Talk:List of Australian novelists

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This article was nominated for deletion in the past. The result of the discussion was Keep.

[edit] Improvement drive

Assuming this list survives it's current AfD - what is suggested to improve this list so it does not return to AfD in the future?

In comparison with Premiers of South Australia, this article lacks a lead section. It also possibly lacks a bit in layout - some prefer the table view and it helps to differentiate from the category.

What is really missing is summary information about each person. Looking at Premiers of South Australia, the list itself identifies party affiliation, and dates the office was held. It would be good to include genre and date of birth/migration/emmigration/death as some form of summary information which allows this list to provide functionality that a category cannot.

I'd hate to argue keep then not contribute to the article...

Any other thoughts?Garrie 23:43, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

As an alpha list with a couple of life dates it was no better than a category. How about leaving the alpha list to the category and re-order this list in terms of historical periods. I'm pretty sure User:Bsnowball suggested this, and I'll leave it to far more knowledgeable people than me to suggest what those periods might be. --Steve _(Stephen) ^talk 01:14, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

I think that finding a reliable reference work to both verify and build the list would be a good start. There are a several biographical dictionaries like the Who's who of Australian writers (ISBN 1875589201) which should cover both living and dead novellists. --Peta 03:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

adb online [1] would also be usefull fr this. also, imho, 'annotating' the list (thnx to to others for helping with that) is more usefull. still not sure about periods, pre-federation, fed to ww2 & post ww2 is an obvious way. but i'm not sure how useful this is. comments?  ⇒ bsnowball  10:25, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I will happily contribute to annotating with summary information from existing articles (have completed A and B so far), but at the moment can't contribute to providing additional entries, or adding references. Sorry but that's how things are with me at the moment. I guess this list should only show real highlights of any article that exists, focussing on Australian contribution (eg: Miles Franklin award would be more worth mentioning than Pulitzer Prize?) ?Garrie 22:19, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the seperating historically. An alternative approach would be along thematic lines - Australian literature (ie, definitively Australian such as We of the Never-Never), war, crime, fantasy etc? (given there was not much feedback re: historical segmenting). Sticking with time based grouping, is WW2 the most recent break-point? Hasn't the electronic era lead to an explosion of written work - and is there something with a literary focus we could use to break it? I think even in terms of historical break points - pre /post Miles Franklin Award may be worthwhile, as it is literary rather than political. I don't know of any other breakpoints for grouping though.Garrie 05:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] lead section / commentary

If you wander along to WP:FL#Language and literature you will see that generally speaking the lead section is quite long compared to the list itself. Maybe this list would be better recieved if it was simply Australian novelists and it had a lead section discussing Australian literature? That way it would again implement features not so directly associated with categories. Garrie 05:42, 28 March 2007 (UTC)