Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Electronic literature

I'm learning!

HI I am learning how to put a project together. We have been running the Women Electronic Literature Writers Project and realize we need to expand to a general electronic literature project. Thank you for any advice and help here. LoveElectronicLiterature (talk) 02:01, 10 December 2023 (UTC)

Talkpage template for this WikiProject

I made a template for the WikiProject. I'm a newbie at this so I also asked at the Help desk if someone could check it. You can view (and edit) the source atTemplate:WikiProject Electronic literature.

The way to use the template is to add it to Talk pages of any Wikipedia page that it's useful for WP Electronic literature to keep an eye on. Just paste the code in the squiggly brackets near the top of the Talk page.

Code	Result
{{WikiProject Electronic literature}}

Then (once we figure out how to set this up) we can track our articles automatically. I think we'd be able to see recently edited articles easily and with some tweaks we could get lists of articles that need an infobox or an image, or things like that.

Next steps:

• Add the task force for Wikipedia:WikiProject Women writers/Women electronic literature writers to the template so we could mark those entries too.
• Write documentation for the template at Template:WikiProject Electronic literature/doc
• Start using the assessment tools so we mark project articles as start-class, high importance etc.

It was hard to know what image to use for the template - I picked the computer icon because I couldn't think of anything better. This can easily be changed if someone has a better idea. Just change the filename of the image in the source code of the template (where it says IMAGE_LEFT = Computer lab icon.svg.

User:LoveElectronicLiterature and others, please let me know if there are things I should change! Lijil (talk) 15:25, 25 January 2024 (UTC)

Lijil: The image looks good and displays well on talk pages. As you may have noticed, I've started to add the banner to related articles. At the moment, there are no provisions for assessment of either quality or importance. Is this intentional?--Ipigott (talk) 11:30, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! To be honest I wasn't sure whether our project was ready for using assessment - I was hoping to make the template very simple to start with. What do you think is best at this stage?

I also added an option to put women=yes when adding the template which would assign a page to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Women writers/Women electronic literature writers, and added an explanation on the WikiProject page here. Lijil (talk) 21:24, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

@Lijil I've added assessment. It makes it much easier to find articles to work on! -- asilvering (talk) 23:33, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Categories

The current run of Special:WantedCategories features two template-generated (i.e. impossible for me to just remove from pages, because they're artificially transcluded by templates) categories for Category:Unknown-importance Electronic literature articles and Category:NA-importance Electronic literature articles. Please note, however, that redlinked categories are always strictly forbidden in all contexts, and WikiProjects are not allowed to leave redlinked project rating categories sitting around without dealing with them. You must either immediately create these categories yourselves if they're wanted, or edit the template to ensure that they aren't being generated at all if they're not wanted, and they cannot be left to sit as redlinks at all.

The redlinked category report runs every three days, which means both of those categories need to be resolved one way or the other by January 31. So please either create those categories if you want them, or edit the template to block them from even existing at all if you don't, as soon as possible — if they're still redlinks the next time the report runs, I'm going to have to escalate it to a higher venue. Thanks. Bearcat (talk) 18:01, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

Bearcat: As it's 31 January and no one else has responded I have created these two categories although I am rather doubtful about whether at this stage they will be very useful. As you can see, up to now no facilities for assessment of quality or importance have been introduced. I don't know whether this is intentional or simply a result of lack of experience. I think perhaps Rosiestep might be able to help with this. (cc: Lijil, LoveElectronicLiterature)--Ipigott (talk) 11:24, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't know until just now that this WikiProject had been created... maybe I missed an on-wiki ping about it somehow over the holidays. I have been involved in offline conversations in this regard, so maybe there had been an email; I don't know. In any case, congratulations, Lijil and LoveElectronicLiterature!

Regarding your specific question for assessment categories, Ipigott, I don't know the answer. This talkpage, however, would be the best place to discuss it. That said, it may take more than 3 days for this WikiProject's founders/members to make decisions about assessments. Maybe other editors besides the founders can decide? Do we need just one article to populate each of the redlinked categories to suffice? I don't have strong opinions on this at the moment other than to say that it's a lot of work to start up a WikiProject and we shouldn't assume that the founders are on-wiki daily and/or that they make decisions such as this one without first having weekly or biweekly discussions about things with people offline. (cc: Bearcat)

I rely on this table a lot as regards to WP:WPWW: User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Women writers. It shows me which articles need assessments, etc. How do we get one (User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/Electronic literature) created and added to the mainpage of WikiProject Electronic literature? --Rosiestep (talk) 12:05, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for these helpful comments, Rosiestep. Let's wait a few days and see if we receive any feedback here. Perhaps LoveElectronicLiterature could email those most closely concerned and ask them for their views. As far as assessment is concerned, I think it would be useful to go for quality assessment but would suggest we leave out importance. If we just include quality, this will be added automatically to all those carrying a banner shell quality assessment. It would also be useful to know whether a "Participants" section should be added to the main project page. Perhaps the presentation of Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Religion will provide some ideas. As always, I would be happy to provide any assistance.--Ipigott (talk) 13:12, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi

I was actually waiting for our website to go live, but then I hit the hospital after our UnConference and am barely recovering and getting back into my life. And Lyle volunteered to do a website like the one that Women Do News have. So I screwed up by creating the Wikipedia Project before being ready to launch. CAn we fix that?

