Talk:Victor Hugo

can someone please explain why Victor Hugo is seen as a saint in that vietnamese religion Zapacna 08:09, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Zapacna ..... not a great source on the religion ... but check out the next to last paragraph here http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/students/vb/Caodai.htm

I did a "Google" on "Cao Dai" and "Victor Hugo" ... lots more to check on later. JerseyBob 04:47, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Article needs structure.

I chose this article from Wikipedia pages needing copy edit hoping to make some initial small edits as a newbie. After reading and comparing it to John Steinbeck and Jules Verne (chosen randomly !! ), I'm now convinced it needs a total structural re-design. The long single heading Life and work has great biographical data, descriptions of VH's works, and critical commentary, but all in one rather convoluted stream.

I've copied that section to a personal sub-page to give it a try. It might be a few ~~days~~ weeks ... but when I post the edit ... feel free to shred it, revert it etc.

I was surprised to see so little here on the talk page, given the article's history entries. Anything there that I should know ???

Zapacna .... I'm far from a Victo Hugo expert .... no help on that one from here.

JerseyBob 02:25, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A better idea ... revisited from time to time

The French Wikipedia has an article nominated for featured article status ... we can do as much for Victor Hugo in English !!!!! http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Hugo

The major issue is to have the article conform more closely to: Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies)

Other concerns

fact checking - I followed several of the links in the current article, and found a reference to VH's brother Eugene as being born in 1803 and dying in 1827. If true, that would negate the reference to VH being the youngest son of ... any help here would be appreciated !! No longer a problem, a better source gives 1800 JerseyBob 19:42, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The current article has many links to articles on individual VH works. Some use the original French titles, and some use English translations. Is a table or list of major works, showing both languages a helpful addition ??
There are no links to traditional biographical sources, though many exist. I'm looking at several of those for inclusion.
- Victor Hugo: A Biography by Graham Robb ISBN: 0393318990 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (May 1, 1999) being recent, and in English, should be included ... my copy is in transit.

JerseyBob 03:08, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

THE GREAT UNDERTAKING: Editing the behemouth Victor Hugo page

Hello! To all interested in the Victor Hugo page, I bravely dug my editing shovel in today and am finding it a huge undertaking. We're talking major substantive editing here. My background is in book editing, so I am pretty confident about what I'm doing. However, I would love to have all and any feedback on what I have done so far. There is a note on the page indicating a division between what has been edited and what has not. Thanks! --Victoria 04:16, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hello back,

Great to have someone with your background here. What was on the page was about 95% from the 1911 EB ... verbatim !! I.ve been gathering resources, but not Bold enough to jump right in as a newbie. JerseyBob 04:55, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm very impressed with what you two have done to the article so far. I just thought you might want to know someone appreciates your contributions. I don't know much about Victor Hugo, but I can give you some general feedback after you get the article pulled together. --TantalumTelluride 05:23, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks all. The plan is to put the bare bones of the thing together, and then everyone can add the extra bits and pieces wherever they fit in. But right now I've got to get what we have pulled together into something comprehensible. --Victoria 05:42, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Victoria: I did the latest minor edit to relink to: La Légende des siècles If handling the titles in this way seems to interrupt the flow ... let me know ... and I'll hold off on similar changes until later in the process and look at how other articles handle it effectively. JerseyBob 18:47, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

JerseyBob: As you've probably noticed, a lot of the links in the edited sections are screwed up now, because I've just been plowing through the content, intending to go back and fix them. So it would be an ENORMOUS HELP if you wanted to follow behind and fix the links and title issues. I guess it would be logical to give the titles in French, followed by the English translation that the work is known by if necessary. It would also be helpful if you were to double-check accents on French words and names, I think I've missed some. Thanks! --Victoria 19:18, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Certainement! Je peux faire cela facilement. (Certainly ! I can do that easily.) <Grinning> !! JerseyBob 20:27, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Victoria: You have done a really "first rate" job !! My goal is to turn all those red links to blue. Some of the proper names lead to articles on the individual works, and some to biographies of the people. Creating some stub articles on the works, where none exist, or learning something more about disambiguation and redirection Wikipedia:Redirect will help. JerseyBob 17:14, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

What the Hell?????

