Talk:List of Canadian writers

Oh my goodness, what a list! Are there 1000 unidentified names here? Please see List of novelists and Talk:List of novelists before going on with this. Ortolan88 10:31 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

And shouldn't people like "Bacque, James" be listed in the opposite order, as in James Bacque? --Ed Poor

Sorry, guys. I'm the offending list-adder. I'm brand new. I plan to do lots more work on it, like dividing them up by genre, and adding dates and brief description. Should they really all be "Margaret Atwood" instead of "Atwood, Margaret?" Blimey!! Sara Parks Ricker

Article titles are all in regular name order, which is much more legible. If you want your list to appear in Last, First, well you can, but you'll want to do the links as [[First Last|Last, First]] so that the links point to the correct title. (By the way, when signing your comments on talk pages, you can just hit the tilde three times: ~~~ and the wiki automatically puts in a link to your user page. It's a lot handier than typing it out by hand!) --Brion VIBBER

The inverted order for names was essential in paper encyclopedias, but now by typing "Atwood" in the search box it's easy to find every article that mentions the name. Eclecticology

And hit the tilde four times if you want to add a date/time stamp with your name.

Long lists with just names on may not be as informative as shorter annotated lists.

Just a thought, but how about starting with the article Canadian literature? It's a survey of the whole field and a great place to add links to smaller, shorter lists of novelists, poets, essayists, historians, whatever, as you go along, possibly annotated with dates or names of best-known works. Some such shorter list articles are already there, waiting to be filled in. If you take that approach, when you get to the novelists, you might consider cutting the list of Canadian novelists out of the List of novelists page and replacing it with a link to your new "list of Canadian novelists" page. And do check those links I mentioned. There's a lot of history there on the problems and opportunities of lists in the Wikipedia. And, welcome and keep on keeping on! Ortolan88 11:23 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

I like your point about splitting out the Canadian novelists from the longer world list. It could also happen with several other countries. List of novelists is already getting long enough that it is starting to react slowly to edits, and its multiple links mean that it also loads more slowly. I still feel uncomfortable about segregating novelists from other writers though - a good writer will often do well in several genres, and this kind of fragmentation does not do him justice. Eclecticology 14:34 Jul 30, 2002 (PDT)

Thanks, everyone. I read up on the problem of dropping lists and fleeing. I promise not to. And, Ortolan, I'm VERY familiar with the Canadian literature article, because I WROTE IT. (That's how I came to have such a gigantor list in the first place.) What I plan to do with the list is add dates and a work of significance with each entry. I don't want to make it JUST a list of novelists, though. What about a genre division like: poets, novelists, literary critics, then one for "inter-genre" writers, such as Atwood (a critic, novelist, poet, and more)? Sara Parks Ricker

What a maroon I am! I figured out you wrote Canadian literature about 5 seconds after I wrote that, and so noted in a bread-and-butter letter on User_talk:Sara Parks Ricker. Look at it this way, I was hoping that you as a "list-adder" (and I really don't think that means some kind of snake), would be inspired by the excellent Canadian literature entry. Friends?

I do think shorter, categorized and annotated lists are the way to go. I'm not so sure about "inter-genre", very few novelists haven't written articles, reviews, or poetry or a non-fiction book, but very few inter-genre writers are known for being inter-genre. Why not just put Atwood on all the lists she belongs on, linking to one article where all her literary achievements are presented together? I'd guess that to Atwood it is all "my writing" and that she doesn't have a poet hat and a critic hat hanging there next to her novelist hat. Vladimir Nabokov was a wonderful critic and a great lepidopterist, but he's still Nabokov the novelist. Ortolan88 10:35 Jul 31, 2002 (PDT)

Yes, Nabokov is probably best known as a novelist, but his most important literary work is likely his translation of Eugene Onegin with the accompanying "Notes on Prosody". We also have separate lists for science fiction and fantasy writers even though these probably should appear as novelists or short story writers. Let the annotations show that a writer wrote in several genres. Eclecticology 11:27 Jul 31, 2002 (PDT)

It's ironic that the annotations on the list of novelist, such as the one that noted that Twain was also a journalist, etc, seem to cause so much confusion and make people think it isn't a list of novelists. Note under novelists that he was a journalist and then put his name on the journalist list and on every list it belongs on (stage performer, travel writer, short story writer). That is a service to the reader. Putting everybody who ever put pen to paper on a single list just doesn't take the reader anywhere. They'll drop out after two screensful. If Nabokov belongs on a list of translators, make a list of translators too. Put Nabakov on it. But don't take him off the novelist list. And check to be sure his main article is inclusive and accurate. Just made a list of how to do this on Talk:List of novelists. I'm sure you know, but it might help someone. Ortolan88

Although I have supported unified lists, I would never go so far as to say that including a person on one genre based list would imply excluding him on an other relevant list. Eclecticology

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You could create a relational database of writers. One table would be the writers themselves. Another table would be a short list of categories such as novelist, translator, poet. A third table would link the first two tables. I've created such databases professionally, and it can be somewhat intricate to set them up (which is why I get the big bucks), but then they make the reports so much easier to generate. If anyone's interested, we could discuss the details here or on the mailing list. --Ed Poor

Your idea sounds fine in principle, but I don't know if Wikipedia is in a position to afford the big bucks. Assuming that you are volunteering to do the set up;-)) I wonder how integrable it would be with the bulk of the users' level of knowledge -- particularly in the light of the recent mailing list debate on parsing, and Wiki Markup vs. HTML. Eclecticology 15:09 Jul 31, 2002 (PDT)

Sounds suspiciously like m:Slotipedia - A Proposal. --Brion VIBBER

Interesting idea -- I'll be glad to look at the Beta version when it's ready. Eclecticology

Indeed. I would like to see Slotipedia get off the ground (although I'm not crazy about the name) and use it to generate these list automatically. When I started the Biographical Listing back in the mists of time, it was fairly easy for two or three people to add all of the new biography entries. Now it's next to impossible to maintain. With Slotipedia, Atwood could appear in List of Writers, List of Novelists, List of Canadian Writers, Literary Critics, etc. --Stephen Gilbert

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I removed Frances Brooke, because she only lived in Canada 5 years, while her hubby was on business! Hardly makes her a "Canadian author"! Sara Parks Ricker

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I'm a great believer in one-line comments (see first entry of this talk page), but some of the last group added have lots of misspellings, not to mention strong POV statements and sarcastic remarks. I hope someone who knows Canadian literature can tone them down without eliminating them. Ortolan88

let me fix thisTwo16 04:58 Jan 10, 2003 (UTC)

Canadain authors had a lot of stuff that I put on in a fit of giggles like Mordici being best drinking buddy in Canada, Margaret Atwood being a better poet than author, Irving Layton used his poetry to get laid and was quite vocal. The stuff about Northrop and McLuhan being mortal enemies is true: (their respective desciples are unable to reconcil their methods of criticism and there is still enemity between them.) Lau is (npov) bitter ex-hooker who proves it every time she is interveiwed and (not so npov) who keeps writing the same book. She caused a libel scandel when she aired her dirty laundry with Kinsella.

Kilodney, who I am aqquainted with, would agree with "misanthrope" and so would his loyal readers.

Bertran Booker is an abstract painter who might have written theosophical spiritual treatises though he couldn't have had a wide audience. Now i remeber something about him being apoet (maybe)

Malcom Lowrey is a brit who wrote important stream of consciousness novel set in Mexico while he was drinking himself to death on the beach in BC should not even be on this list

Haliburton was 19th century humorist and delighted in mocking 'mericans ---

I don't know exactly where to a notion about a criterion for top ten inclusion in every field of endevour?