuring coordination among multiple pages can be difficult and tiresome to achieve.

These societal traits make wikis a good repository for things like lists of typos, catalogs of character names and so forth. In these cases, small edits can build a workable and useful whole by incremental additions. However, there is an unhappy flipside. Most of the really good articles on WP (say, those listed in "Featured Articles") are the work of one person or a small group, say a couple-three editors, who assemble a clear and thorough exposition of a topic which interests them. Remarkably often, such people can do a really terrific job. They push the article up to Featured status (I did this five times — all it takes is energy and care), where it can sit and bask in the glory. . . . And attract a stream of well-meaning editors who come along, adding their favorite tidbit of information, little drops of this or that which may well be completely accurate but which don't fit into the scheme painfully worked out by the original authors.

After this goes on for long enough, the original authors or others with a like-minded sense of dedication have to go through and clean up the cruft.

I saw several cycles of this happen with the article Calvin and Hobbes. Everybody has their own favorite Calvin and Hobbes strip, and damn if they don't want to talk about it! This sort of thing is a big reason why WP has "Featured Article Review", a mechanism for forcing cruft patrol and, if necessary, taking pages off the honor roll.

If pynchonwiki is to be a going concern, it'll need mechanisms for keeping track of good content. Somebody will also have to institute ground rules for keeping debate fair and dealing with the inevitable hotheads and trolls (trust me, no subject is too obscure to attract crackpottery). Otherwise, we're just prayin' for that anarchist miracle.

Pirate Prentice wrote:

> There's basically 3 things the wiki does at the moment: 1) straight up
> reference (what was the Chicago World's Fair and when did it happen?),
> 2) connections to other Pynchon novels ("single up all lines" also
> appears on these pages of GR and V., "entropy" was a major theme in
> GR, etc), and 3) interpretation.

I think that any work people do on #3 (which is what Wikipediphiles call "original research") should be credited to the people who do it, since it is after all value generated by labor. To an extent, #2 shades into #3, depending upon how much one has to squint to draw the connections. The many avatars of Pig Bodine are less subtle than the postage-stamp references in ATD, for example.

BlakeStacey 15:44, 29 November 2006 (PST)

What do we do about interpretation? As you say, the Pynchonwiki differs from Wikipedia in that there's room for people to add their own interpretations. Jasper on Pynchon-L warned that this could easily turn into a BS free-for-all, and maybe he's right. Who knows? This is one grand experiment! I foresee that someday, perhaps soon, we will need to agree on some hard and fast rules regarding opinions/interpretation (i.e. should users sign their opinions, do we keep interpretation in the discussion pages, etc), but for now, I for one say let's just sit back and see what the 125+ registered users we've got come up with. Bleakhaus 19:58, 29 November 2006 (PST)

I floated an idea on PYNCHON-L which seems reasonable, at first glance. What if we institute a rule like Wikipedia's "No original research" policy for the articles themselves, allow a free-for-all on the discussion side, and then host periodic debates on issues of interest? We pick a topic relating to ATD, people who want to throw lit-crit around write their positions, and after a week, the moderator (i.e., a screwball with scholarly pretensions and too much free time) writes up the debate's "greatest hits" as an article. Giving proper attribution to all participants, naturally. This way, we can cover whatever issues arise naturally in close-reading ATD, letting everyone who wants to rant do so, while making sure important ideas don't get lost. BlakeStacey 08:37, 30 November 2006 (PST)

Ande+++Not quite sure how to "discuss" here yet---but since I stirred the pot on the pynchon-l site, I will try to move my musings here. As always with Wikipedia and actually anything (see recent gatt.org hacks of WTO, news stories about faked research at the university level, etc.) Reader Beware! It seems that when speculating, there is speculating language properly employed (wiggle words like "seems to me, mayhaps, IMHO--if you are partial to internet convention) that can signal departure from fact to opinion. But the "facts" are only so good too--there is nothing to stop me from presenting myself as a scholar of esoteric Sanskrit calligraphy and providing translation of the text of the seal, nefariously if I wish, to promote some pet close reading. On the other hand, part of the joy of reading,esp reading Pynchon, is the unexpected depth gained by digging just a bit-- I'm not a WWI naval buff--my experience being limited to loving __Riddle of the Sands__ and a quick read of __Dreadnought__, so my initial read of 'dazzle painting'(AtD 122) had more Star Trek NG-Romulan Ships appearing off the aft deck-type connotations, but I marked it, looked it up, found it to be fascinating (esp when you consider that the periscopes looking at the painted patterns were made of Iceland Spar), and found that the wiki was a great place to share my discovery--without feeling too shy about the "well duh, of course everyone knows that..." responses that one might subject oneself to in an open forum...

