Talk:Electronic literature

Speculation

I've read some articles that articles that claim improvisational theater is a type of literature, so it stands to reason that flashmobs that result in improve theater would qualify. Can anyone help with the source?131.125.58.78 (talk) 18:26, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Impro/flashmobs would only be electronic literature if they incorporate computation in some meaningful way. An early example was

• Wittig R (1994) Invisible Rendevous: Connection and Collaboration in the New Landscape of Electronic Writing. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan UP.

That book documents INVISIBLE SEATTLE, an electronic bulletin board begun in the mid-Eighties in Seattle that, in turn, gave its name to a collaborative novel of electronically assembled random contributions from the citizenry.

Netprov is a genre of e-lit that creates collaborative online improvisational literature. Online larps could certainly be considered e-lit, but haven't typically been seen that way yet to my knowledge. Some references include

• Wittig, Rob. Netprov: Networked Improvised Literature for the Classroom and Beyond. Amherst College Press. 2021. doi:10.3998/mpub.12387128
• Burr, Lauren. “Bicycles, Bonfires and an Airport Apocalypse: The Poetics and Ethics of Netprov.” Hyperrhiz: New Media Cultures, no. 11, 2015. doi:10.20415/hyp/011.e01

(talk) 14:20, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! There's now a separate article on Netprov, and it's mentioned in this article as well. Lijil (talk) 14:56, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

History

There is nothing on the history of EL. A good source is http://dichtung-digital.mewi.unibas.ch/2012/41/walker-rettberg/walker-rettberg.htm. N. Katherine Hayles's Electronic Literature: New Horizons for the Literary and C.T. Funkhouser's Prehistoric Digital Poetry: An Archaeology of Forms, 1959-1995 should also be used for writing a history.Kdammers (talk) 08:07, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

I see somebody added a lot of history, but it needs fixing - the predecessors section is about ebooks and audio books, not e-lit, and the rest is mostly about games. I don't currently have time to edit, but this is something that needs attention. Lijil (talk) 21:26, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for editing so much on the history. We are working on this as well. I'll get to the New Media Reader from Noah Wardrip Fruin and Nick Monfort as a source as soon as I can. LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 20:04, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

Oh and of course we need to cite Leonardo Flores theory of the three web generations. Just a reminder to me. LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 20:06, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

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GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Electronic literature/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: TompaDompa (talk · contribs) 14:02, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

This is a WP:QUICKFAIL based on criterion 3 (It has, or needs, cleanup banners that are unquestionably still valid. These include {{cleanup}}, {{POV}}, {{unreferenced}} or large numbers of {{citation needed}}, {{clarify}}, or similar tags.) and criterion 1 (It is a long way from meeting any one of the six good article criteria), specifically WP:GACR 2b (reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose)). The current version has several uncited paragraphs. There are also issues with tone and borderline promotional language such as "easy-to-use" and "classics". I'll add some maintenance tags to the article itself. TompaDompa (talk) 14:02, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Need to restore some drafts

This is probably not the correct place to put this reminder, but as we develop a Project Electronic Literature, we need to restore the drafts from User talk:Atfalati - Wikipedia that were abandoned (Tim McLaughlin). LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 17:15, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

I just requested that the following drafts from User:Atfalatibe undeleted: Draft:Notes Toward Absolute Zero and Draft:Tim McLaughlin. I'll try to improve them. Lijil (talk) 09:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Electronic Literature project

I have started an Electronic Literature project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronic literature - Wikipedia LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 02:29, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

GA Review

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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This review is transcluded from Talk:Electronic literature/GA2. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 21:12, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for a very helpful and thorough review! I've started working through the points but it will take a few days :) Lijil (talk) 16:28, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi again - sorry this is taking me a while, a lot of other things going on. I wanted to ask about the Outline of literature - Electronic literature *is* in the outline, under Major written forms -> Electronic, and since most of the other items in that section have the outline I thought it would make sense to include it. Lijil (talk) 09:18, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

