Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Novels/Crime task force

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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels/Crime task force page.
Novels
Literature Portal
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Novels, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to narrative novels, novellas, novelettes and short stories on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit one of the articles mentioned below, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and contribute to the general Project discussion to talk over new ideas and suggestions.
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Contents

[edit] Documentation

This is talk page associated with the WikiProject Crime task force belonging to Wikipedia:WikiProject Novels. It is used as a discussion forum for the task force.

[edit] Discussion for the Crime task force

[edit] Patricia Cornwell

The novels of Patricia Cornwell could do with some work. Several of the Kay Scarpetta series in particular have been set up as separate articles, but it's hard to describe them even as stubs. Several literally consist of just one sentence. The only one that has an infobox is Predator (novel). Postmortem (novel), in particular, could do with better treatment I think as the recipient of the Edgar, Creasey, Anthony and Macavity Awards and the French Prix du Roman d'Adventure. I've tagged all those that exist so that they should now be appearing in the task force category, and I plan to work them myself when I have time, but I would appreciate any help people can provide given the scale of the work involved. Silverthorn 16:42, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Might have a lack of time for about a week as I am likely to be mostly on a wikibreak, however do keep us up to date on progress. When I get a chance I will look in on them. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 09:15, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
I have been working on expanding these. All those that have been created should now have an infobox and most, with the exception of Predator which I haven't had a chance to get to yet, should also now contain more than just a brief few sentences. Only three novels in the series have not been created at all yet. It seemed better to work on improving those articles that had already been created before adding new ones. These three are:
Silverthorn 12:40, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction

Hi folks: I'm a fairly new editor but this is precisely the task force with which I'd like to be associated. I'm not sure what I should do now that I've found you and joined you. Your suggestions would be gratefully appreciated. You might cast an eye over my contributions to date (especially in the area of Ellery Queen novels, for which I've been creating pages) and let me know what you'd like me to do to bring them into alignment with your project. I'm inexperienced with markup so would love to have templates that I could use to help you when I make contributions. Accounting4Taste 05:37, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi! Welcome aboard. There are links to templates for articles in the right-hand column of this page, which sound like what you are looking for. Also, any articles that fit into this task force need to be tagged if they aren't already. The coding for that is on the task force front page, below where you signed up as a participant. If it's done correctly, you'll see a little symbol appear on the main novels project banner that says its part of this taskforce. I hope that helps. Silverthorn 10:14, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Also welcome, I've had a quick look at the Ellery Queen articles and you have made a very good start. I have added a "Novels by" category and made a few other changes on the main pages and the talk pages. You might like to have a look over them and then look at the ArticleTemplate and StyleGuidelines pages. There are plenty of tagging activity to do, article de-stubification etc. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 16:24, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the welcomes. As you may have noted, I'm more interested in the older novels in this category. I've started on the task of bringing the entries I've been working on into line with the preferred format (infobox and the task force tag) -- mostly the novels of Ellery Queen and S. S. Van Dine. Do articles about mystery writers fall under the heading of this project? I'm also not absolutely sure what Kevinalewis meant by "Novels by" category. There's also one task that I've been putting off because I'm not sure how to do it, but I'm not sure if it falls within the boundaries of this task force. I want to combine Bertha Cool and Donald Lam into a single new page, Cool and Lam, without losing any of the talk page comments. Any assistance or pointers to exactly how this process is accomplished would be, again, very welcome. Oh, and where exactly can I find a list of "tagging activity, article de-stubification" that you want done? I tried to find a list of these items but it seems to be subsumed within the more general category of lists that the novel task force wants worked on. Accounting4Taste 18:10, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
Before anybody wastes a lot of time answering all of the above -- I think, to spare your time, I'll thoroughly investigate Patricia Cornwell and take careful note of exactly what it is you're doing and what tags, etc., you use to do it, and THEN ask questions if I still need to. But I could still use help combining Bertha Cool and Donald Lam into Cool and Lam. Sorry about the previous spate of questions -- just chalk it up to enthusiasm about getting started on this project. If there's a better way to learn the details than from Patricia Cornwell, by all means let me know. Accounting4Taste 19:49, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
"Novels by ..." see example below (however normally stacked one on the other!
{{DEFAULTSORT:Body Farm, The}} [[Category:1995 novels]] [[Category:Crime novels]] [[Category:Novels by Patricia Cornwell]]
"Detective, Crime, Mystery" novels and other prose should be tagged as part of the project.
"Hope that helps. I'll have a look at the merge issue. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:34, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

On the merge front - seems a reasonable thing to do - In terms of actually merge unless there is some thing admins can do I thing the only way would be to rename the main article and then manually blend in the text from the main article and the talk. I know that leaves the history log out in the cold but I don't know of alternatives. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:45, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Added categories

I've added some categories to the crime task force page -- for crime writers rather than crime novels, but still distinguished by country of origin. If this isn't the correct thing to do, please let me know. I suspect there may be more categories to add. Accounting4Taste 18:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

