Talk:The Casual Vacancy

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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Deborah Orr review[edit]

The "review" by Deborah Orr in The Guardian, Unlike Harry Potter, The Casual Vacancy casts no spells (as yet thankfully not referenced in the article) is perhaps more notable for the number of scathing comments that the review itself received than for its literary merit. Esowteric+Talk 20:06, 29 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Amazon vs. Goodreads ratings[edit]

I reverted a sentence about Amazon ratings today, because they're crowdsourced so we can't include them like we do with e.g. Rotten Tomatoes for movies. But I noticed their histogram was heavily bimodal, falling from 5 to 2 and then sharply increasing at 1, which indicates to me that they are being gamed by detractors. The Goodreads ratings seem to confirm this, lacking any hit of bimodality at present. Neither of the sites convince me that the majority of their reviewers have finished the book, however. —Cupco 05:26, 2 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

People feeling provoked[edit]

This might develope into something noteworthy: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/9580177/First-Middle-England-now-Rowlings-novel-upsets-Sikhs-as-well.html Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:39, 4 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Spoilers[edit]

The contents of these page, specially the Plot summary, contains many spoilers. It could and should be more discrete. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 186.4.23.115 (talk) 07:14, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia does not avoid or specifically warn about spoilers. See Wikipedia:Spoiler. JRSpriggs (talk) 07:59, 16 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

However, people who are used to Wikipedia know that if they haven't seen/read the thing in question they should avoid reading the plot summary. The ending of the book is revealed in the Background → Conception section. While it's probably not doing anyone a service to be reading ALL about something before they've experienced it themselves, you know you're not going to have the ending ruined by browsing the reviews. The footnote links to an article specifically meant to spoil, which is fine for anyone who wants that, but there's got to be another way to mention that Rihanna's song shows up in the book without having to mention the ending. Monohymn (talk) 06:43, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I like spoilers. They help me decide whether I will enjoy reading the story or watching the movie. And they make the story easier to understand when I see it as they create a context to which I can relate. JRSpriggs (talk) 06:58, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

To each his own, I suppose. I'm certainly not one to shy away from spoiling things for myself (having read the last page of The Running Man first, for example), but I think that most people would agree that you don't give away the ending on principle (outside of the plot summary). The overwhelming majority of book reviewers don't give away endings because, if they did, people would complain and they'd be out of a job. As I said, the mentioning of the song is notable enough, but to nonchalantly mention the ending in the same sentence where nonchalant people would come along and nonchalantly read it (thereby possibly ruining their own personal reading experience, something that they might not want to do), that just doesn't jive with me. I'm arguing for the removal of one tiny, insignificant thing (how does the ending of the book relate to the conception of the book anyway?); seeing as how I rarely get involved with actually editing around here, I'm just going to make my case and let the rest of you decide. Monohymn (talk) 08:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that spoilers shouldn't exist outside of the plot summary unless they're relatively minor spoilers. There's really no need to give away the ending outside of the actual plot summary. Silver seren^C 16:26, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

As said explicitly at WP:Spoiler, "It is not acceptable to delete information from an article because you think it spoils the plot.", people "nonchalantly" browsing the internet for details about a book they have not read are almost committing themselves to find a spoiler. Although it seems like a "spoiler" now - would it be in 6 months time, a year, 10 years, etc.? I think part of the problem is that the book is less than a month old; look at Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows of which the discussion of its themes is full of spoilers. I'm not sure how you have deduced this is "insignificant", but I do think it needs moving to another section, but not removing. —Jennie | ☎ 17:10, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd say keep the spoilers, in accordance with Wikipedia policy, but keep them within the bounds of the plot summary where the reader can expect to find them. Regards, Esowteric+Talk 17:55, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think it needs to moved from the "Conception" section, but not removed, as according to Wikipedia policy, "It is not acceptable to delete information from an article because you think it spoils the plot." —Jennie | ☎ 18:08, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I came to the conclusion that it was insignificant as pertaining to the Conception section, especially considering that the footnote refers to an article that gives us no insight into why the author chose such an ending. Hell, the article doesn't give us any insight into why she chose that particular song either, but since it is part of the plot then perhaps that fact could be rewritten into the summary. Monohymn (talk) 18:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Of course, the Characters section also provides a lot of eventual outcomes, as well .... Esowteric+Talk 19:11, 17 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The characters section should be deleted as a whole, as it is completely unreferenced. Only the plot summary can get away with that. Silver seren^C 06:36, 19 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Manual of style in this article[edit]

I have started a similar discussion in the Cormoran Strike article but I have decided to post this as The Casual Vacancy is from the same author and publisher.

There appears to be some confusion into the type of grammar and vocabulary to use in this article. Although the Wikipedia Manual of Style recommends using words common to all varieties of English particular dialects are normally used if there are strong national ties to the topic (see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English for more information). I would therefore recommend using British English as the series is written by a British author and they are set in the United Kingdom which is the rationale behind using it in the Harry Potter articles.

As for punctuation: the novels use single quotation marks for primary quotation and double marks for secondary quotation which is the style generally used by modern British publishers, although the mainstream media tend to use double marks for primary quotation as in US English, and sentence spacing is not not used in the novels. Therefore I would recommend using single quotation marks for primary quotation unless double marks are used by the source cited. As for spelling: the novel uses an S in the 'ise' suffix e.g. 'realise' as opposed the Z used in US and Oxford spelling. Tk420 (talk) 20:31, 12 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]