Talk:The Silent Speaker

Novels: Crime Mid‑importance

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Dictaphone[edit]

A recent edit injects some OR into the article's introductory material ("almost certainly," for example, and "obvious avoidance"). Since I don't mind that sort of viewpoint so long as it isn't made up of whole cloth, I don't wish to edit it. But the accompanying edit summary notes that the Dictaphone wasn't new to offices in 1946 (not 1947), having been introduced in 1917. The Dictaphone.com web site, with its brief corporate history, doesn't make that at all clear. Although the initial technology was developed by Edison's people in the late 19th century, it was 1939 before the "first electronic dictation machines were introduced." 1917 is not mentioned as a watershed date. Was Boone using an electronic dictation machine? I don't know, and I don't know that a so-called Stenophone was introduced in 1917. Fish Man's point is well taken, though: whatever the correct date, it wasn't brand new technology in 1946. TurnerHodges 04:55, 26 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Spoiler removal[edit]

It just baffles me that someone would go to the trouble of writing several paragraphs that detail the conclusion of a mystery novel and then post them on Wikipedia. For whose benefit? Someone who has already read the book and can recall the ending? For someone who has not read the book and will therefore have his or her enjoyment spoiled? What is the point?

Furthermore, it's astonishing that someone would take the time to write and post all that, but not bother to check it first. The editor claims that the murderer lay in wait in the shadows; but chapter 35 gives the murderer's statement that he "waited in an areaway across the street until he saw her coming and then joined her and mounted the stoop with her." Just a few sentences earlier, Cramer says that Boone "threw it at him, what he had found out . . ." Boone did not throw the papers back in his face, as the editor would have it. Wolfe does not "urge" his employees to search the office, he tells them to do so. There are other matters, but I don't want to pile on. TurnerHodges (talk) 15:02, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi TurnerHodges. As I pointed out in my edit summary and on your talk page just now, Wikipedia plot summaries contain comprehensive plot information; we do not censor solutions to mysteries, or whether an ending is happy or sad, or anything else that contributes to summarization of an entire plot. We write plot summaries so people can become familiar with the story, not to tantalize.

I disagree with your characterization of the section as "innaccurate"; your objections to it seem to constitute minor word-choice disagreements and one small, non-plot-affecting error. To address your specific problems with the section: I used "in the shadows" as a shorthand for "in an areaway across the street." If you'd like, you can change the phrasing and use the full description. You are right that I messed up the "throwing" bit - I will correct that when I finish writing this. As for "urges" vs "orders," I made a stylistic decision to go with "urges," but you are, again, free to change my phrasing if you feel terribly strongly about it. This is Wikipedia, where the law of the land is "so FIX it!". keɪɑtɪk flʌfi (talk) 23:59, 21 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I did not wish to pile on, but you invite it. I stand by my characterization of your edit as inaccurate (spelled thus, by the way). One person's error is another person's shorthand; one person's blunder is another's word-choice disagreement. But that's hardly the point, of which there are two.

One point is that the writing in your edit is sloppy, and those errors that you regard as picayune are just the clearest examples of the lack of care you took. I resent the fact that you blithely drop it into an article that others, not just TurnerHodges, have spent hours and hours crafting. Then you hide behind a link to some ill-considered dictum that anything goes. You bring as much care to assembling words as you do to taking me to task for not putting this matter on the talk page -- before you bothered to check the talk page.

The second point is that just because you can do something does not mean that you necessarily should. The law permitted Kenneth Starr great latitude in his investigation and his questioning of Bill Clinton. Should he have therefore used that latitude to turn the investigation into a hyper-partisan, oxygen-sucking sideshow? Who knows? But he could, and he did, and he is now teaching at obscure little Pepperdine U in Malibu.

And because you can write a spoiler, you do so. I do not see where you discuss your rationale. Therefore, I'll hypothesize that you are responding to the same impulse that causes a youngster to wave a hand frantically in the air, in response to a teacher's query, pleading "I know! I know! Call on me!"

I am not going to engage you in a flame war -- or whatever the term that is used in Wikipedia for this sort of kerfuffle. Your contribution, such as it is, stands. I decline to edit it, thanks. Sows' ears and all that. TurnerHodges (talk) 04:09, 22 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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