Bob: Do you have any idea why all of the HOURS of editing/rewriting that I did last night have suddenly disappearred today? All of my work is recorded in the "Page History", and I can't see any record of anyone having undone it.... I'm trying not to panic, but this is bizarre.... --Victoria 18:47, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bob: I see now that in the process of doing your "minor" edit listed as "sp and link to Vendée", you somehow reverted the page to a much earlier version. I'm ASSUMING that you did not INTEND to do that and it's just a glitch of some sort. I'm going to go back now and reinsert all the edits I did last night. If you DID intend to undo the work I did... then please talk to me, baby.... --Victoria 18:55, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, all of the material has now been reinstated, and I'm much calmer. But this may have "undone" some of your link work, unfortunately. Please feel free to continue with link clean-up. In addition to the "linking" problems, all of the titles need to be put into italics. My next priority is to insert further biographical and critical material into the existing structure. Soon as I grab something to eat.... --Victoria 19:11, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Re-write/restructuring complete, finetuning in progress

To all interested parties: Bob and I are working on finetuning the "Victor Hugo" page after some huge rewriting, editing, and re-structuring. So as to avoid overlapping work, please post here if you want to get involved, to keep things organized.... And, of course, if anyone has any comments, suggestions, or criticisms to offer about the work that has been done so far, they would be VERY WELCOME. Thanks. --Victoria 19:15, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bob: I've been gathering a lot of extra biographical, critical detail today, which I'll be incorporating. So stick to "link work" for now, so that we don't have any overlap of text additions. --Victoria 00:13, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bob: Please note that I have changed a lot of the play-title links in the "Threatrical Work" section to external links (i.e. links to other websites), since there are currently no pages in Wikipedia to link them to. --Victoria 07:04, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A classic newbie "Goof"

Victoria:My sincere apologies for the accidental reversion ... I'll be much more careful in the future !! The last thing in the world I'd want to see is the loss of all that you've done. JerseyBob 23:39, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Bob: All's well that ends well! It was relatively easy to fix, so I apologize for the hysterics on my part. If you look at the Page History, you'll see that someone named "Silence" fixed the image of Hugo at the beginning of the article, for the better. I've invited him/her here to this page if they have any other suggestions.

Good Work

This article has improved incredibly over the course of just a few days thanks to the major contributions of Victoria Ridout and countless minor edits by JerseyBob. As promised at the onset of their great endevour, I have returned to give my evaluation; and I am extremely pleased with the results. I can only think of a few suggestions:

The article could use some more pictures. There are a several good public-domain images in the French-language article that could be transferred to the English-language Wikipedia or to the Commons. I don't speak French, so I'm not sure what some of the images are; but at least some of them could probably be used in our article. If you have any questions about uploading or using images, see Wikipedia:Images and Wikipedia:Extended image syntax or ask me on my talk page.
All external links should generally be placed at the end of the article. Even if Wikipedia doesn't have an article on a particular play, the title should be wikilinked or pipe-linked anyway so that it will direct to the correct article when it is eventually created.
Eventually, this could be a featured article. After you add some images and cite your sources, you might want to consider requesting a peer review.

Once again, thanks for the great work. --TantalumTelluride 21:49, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks very much, good suggestions. --Victoria 23:55, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My thanks too, though I've only played the role of the man with the "broom & scoop" following along after the premier equestrian unit in the parade !! All the congratulations belong to Victoria. I'm sure we'll both stick with it to implement the finishing touches. JerseyBob 00:11, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hugo's Drawings and Artwork

Now that I've posted the resource material, the next priority is to add a small section on Hugo's artwork, a section that will really lend itself to visuals. Stay tuned.... --Victoria 23:56, 6 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