A very large sidebar is a major intrusion in a short article; far preferable are navboxes such as the two already at the end of the article, which do the same job but far more unobtrusively, and without disrupting the placement of images, quote boxes, tables or other items that may need to go on the side. I note you're removed an image (for a different reason), but it's more than likely that images will be found later. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:22, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

OK! Lijil (talk) 09:40, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for your patience - I think I've finished! Lijil (talk) 18:57, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Comments

• People, throughout, need to be briefly introduced at first mention. Who is Katherine Hayles? Scott Rettberg? The mysterious "Handler" and the wrongly-Wikilinked Hayles? Nanni Balestrini? and so on, there are many more. This treatment should include EL authors, as it seems that many of them are poets, artists, game developers, and so on, which the reader should be told as background in each case. Further, when there is a Wikipedia article, these people should be wikilinked.
  • Done

• The article seems to be in British English with -ise endings, in which case please say "the scientist John Doe" where American English has "scientist John Doe". Again, this is throughout. It would be wise to add {{Use British English|date=January 2004}} at the top of the article, after the Short description.
  • Done

• The lead section does not summarise all sections of the article. It needs in particular to have a paragraph on the History, another on Scholarship, and a brief mention of Databases.
  • Done

• 'Definitions' is not fully cited.
  • I think I've fixed this now?

• Should 'Definitions' not briefly explain how e.g. hypertext can offer capabilities not afforded by plain text? The key is surely the reader's freedom to choose alternate paths, so perhaps this should be said, illustrated (with an example and maybe a diagram), and cited up front in the article.
  • Added paragraph with examples. Removed the first paragraph as it's not very clear to a general reader, and moved up Kate Hayles' quote which is clearer. Added third-generation e-lit to explain how social media fits in.

• 'History' contains many very short paragraphs - the first one in '1960s' is a single sentence, for instance. Please merge the short paragraphs together.
  • Done

• Ref [10] Gaboury mentions 'queer' items in early computer art. Does this imply that EL provided a platform for minorities to express themselves? If so, article should say something on that subject.
  • I suppose this is the case because self-publishing and indie publishers/journals dominated since the mainstream publishers weren't interested - but I can't find any sources that specifically discuss this, so I don't think it can be added to the article at this point.

• '1980s' claims that The Legible City is an influential digital work "with strong literary components". Please explain what that means, and indicate (with a reference) how it was influential - that cannot be cited to the work itself, obviously.
  • Done. Added references, expanded description.

• 'Literary criticism' contains three very short subsections. These feel very brief and light for whole sections. I guess we could simply merge them into one section (with a little rewording to include keywords ("context", "repetition") in the sentences; or they need expansion with additional sources.
  • Done. The 'Literary criticism' section is really about the same topic as the previous paragraph so I combined them in one section with a slightly different subtitle.

• The Laboratory NT2 needs to be cited in the text.
  • Done

• 'Databases and directories' begins with whole sentences and tails off into mere mentions of names. I suspect this is because you've already said everything worth saying just above in the text part of 'Preservation and archiving', so I suggest we drop the 'Databases and directories' subsection altogether, and merge its refs into the text part.
  • Done

• 'See also': please remove 'Hypertext' and link it in the article. 'Cybertext', 'Digital poetry', 'Generative literature', 'Hypertext fiction', 'Hypermedia', and 'Interactive fiction' are already linked in the article, please remove them from the list.
  • I removed all except List of electronic literature authors, critics, and works. I removed the link to Literatronica completely as it is not central to the topic while the others are integrated into the main text.

• Why is "Stochastic Texts" in noWiki-ed double square brackets?
  • Thanks for noticing this. This was a typo that I fixed.

• Why does [14] De Rosario need an essay-length note inside the ref? Suggest you paraphrase the best bits and put it in the main text as it seems to be rather relevant (as well as indigestible and misplaced in the refs).
  • Done

• Please format all work titles in italics, e.g. afternoon, a story (all in lowercase, btw), Victory Garden, Patchwork Girl, The Sumerian Game, and so on.
  • Done

• A small thing: the word "also" is used half-a-dozen times in the text. It doesn't add anything, so I suggest you just delete it.
  • Deleted a lot of them.

