Talk:Cambridge Companions

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Editors needed[edit]

I created the List of Cambridge Companions to Music article couple of years ago but shied away from creating the articles on the rest two sub-series of this series. DGG and Charles Matthews are you aware of editors who will be willing to help create/maintain these article(s) and incorporate the information in the few hundred volumes into Wikipedia? Solomon7968 20:43, 30 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

by sub-series, I think you mean Cambridge Companion to Literature and Classics, and Cambridge Companions to Philosophy, Religion and Culture . I am a little unsure about including the names of all the contributors; on the one hand, these can be found easily in the worldcat record; on the other, the notable ones with WP articles might be justified, and it is possible that in time most of the contributors would in fact justify articles by WP:PROF.
I have learned not to promise to do things here: I may start them, but unfortunately I must admit that it's unwise to count on me. DGG ( talk ) 04:40, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
OK rather than relying on you two I went ahead creating the two articles; just the shell for now as it was enough for me. I still need help putting the whole series together and, above all, incorporating the information in them to our content Wikipedia articles. For this let's ping major contributors to WP:PROF: @Xxanthippe, Kevin Murray, Mscuthbert, Mangojuice, Tryptofish, EEng, David Eppstein, Guillaume2303, Psychonaut, SMcCandlish, Nsk92, WhatamIdoing, Radiant!, Lawrencekhoo, BenAveling, Quarl, NJ Wine, Bdj, Thecheesykid, and JorisvS:. Solomon7968 13:46, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the ping. This is somewhat far afield from the subject areas where I am comfortable editing, so you'll probably get better input from other editors. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:28, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at their web site, these three "collections" seem to be composed of series, eg. CC to Philosophy, and CC to Religion. But I also see CC to Law, without any other more comprehensive collection. I have not ruled out that some may be in multiple sections. At the least we'll need a (sub)series indication for the vols. in the 3 main collections, plus separate ones fro Law and possibly other topic areas . DGG ( talk ) 18:31, 31 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wait a second. Isn't this just going to be a small set of tables? What is there for us to do? Can't you just fetch the publication info out of some publisher's database? EEng 05:23, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Instead of pinging PROF contributors I should have pinged our numerous FA contributors instead. The final goal is (unrelated to this article) is to make every biography/topic who/which gets a volume devoted to a FA. I can't do this alone as I am yet to make a substantial contribution to even a single FA and this would mean contributing to 500+ FA articles. Solomon7968 09:29, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
The thing you have to learn, in having a goal, is not to set an impossible goal, something too high you can never reach. You gotta have a series of smaller goals, that you can accomplish, and slowly work your way up ... My goal: right now, I want to be the all-being master of time, space and dimension.
-- Steve Martin
My advice to you is to follow Mr. Martin's lead: first become the all-being master of time, space, and dimension, then tackle the 500 FAs.
Seriously, now: are you saying, for example, that since there's a CC to Sherlock Holmes (see List of Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics) you want to bring Sherlock Holmes to FA -- then do that again for every topic for which there's a CC? EEng 15:30, 1 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As I said previously it is definitely not an impossible goal because I am not alone in this endeavor and 500 is a countable natural number. The first step of the 500 or so possible but hard steps seems to be developing this three sub-series articles including this one and notifying the most ambitious/learned wiki contributor of the 500 articles who would read the CC and incorporate its content into the corresponding wiki article and maintain it all the way upto FA.

For now I am keen on completing the first step of developing this three subseries article. Ping some editors who would help me do this and maintain it by watchlisting it in the future. Ping:

Break[edit]