IMAGES

Well, I spent about an hour trying to figure out how to incorporate images into the article. I followed (or TRIED to follow) all of the instructions on the subject, but found them pretty well incomprehensible. If someone knows of, or can provide, some STEP-BY-STEP instructions on how to do it, I would be grateful. Otherwise, I'm going to have to leave that task to someone else, cause I just don't get it.... --Victoria 18:00, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Victoria, I find it easiest to find another image ... go into edit mode and "steal" the code !! As in ... this image. I would rather steal than re-invent anything. This image is from the French article, with a modified caption. Go into edit mode on this page and "copy and paste" everything including the two [[ brackets in the opening line in the edit box for this entry that starts with: Victoria, I find it easiest to find another image . JerseyBob 21:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's a solution if the image you want to display already exists on another Wikipedia site. But I want to find out how to upload other images from my computer and/or other internet sites. Maybe I'll give it another try later when I am not feeling so frustrated.... --Victoria 22:37, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Victoria, what operating system and browser are you using? --TantalumTelluride 23:52, 7 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

LOOKY-SEE!!! I managed to figure it out and have incorporated an image under the "Drawings" section.... More to come.... --Victoria 00:26, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Very good! That wasn't so hard; was it? Just wait 'til you need to use a table! --TantalumTelluride 00:57, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm the "Little Editor That Could". Remind me of that the next time I whine about something.... hehe.... --Victoria 03:22, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Check out the pics, kids!

You wanted pics -- you got pics! Have a look at the Victor Hugo page and let me know what you think. I'm quite pleased with what I was able to find on the internet.... --Victoria 07:45, 8 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! Now the French will be stealing images from us. Excellent work! --TantalumTelluride 04:00, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Still with you ... !!

Victoria: The pics are just the icing !! What you've done with the words is the cake !! I'm still here, though real life has severely cut into my online time over the last couple of days.

Some random thoughts:

Should there be a more prominent mention of his children ????
- the effect of Leopoldine's death ...
- François-Victor Hugo ... the first translator to offer a complete French translation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1857).
- Paul Meurice wound up spending ten months in prison in 1848 for printing an article on the right of asylum in his paper called L'Evenement. The article was by Charles-Victor Hugo, Victor Hugo's son.

JerseyBob 00:07, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

JerseyBob: You're readin my mind. I am, as we speak, starting to compile a section titled "Family". There's a lot of rich material there -- his brother who was in love with Hugo's wife and went mad after they got married, his wife's infamous affair with Hugo's friend, the drowing of his oldest daughter, the story of the madness of his oldest daughter Adele (made into a well known film by Truffaut in the 70's, his grandchildren, one of which married the son of a famous explorer, which is why there is a Victor Hugo Island somewhere in the antarctica, plus the stuff you mention above, etc etc. Stay tuned.... --Victoria 03:38, 9 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Article size

So ... Victor needs to go on a diet !!

Victoria: I saw the comments by TantalumTelluride and yourself re: slimming him down I tried this and think that I can do the same for many of the other paragraphs. The side by side comparison is in my Sandbox Your thoughts ?????

Proposed last paragraph for Theatrical work section

Hugo’s Angelo (1835) premiered successfully. Soon after in 1836, the Duke of New Orleans (brother of King Louis-Philippe, and a Hugo admirer), founded the Théâtre de la Renaissancea to showcase new plays. It's premiere offering (November 1838) was Hugo's [Ruy Blas. Considered Hugo’s best drama, it met with only average success. Similarly, in 1843 The Burgraves played only 33 nights, and was his last theatrical work. The short verse drama Torquemada written in 1869, but unpublished until 1882, was never intended for the stage. However, Hugo's interest in the theatre continued, and in 1864 his essay on William Shakespeare, whose style he admired and had emulated, was very well received.

JerseyBob 02:40, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

No! Please! The TEXT does not need to be compressed, I am solving the problem by deleting images. The text is already very sparse, and I am opposed to editing which may negatively effect the sense and flow. In the end, it is the INFORMATION being presented that is important, so I am quite happy to get rid of some of the visual spectacle in order to reduce the page size. Besides, deleting words will not substantially reduce the size of the page, it is the images that are using up the most bandwith. --Victoria 02:51, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Victoria: That's exactly why I tried it here and not in the article !! Another thought ... I know that Wikipedia frowns on sub-pages ... but could the complete Bibliography list be on it's own linked page ???? JerseyBob 02:59, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Feel free to edit this article or any other for conciseness, but also realize that size limitations are almost purely stylistic. Since the long lists are contributing significantly to the size of this article, it can exceed the 32kB limit without causing any major problems. Perhaps a better alternative would be to start a separate articles for the list of works, although it's not extremely necessary at this point. The text is about the right length as it is now, and there are about the right number of images. I think the best thing for us to do now is to continue to wikify and revise the article without increasing its length. --TantalumTelluride 03:03, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

