Talk:Gadsby (novel)/Archive 5

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Just for fun

Can someone point me to the last revision of this article which was still (within reasonable constraints) a lipogram (or your idea of the "best" lipogrammatic revision)? Thanks. Protonk (talk) 18:39, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Possibly https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gadsby_(novel)&oldid=246524814 , which is as extreme as it ever got. Even the edit links were hidden, I believe, and <REF> was avoided, although it seems like {{cite news}} was allowed. —Soap— 22:37, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Actually I realized I posted better links up above 4 years ago. I'll put them again here since I assume the other section will be archived eventually:

• July 25, 2008 Non-lipogram version from before the edit dispute began
• September 9, 2008 Early lipogram, possibly the purest lipogram version because it removes e's even from formatting sections and wiki code
• October 31, 2008 Refined version of above, allows a few e's in piped links (see difference between the two)
• December 19, 2008 A compromise: infobox and footnotes contain e

—Soap— 03:05, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

A call to civility

Looking through past discussion, it's obvious that folks discussing this topic strongly split into two camps. I say that folks should laugh about this all. It's fun. All of us should find ways to do silly things. I applaud the original author for going down this path. I strongly ask that all of us show said author civil and fair discussion. No attacks that focus on an individual or call an author annoying if said author acts in good faith.

If folks want to avoid a full-on word switch, a lipogrammatical introduction would accomplish it. It would accomplish a fair common ground. It's an optimal way to show what Gadsby is all about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Resoru (talk • contribs) 11:54, 16 March 2015‎

Consensus was reached long ago that making the article harder to understand in the name of cuteness is a bad idea for wikipedia. There are lots of other websites where you can lipogram to your heart's content - but not here. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:06, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

This section was added by User:Resoru, who made several edits to remove the letter "e" from his comment. Trying anything like that in the article will result in a block. Jonathunder (talk) 19:05, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Jonathunder changed the the title of my section then blocked me for changing it back. Truly astounding. You've lost a Wikipedia editor of seven years, but I suppose you see that as a plus. 167.220.23.112 (talk) 21:34, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

I hope you will return to nondisruptive editing and you are welcome to do so when the block expires. Insisting on lipograms on this talk page, however, is disruptive. See the discussion from 2010. Jonathunder (talk) 22:38, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Wow - blocking after two edits seems unnecessarily quick and nasty, especially if the edits were just to the title of his/her own talk section. Just because there's a long history of dispute on this article doesn't mean we have to be hyper-sensitive. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 00:19, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

User:Jonathunder, that was a gravely inappropriate use of the blocking tool. The user was only editing his own comment, and he wasn't doing anything that you warned him would result in a block. (You said he'd be blocked for writing a lipogram in the article, and he respected that warning.) Your post hoc justification for the block linked to a single user's suggestion (not restriction) to John J. Bulten that he stop posting lipograms on this talk page. This suggestion was not binding, carried no threat of a block, attracted no discussion or community consensus, and was directed to a user who (as far as I can tell) has no connection whatsoever to User:Resoru. (Besides this, it rests on a misunderstanding of WP:POINT.) I think you owe User:Resoru an immediate unblock and an apology. —Psychonaut (talk) 08:48, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

I think you are right. Jonathunder (talk) 17:05, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the right thing. —Psychonaut (talk) 17:23, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

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This is funny

Apparently there are some who feel that an article about a lipogramatic novel should, itself, be lipogramatic. Others clearly disagree.

I would just point out that Wikipedia has an article about the Voynich Manuscript, which is entirely written in an unknown, and thus far uninterpretable writing system. Yet no one seems to have felt behooved to rewrite the Voynich article in a similarly uninterpretable system.

Just sayin' :-) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.95.43.249 (talk) 23:22, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

Cut

I cut this sentence which seems odd & unimportant:

He also notes great ideas in the publication of his work from no other than Thomas O'Neil, an advid writer and publicisor.

Ben Finn (talk) 13:06, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

A Proposed Compromise

Obviously we can't write the entire article in lipogram, especially parts concerning factual information or how the letter E was avoided. But can we at least write the plot summary in lipogram, so long as it is deemed to not be difficult to read, seeing as it concerns neither of those and reflects the actual contents of the book? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hydro387 (talk • contribs) 19:46, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

It's clear from years of discussion that the consensus is that being clever with lipograms doesn't belong in a wikipedia article. You are more than welcome to do this on your User talk page or some other website - but don't muddy the article that way, please. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:01, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

There appears to be a little problem here...

Either it's untrue that "The novel's 50,110 words do not contain a single e" or the text on Wikisource has an issue. There is an 'e' here (second paragraph, first line) and here as well (second paragraph, third-last line). In both cases, the word is 'the'. The word wasn't typo'd by the Wikisource contributors, it's actually there in the scan image. Am I missing something? 93.36.119.202 (talk) 15:11, 4 June 2013 (UTC) P.S. I checked, and those are the only 2 occurrences of letter 'e' in the entire text.

I noted this in the article. Hopefully a scanned copy of the book counts as an authoritative source. C. Scott Ananian (talk) 18:03, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

The publisher may have made the typos. I don't know much about book publishing today, let alone 70 years ago, but I get the impression that the manuscript the author sends in has to be re-typed manually by the publisher, and it's easy enough to make a few mistakes. I've seen typos in published academic books, after all, such as *ecomoic for "economic" and a children's book about a girl named Terri who suddenly becomes "Terry" on one page. —Soap— 22:26, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

• I found the letter E at least 4 times in Kindle edition of the book. Twice for the word "the" and also the word "officers" and "elude"--74.103.148.51 (talk) 00:26, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

The scanning process could have created some of those, by misinterpreting flawed letters. This can produce an "e" out of a "c" or an "o" or a semicolon or even a squashed bug on the page. Sometimes the OCR software tries to make another word once it has picked up a bad letter, and this could introduce more new letters. The process has improved, but there's not much it can do with indistinct copy, and human surveillance is still required. WHPratt (talk) 14:37, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Scanning is unlikely to have created the word "the" or "officers" however. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:12, 21 May 2017 (UTC)

Right, in these cases, I agree. I was speaking generally. I could see a word like "official" with bad typography at the end being interpreted as "officer" by an OCR robot, or "this" or "thy" turning into "the" as the software tries to make the best match under the usual rules. WHPratt (talk) 13:01, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

I didn't realize OCR made decisions like that - I thought it was strictly letter-by-letter. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 14:57, 22 May 2017 (UTC)

I've encountered it here and there. There are lots of algorithms, and it depends upon how smart the program is trying to be as to how dumb it can get! WHPratt (talk) 13:01, 13 June 2017 (UTC)

yuck

The latest attempt to write the article lipogrammatically (by an anonymous editor) did a great job of demonstrating how clumsy and awkward such writing is, which is why it's not used in an encyclopedia article. The plot summary started "John Gadsby, having had fifty birthdays, was in alarm at his birth-town's, Branton Hills, waning ..." Speaking as somebody who has had more than fifty birthdays, that is dreck. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 19:06, 26 January 2018 (UTC).

I did think it would be kind of cool to have at least the Plot written without "E" as the book is, but the book has to be extremely verbose and long to avoid the letter, which wikipedia plot sections are not supposed to be. AlienChex (talk) 05:30, 30 November 2021 (UTC)