Talk:Garth Ennis

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Apologies to the writer of the original stub for erasing most of your work - I figured the fact that you thought Ennis was English rather than Irish means you're not that attached to the subject - Joe.


Shouldn't there be a paragraph on how he has revitalized the Punisher and is largely considered to be the character's definitive writer? He has written over 60 appearances of the character; I consider that notable enough to warrant a paragraph. - Gasface

Then Be bold and add it in people can then tweak it. For my own part I was thinking it'd be best to redo the bibliography in chronological order. The same suggestion came up over on the Grant Morrison entry and I've made a start throwing in dates and we'd need to full range of dates here too. (Emperor 01:31, 20 May 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Merge?

I see no reason for an entry Garth Ennis work for 2000 A.D./Judge Dredd and it also makes a chronological sorting of publications impossible. (Emperor 21:04, 31 May 2006 (UTC))

  • Agreed. Rudá 21:50, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
The other entry has now been put up for deletion so anyone looking to thrown in their opinions should do so over there. (Emperor 02:36, 1 June 2006 (UTC))

I'm sorry; my logic was that it could easily be linked straight from 2000 AD, rather than an indirect link to his page, scrolling around to find the extremely incomplete list that was there ... and because, since it was early and fairly obscure to American audiences, it would be more an interesting bit of info but not neccessarily for everybody. Now I see the conversation going on down below, so obviously people disagree. I hadn't been able to figure out this talk section before. Sorry for causing trouble.

[edit] Concise vs comprehensive bibliographies

It came up on the VfD discussion for the above merge and I thought it best to continue it hre rather than bog down the deletion discussion. To reiterate my viewpoint: I think the bibliography needs to be as comprehensive as possible as all the work from someone notable like Garth Ennis, Grant Morrison and Alan Moore is notable. While I don't see the length of the bibliographies being too much of an issue at the moment it has been an issue I have pondered. If it did become an issue I'd favour a "concise bibliography" in the entry and a separate "comprehensive bibliography" link through form there. At the moment I think the main issue at the moment is other entries that are largely just bibliography. This isn't a problem with the bibliography just that a longer biography is required but as this is all a work in progress it is handy to have the bibliography to help create the biography. The three entries I linked to above are good examples of "mature" entries that have grown to be (partly due to the popularity of the authors involved). So as things stand I am more in favour of adding more to the biographies rather than taking things out of bibliogrpahies (which, as I've said, is a judgement call and very difficult to get a consensus on and impossible to properly police). It also partly reflects the moderate problem of expanding UK writers and artists entries unless they have crossed over to the American mainstream (but then again there are a lot of entries for US writers and artists that need similar work). (Emperor 14:03, 2 June 2006 (UTC))

To summarise the opposing view: Listing every single 5 page Dredd story from someone like John Wagner would create a very long list, but uit wouldn;t necessarily be particualrly interesting or informative. Add a listing for every single reprint of those stories and you end up with a very long list of very little interest whatsoever, undiferentiated data rather than useful information. --Artw 17:16, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree. An encyclopedia article should be a readable guide to the general reader, not a checklist for obsessives. --Nicknack009 17:55, 2 June 2006 (UTC)
There are ways and means to cope with what might start to become an overwhelming list in this case listing the actual reprints seems a reasonable compromise if this is really thought to be a problem (and I'm not yet convinced it will be in this case). (Emperor 13:54, 7 June 2006 (UTC))
As, I suppose, one of the people making the contributions in question, I'll explain the logic as I saw it. I thought this was meant to be a source of information, and, as such, it seemed like the information should be as complete as possible. It seemed, reading through the articles about Moore or Ennis (for instance) as if the biography section already gave a decent "readable guide", an overview bibliography explaining what the general important ones are and linking to extensively detailed information about the issues and the series, making the bibliography as written seem largely redundant. When I saw the Ennis page (for instance), it was inconsistently arranged (some things referred to by story name, some by the title, some collected under a character name). To say that it was a guide to the "important" works would be quite a judgement call; it was missing all of his Dredd work but the most recent one, but had an entry for "Chopper" with both obscure stories. It included "Flinch" #3 but not The Demon ... and "Star Wars Tales" but not "Dicks". I can see the logic in arranging the information so that it would go from "general interest" [maxi-series] to "more obscure" [one-offs and short stories], but it seems to me like it's editorializing to try to determine what is "imporant" in the career of a writer. (Just as a for instance, one of the four short stories from 'Crisis' is about John Wayne and the "F*** Communism" lighters, which eventually factored in heavily with 'Preacher' (I concede, that information isn't in the entry at present, but that does tend to make that an interesting story to be aware of.)) If you opt not to include a definitive bibliography, or even form a seperate page for a specifically definitive one, I would then suggest offering a clear link to another site which does include it.
ThatGuamGuy 04:17, 3 June 2006 (UTC)Sean (TGG)
Yes, it is supposed to be a source of information, but a long list of undifferentiated facts is not really information. My own inclination is not to bother with bibliographies, but to mention his most significant work in the body of the article, and describe what made it significant, its themes etc. And yes, that is a judgement call. If you're going to write a helpful encyclopedia article you need to exercise judgement, otherwise you end up with an article that's so full of trivia that someone looking to find out who Garth Ennis is and what's significant about him will leave overwhelmed and none the wiser. This is a reference work which needs to be accessible to the general reader. It needs to make sense to someone who has no idea who Garth Ennis is. A link to a comprehensive biography, if one exists elsewhere on the web, is an excellent idea, but it's not necessary or desirable, in my opinion, to include one here. --Nicknack009 09:45, 3 June 2006 (UTC)


