Talk:Main Page

Added Annotation by Page

Hey, I've started to add a different type of annotation that the Alphabetical Index. I like this method because it gives the reader all the references on the page, as he reads, in a non-spoilerish fashion. No idea if this will take off aside from my contributions, and also no idea how to integrate it with the Alphabetical Index, but these problems I leave to future Pynchonwiki contributors as well as my future self.

I also have not followed the naming guidelines on the main page, for the simple reason that I don't know how...! These pages can be renamed and moved by whoever knows how to do so.

Bleakhaus 08:51, 22 November 2006 (PST)

I would name the page-by-page pages eg: ATD 1-25, etc. Ultimately, all Pynchon's works will be in the Wiki, so it's important to establish this convention. I have moved the three pages you created to reflect this naming.

I changed the page number headers to a 2nd level from a 1st level, to reflect semantically their heirarchy on the page (they appeared at the same level as "Pages 1-25"; thus, for example, I changed

=Page 1=

to

==Page1==

I would suggest that eventually we have a link to the ToC for the page-by-page, as it will be a very long ToC!

Tim November 22, 2006

good call! I'll handle that ToC soon. Bleakhaus 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)

I think the page-by-page (can we now call that the PbP?) is a lot more fun to edit, since it follows the way I am reading the book. --Fblau 09:03, 25 November 2006 (PST)

What can the Pynchonwiki do better than Amazon.com full text search?

I note that Amazon.com's full text search of Pynchon's novels does exactly the same thing as one function of Thomaspynchon.com's previous guides: giving the page numbers where a given character or thing is mentioned. That said, I think we need to articulate what the guides and Pynchon wiki do in addition to justify all the human labor involved, and then communicate that to potential wiki contributors. (also, Amazon doesn't do this for AtD yet, but since it's available for all his other works, I assume it's just a matter of time). Thoughts? Bleakhaus 12:26, 23 November 2006 (PST)

Change of logo/cover image

Shouldn't we change the cover image/logo for Pynchon wiki (upper left corner) to the final version of the cover? And, for accuracy's sake, shouldn't we include the white border around the cover? Torerye 01:21, 24 November 2006 (PST)

agreed-- Tim will have to take care of that, though. Bleakhaus 14:17, 24 November 2006 (PST)

Tim sez:
This brings up the general branding of this site. I would like to have Wikis for all the works, and use the Category namespace to separate them. Having them all in this wiki means that a user can search in all the novels.

So, I'm thinking I just create a "logo" image that's general, for "Pynchon Wiki".

I'd surely love to hear anyone's thoughts on this so we can brainstorm the best decision. Email me directly at tim (at) hyperarts (dot com).

--WikiAdmin 15:00, 24 November 2006 (PST)

Missing caption?

Um, was the picture caption removed as a spoiler, or what? Bleakhaus 22:49, 27 November 2006 (PST)

No, I just took it off to free up the image, jettisoning signifiers. As I looked at it, I just thought it worked better if the reader just sort of recognizes it as that Chums of Chance bit without being too literal.

WikiAdmin 23:28, 27 November 2006 (PST)

The impending anarchist miracle

The following is copied from A. A.'s message on PYNCHON-L.

Jasper Fidget <jasper.fidget@[omitted]> wrote:

> [...]  I anticipate the wiki turning into a junkyard full of people's 
> half-baked opinions and
> Kinbote-esque commentary (i.e. worse than useless).

In reply to which, pynchonoid <pynchonoid@[omitted]> wrote:

> That's Pynchon-l you're describing, certainly.
>
> I think you're wrong about the potential for
> http://pynchonwiki.com.  So far, it is nothing like
> your description and is instead a useful resource that
> will grow more so as more people contribute useful
> information.
>

And in reply to the above, I say:

First of all, Kinbote's commentary isn't "worse than useless". His digressions on Zembla have blasted little to do with John Shade's Appalachia, but leaving aside the value of the Forward (which gives the reader their first brush with Shade and, in some respects, a more complete visual impression), the Commentary and Index provide a counterpart and complement to the 999 lines of the poem itself. The book in its entirety is an artifice, deceptive and illuminating; if pynchonwiki.com produces anything like Pale Fire, its authors would have every right to be proud.

"Ha ha, only serious."

Second, the pynchonwiki has the potential to become something I wished Wikipedia could provide: a place to provide factual material of scholarly use, backed up with pointers to papers and books, plus the opportunity to generate new literary talk with kindred folks. You can't do that over at WP. Even applying the bread-and-butter methods of lit-crit one learns in the undergraduate years is a sin, or in the argot, Original Research. In WP territory, you can't discuss a new book, even with old methods, only report what other people have said about old books. This is appropriate for an encyclopedia, but it can't constitute the whole of discourse.

Human behavior implies some basic facts about wiki life. Foremost is the under-acknowledged issue that in any situation where the wiki grows by people contributing their free time, the majority of edits will be minor ones, affecting (and affected by) only their immediate environment. Lists can grow item by item, for example, much more easily than entire articles can be overhauled. Thus, even in cases where a page contains all the **facts** one needs, the organization will often be poor. Also, ensuring coordination among multiple pages can be difficult and tiresome to achieve.

These societal traits make wikis a good repository for things like lists of typos, catalogs of character names and so forth. In these cases, small edits **can** build a workable and useful whole by incremental additions. However, there is an unhappy flipside. Most of the really good articles on WP (say, those listed in "Featured Articles") are the work of one person or a small group, say a couple-three editors, who assemble a clear and thorough exposition of a topic which interests them. Remarkably often, such people can do a really terrific job. They push the article up to Featured status (I did this five times — all it takes is energy and care), where it can sit and bask in the glory. . . . And attract a stream of well-meaning editors who come along, adding their favorite tidbit of information, little drops of this or that which may well be completely accurate but which don't fit into the scheme painfully worked out by the original authors.

After this goes on for long enough, the original authors or others with a like-minded sense of dedication have to go through and clean up the cruft.

I saw several cycles of this happen with the article Calvin and Hobbes. Everybody has their own favorite Calvin and Hobbes strip, and damn if they don't want to talk about it! This sort of thing is a big reason why WP has "Featured Article Review", a mechanism for forcing cruft patrol and, if necessary, taking pages off the honor roll.

If pynchonwiki is to be a going concern, it'll need mechanisms for keeping track of good content. Somebody will also have to institute ground rules for keeping debate fair and dealing with the inevitable hotheads and trolls (trust me, no subject is too obscure to attract crackpottery). Otherwise, we're just prayin' for that anarchist miracle.

Pirate Prentice wrote:

> There's basically 3 things the wiki does at the moment: 1) straight up
> reference (what was the Chicago World's Fair and when did it happen?),
> 2) connections to other Pynchon novels ("single up all lines" also
> appears on these pages of GR and V., "entropy" was a major theme in
> GR, etc), and 3) interpretation.

I think that any work people do on #3 (which is what Wikipediphiles call "original research") should be credited to the people who do it, since it is after all value generated by labor. To an extent, #2 shades into #3, depending upon how much one has to squint to draw the connections. The many avatars of Pig Bodine are less subtle than the postage-stamp references in ATD, for example.

BlakeStacey 15:44, 29 November 2006 (PST)