Talk:The Mongoliad

Untitled

WIth respect to this article I am an interested party; how freely should I go about correcting inaccuracies (and adding bona-fide relevant material)? --Jeremybornstein (talk) 19:25, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Hello Jeremy, great to see you hear. I am the sole author of the article [so far], and as far as I am concerned you are more than welcome to jump in – I've already come across some inconsistencies in the reports so clarity would definitely be beneficial. There is a guideline at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest you might wish to peruse. The main limitations are that any contributions you make must be neutral and fully supported by primary (e.g. subutai.mn) or reliable secondary sources (e.g. io9, CNet et al.) and not your personal experience. If the additions and corrections you want to make can't be supported by secondary sources, it would be great if you could publish them or have them reported off-site. Feel free to ask, and when in doubt, be bold! Regards, Skomorokh 21:52, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, and thank you for the initial revs of the article. I made an initial attempt and realized that I could probably spend far too much time messing with this and so am probably going to keep my hands off for the time being. If you would like clarification or more information, please feel free to stop by #subutai on freenode, our FB page, or just send me mail. Best. --Jeremybornstein (talk) 05:24, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Your changes are great, thanks a lot Jeremy. I will lurk in the freenode channel as "Narodnik" and will mail/twitter when clarification is needed. Cheers, Skomorokh 08:07, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Historical fiction or fantasy?

Does it contain any super natural elements, or is it supposed to be consistent with nature as we know it? Does it aim to be historically accurate? I.e. is the story plausible in its historical context, though it's made up? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.235.35.99 (talk) 04:47, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

It is "historically detailed fantasy," in my opinion. The historical elements are all accurate enough to qualify as historical fiction, but visions, apparitions and supernatural phenomena (albeit low-key) are presented to the reader as "real," therefore they are elements of fantasy. Bridgman (talk) 20:07, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Redirect

I set up a redirect from "Foreworld Saga" to this article. Subutai Corp and 47North seem to use the terms "Foreworld Saga" and "Mongoliad Cycle" interchangeably. Their franchise is shifting a bit. Bridgman (talk) 21:15, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Decay

The first footnote is now a dead link:

http://asia.cnet.com/crave/2010/05/27/neal-stephenson-to-launch-interactive-novel-for-the-ipad/

redirects to

http://cnet.com/crave/

I am unfamiliar with the removal of dead links from wikipedia, and editing footnotes. I am also not logged in, so I will abstain from direct editing. With any luck, a competent, logged-in editor will read this, find an archive, fix the problem, and delete this remark.

Best of luck. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.147.253.126 (talk) 07:27, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

 Done. Woodroar (talk) 00:14, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Use of lists

The use of bullet lists in the section "Historical events and persons depicted in the Mongoliad series" was tagged as inappropriate. I disagree, using the rationale found in WP:prose#Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Embedded_lists#.22Children.22_.28i.e..2C_Indentation:

"It can be appropriate to use a list style when the items in a list are 'children' of the paragraphs that precede them. Such 'children' logically qualify for indentation beneath their parent description. In this case, indenting the paragraphs in list form may make them easier to read..." WCCasey (talk) 04:26, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

I think that a case could be made for considering these "children" if they were all notable and specific historical events that reliable sources support expanding. But right now it's entirely original research, not only in the forms of "perhaps a reference to..." and "most of the details...are fictional" but also the weight we give these events. Of course, WP:PRIMARY allows us to summarize the plot, and I think there's a common sense approach in linking fictional events with their real-life counterparts. (For example, I think everyone would agree that the fictional and real-life siege of Kiev in 1240 are the same.) But analysis beyond this point, including expanding on specific events and linking fictional to real-life events, must be based on reliable sources. Rather than list-ifying and expanding, we should really cutting back. Woodroar (talk) 05:39, 1 March 2016 (UTC)

Sourcing is a separate issue from the tagged use of lists, and can also be tagged if there are concerns. I think the whole point of Wikipedia is to expand our knowledge - why should we be "cutting back"? WCCasey (talk) 06:38, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

My apologies, I thought I had tagged the section and the article for cleanup, but apparently not! As far as why we should be cutting back: because our own analysis and interpretation doesn't matter. WP:NOR is a core content policy, after all. Woodroar (talk) 13:02, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Rewrote the section with lists as prose and removed one speculative sentence. Please tag other suspected instances of OR individually so they can be fixed. WCCasey (talk) 00:17, 5 March 2016 (UTC)