There are, but I'm not sure if "writers" should be within scope. Certainly the parent Novels project, focuses on the prose and the associated, characters, locations, etc and stops short of the biogrpaphies of the authors. That is more the realm of WPBiography. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 09:28, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I see your point about the WPBiography project. The trouble is, there are crime writers like Ellery Queen, Craig Rice and Phoebe Atwood Taylor (to name some I've been working on recently) where the information on the detective character is built into the page concerned with the author. I suppose those would have to be split out into author and character ... a lot of work. And for, say, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, there's little information available about the author, which would make for a very scanty article. Your thoughts would be welcome. Accounting4Taste 16:04, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
It occurs to me that, regardless of whether or not these pages collecting categories of writers truly belong to this project, they are useful -- I might start working on, say, Lord Peter Wimsey by going to the article about Dorothy L. Sayers (although I realize those are both quite well-defined articles already). I think I might find work to do for the task force by having these category tags on the page. Does this make sense? I don't mind deleting them if it's appropriate, no worries there. Accounting4Taste 18:35, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I do agree that bios of writers are probably outside the scope of this project. But the bibliographies of crime writers, I think, definitely are within. For the important authors it might even be good idea to have navigational templates that list the books similar to the one in Raymond Chandler. Henry Merrivale 03:03, 9 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Subcategories

I have created the subcategory Category:Crime fiction novels by author within Category:Crime novels at the same time decategorizing corresponding novels from Category:Crime novels. I think it helps to depopulate the mother category and keep it to the manageable size. As Kevinalewis pointed out to me, the fiction novel part of the cat name is redundant so I will correct it to crime novels by author. The reason for my stupidity is classification of authors: crime fiction vs. non-fiction crime. I also propose to create subcategory crime novel series. What do you think? If this is reasonable then it would be good if we could come up with the list of authors and series that are important, interesting, or just so numerous that they deserve it. Henry Merrivale 00:52, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Superb work, if you could ensure Category:Crime novel series is also sub/part of Category:Crime novels & Category:Novel series that would seem good to me. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 10:27, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Oh yes, one thought. When placing authors categories within a genre based category you need to be conscious of their entire output. For instance, to my knowledge Agatha Christie wrote at least one Spy novel. If so then I would council keeping such an author in the wider Category:Novels by author in addition until all their output is covered by such genre categories. In this case they author would then be dropped down and in this example to Category:Crime novels by author and Category:Spy novels by author. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 11:02, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
Category:Crime novel series is up. Any suggestions as to what series deserve to be there? Henry Merrivale 10:12, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Nice work, no ideas currently I'll try and have a look a little later this afternoon. One thing the Category:In Death (Novels) appears to be a rather badly named cat., should it not rather be something like Category:In Death (novel series) with the disambig elements in lower case and clearly indicating the word series as many other series cats do. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 10:52, 12 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Mass removal of short story-related category tags

This is definitely of interest for anyone in the Short Story Task Force. An editor is going around removing books from the various short story-related categories. The rationale being given is that the book is not a short story. Yet the editor is not replacing the category with an alternative. And the categories themselves simply say "X short stories" - which should apply to collections as well as the individual pieces themselves. I've asked the editor to explain himself before I start reverting the ones on my watchlist. But I thought I would give folks a heads up on this. For an example, check the edit history of Saint Errant, a collection of detective short stories that have been removed from the related category. 23skidoo 11:27, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Surely in this case the thing would be to replace Category:Detective fiction short stories with possibly a new Category:Detective short story collections (I'm not sure about the "fiction" element of this it is largely redundant). :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 12:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
The other category in the example does a appear to be dispensable. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 12:41, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
also this probably should be discussed on the task-force talk page. And the debate maybe referenced here. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 12:44, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

So moved. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 12:48, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Actually investigating further these have arrived under Category:Mystery short story collections by virtue of the Category:Short story collections by Leslie Charteris and is that not a more appropriate home than "Detective fiction". Just a question. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 12:54, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Just to add my 2-cents, I didn't realize there was a substitute category created, so my "complaint" above was probably in error. Still, it's probably worth bringing to people's attention that there are some redundant categories out there. 23skidoo 12:41, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mystery films

I recognize that the Crime task force is part of the Novels project. At the same time, I've just learned that there is a category of mystery films and I'm wondering if a link might somehow be included within the Crime task force. I guess what I'm asking is, is this task force about crime, or about novels? Accounting4Taste 16:35, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

The combination - strictly speaking, taking the lead from the parent project "Crime narrative fiction prose". But a few associated interests shouldn't harm unless they become the main focus. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 16:53, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
"Associated interests" -- very well put, and thank you. I ask because most people associate Charlie Chan or Boston Blackie with mystery films more than they do mystery novels (to give some examples). I will add a section on the main page called "Associated interests" (and of course if someone feels strongly about what this should be called, by all means change it or even delete it). Accounting4Taste 16:57, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Deletion discussion that may be of interest

The crime task force members may care to look at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of fictional amateur detectives, which is up for deletion. I want to add that I'm not encouraging anyone to have an opinion which matches/does not match my own, which is for deletion -- if there's a good point to keeping this list, I'd like to know about it so I can change what's left of my mind ;-) I just think that the more opinions we get, the better the final decision will be, and it occurred to me that this task force's members might have an opinion as to the utility of this list. Accounting4Taste 23:07, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ellery Queen

My New Year's resolution, in Wikipedia terms, is to bring Ellery Queen to FA status. I've asked a couple of editors to give this article the once-over and let me know what might need to happen. If anyone in the Crime task force has comments to offer, they would be welcome (I think I'd find them fastest on Talk:Ellery Queen). Thanks in advance, and happy new year! Accounting4Taste:talk 21:52, 1 January 2008 (UTC)