User:Johnbod/Books v Works

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Beatus Vir

Beatus Vir, meaning "Blessed is the man" in Latin, are the first words of Psalm 1 in the Hebrew Bible. It also occurs as the second verse of Psalm 112 (or 111 in other sequences). The phrase is found as the title normally used for a large number of musical settings of these psalms, and in reference to illuminated manuscripts, where the "Beatus initial" B, or the two words, are often very heavily decorated, often taking up a whole page.

Music

There are sung settings by

Haydn
,

Among modern works

longest non-repetitive piano piece
is an 11 hour work for two pianos by Jacob Mashak premiered in 2008.


Category:Books by author & Category:Works by author - A Proposal, for Comment

What we have now

At present these two categories seem to occupy exactly the same position, as a supercategory for "by author" categories. Some authors have both Works and Books subcategories, others just have one or the other, seemingly at random. I show the "F"'s as they currently are as an example, with summarised contents:


and by comparison:

  • [+] Novels by Philip José Farmer
  • [+] Novels by William Faulkner
  • [+] Novels by Sebastian Faulks
  • [+] Novels by Timothy Findley
  • [+] Novels by Jack Finney
  • [+] Novels by Ken Follett
  • [+] Novels by Richard Ford
  • [+] Novels by E. M. Forster
  • [+] Novels by Frederick Forsyth
  • [+] Novels by Alan Dean Foster
  • [+] Novels by Al Fray
  • [+] Novels by Stephen Fry
  • [+] Novels by Cornelia Funke

Sometimes the contents of the categories are logical (which usually means identical), sometimes not - some articles are in Works but not Books, or vice versa, for no apparent reason. Many books categories just contain sub-cats for novels etc; other books categories, like Fitzgerald above, ignore novels & other fiction entirely. Altogether there are 167 Works and 188 Books subcategories.

On the category page Works defines itself as the overall category: "This category is for all types of written works. Specific forms should be found as sub-categories of this one, i.e. Category:Books by author, Category:Plays by author, Category:Poems by author." How "Books" are a "specific form" is not specified. The Books category does not really define itself at all, although there is a tendency for non-literary writers like Sigmund Freud to have books and not works.

Results

The problems with this are:

  • 1) There is massive duplication; neither set of categories make sense or, despite efforts by many editors, are very tidily maintained. Very many duplicated categories hold only the same sub-categories, and that is when the system is working well!
  • 2) There is not enough duplication - Freud has no works, Faulkner has no books.
  • 3) What is there can be very confusing or misleading - it would be easy to think, from the Books by category, that we only have an article on one very minor Fitzgerald work, thus missing 19 other articles.

What to do?

I think there are two alternatives:

  • A) Merge the Books and Works by author categories. Non-fiction writers would have Works too.
  • B) Repurpose Books to a dedicated category for non-fiction/plays/poems. Someone like Freud or Fort would only have books, and no works. This is often how the categories are in practice treated today, but without consistency, or this being explained. The category could perhaps be called "non-literary books", or just "Books" with a clear explanation. Novels and plays etc by would not be sub-categories of these categories, only of Works. Only writers of "imaginative literature" would have Works. The structure to be explained on the category pages.

There is a further complication, in that the Books categories may feed into Books by country category. I would suggest just including the Works categories here instead, since the number of works with articles that are not books is very small - especially outside the English language. At the moment the national categories work very imperfectly because, to take Camus as an example, his "Books" and his novels, are in Category:French books, but his short story collections slips out, and is not in the category.

Of the two, I prefer B, but would like to hear what others think before making a proposal at CfD. Please comment at the bottom.

Notes

  • In A, some other categories outside the main run would need housing in a new category:
  • [+] Political books by author
  • [+] Bibliographies by author
  • [+] American books by author
  • [+] British books by author
  • [+] Canadian books by author
  • [+] Indian books by author
  • [+] Novels by author
  • [+] Single-author short story collections
  • There are still many "Works of", though "Works by" is clearly standard.
  • The potential sub-categories of Works by are given as:

+] Films by writer [+] Essays by author [+] Books by author [+] Novels by author [+] Plays by author [+] Poems by author [+] Short stories by author [+] Single-author short story collections

Comments

I see you're thinking about this--consider the case of people like Michelangelo or Wagner, where the works category is much more encompassing. For another possibility you mention: the fiction/non-fiction distinction is one thing, but consider also other imaginative literature like poetry. this is tricky, & I can think of objections to almost anything. I suggest setting up a work page with some examples. DGG (talk) 00:17, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I'll keep this here, if that's ok. Wagner doesn't have a Works category, only Category:Compositions by Richard Wagner, nor does Michelangelo (Paintings by...), whose poems seem to have no articles. Nor do Shakespeare, Balzac, Robert Ludlum .... Category:Works by artist (finally found it!) is divided strictly by type of work, and I am talking about the next one down Category:Works by author which is only for "all types of written works". So I don't think that's a problem. The top one should be Category:Works by creator, but that's for another day. I will copy this to my sandbox Modest Proposal to kick the discussion off there, I hope... Johnbod 00:32, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Ys, a good place. And right, I did not actually look--it seems that there are thousands of places where cats are needed and have not been made. Mind if I link the sample cats above--people will want to look? DGG (talk) 00:42, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

