Explanations for Work Relationships

I thought relationships already have the explanation built into what you link.

Is an adaption of.
Is a retelling of
etc.

What more is needed?

Recommendations are subjective but work relationships shouldn't be a matter of opinion. Either a work was inspired or contains or whatever or it wasn't, no explanation should be needed.

The work-and-work relationships feature isn't for in-work references. I don't think it should be. Continuing to put a reference that doesn't have a more definite work relationship in member recommendations makes the most sense, doesn't it?

>7 PlaidStallion: Because it would create too many relationships, some of which would be open to interpretation. I find what you're doing interesting, but I still don't think it belongs to work-to-work relationships. It works excellent in recs and perhaps a separate bibliographical module altogether could be proposed for it

>9 PlaidStallion: It's not the only feature you're asking for. Work-to-work relationships do not currently include the relationship you're talking about, so you're also asking for a new relationship of the kind 'is referenced in/by'. Work-to-work relationships that already exist are self-explanatory and don't need an explanation. Those of us who commented do not think references belong to this category, although personally I would love and find useful such relationships in a separate module.

It might seem nit-picky to you why there and not here, but it's really not. Having a clean, well-organized interface is crucial for the functionality of a site/daatbase as complex as LT. Since LT is being redesigned, perhaps we should both pitch the idea of creating a web of references when they start working on work pages.

Just because a work is referenced in another work does not mean that the second work was inspired by the first one. Personally, if you need to explain a work-to-work relationship, I don't think the relationship is justified.

Entering 24 quotations from the book also seems excessive.

So does calling this book a 'commentary on' three classics. They may be referenced in the text, but reading the contents as listed in WorldCat does not lead me to feel that there is enough to consider this a commentary on the other books.

>4 PlaidStallion: Oh, you didn't confuse me. You just doubled down on why I say it's not needed.
The work to work relationship covers all the books in the work. So a citation of a page number, chapter, or verse may change from one printing to the next. It becomes rather cluttered. The title would be all that's needed. Put it in public comments on your personal copy if you want.

>15 PlaidStallion: See, you're conflating a recommendation, which is personal and subjective, with a work to work relationship, like being part of an omnibus or being a commentary of another book, which is NOT subjective. As stated in >3 jjwilson61:, it should need no explanation.

Just because a book mentions another book, that doesn't make it a commentary on said book. It may be used as part of their research, but that doesn't make them directly linked. Otherwise, we'd need a section in the work to work relationship for "bibliography listed in book."

And if you really want to go to the extreme, how many books can be linked as "inspired by" to the Christian Bible? To other mythology?

Honestly, I think >8 SandraArdnas: has a better idea for what you're seeking -- a new bibliographic interface. It might help better with Publisher tracking as well. Just like Series is now an interface on its own.

re: works that reference other works

Another suggestion that you can do now: put the info into a tag. Tags are findable to everyone on a work's page.

I've done this myself: in The Constant Rabbit, there are lots of allusions to (and bits from) the movie The Court Jester.

>18 PlaidStallion: You will admit that there is a difference between a one-time allusion to another work (let's say, using Hamlet's phrase "to be or not to be") is not the same thing as a book that is dedicated entirely to analysing Shakespeare's play, or a work of fiction which takes the plot of Hamlet and recognizably puts it into another setting?

"Reference to" and "inspired by" are meant for just such strong links between two works, not for "allusions" or "influences". As a rule the connection is obvious based merely on the book descriptions (i.e., if you need to explain it, there's a good chance that the relationship should not be used).

It's a signal-to-noise issue. If a work-to-work relationship is created for every single instance in which one book mentions or influences another in however small a way, then the list would be endless -- and cease to be meaningful, because it is not possible to sort out the salient relationships from the less significant ones.

For those who might find such mentions interesting, most non-fiction books include indexes and bibliographies that are meant to serve that exact purpose. I don't see any value in LT trying to recreate this material, and the number of readers for whom including this on LT "could possibly be useful" is, I suspect, quite small.

Edit: If you are interested in multiple influences connected with individual books (i.e., "works mentioned in x", "works that inspired x", or "works that mention x"), LT's list function might be an option for collecting this information, and has sometimes been used for this purpose by other users.

>20 spiphany: I doubt the list of people who would find it useful is quite small unless you read strictly fiction, but it IS an entirely different ballpark than work-to-work relationships. Individual indexes and bibliographies are most definitely not as functional as hyperlinked web of references of all books on LT.