As to attribution, I started this discussion of speculation on the wiki on the P-List, because I found an off-hand comment I made in the course of (what I had assumed) was a less than serious discussion, suddenly "attributed" to me on the wiki--now, I understand that I can "edit" said attribution into wiki oblivion (or into a wiki war) but last vestiges of my Mother's WASPish upbringing cause me to hesitate to disturb the work of others...I could just retreat into politeness and not talk to strangers at all.

So, as to the issue of No. 3--Interpretation--I agree with A.A., No.2 will bleed into No. 3, attribution is essential--and such posts should include a signature--preferably not just the digital signature available if you dig in the wiki history. We may even want to create a system so that people can discreetly mark posts as 1, 2 or 3, if they forget to use speculative language. And in the meantime, I would ask that until we have a moderated discussion, where Ideas are tempered in the furnace of debate, we be careful about "attributing" passing thoughts as "original research." Ande Ande 10:49, 30 November 2006 (PST)

Quick hints about the mechanics of wiki-work: you can indent paragraphs by using colons, italicize text by using double apostrophes (''), bold text by using triple apostrophes ('''), sign your name by using four tildes (~~~~ for me gives BlakeStacey 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)) and make "wikilinks" to other pages by using double square brackets. [[Thomas Pynchon]], for example, gives Thomas Pynchon. Wikipedia has a "Cheatsheet" on these matters; all of those tricks should work the same here. Best wishes, BlakeStacey 10:10, 30 November 2006 (PST)

I think Ande's ideas are all good ones, and particularly like the idea of keeping separate the discussion and annotation sections.
Of course, with Pynchon, there's plenty to draw connections with, and I think it's worthwhile to bracket non-obvious connections with contingent language. Not only does this indicate their interprative nature, it also more fully allows the possiblity of other readings.Ahpsp 10:42, 30 November 2006 (PST)

Tim sez: I already laid out on the home page, under "Pynchon Wiki Help and Contributor Guidelines", how to handle discussion:

To open a discussion on an individual listing of the Alpha Index, see the page on Tait. Basically, give it a name that identifies the alpha listing (eg [[Subject Discussion|DISCUSSION]] where "Subject Discussion" would be, eg, "Tait Discussion" or whatever) and notice that the visible name will be "DISCUSSION" in full caps, so it stands out a bit.

You can initiate a discussion for any topic using the above syntax. Just make sure the discussion article you create has an unique, intuitive and reasonably brief name. Don't just create a new article called "Discussion" -- if one already exists, you'll just open that one for editing. And, as I've said elsewhere, just use the "List All Pages" sidebar link to see what current exists in the wiki.

Anybody is free to email me tim (at) hyperarts (dot com) to discuss.

I think through the group process we can get it right.

Regarding help, besides the Wikipedia Cheatsheet, you can use the Help link in the sidebar which has a page with lots of useful info. I need to create The Perfect Wiki Cheatsheet, but just haven't gotten the time what with all else that sort of exploding around me :)

WikiAdmin 10:56, 30 November 2006 (PST)

Tim, I think your system of Discussion is overkill. What if, and I believe this would commonly happen, someone has only a sentence or two to say about Tait? Or someone wants to respond to that in a sentence or two? We'd then be creating hundreds of Wiki pages with only a bit of content in them.

I advocate for the creation of separate discussion pages only if there's so much discussion on a certain entry that it's bogging down the Letter page. Bleakhaus 15:50, 30 November 2006 (PST)

Tim sez:

I think your approach is fine, basically the same principal as adding content to the Page by Page or Alpha guides, i.e., the drilldown. Avoid clutter at all costs!

I also think a general discussion page, such as this has become, should be archived (moved) every so often. This one's getting quite unwieldy.

WikiAdmin 18:19, 30 November 2006 (PST)

Attribution?

A lot of people are talking about whether we should suggest signing posts, especially those we'd consider opinion or speculation. I actually think this is a good idea, but obviously it will be up to each contributor whether he chooses to or not.Bleakhaus 15:52, 30 November 2006 (PST)

Copyright policy?

The Pynchon Wiki doesn't appear to have any copyright notices or policies set out. Should we agree to release our contributions under the GFDL 1.2, like Wikipedia, a Creative Commons license or some such? BlakeStacey 16:59, 2 December 2006 (PST)