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Archive 1

New summary spoilers

Someone in Kansas Arkansas is being very naughty, no? --SandChigger 23:18, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

I only looked at the first sentence and am just dying to fix his/her spelling, etc., but haven't read the damned thing yet, LOL. TAnthony 01:20, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Are you saying we should leave it? If so, I'll go through and correct any errors (spelling, grammar, factual) I find. (And yes, that last could mean what you might think it means, but I shan't say definitely one way or the other. wink wink, nudge nudge.) --SandChigger 03:39, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm, I was thinking it must've just come out and my Amazon.com pre-order just hadn't shipped yet, but (as you already realized) it's not out yet. Without a source, how can we be sure it isn't fan fic or something? Perhaps your first instinct to delete it was a good idea. TAnthony 17:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
Personally (not having read the relevant sections, I had fortunately looked at the talk page diffs first), I'm wondering whether, if that is in fact the actual plot summary, it is even legal to host it here. I suspect that everyone with access to it either wouldn't leak it, have a NDA to not leak it, or are contractually bound as part of their employment to not leak it, but I'm not sure how the laws apply to a third party like us. --Gwern (contribs) 17:42, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
I was hoping that someone else would have voiced an opinion on this by now. I've seen an ARC of the novel and this synopsis is fairly accurate. If no one is sure whether this is a violation, shouldn't we err on the side of caution and delete it? --SandChigger 03:42, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I was going to say that erring on the side of caution would be leaving it alone. It's not clear either way, it will soon be mooted by the public release, and it's not nearly as likely to get WMF sued as other fair use stuff is. Plus, I've observed that stuff that is removed is rarely restored even if it could be. --Gwern (contribs) 12:28, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Leaving it alone seems an unacceptable option when it's so badly written. Clean-up then? --SandChigger 15:04, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I've deleted it. Not fair to those fans who choose to read it. If true, it may have completely spoiled it for me. That's just wrong, not to mention illegal. You can't post complete outlines of yet-to-be-published novels (whether true or not) at Wiki.--Dune-o-phile 16:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, I didn't add it in the first place, so I'm certainly not going to revert to restore it. Arguments to the effect that something "is not fair" have always reeked of the kindergarten playground IMO. (Sandworms hasn't been published yet, so any "plot summary" will necessarily contain spoilers. Knowing these things, anyone who goes ahead and reads it has no one to blame but themselves. Enough already with this coddling of the stupid and unthinking!) But the point about illegality is valid...if true. I haven't checked the copyright law to see if cases like this are specifically addressed therein or if there are other legal precedents. I suspect you haven't, either, but on the off chance you have, can you cite the pertinent passage or link to a web resource containing it? --SandChigger 02:03, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
It's already got spoiler warnings, quite aside from the general principle that you would expect an encyclopedia article to have spoilers! And outlines (or as we call them here, plot summaries) are perfectly legal. Why wouldn't they be? The issue we were discussing was whether the information came from a legally dubious source and whether that taint would extend to our article. I haven't seen anyone proffer a plausible explanation why it would. --Gwern (contribs) 02:51, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, if it is going to stay up, someone who is more wiki saavy than I, please, please edit the damn thing and make it readable. As far as legality, I suspect that if it is illegal someone from wikipedia will be hearing from the HLPTleilax Master B 18:23, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I would like to point out that it says "Scytale finally reawakens his own ghola" by dying in front of the Scytale ghola. That implied to me deliberate attempts to restore the memory. According to SandChigger that is not done deliberately; he coincidentally dies in front of the ghola and has the effect of restoring those memories. I think it should read, "Scytale's ghola is finally reawakened when Scytale dies in front of his younger self"--then its not implied that Scytale is succeeding in some way in attempts to reawaken the memory. The way it reads now, it sounds like a deliberate attempt.......... Tleilax Master B 13:35, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, it's possible, isn't it? That Scytale made the ghola and primed it in such a way that he knew it would suffer extreme crisis upon his death? 216.61.238.76 23:10, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
Oh, goody, an apologist already! If that were the case, then why does he try so hard to reawaken the ghola's memories while alive? Why not just hurry up and die? --SandChigger 13:26, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

The book is out in stores. Any reason why we shouldn't re-post the summary?? Tleilax Master B 18:41, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

I see no reason not to post it. Betterlucknexttime 02:53, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Reviews

