User talk:Classicfilms/Archive 6

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Re: Wikis in the classroom

Hello Jbmurray,

I wanted to thank you for the post you made on: Making Wikis Work for Scholars http://insidehighered.com/news/2008/04/28/wiki which alerted me to your work on The WP. I've only skimmed through your projects at the moment but I look forward to reading through them over time. Glad to see you (and your students) here. Regards, -Classicfilms (talk) 19:06, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

(copied over from my talk page:) Thanks for the encouragement! --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:01, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: Thanks

Just wanted to add my thanks as well. -Classicfilms (talk) 16:08, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

No problem. That guy has been spamming user talk pages all morning (My local time is UTC-4) with various sockpuppet accounts. I'm surprised he hasn't spammed me yet. J.delanoygabsadds 16:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Electronic Literature

Thanks for your help with various electronic literature and hyperfiction pages!

I'm not sure that you're aware that the ELO is rather more contentious than it may seem to outsiders; see http://markbernstein.org/ELO.html . I don't think it appropriate to link every hypertext author to ELO, or to subsume hypertext fiction under the ELO rubric of "electronic fiction". But I agree that there is much to improve in all these articles, and welcome fresh hands and fresh insights! Feel free to email me (bernstein@eastgate.com) if you'd like to explore this further. MarkBernstein (talk) 13:16, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Mark,
Thanks so much - I am quite grateful for your insights and suggestions and willingness to help here. I do have some familiarity with this subject and would very much like to work with you to improve these pages.
Here is what I saw when I first looked at the pages. Both pages were badly in need of clean up:
The original ELO page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electronic_Literature_Organization&oldid=182338791
The original Electronic Literature page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electronic_literature&oldid=209549580
Since both pages were enormously similar, I made the decision to merge. However, by all means, please do restore the ELO page here if you feel it should be a separate article, perhaps developing it a bit more from its original state.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electronic_Literature_Organization&redirect=no
In terms of authors - the pages in their original form each contained lists of hypertext authors that were nearly identical which is why I included them. In addition, the definition of electronic literature on the ELO website does include "hypertext fiction" - I also used current scholarship which discusses "hypertext fiction" as "first generation" electronic literature.
That being said, I appreciate all of your points and wonder if I might ask for your help in improving these articles which were originally badly in need of clean up and am open to any suggestions you might have. Thanks again for this very helpful post and I look forward to hearing from you, -Classicfilms (talk) 16:10, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
The problem here is that ELO is a particular organization -- a faction, if you will. So it's not synonymous with "electronic literature", and has sometimes (in my view) been hostile to hypertext fiction. It's not uncommon for two or more organization (or political parties) to have similar over-arching goals but great differences; merging is good, but you don't really want to merge the Republicans and Democrats because both parties want a better US.
What these pages need most, IMHO, are links and citations to the critical literature -- to discussions of the titles in print and on the Web -- so that people will have better guidance in reading and discussing these works. MarkBernstein (talk) 17:43, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Ok, I restored the page Electronic Literature Organization and updated the introduction. Perhaps if you have some time, you could develop and improve the article a bit. I also think that your suggestion about links from the critical literature is quite fair. If you want to go ahead and make these edits, I'd be happy to look at them. Thanks again for your input and help in improving these articles and I look forward to reading your edits. -Classicfilms (talk) 18:05, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
I should not edit ELO -- I'm COI there -- and as I run Eastgate, it might be better that other hands compose the revisions. I understand that this adds to the burden, but I see no way around it. MarkBernstein (talk)
Keeping your points in mind, I made some further edits to the articles and as far as I can see, they do adhere to Wikipedia:Five pillars - so I'm not sure I have anything else to add. I understand and appreciate the points about your own further involvement. Perhaps the next step would be for other people interested in electronic literature to edit and develop these pages, which I hope will happen over time. Thanks again for your suggestions and help with these pages. Regards -Classicfilms (talk) 19:38, 22 May 2008 (UTC)