It my view, just based on the appearances of the page, the bibliography is a supplement to the article. I do agree with you that people don't read a bibliography in order to understand themes and reasons that specific works are the most significant in his body of work -- that's what they read the article for. It seems as if you're saying there shouldn't be bibliographies at all; that's certainly a valid opinion, and I'd like to hear what other people think on that subject, and I would go so far as to half-sgree: I don't see the point of bibliographies if they're going to be haphazard and incomplete (which it was before I contributed) and, at best, just duplicating the information in the article. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding you, though; is there a reason to have a bibliography section which just lists the specific stuff which is mentioned in the biography? Because that seems really redundant to me, especially when the individual titles generally have their own pages.
It seems to me like the interesting thing about a bibliography on this website would be having it be extensive, because then you can really get into the inter-connectedness, which I thought was part of the point of wikipedia. (I don't actually know, I'm clearly new here, but that seemed to be one of the big appeals.)
One other thing I don't understand... if I go to the X-Men page (for instance), there's a nice long article, and a list of current members, and notable former members... and then there's another wikipedia entry directly linked which lists every single person who has ever been a member of the X-Men, or any X-Men related team. It lists the issue they joined, their full name, and a full paragragh describing them. And, of course, it links to their own page, which they all have, and which has all that info. Why is a complete bibliography of a major comic book writer less accessible to a general reader than that? I can see the logic in "Click here to view a full bibliography", but it seems as if the information should be here somewhere for those who do want it.
ThatGuamGuy 23:15, 3 June 2006 (UTC)sean (TGG)
However, looking at the initial post in here (sorry, I don't know what "VfD" means), I would agree with Nicknack that an extensive bibliography is counter-productive in a situation, as described by Emperor, where the biography section is short or non-existent. If the bibliography is the primary source of information about what the person wrote, that's a different situation. I guess all the writers I like are too mainstream, because I haven't seen that yet. :)

ThatGuamGuy 23:34, 3 June 2006 (UTC)sean (TGG)

Basically I think bibliographies just overwhelm articles, ending up with a map that's as big as the territory depicted and thus useless as a map. I suppose a bibliography probably serves a useful function by providing somewhere for completeness-obsessives to cram more information in without unbalancing the article itself. --Nicknack009 23:46, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
You make a good point, to which I'd add: the problem with a democratic thing like wikipedia depending on judgement calls is that every story will be somebody's favorite, so somebody will miss if it there's no mention at all.
I certainly don't want the bibliography to overshadow the biography (and can totally see how that could happen with too much info), especially with regard to Garth Ennis, as I think the bio is quite good and a *great* career overview (other than agreeing with the guy above that The Punisher should be elaborated upon, which I didn't want to do myself before all this back-and-forth was resolved).
I'd go with the idea of taking detailed bibliographies (where they exist) and moving them to a seperate entry. ThatGuamGuy 00:25, 4 June 2006 (UTC)sean
I can't see the article becoming unbalanced. The biography is a good lengthy one touching on the big works and themes and the bibliography is tagged on then end with a more detailled overview of what he has done (if it was above the bibliography and people had to go through it to get to the bibliography then that would be an issue). It is also a useful way of presenting the information. I find that once I've read the bibliography an entries us is for quick reference and the like and I skip the opening section and go straight to the bibliography or the external links section. The web is a different medium to print and large blocks of text don't make for great reading online and sometimes a stripped down list is a more usable way of getting the information. Bottom line is that as people can skip sections of the page (thanks to the handy menu) if they don't want to have anything to do with one part of the page then they don't have to. (Emperor 13:54, 7 June 2006 (UTC))
  • Although I personally haven't been adding them, I don't understand why they could be a problem with comprehensive bibliographies. All Wikipedia creator biographies - literary or otherwise - follow the same pattern, with biographical details at the top, career details second, other issues third, and finally a list of achievements, accomplishments, and/or published works. Wikipedia is not paper, and these pages so far are not breaking even the recommended page sizes. It's more useful for this information to be gathered in one place than scattered here and there over the interweb.
  • Merging the two pages together results in a page substantially below the recommended 30kb limit. However, the guidelines on size state that even this limit should not be taken too seriously for lists. Vizjim 09:41, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
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