I have to admit, I've become discouraged with this community. On one hand, a lot of people seem to like the idea of being a community that creates high-quality content that is useful to others on the internet. On the other hand, to be honest, I don't really see very many people putting in the effort to actually learn about literature. I see a lot of debates about tags or other meaningless issues--I've been part of that debate and share the blame for that--but I don't really see any learning happening.

Our debate over whether music counts as literature is the epitome of that. People came into the debate with very strong feelings, but then didn't bother to put the time and effort into resolving what is a very complicated issue. I doubt that more than two people have read any sort of article on the subject that isn't a wikipedia article or a dictionary page. It's like people think that what they already know is enough and like they shouldn't have to put any effort into learning more. That's a problem, because as we saw at the beginning of the site, we don't really know anything about literature. If people aren't learning or aren't willing to learn, then what does that say about this site?

If anything, as a community we've managed to leapfrog straight past learning the tools of literary study and skipped ahead to the antagonistic snobbery.

Here are some questions that are worth considering:

1. Do you read academic articles about literature? Why or why not?
2. What have you learned since joining the site? Has this knowledge been factual (I learned that [author x] worked as a [profession y])? Or have you learned methods, such as close reading?
3. What kind of research do you do before answering questions?

We need people being useful. I'm not sure what being useful means to people in this community. For me, being useful means taking initiative and learning on your own. For me, being useful means recognizing that learning literary criticism means learning new ways of thinking and writing (e.g. close reading). For me, being useful doesn't mean waiting for others to explain things, but taking initiative and learning things yourself.

I have to be honest, I can count the number of people being useful on this site on my right hand. I see lots of people debating about meaningless tagging issues and and closing questions for dubious reasons; I don't really see anyone at the moment being actually useful. Someone's got to step up.

I have to admit, I've become discouraged with this community. On one hand, a lot of people seem to like the idea of being a community that creates high-quality content that is useful to others on the internet. On the other hand, to be honest, I don't really see very many people putting in the effort to actually learn about literature. I see a lot of debates about tags or other meaningless issues--I've been part of that debate and share the blame for that--but I don't really see any learning happening.

Our debate over whether music counts as literature is the epitome of that. People came into the debate with very strong feelings, but then didn't bother to put the time and effort into resolving what is a very complicated issue. I doubt that more than two people have read any sort of article on the subject that isn't a wikipedia article or a dictionary page. It's like people think that what they already know is enough and like they shouldn't have to put any effort into learning more. That's a problem, because as we saw at the beginning of the site, we don't really know anything about literature. If people aren't learning or aren't willing to learn, then what does that say about this site?

If anything, as a community we've managed to leapfrog straight past learning the tools of literary study and skipped ahead to the antagonistic snobbery.

Here are some questions that are worth considering:

1. Do you read academic articles about literature? Why or why not?
2. What have you learned since joining the site? Has this knowledge been factual (I learned that [author x] worked as a [profession y])? Or have you learned methods, such as close reading?
3. When you learn things, is it on your own initiative? What kinds of things are you learning on your own initiative?
4. What kind of research do you do before answering questions?

We need people being useful. I'm not sure what being useful means to people in this community. For me, being useful means taking initiative and learning on your own. For me, being useful means recognizing that learning literary criticism means learning new ways of thinking and writing (e.g. close reading). For me, being useful doesn't mean waiting for others to explain things, but taking initiative and learning things yourself.

I have to be honest, I can count the number of people being useful on this site on my right hand. I see lots of people debating about meaningless tagging issues and and closing questions for dubious reasons; I don't really see anyone at the moment being actually useful. Someone's got to step up.

What resources can I use to learn more about literature?

1. Scholar.google.com
2. Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison
3. My close reading answer
4. Reading academic works of literary criticism
5. Going to the site's chat room and perusing the many links posted there.