PlaidStallion, I'm not a coder, but I've been on LT long enough by now to recognize what would be useful from the user perspective and what would create noise. Work-to-work relationships are entire work to entire work relationships (or entire work to several entire works in case of omnibus), not a part of the work to a part of another work relationship. Those are different categories altogether and that is not splitting hairs. That is the basics of user-friendly design.

'Is a commentary on the text of' is very different from 'includes a few comments on'.

>18 PlaidStallion: In all honesty, >20 spiphany: says it much better than I. if you need to explain it, there's a good chance that the relationship should not be used

>26 PlaidStallion: You're using Huck Finn as an example? And you need explanations for those? Those are all obvious. It's the entire fricking book! Huck Finn is part of the annotated Huck Finn, several different Mark Twain Omnibi... *facepalm* No. Just no.

You are just making stupid arguments now.

>26 PlaidStallion: Not 'has' a commentary, but 'is' a commentary. Is On Becoming a Person really a commentary on the text of 1984, Brave New World, and Walden Two or does it just include a few comments?

>21 SandraArdnas:, >25 PlaidStallion:
I'm trained as a literary scholar and did a fair amount of research on the reception of classical texts -- i.e. including, in principle, precisely the sort of references that you want to see work-to-work relationships for.

I still don't think that this sort of detail is likely to be relevant for the vast majority of LT users, and I don't think that LT is the most suitable option for tracking this kind of information.

For those who are interested in determining every single time that Hamlet or Huckleberry Finn or Darwin's Origin of the Species are mentioned in another piece of published work, there are other, more efficient and effective ways of doing this research. Tools developed for corpus linguistics or bibliometrics would probably be relevant for this, or even the digitalized corpora available through Google and similar.

>26 PlaidStallion: In general, I expect that the work descriptions of the related works for Huckleberry Finn provide all the explanation that is needed about what sort of "commentary" or "adaptation" the work in question is.

>26 PlaidStallion: All of your examples presupose 'entire work'. So there's no what chapter. 18 works are not contained in Huck Finn, but the other way around, there are 18 that contain that novel and one or more other works. Similarly, a commentary on the text means the entire work is a commentary. All of the work-to-work relationships are about entire works, not bits and pieces of it. The nature of adaptation, study etc. is revealed by going to that work page. The purpose of work-to-work relationships is to provide those links for those interested, not to be annotated bibliography

>29 spiphany: For those who are interested in determining every single time that Hamlet or Huckleberry Finn or Darwin's Origin of the Species are mentioned in another piece of published work, there are other, more efficient and effective ways of doing this research. Tools developed for corpus linguistics or bibliometrics would probably be relevant for this, or even the digitalized corpora available through Google and similar.

But that's something entirely different and indeed useful to select people doing certain type of research. Member curated/entered references are neither suitable for 'every single mention' type of data, nor is it desirable. Its advantage is precisely that they can focus on relevant enough references and possibly provide a short annotation.

>1 PlaidStallion: BTW, Your first touchstone is wrong.

I'm going to drop a link here (because I looked it up to check my memory after reading through here)...

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/HelpThing:Work/Relationships

... and share a thought that my biggest takeaway from this thread is that Lists are underutilized. For example, an open list of "Books That Reference The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" with an explanation of how the reference was made would be interesting.

>34 aspirit: That's a really good idea.

>37 PlaidStallion:

Whether or not one thinks of On Becoming a Person as a commentary on 1984, Brave New World and Walden Two,

Clearly not. One paragraph with a quotation? That's not even a comment on Walden Two!.

See the link in >34 aspirit:. "Use specifically for cases where Work B is a commentary on the text of Work A. Fairly rare, generally see for classical texts and scriptures." You might also want to look up the definition of "commentary". A commentary is a treatise, not a mere mention.

>38 PlaidStallion: I'm fairly certain Carmen.et.Error said it's a good idea to use Lists more.

>37 PlaidStallion: Your arguments come off as sounding as if you don't understand the meaning of terms used on this site (or in academia). On Becoming a Person is obviously not a commentary on 1984, Brave New World, and Walden Two. The definition doesn't involve a certain number of pages or the reader's opinion. A work's creator(s) clearly state what the work relationship is when their is one (with exceptions, rare as exceptions are to any rule).

>38 PlaidStallion: Heh, at the risk of disappointing you I was agreeing with the idea aspirit expressed about lists. Or are you saying you support that, too?

>40 aspirit: Yep! That's what I was saying.

Work relationships are not intended for the kind of thing you want to do.

No. Let's NOT overburden the databank with stuff that is only of marginal interest.

Whether or not a few members would like all references to other books to be listed, that would require enormous computer resources.

Your first touchstone is still wrong.