For more information on how to cover topics in greater detail than is possible in 32kB, see Wikipedia:Summary style. Victor doesn't need to trim down yet, but he needs to start watching his weight. No more large pieces of content should be added directly to this article unless something else is moved out. --TantalumTelluride 03:11, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I really DO NOT want to CUT UP the article. It is currently very cohesive and should remain as ONE PIECE. What I AM thinking of doing is setting up a separate page to talk about his family at length, since there is no room to do so on the current page. Would there be any problem with that, Telluride? What are the rules regarding titles for new pages? Would "Victor Hugo Family" be acceptable? --Victoria 03:13, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

First, I'd like to say: Wow. This page has improved uniminaginably in a very short span of time. This is truly rapidly approaching being a very good featured article candidate! I'm deeply impressed. The image additions do a fantastic deal in helping making the article accessible and aesthetically pleasing, and the text has no major problems that I've seen so far; I'll try to continue going through it with my copyedit when I have time, perhaps over the weekend.

Second, I'll have to agree with TantalumTelluride 100%. This article is in absolutely no way too long; if you check out featured article pages, you'll have a hard time finding one that doesn't pass the 32k "limit". Please ignore that arbitrary set at which the meaningless warning "this page may be too long" appears, as it is very misleading and has nothing to do with actual Wikipedia articles. In truth, this article is one of the shortest high-quality )i.e. Wikipedia biographies I've ever seen. Furthermore, I have to say that of every Wikipedia biography I've ever seen, this one has the best interplay of text and images; the balance is almost perfect, and I tried to bring it a bit closer by standardizing the text captions and expanding images wherever possible, making them more visible and making them frame the text even better. If you have any specific objections to any changes I made, please do feel free to say so here and/or revert them, as the entire point of Wikipedia collaboration is that anyone can revert anything if an unfortunate edit is made—it's the magic of edit histories! :) Note that I did not delete, remove, or add a single image when I made my changes; all I did was resize and reposition them. If it looks like I deleted images in the edit history, that's only because I moved it to a different part of the article (usually a paragraph or two up or down), and you can see it added elsewhere there. No need to freak out, Victoria. If anything, we should be trying to make this page longer so it can be more comprehensive; it's easier to remove excess information than to add new information, because more people are able to edit an existing article than to research and contribute new information!

Furthermore, if this article does get overlarge (and it's nowhere near that currently, if anything it's comfortably average, with a nice, athletic physique and even a touch of slimness!), we always have the option of expanding sections of the article into new pages. See Charles Darwin, a biography that grew to something like a hundred pages in length and simply got divided into a whole series of articles to account for that, with Charles Darwin serving as the hub for them! Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia; there are no space limits here. The only limitations are those we choose to impose upon ourselves for the sake of a reasonable amount of brevity in order to facilitate clarity and getting across the most important information. Common sense is the most important thing in Wikipedia editing, not blind rule-following. -Silence 03:21, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

