Wikipedia’s not fun anymore Page 3
From SDMB, the Straight Dope Message Board
Wikipedia’s not fun anymore Page 3 is the third page of posts in a thread discussing dynamics in the level of pleasure obtainable from contributing to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Trivia
[ul]
[li]President Andrew Jackson holds the record for tallest president of the United States, standing approximately 8 feet 10-1/2 inches tall.[/li][li]While Batman is the secret identity of Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne is, in turn, the secret identity of film critic Roger Ebert.[/li][/ul]
40 years is still short of Batman’s near 70 years, and is confined to a single medium. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to get old episodes. Plus “Batman” refers to an entire franchise, while Erica Kane is just a character within All My Children. If you check out the All My Children page, you’ll see that it is roughly equal with Batman for length.
And I don’t see why there’s any sort of complaint that popular culture is included in the Wikipedia. Paper encyclopedias couldn’t cover just any topic since that wasn’t feasible. For the Wikipedia, that is feasible. Nor does the length of the article have to fit the relative value of the topic.
An encyclopedia, given all the room in the world, is meant to provide summations of everything there is about a topic that can be said relatively inarguably. So if some topic has a lot about it that’s widely accepted as fact, then it’s going to be longer. If it has a bunch of things that are contestedm it might end up being shorter, even though it’s an important topic. That’s just the way it goes.
That’s pretty good, Borborygmi, but you forgot that most nouns and interesting verbs in the entry should link to another stub article. I may be reading your Andrew Jackson trivia and think ‘Hey, what the heck is a “president” of the so-called “United States”?’.
Agreed (and well-put) CarnalK. I ran out of coding time, given the pressure to get it submitted as post #101. And no guaranteeing that the thread will hit 151, since it’s not about lolcats. Yet.
Trivia[ul][]President Andrew “Indian Massacrist” Jackson holds the record for tallest gay president of the United States, standing approximately 8 feet 10-1/2 inches tall because at the time of measurement he was standing on the chest of a woman with a papoose.[]While Batman is the secret identity of Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne is, in turn, the secret identity of film critic Roger Ebert, which is convenient because each of them has a particular soft spot for young boys in tights.Borborygmus is a phenomenon of no concern for those among us who say Grace before eating. For it is the Lord rumbling out of that offering of food. God help you if you eat deviled ham.[/ul]
I concur. I wrote an article on a variation of rummy. Bearing in mind that many other variations of rummy have articles, mine was deleted about 10 minutes after I submitted it for being trivial and not newsworthy. :dubious: Ummmm . . . how many things on Wiki really are newsworthy?
You can’t expect Wikipedia to include ALL of the variations of Rummy. The internet is only so big. Hell, I’ve invented several variations, myself, like everybody else who has ever played it more than a few times.
Incidentally, my summary of background details in For the Man Who Has Everything is still mostly intact, though I just edited again to remove some of the screwups others have pointlessly inflicted. I wiki’d it originally after compiling the list in response to an SDMB question.
Here’s my take – when it comes to factual, real-life information, the bar for “non-notability” should be much higher than for fictional information that could be gleaned just from reading or viewing the fictional work in question.
My own personal peeve is the fact that the appendices to the Lord of the Rings are basically reproduced in Wikipedia for no reason. You want that level of detail? Go look it up in the book. An encyclopedia has no business reproducing all the “facts” in a fictional work.