This is a conversation where I wish LibraryThing had "likes" for posts. I don't really have anything to add to the discussion, but don't personally like the suggestion being made, and agree with all the arguments made against it.

>49 PlaidStallion: Did you try clicking on it?

>44 PlaidStallion:

No, the entire book On Becoming a Person was not devoted to commentary on Walden Two. Again, does it really matter? As

Yes, it does. And it is "clear in the wiki", which explicitly says the WORK is a commentary on another work.

I think your problem is that you are confusing "comment" with "commentary". They are not the same.

references or is referenced by or contains a commentary on the text of would be better choices

This has been raised and discussed before, and the consensus is that it would be too unwieldy.

Lists has been suggested as a current tool for what the OP wants to accomplish. Talk threads are also available for touchstoning references and room for copious notes. There is already at least one group set up for this type of study:

https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/22182/One-Book-One-Thread

This discussion of the same thing from a few years ago is interesting: https://www.librarything.com/topic/244659

and much older discussions from 2012: https://www.librarything.com/topic/137409
and 2013: https://www.librarything.com/topic/149660

I think a CK-style feature would be useful and interesting for references to other works, but I think using the work-to-work feature for it would render the work-to-work feature unusable for its intended function for some popular books.

>56 paradoxosalpha: This isn't really a fair question as it's impossible to say whether one is recommending based on references and shared ideas, or tracking for personal record. It's not a suitable place to track references anyway as you can't recommend a book more than 3 times.

>59 SandraArdnas:

I put this question in >56 paradoxosalpha: because I read earlier posts in this thread implying that a user might be doing this now, i.e. creating "Recommendations" where there was really no intent to recommend the book identified, just to associate it with the other work because of intertextual references.

I agree that it's not a good practice, and the limit on multiple recommendations is one of the places where it falls apart.

PlaidStallion (#49):

No. This is not about being "visionary". You are not smarter, more clear-sighted, or more of a leader than everyone else here. You want a feature to do a thing it is not intended to do, and that other people have good reason not to want it to do. It's not about budget, performance, or complexity, it's about cluttering up a useful feature with things that do not matter and do not apply to 99% of users or 99% of works, but which will make it difficult for those 99% of users to find what they want 99% of the time.

It's a corner case. If they could implement the corner case without affecting everyone else, your points might have merit - but they can't, and they don't.

Stop being condescending to people who disagree with you. It does not escape me, and certainly does not escape MarthaJeanne, that you reserve this sort of treatment (infantile phrasing and a kissy face) for women.

>61 lorax: He is brand new on LibraryThing, he finds in necessary to insult long time members, he can't use touchstones correctly, but he wants the whole site to change to fit his needs.

>60 paradoxosalpha: Yes, I understand, I wasn't really criticizing, more explaining why it's difficult for me to vote. While I don't think it should be used for recs per se, I also can't bring myself to just vote no since these would as a rule be legit recs.

>63 SandraArdnas:

OK, I see. I'm not surprised that we get something like unanimity for >54 paradoxosalpha: and >55 paradoxosalpha:. The other two questions are more for context.

>60 paradoxosalpha:, >63 SandraArdnas: This is already being done; see https://www.librarything.com/work/1287925

>65 norabelle414: Is that just a super-detailed analysis justifying the Rec or is it copied and pasted from the Introduction? The opening label gives the impression of the latter.

>66 PlaidStallion: I suggest you look again at the >54 paradoxosalpha: results. Tim will likely note the polls in this thread if he considers your recommendations.

As an aside: We have the ability to use block quote formatting in Talk. When that's too much of a hassle, quotation marks remain an option.

Also, as it doesn't seem to be apparent to you, PlaidStallion, The Sickness Unto Death is contained within Fear and Trembling and The Sickness Unto Death. The touchstone in >1 PlaidStallion: is linked to the larger work. That might be worth looking at since it's been brought up multiple times.

edited to fix a typo

>66 PlaidStallion: You know, a lot of the participants in this thread and I disagree on some things. Generally, I even empathize with some of your arguments about the subjectivity of relevance. Nevertheless, treating others with condescension merely because you feel they've done it to you isn't likely to get you very far.

As to the topic at hand, I'm not contributing my thoughts on the original proposal, because I feel other people have argued the pros and cons a lot better than I can.

>70 PlaidStallion: what a model of good behavior you imagine you are! I’m quite blown away.

>45 PlaidStallion: In what ways does aspirit's List idea not fit with that? You seem to have already used Lists in a similar function; what about it isn't satisfactory for your purpose or requires you to be a "literary critic"?

