Wikipedia continues to surprise. I mean, I love the phrase "Eschew obfuscation", but who the hell takes the time to write up an entry for it?
And Wikipedia continues to amuse. I laughed when I saw this T-shirt earlier today, and then laughed again when I visited the article above just now...
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Stand by for further laughter.
ReplyDeleteThis certainly pricks my conscience. I've become a bit of a Wikipedia revisionist, if not out-an-out deletionist in recent times. Suffice to say as soon as I saw this entry my thoughts instantly turned to "deletion nomination". But I've resisted the urge in the last five minutes. Wikipedians Anonymous anyone?
ReplyDeleteSo, hey, wait a minute, Murtoa... do you mean to say you're an actual walking, talking, living Wikipedia contributor/editor?! That's amazing! I've never met one before! What's an example of your wor... wait a second... oh my good giddy aunt: there he is! Over 500 edits! This is like a gold mine! Look at all that SA stuff! The noose is tightening! I'm starting to feel a bit creepy reading all this stuff, but that's what it's there for, isn't it? Look at this stuff! Hehehe. Tidy, tidy ,tidy... Murt, you are a pedant after my own heart. No citation needed. I take my hat off. :)
ReplyDeleteYou're undoing vandalism on Kyle Sandilands page! Ha, ha. This is SO great!
ReplyDelete"Liquorland vs LiquorLAND== The main entry should be "Liquorland", not "LiquorLAND" as the only use of the capitalised "LAND" is in the logo device."
Yes!
Eden Hills, Eden Hills... I finally feel like I'm getting to know you. Actually, did you realise that we spent six months commuting through the same station last year? I wonder if I ever stood next to you on an escalator. We really should have stopped in at the Coffee HQ for a chat. Hehehe.
Now, back to the reading!
1998 AFL Grand Final (tautology - if they are "the only side" then by definition it is "yet to be matched")
ReplyDeleteI love it!
'Hi there, you probably won’t be particularly pleased that I’ve removed most of the material you’ve added to the Wesley College page in the last couple of days...')
Very diplomatic!
Wesley College, Melbourne ("Brother" schools inappropriate for a coeducational school)
So true!
That's it: Phil, I'm giving you administrator access to my blog. Go crazy! I think I'd be too daunted by the size of Wikipedia to ever dip a toe in, but, as they say, I love your work.
eek.
ReplyDeleteCome now, don't be bashful. And make me feel like a stalker. I assume you got started out of your love for Fly Buys, but I'd love to know what keeps you going? What's your motivation? Is it just a simple love of tidying up or being precise... or are you thinking of future generations? Or is it about contributing to something large, something global? Or some other reason? It's the biggest blog there is, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI've often thought about contributing, but in the end am happy just to leave it up to others. There's not enough time in life as there is, and is what I have to contribute really worth the time it'd take add? On the other hand, investigating, say, the history of Templestowe and posting that I could imagine would be very rewarding. Even if no one ever reads it, just what you'd learn personally from the process would make it worthwhile.
I've often reflected on my being drawn to the ol’ Wiki. And it is a bit of a concern. Yes, I think when I started I was drawn to topics where I thought I could make a genuine contribution (and I'm not talking about Kyle Sandilands in this regard…) I admit I have been increasingly drawn towards a noble but time-consuming fight against poorly written articles, hence get drawn to deletion debates. In a sense this appeals to a predatory nature, as this principally involves tearing to shreds people who mount articles on their local un-notable cricket club, or themselves, or a particular genre who love to honour their old school by contributing reams of rubbish about house colours, notable old scholars who aren’t notable etc. The community that is Wikipedia is quite scary. If you consider my volume of edits as considerable, they fade into inconsequence compared with folk that appear to be on all day every day. And the disputes! Some of them are very serious folk indeed and will argue with great venom about Wiki policy, protocol, templates etc. It certainly can be an obsession, and I have particularly pondered this when at some hour of the night I should be sleeping I'm digging out references on Tallulah Morton, an Australian fashion model I didn’t even know existed, but for whom I came to a view that she was “notable”. Confession over. I'm also reflecting on the fact that yet again my friend you have successfully compromised my fading anonymity! :)
ReplyDeleteI guess it's always worth it as long as you're enjoying yourself. You know, you do it because it's fun. We all enjoy different things. Some people seem to think pinball is a good past time, but I've never seen the appeal. Even though I like arcade/computer games. The experience - what you have after the game is over - just doesn't seem worthwhile. (There are probably better examples than pinball, but that was the first thing that came to mind. Go figure.)