"Repurpose Books to a dedicated category for non-fiction/plays/poems."

what would you call it? If you call it "books" people will surely use it wrong & we'll be monitoring the cats forever. Possibly separate categories for each genre. But I see no logical way of handling the supercats without using them every individual time. If we use "novels" then we'd need it for even a single one or people wont know where to look. DGG 00:42, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
You could just call it books, but I agree that's not perfect. "Non-literary books" is probably better - although legally etc everything is "literature", not everything is "literary". I'll do some links above. I'm not proposing to affect eg the "novels by" categories, many of which have only one member, quite rightly. They should be complete. The question is whether every "novels by" feeds into a "works by". Johnbod 02:03, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Because "Works" encompasses a far greater range of items beyond books (paintings, sculptures, short stories, films, librettos, etc.) my feeling is that Works by should serve as the parent categories. Books by should serve to hold any book whether fiction or non-fiction and the Novels by structure should be renamed/merged into it. I don't see a strongly compelling reason for categorizing fiction books and non-fiction books separately but if there is such a need then there should be Non-fiction books and Fiction books categories under Works. Otto4711 16:39, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
But (see DGG comments above, & reply) at the moment "Works by author" is exclusively for written works. There is in fact no category tree that unites works in different fields by the same creator, like Wagner's music & books, or Michelangelo's paintings and poems. These are in fact only united in their eponymous categories. I don't agree in merging the different genres of written work, & I think you probably agree that that would not be supported in a CfR. But something can be done to sort out the confusion and duplication that currently mark the books and works category. Johnbod 16:50, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict)::*Works by author shouldn't be the parent cat. Works by artist should. I don't know that there needs to be a specific tree to unite works in different fields. A link in the category descriptions would suffice. For instance in Books by Richard Wagner put a note that reads "for musical compositions see Compositions by Richard Wagner. I think trying to devise a categroy structure to encompass multi-disciplinary artists is just going to end up in a bigger tangle than we already have. Otto4711 17:43, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting such a scheme Johnbod 16:30, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Utterly disagree, authors are "not" artists, per se. A case could be made for the fiction author, but certainly not for the field of non-fiction authorship. Particularly in the technical disciplines of science, technology, philosophy and so on. Even in the fictional area were are pushing the definition of artist to the limits. It is quite sufficient to include the "Works by author" category with "Works by artist" supercategory (a "true" parent category). However they are not the same thing!. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:18, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
One problem is that "Works by Artist" contains performers ("recording artists") as well, but that is not something I am attempting to solve here. Johnbod 16:30, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
Essentially here what is happening is that a true structure is unable to clearly categorise a "mixed" element descriptive scheme. In other works a Book is like the packing, the Novel is like the content type, Fantasy is the content genre etc. This appears to be what we have at the moment. My efforts have been to start to untangle this mess which others here have seen and some of which is a work in progress. The usage of these above terms in the real world is extraordinarily "woolly" (i.e. loose). So any scheme that has hard and fast rules will always be a compromise. However I think we should be able to describe each element of these with a somewhat rationale scheme. I am certainly not in favour of too much merging as we have hundreds of articles in some categories as it is. Also we would lose plenty of useful information by doing so. Essentially as I see it is we need a category element that deals with Fiction / Non-fiction; we need an element that deals with "package" ie. Book, e-book, audio books etc.; an element that deals with writing form, i.e. Novel, Poetry, essay, short story, article etc. and one that deals with genre in the case of fiction (crime, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, western etc.) or subject in the case of non-fiction (philosophy, history, medicine etc.) :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 17:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
  • A big chunk of the problem is that people want the category system to do everything when at least some of these intersections should be handled by lists or see also links in author or book articles. As the distinctions get drawn ever finer categories splinter off into less and less useful pieces. I find myself questioning also whether everything ever written has to be in a by author category in the first place. Otto4711 17:51, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
  • I'm very clear that a "by author" category is the most important one for any written work (anonymous reference works apart). Most books with articles are written by authors with more than one article on their works. All the other types of category for works/books have problems of definition, are divided by nationality, language etc etc. There are no intersections in "by author" categories - that is not the problem here. Johnbod 19:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree in principle with Johnbod; the fact that a task is hard is no reason not to do it. As I explained above the essential problem is a mix of category elements in together. If these can be considered separately then this task should be achieveable, and desirable!. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page)/(Desk) 08:11, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
My take is that yes, the genre/subject area elements have all sorts of problems, but these are really separate to the books/works question. Personally I'm much less bothered by the "package" element - how often is this really an issue in terms of modern media? It is an issue re poetry etc, hence imaginative literature should be in "Works". Otto is right in saying we can't accomodate absolutely everything. "Articles" by academics are currently rather stranded, and may have to remain so. I think we should aim for an agreed structure which you can approach from the top, and know that you ought to be able to find the "by author" category for an author who wrote a particular type and mix of work. At the moment we just don't have this. The hierarchy would be:
  • Works - for all writers of imaginative literature who were not just novelists or playwrights/screenwriters
  • Books - for all authors with no imaginative literature
  • Novels/Plays/Screenplays etc - for those who only have articles on that one type of work
  • - that is the solution that will achieve the desired consistency with the least work from where we are, and the fewest categories containing only one sub-category (in Works only). Comments? Johnbod 16:30, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
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