See Wikipedia:Naming conventions. Victor Hugo family is acceptable, with a redirect from Victor Hugo Family. Also Silence is right; 32kB is just a general guideline. I suppose it wouldn't hurt to add a little more about Hugo's family. --TantalumTelluride 03:28, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd probably go with something like Family of Victor Hugo or just Hugo family. -Silence 03:30, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You're right. The precedent seems to be in the form of Hugo family, such as Kennedy family and Lee family. --TantalumTelluride 03:45, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, what's up with all the reduced-sized images? Does Victoria not know how to change an image's size just by adding "px" and the pixel size number? -Silence 03:49, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. I think she might have been trying to cut down the article size. I wouldn't worry. She'll catch on to all the wiki-nuances before long. After all, there are still a few guidelines out there in the Wikipedia namespace that I'm not sure about, too. --TantalumTelluride 04:28, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, same. In fact, I probably haven't even read a fifth of all the guidelines out there yet. :) It just takes time. I have a lot of experience myself with the torment that is edit conflicts; I've lashed out at good friends of mine who I really wanted to collaborate with, because of having to deal with an endless series of edit conflicts just to get in one edit. It's one of the most serious problems with Wiki in general wherever there's enough activity to end up with a lot of people editing at once. What I've found is that the best way to deal when you've got a major edit and don't want to immediately spend even more time incorporating your edit with the edit you're conflicting with, is to simply overwrite the edits that are conflicting yours with your edits, so you've at least got your information saved—the worst thing is to lose your information by computer failure or similar after spending all that excess time copy-editing! So your first priority should be adding it safely to the Wikipedia history, if your edit is large-scale. Next, compare your edit to the previous one in history, and then work on incorporating the two, with the pressure off you a bit. I think if this was the accepted way to handle these situations on Wikipedia, edit conflicts would be less of a hassle. But oh well. -Silence 04:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going out for a while. Can everyone PLEASE just leave the images and layout alone for a while. It is VERY FRUSTRATING to have people meddling while you're right in the middle of editing the page. I'll let you know when I'm DONE editing the page for length, as per suggestions above. --Victoria 04:04, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

You shouldn't be editing the page for length—you should be editing it for quality. The suggestion that we need to worry about trimming this down at this stage in the article's life was an exceedingly poor one, and you should, in my opinion, disregard it and continue with the fantastic improvements and additions you were making before. -Silence 04:09, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

When Victoria starts typing in ALL CAPS, it's time to edit another article for a while! (See also: Talk:Victor Hugo#What the Hell?????.) --TantalumTelluride 04:13, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I've already stopped for now; the antics on my talk page are getting a bit frightening. I'll just work on the copyedit later. But, I'd still like to know what anyone thinks of my two experiments in my last two edits; what do you think of the image placement in those? Of course, clearly we'll have to switch the larger Cosette image back in for the smaller one when things have calmed down a bit; it's a much higher-quality image, and can easily be shrunk down within the article itself if we really need to (hint: we don't). But that can wait. -Silence 04:20, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

OKAY, WHERE THINGS ARE AT NOW

RE LENGTH: It never would have OCCURRED to me that the article might be becoming too LARGE until Telleride wrote the following on my TALK page:

I just want to make sure you are aware of the guidelines at Wikipedia:Article size because Victor Hugo now is at 34KB. Although size limitations are not as strict as they once were, you might want to start thinking about breaking sections out into separate articles. Again, note that article size is now mostly a stylistic concern rather than a technical limitation. Since a considerable portion of Victor Hugo consists of lists of works, the size could potentially exceed 32KB without causing any significant problems. But at this article's current rate of expansion, who knows what measures might need to be taken in the near future? --TantalumTelluride 06:04, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Now I'm just plain confused about the issue. What you all seem to be saying is "Be careful the article doesn't get too big -- but if it gets too big... don't worry about it..." Okay, so the 32MB mark is arbitrary and not written in stone... but how big is TOO BIG?

The LAST thing I want to see happen is for the article to get DIVIDED, or for the text to be edited down. I feel strongly that it is already very concise and cohensive, as is. I would much rather see the images reduced and/or downsized (to what they are now) than lose text. I *had* planned to add a section on Hugo's family. Now, that WOULD lend itself well to a separate page, I'm OK with that. But there are a few more paragraphs of info that I have yet to incorporate into the "Political Life & Exile" section that MUST be incorporated into the current page. Once that is done, that section can easily support another image that will help make the page look a little more balanced image-wise.

BOTTOM LINE: I would really appreciate it if you could all wait until I'm done writing and adding to the current text -- which should be within the next couple of days -- before fooling around with the layout. I would also appreciate it if you could talk to me about your concerns before making substantial changes, so that we're at least all on the same page and not being counter-productive.

I've already had one article on Wikipedia BUTCHERED by some editors who (in my opinion) acted in haste to divide an article I hadn't even finished yet, without consulting with me in any way. If that were to happen to this article, in the same hasty non-consultative fashion, I really doubt I would be interested in investing any more time into Wikipedia. I realize that as a newcomer I must concede to the decisions of others here -- but SURELY there is some room for considerate discussion?

Thank you for listening. --Victoria 05:36, 11 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]