Solomon7968 05:40, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

♫ But he's got high hopes! He's got high hopes! ♫ EEng 05:49, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • are you certain there are sufficient sources (of WP's WP:RS sort) to create articles on these books? Let alone bring them to FA? Perhaps these individual books or series do get a lot of in-depth tertiary coverage, but I'd be surprised if that were the case. I mean, I did a Google Scholar search for "The Cambridge Companion to Modern Japanese Culture" and got a grand total of one hit that wasn't for the book itself. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 06:21, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
He's not proposing an article on each volume. He's proposing that the article on the subject of each volume be brought to FA, using that volume. EEng 06:28, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Just in case there is any confusion I can confirm that EEng is right. I am only proposing we use CC because it is one of the very few if only "collection-of-essays" which gives almost overview of the subject. If you have something else series in mind and happen to own it feel free to use it if you want to bring an article to FA. Solomon7968 06:33, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
For the avoidance of doubt, my two posts directed at Solomon7968 -- were perfectly serious: the first [1] was aimed at helping Solomon understand how enormous would be an undertaking to bring 500 articles to FA, and the second [2] complimented him for remaining pluckily if naively undaunted. E . EEng 06:00, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Solomon: If you're talking about expanding the subjects of these books, I've used some of them to expand articles already, but I haven't participated in FA in years and don't intend to return. Each subject would require use of far more sources than just the Cambridge books, anyways. You're talking an enormous amount of work on some quite involved subjects. Not that I want to discourage you, but I think you'll find editors prefer to work in their preferred subject areas rather than something as broad and abstract as what you may be proposing. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 06:38, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Curly Turkey, I completely agree that this involves an enormous amount of work on some quite involved subjects. As I proposed it my gut feeling is that English Wikipedia with now well over 5 million articles should focus more on quality not quantity. The best way to do this is to track how much progress we have made in completing including all information on our most important topics. There ought to be a way to judge how important a topic is and another way to judge how much information we have covered out of all available information on the topic. The existence of a CC on the topic and the books/related material included in the bibliography of the CC seems to cater to both these questions. Again I repeat that this involves an enormous amount of work on some quite involved subjects. However this in no way discouraging us from completing the first crucial step of developing this sub-series article. The larger steps can be accomplished step by step by distributing the work load if you can spread this message to 500 or so contributors. Solomon7968 06:52, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Is what you're aiming at not covered by Wikipedia:Vital articles? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 07:00, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This CC list developed by scholars would complement our vital articles list developed by amateurs. The vital articles talk page is flooded by requests from various marginalized groups/nationalities to include their topic in this elite club. However even if we agree to such requests we can't artificially add content to them unless scholars unearth new information. Not a single Indian classical music topic has an entry in the CC Music series however cricket India's most popular sport have an entry elsewhere. Solomon7968 07:26, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
You're not worried that having competing lists wouldn't dilute efforts? The number of active WP editors has been shrinking, after all. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 09:02, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Some of those people haven't edited in over a decade, others are banned, and at least one is deceased. What a joke of a mass-ping. – Juliancolton | Talk 14:11, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • LOL, kinda agreed to the last part. The effort to galvanize editors should be lauded, but these efforts often fail unless there is a lot of sustained attention, and you have some very excited editors. It sounds like what you're talking about is a long term featured topic. Remember that there is no deadline. That being said, I don't like editing musicians' articles, because I spend too much time doing that day to day, and I have other big Wikipedia goals. ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 21:00, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • I can make a suggestion about that also: the people who will organize it are the people who do the work of writing and upgrading the articles. If such people are available and want to do the work, you have a project. If not, not.
I don't think working on various lists dilutes effort. The effort needed is not the small effort of making lists, but the much more difficult job of writing articles, especially Featured Articles. We have had dozens of attempts here to organize article writing--some seem to inspire people, some have been ignored for 15 years. The ones that turn out to be important are the ones people work from. The others don't do harm. Myself, I feel that the need to get organized at all belongs to the print era, but all I probably mean by that is that i do not personally like to work in a systematic fashion.
But for those who want to, the suggestion that these book series might be a convenient way of working with broad articles on large topics is a very interesting one, because it's those we have the most trouble with. DGG ( talk ) 14:39, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Completely agree. EEng 14:47, 7 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
:::I have removed some inter-personal sniping and material related to it from this section. Because of its dispersion among material relevant to the discussion, it was easier than collapsing DGG ( talk ) 14:20, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think in my field (sociology) the The Wiley Blackwell Companions are more popular. My main concern here is that whereas those lists are useful, I an not sure if they, or in particular, this article, would pass WP:NBOOK. I couldn't find a single reference that would suggest this series is important (yes, yes, I know it is, but we need a source for this, not our own opinion). Maybe it would squeeze under section #4 (books from this series are often used at university-level education as textbooks?). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:37, 10 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

​He's not proposing we create articles on the books; he's demanding that (other people, naturally) take every subject that's the topic of a book in this series to FA status. ‑ Iridescent 10:01, 10 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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