>66 PlaidStallion: How about you take a lesson? The idea of turning work-to-work relationships into annotated trashbin of any relationships isn't going to happen. It's a terrible idea, rejected unanimously. The end. No amount of condescension and arrogance is going to change that.

>53 paradoxosalpha: thru >56 paradoxosalpha: Excellent idea! Thanks for putting those polls up.

Plaidstallion, making your library Private means that no one else can see your books, comments, or reviews. Just so you know.

>75 karenb:

Thanks, I was inspired by >50 r.orrison:, which reflected my own feeling at that moment.

>79 PlaidStallion: Ad hominems help you in life win an argument? You don't seem to have imbibed that humanistic psychology. I'd suggest looking up the concept of projection because you're a textbook example with the 'everyone is close minded and I have such glorious ideas' shtick.

>81 PlaidStallion: This is getting tiresome. And yes, suggesting people are non-human / sub-human is ad hominem.

Work to work relations is about X is contained in Y, and things like that. Of course that's sometimes trivial - who would have guessed "Hamlet" is contained in the complete works of Shakespeare? Right?! But sometimes it's useful - wait, I don't have to buy that separate publication of an essay by Susan Sontag, because it's contained in one of her collections of essays which I have ordered already.

I would love to see improvement on the issue of member recommendations. Deals with similar issues as "insert topic" is not what I would be looking for though. That would lead to: "So this book is also about pre-historic times". So Jean Auel's novels are "related" to excavation reports? It's bad enough I get such things from tag pages.

>81 PlaidStallion: I think I'll pay you by granting you the honor of being the first person on LT I blocked. Just insuffarable

>84 PlaidStallion: Trivial only in the sense that anybody who ever heard of Shakespeare is likely to know that the play Hamlet is one of his works (the semi-historical figure, mentioned in old-Norse sources - not so much). You seem to labour under the impression I object to listing such obvious things though.

The Lord of the Rings has been published in various ways - some single volume, some three volumes, some X volumes.

Because of cultural / historical / theological differences, we try not to combine various "bibles".

>84 PlaidStallion: Trivial only in the sense that anybody who ever heard of Shakespeare is likely to know that the play Hamlet is one of his works (the semi-historical figure, mentioned in old-Norse sources - not so much). You seem to labour under the impression I object to listing such obvious things though.

The Lord of the Rings has been published in various ways - some single volume, some three volumes, some X volumes.

Because of cultural / historical / theological differences, we try not to combine various "bibles". There are gazillions of copies, in various translations here though. And obviously OT =/= NT =/= bible

Anglo library rules are irrelevant in any international setting (like LT).

>88 PlaidStallion:

upon perusal of his/her/zir catalogue page (if it’s accurate) he/she/ze has never read or is currently reading the given work

That doesn't follow. You are making the assumption that everyone has catalogued every book they have ever read. Which is absurd.

That looks like a case of spamming

It's not spamming to remove a work-to-work relationship that does not fall within one of the given categories.

And Spam Fighters is for commercial spam, not edit wars.

>88 PlaidStallion: Helper badges are assigned by the official LibraryThing team, which is overseen by the site owner. Badges aren't self-selected; they're earned.

I strongly recommend going through the Spam Fighters threads to see what's spam and what isn't, if for whatever reason lilithcat's concise explanation leaves any confusion.

To make a complaint, to ask for guidance about what's acceptable behavior when you don't feel comfortable posting in the appropriate groups, or to notify the LT team of threats of violence against you, the best course of action is usually to contact the LT team directly. The general email address is info@librarything.com. Email addresses for specific purposes are listed in Help.

By the way, all those flags above? Those are to mark where there's Terms of Service abuse. At some point, those flags should attract the LT team's attention. People are reading all the messages in this thread and calling out the attacks against members.

>88 PlaidStallion: You might be confused--these aren't "your books." What's being edited is the shared bibliographic information for all copies of that book, for all users of LibraryThing. If you want to note that On Becoming a Person discusses (inter alia) Brave New World, it would be appropriate to do so in fields that affect only your copy, not all copies. I myself use the "Comments" field for this purpose.

Substantively, the rules for this are clear: "When in doubt, leave it out and talk about it with others before adding the relationship" (https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/HelpThing:Work/Relationships). And: commentaries are "Fairly rare, generally see for classical texts and scriptures" (same page). On Becoming a Person is not a commentary in this sense.

>91 JacobHolt: Not to mention that multiple users already repeatedly explained in this thread why "commentary" was not an applicable relationship in such cases, so the original poster was knowingly choosing to ignore the consensus of LT users when creating this relationship.

I don't like edit wars, but removing a relationship that users have agreed is incorrect seems like a reasonable thing to do.