What are the questions that we need to ask our 40 folks on my email list of those interested in working on the wikipedia project? And do we ask those questions of others? What are the categories we need?

And yes, we should add a participants section to the main project page and I can ask folks to sign up there? I don't know how to do that. LoveElectronicLit who forgot to sign in. 216.176.47.241 (talk) 16:18, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

LoveElectronicLiterature: Thanks for responding. Sorry to hear you are not too well. Now that the wikiproject is live, I think we should just go ahead with improvements. I can help you along. The first thing is to decide whether we want assessments. As I said above, I think quality assessments would help. (This would also interface with alerts, etc.) Relationships with other projects would also be useful but not essential. I can add participants tomorrow.. I don't know whether it would be worthwhile to contact all 40 of those potentially interested. I would first contact a handful of those who have been most active and see if they have any urgent suggestions.--Ipigott (talk) 17:27, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I think I messed up with the categories - I tried to make a template for the WikiProject (see the topic above this on this talk page) but I think I didn't quite understand all the categories being created. I would appreciate any help in cleaning it up! @LoveElectronicLiterature I hope you feel better soon! Lijil (talk) 21:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Lijil: Don't worry too much about the categories. I'll try to sort them out today or tomorrow, possibly by initiating quality assessment. We actually have until next Wednesday to work on them.--Ipigott (talk) 09:43, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you!! Lijil (talk) 13:57, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

I'm with you, @Rosiestep, so I went ahead and made a set of assessment categories. -- asilvering (talk) 23:35, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Asilvering, awesome and thank you!

Oh my gosh, LoveElectronicLiterature, I am sorry to hear about your hospitalization! I wish you good health! Having been hospitalized myself a couple of years ago, I am empathetic about the situation and I know it takes a while to fully recover, even after hospital discharge. So: no rush with any of the topics mentioned here! That said, some of the topics are rudimentary and can easily be handled by anyone who has experience with new WikiProject start-up, such as creating a participants' section on the project's mainpage. Where it would be suitable for the WikiProject's founder/co-founder to make the decision, we can make sure to be patient with a reply.

To the extent that you can encourage the ... handful of those who have been most active ... to join the conversation regarding wiki work on this talkpage, that would be useful. For example, it would show evidence that there isn't a cabal who gang-up off-wiki to support a particular article nominated for Articles For Deletion. It is understood that your community also engages in e-lit work not related to Wikipedia and that those conversations occur elsewhere. Ergo, this comment is only referring to conversations related to Wikipedia work.

Thanks for all you do for e-lit. Glad to support you in this WikiProject start-up. --Rosiestep (talk) 00:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

@Bearcat, would you have a look at the template and see if it is still going to be re-creating those Importance categories? I think the problem is resolved and we don't need these categories at all. I don't see anything that would create new redlinks but it's very possible I'm missing something. -- asilvering (talk) 17:15, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

I don't really know how to evaluate what categories a wikiproject template is or isn't going to generate by examining the template coding — I only know what actually turns up at Special:WantedCategories after it's already happening. So I can certainly bring things to the project's attention if they show up there in the future, but I don't have the template-coding expertise necessary to figure out what categories the template is going to make just by reading the code. Bearcat (talk) 17:32, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Okay, I'll put a CSD request in for those categories. If they show up as redlinks on Special:WantedCategories next time it updates, mea maxima culpa, come back here and yell at me and I'll figure out what's wrong. -- asilvering (talk) 17:47, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Categories updated by bot

Thanks to Asilvering, we have now progressed on article assessment although the data displayed today are from last Tuesday. If I am not mistaken, I believe Bearcat explained that a bot will update the results next Tuesday. This may also result in populating the empty categories. Perhaps Ser Amantio di Nicolao, we should simply wait to see if everything falls into place automatically.--Ipigott (talk) 07:07, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

It looks like the ones that have already had the banner shell updated are categorizing correctly, so as ‎Qwerfjkl bot goes through everything I think they'll sort automatically. I'm not sure why they're not ending up in Category:Unassessed Electronic literature articles by default, though. -- asilvering (talk) 08:44, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Participants

See the main page for info on participants and how to add a user box to your user page. I've started the list.--Ipigott (talk) 15:54, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Ipigott - Thanks for starting Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronic literature#List of participatants! --Rosiestep (talk) 00:36, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Redlink lists