• The redlink to Irma Salo Jæger should be replaced with an Interlanguage link (Template:Ill) to the article on Norwegian Wikipedia. Same for any other notable Norwegians currently redlinked.
  • Thanks for letting me know about this option - I've used it for Jæger and some other people as well (Germans and Italians).

Images

• Floppy diskette photo: Grigar and Moulthrop may be happy for people to use their text with CC-by-SA, but how can they release the image of somebody else's diskette label? That must be in copyright unless I'm missing something here?. We could use it from a new Wikipedia file with a new NFUR, but it seems to be wrongly-labelled as CC-by-SA on Commons.
  • Can a diskette label be copyrighted? I'm not an expert, but I interpret this as equivalent to a book cover, which is permitted (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Books/Images? Otherwise, would it be the author Shelley Jackson or the publisher Eastgate Systems who would need to give permission?
    • Book and album covers are definitely copyrighted, and can only be used with a Non-Free Use Rationale. You might wish to try to argue that a simple text label on a cassette is not copyrightable by virtue of being so very simple, but I'd check with the helpdesk if I were you.
      • OK, I posted the question to the Help Desk.
        • I do hope you're not waiting on this - we should get the review done, and hide the image if we're not sure it's ok. My choice as I've said would be a non-free rationale with the image on Wikipedia (not Commons). Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:23, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
          • I removed the image. Looking at other pages for major kinds of literature most don't have a top image anyway - I did add the literature outline template after looking at some of those pages. I added another photo of a different work of hypertext fiction under the 1990s subsection that shows a bit of the same idea as the diskette photo.
            • Well, OK. The cover of a diskette doesn't give much away, anyway. It might be more informative to add a small screenshot (to Wikipedia, not to Commons) with a fair usage rationale.

• The two network visualisations are stated on Commons to be by Jill Walker Rettberg, and on Figshare to be CC-by-SA 4.0. Please amend the "Source" statement on both Commons pages to say the source is the Figshare address given in "Description" (I suggest you just move the URL down to 'Source' and tidy the text).
  • The data, not the visualisations seem to be on Figshare. The visualisations are in the paper on Electronic book review, and right at the bottom of the page it says "ebr is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License."
    • OK.

Sources

All the spotchecks I tried passed.

• [34] Rettberg: please add an |author-link= to her Wikipedia page. Same for other authors cited.

• [38] Barnet: please add website, URL, and date, or some other way of finding the document; and format the citation using the Cite web or similar template.
  • Done

• [39] Aarseth: please add pages cited, and format the citation using the Cite book template. Please spell out "University Press".
  • Done

• [41] Hyperfiction: please add |newspaper=The New York Times, and the date it was published.
  • Done

• [48] Ciccoricco: please add pages cited.
  • Done

• [58] RoGue: why is this blog a reliable source?
  • I suppose it's a primary source, since the work Cloak Room was published on that blog. The same thing is stated in the article referenced immediately before. I added this reference to this statement as well - is it OK to leave the reference to the blog in there as well?
    • Yes why not.

• [89] Bell: please add pages (or chapter no. with title) cited.
  • Deleted sentence and citation as it didn't really add anything and I couldn't figure out the page.

• [93] Preservation...: please use the Cite book (or Cite web) template, with author, date and publisher.
  • Done (replaced with better version of the source)

• [104] AELA and ADELI, or is it MAELD & ADELD? There seems to be some unspoken relationship between these acronyms, but it should be rationalised for use here.
  • Replaced existing title in the text with the title from the website (MAELD & ADELD), not sure where the other acronyms came from.

Summary

By the way, it'd be helpful if you could mark ** Done (or whatever reply) for each item when you've addressed it. Thanks!

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.