What exactly does this mean, "The publisher is promoting this volume with a $250,000 national marketing plan.-Ed."? Someone added it to the last review but I honestly don't get what it means. What it seems to mean is that the publisher has spent $250,000 promoting the book, but what does that have to do with the review and why must it be added to the article? Konman72 (talk) 04:35, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Kon, that was added by Gwern in this revision. It's the version of the review given on the Barnes and Noble page. (I didn't recheck the link given, but I remember seeing it there as well.) It doesn't really have any relevance here, of course.
Btw, the Library Journal review no longer appears on the Amazon pages that I can find. We should change the footnote, no? --SandChigger (talk) 09:16, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
You mean the B&N page, right? It's there, you just have to hunt for the full list of editorials. It's one of the tabs...
And the marketing surely has some relevance, even if you don't care about the integrity of your quoting - it's at least a reference for how much money was spent marketing the book. --Gwern (contribs) 14:44, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
But Gwern, what does it specifically have to do with that one review? If the marketing affected her review as it seems you are assuming/implying then could the same not be said about the negative Publishers Weekly review? In truth (read: not original research) it has no effect on either review. And how exactly is this a sign of me "not caring about the integrity of my quoting?" If you want the information then add it into a new section of the article, problem solved. Konman72 (talk) 20:19, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
It has to do because our source includes it. You mark partial quotes with ...; notice that I didn't feel it necessary to quote the entire Publisher's Weekly review because parts were unnecessary (and there's the whole copyright thing), but I clearly marked where I excised material. It's basic editorial practice. And it is a perfectly valid thing to mention, which is precisely why the B&N editors noted that in the first place - although reading your comment, you seem to believe that conflict of interests never exist. --Gwern (contribs) 16:30, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, clearly, but it's at the end of the quote and so I think it's OK to just end the quote rather than leave it trailing off with ellipses, especially since the $250K note is bracketed. It really is out of place in the Reviews section, but certainly may be notable/helpful on its own backing up something else. — TAnthonyTalk 18:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Gwern where exactly did I end up on your bad side? Please assume good faith when dealing with me or any other Wikipedians as most of the time I am trying to improve the article rather than harm it for my own "side's" benefit. Can you say the same about yourself? I'm sorry that I didn't know ellipses were required when excising a single section of a review (now if I had taken a sentence or two out of the middle I would have used them without question). I, of course, know that conflict of interest can happen, however where are you getting that it happened here? Because that sentence is at the end? If you say that there was a conflict of interest due to the amount spent on marketing then you must apply that to the negative PW review as well since we have the exact same amount of evidence for both. I did not delete the sentence for any reason other then the fact that it seemed random and had literally nothing to do with the review. I quoted the necessary bit and left the rest out. If you can provide some tangible reason why we should suspect this review of conflict of interest over any others then we can make that statement, otherwise we should just let this topic drop. Konman72 (talk) 22:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Ah, the "Dune posse" is all here! If I may weigh in, the $250K info may be interesting but certainly has no bearing on the article in the context of this review; if someone writes a sourced paragraph/section about the marketing or even financials of the book, then I see the relevance. And there is never a need to include an entire quote to maintain its "integrity" as long as you're not twisting the meaning. — TAnthonyTalk 20:28, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

By the way, what is the "commercially successful" bit based on? Just wondering, meant to ask earlier. --SandChigger (talk) 12:21, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Hitting bestseller lists. Going through LexisNexis for the Publisher Weekly's review, I noticed a number of hits for bestseller status, and I think the B&N/Amazon pages mention that as well. I don't really know how a book could not be considered commercially successful if it's a bestseller, so I see that clause as the sort of generally known factoid that doesn't need citation. --Gwern (contribs) 16:30, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
If we're nitpicking here, some web sources for the "commercially successful" bit would probably be prudent. — TAnthonyTalk 18:24, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, some can be found though the statement is quite vague. Perhaps saying "though the book was on many best seller lists" with citations would work better. Konman72 (talk) 22:04, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Edits to Critical Reception section

The anonymous reordering the paragraphs so that the positive review precedes the negative did not exactly constitute a substantive change, so it's not worth the effort of undoing. I guess someone feels (correctly) that the thing needs all the help it can get. --SandChigger (talk) 15:12, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

To be fair, deus ex machina bail-outs are a Herbert trademark, and not just in the Dune cycle. 2A01:CB0C:CD:D800:75E1:DCEB:B151:CA37 (talk) 07:56, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

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