I adapted templates from Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red to make a redlink list using Wikidata showing all the works (and authors) that have won the New Media Writing Prize. The British Library has entered all the winners of the New Media Writing Prize into Wikidata, so I was able to generate a list of them, and I added links to ELMCIP pages - but we haven't yet donated ELMCIP data systematically to Wikidata so this is very incomplete so far. It shows a LOT of works, many of which may be notable, and also links to authors, most of whom are red links. @LoveElectronicLiterature and @Ipigott: What is the best way to display this on the WikiProject page to invite people to look at this? Maybe links across the top like in WP:WikiProject Women in Red? I think we should ALSO make crowdsourced lists of redlinks - I can give that a go in a few days. Lijil (talk) 16:24, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, Lijil, for your work on Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronic literature/Electronic literature works that won the New Media Writing Prize. As it lists both works and authors, it will certainly be useful as the project goes forward but I think at this stage it would be good to provide a shorter list of works and authors which are backed by a sufficient number of reliable sources to support the creation of articles. This will no doubt necessitate additional work but it would help to have a sound basis for making a start. The wikidata list could perhaps be included on a page devoted to resources. Hope I'm not being too difficult.--Ipigott (talk) 16:39, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that a hand-curated list would be more immediately useful, @Ipigott. A resources section sounds good! Most of the works on Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronic literature/Electronic literature works that won the New Media Writing Prize probably aren't notable, though some certainly are, and I think connecting to Wikidata will be very helpful as we get more e-lit into Wikidata. Lijil (talk) 17:22, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Women e-lit writers task force

At some point this year (no rush), there should be a discussion regarding whether or not to shift the task force named Wikipedia:WikiProject Women writers/Women electronic literature writers to Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronic literature/Women electronic literature writers. -- Rosiestep (talk) 15:52, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Visual novels

I came across Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Visual novels while reviewing the mainpage organization of Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games and wondered if "visual novels" are associated with WP:Elit? The wiki article on visual novels starts with A visual novel (VN) is a form of digital interactive fiction., but Category:Visual novels is a subcat of Category:Adventure games and not Category:Electronic literature. I have no expertise in the matter; just raising a question. Thanks. --Rosiestep (talk) 16:11, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Hm, good question. I can't really think of a definition for electronic literature that would categorically exclude visual novels, but if I'm asked to think of examples of electronic literature, visual novels wouldn't come to mind. -- asilvering (talk) 01:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

It seems to me that most of these are essentially games rather than completed works designed to take advantage of the facilities available on digital devices. That said, electronic literature seems to be strongly inspired by visual games and interactive fiction. We should encourage collaboration between these projects as they have so much in common. Perhaps PresN would like to comment on this.--Ipigott (talk) 11:04, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Visual novels are typically considered to be video games, as there is a branching narrative and some degree of decision-making involved in playing them. That said, it's blurry- non-branching visual novels can be referred to as Kinetic novels, but not always.

Categorization is difficult, so I'd recommend thinking less about trying to perfectly include everything that could be considered "electronic literature" under a definition and more about what you want this project to focus on. It seems that your interest/focus is on forms of electronic literature that are not video games, so is it really worth your time trying to tag hundreds of articles on visual novels that you don't want to work on and which are already covered by another project? Related question- Ipigott and I got connected when he tagged some early text-based video games/ I worked on (Zork, Colossal Cave Adventure), but are Interactive fiction games the same thing as electronic literature, and more to the point are they things that this project is interested in working on? --PresN 15:20, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Interactive fiction and electronic literature are not synonymous, no. (I'll leave "are they things that this project is interested in working on" to the people who founded the project.) -- asilvering (talk) 16:37, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, PresN, for sharing your perspective and advice. On the basis of the earlier work undertaken in connection with women, there seems to be a clear understanding of what constitutes electronic literature. Although I am not conversant with the field myself, I think it would be useful to try to put together a fairly short red list of authors and works which deserve attention over the coming weeks and months. In this connection, male contributors can of course now be considered although further work on women is welcome too.--Ipigott (talk) 11:48, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Good question. Some e-lit scholars do include visual novels as e-lit, but they're not usually discussed as part of the field, perhaps partly because they come out of a Japanese context and only relatively recently became well known in the West (at least to people old enough to be writing scholarly articles about electronic literature). So this might be a Western bias too. At any rate, a Google Scholar search for "visual novel" and "electronic literature" doesn't turn up much. Interactive fiction on the other hand is typically included in definitions of electronic literature (though not all people involved in interactive fiction have heard of electronic literature...) I would include visual novels in a "see also" or "related genres" - the boundaries are quite flexible here. Lijil (talk) 10:16, 7 February 2024 (UTC)