ReplyDeleteNow I enjoy working with words, editing, correcting, etc, and so I can see the appeal in workin' on the Wik, but, well... maybe it's the impermanence of it that troubles me... that you can fuss and tweak for hours and then someone comes along and blows it all away. Sure, you can restore, but surely over time as your edits build up, you'd start to spend most of your time monitoring your old work, fighting endless battles against weeds in the garden. Actually, that's exactly it. Wikipedia seems a lot like gardening. You work your guts out mowing and pruning and weeding (etc, etc) and then three weeks later it's all back to how it was! Argh!
And don't worry, there are still many missing pieces to the 'Phil' puzzle. And now that Google Earth's 'Street View' images are going to be blurred, my plans for an online stakeout of the foyer at Pacific Loyalty Loyalty Pacific have been deleted. So your anonymity is safe for a little while yet...
Oh, and you'd better get back to the Tallulah Morton page; I think I've found some more vandalism:
ReplyDeleteBirth name: Tallulah Morton Roots
...
Come on. Surely not? How could any girl get through high school with a surname like that? Sounds like the sort of thing you'd see scrawled across the toilet wall with a phone number underneath it. Or do I just have a dirty mind?
Tallulah Morton Roots, but only on the second date.
Oh glory, I have taken it too far.
My apologies.
Yeah I also thought that Tallulah's suffix was dodgy but a quick Google suggests it's legitimate. Brave girl.
ReplyDeleteTake your point about being a bit like gardening. Yes, weeding, particularly the endless filtering out of vandalism is tiresome. But once you get the hang of what constitutes good copy and what doesn't, you get very little of someone turfing out all your good work. Dare I say it, if its verifiable and "notable", it tends not to get mucked about too much. So usually there's a nice quality control thing happening and generally civil behaviour. Contentious material is often resolved by consensus within discussion pages. That's not to say there won't occasionally be destructive behaviour which will raise the ire of the Wiki community. But it's an interesting melting pot of folk in there. And of course, a never-ending supply of articles begging for improvement...
I love crazy people (and I don't mean that in a nasty way), so, yeah, I reckon there'd be a lot of interesting characters amongst the contributors. Surely it's just a matter of time before a doco profiling some of them comes out?
ReplyDeleteWell, anyway, keep it up, and I look forward to learning more about American River, Eden Hills and Wesley College. :)
Whoops, Murt, I've found another mistake in your list of edits:
ReplyDeleteMark Holden (Removed superfluous comment)
I think you'll find the whole entry is superfluous.
I was looking up the wikipedia entry on James Bond just now and discovered, to my amazement...
ReplyDeleteActually, let's start this story a little further back: earlier this month someone with the username Jimkir made a series of edits to various Wikipedia articles, most of which were caught and reverted in short order.
Which leads us to now, when my wanting to find out the correct reading order of John Gardner's James Bond novels yielded the datum that the second James Bond movie won two Logie awards.
Which has now been part of the entry for two weeks and counting.
In fact, not only has the claim not been reverted, but it has had its grammar and spelling corrected, and a link to the Logie Awards entry added.
(I think the genius (luck?) of this particular pranking lies in Jimkir adding his bogus information between an existing piece of information and the link to the footnote for the existing information. Because, it's got a cite next to it, so it must be true. And someone else has probably already clicked through to confirm the cite, so I don't need to. I'll just correct this spelling.)
Now to see which of you two can fix it first. :-)
Hehe. Funny. Although I think "genius" might be overstating things a bit. Clever, perhaps.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm not sure why you think I'll be rushing to fix this, as I've just been saying I'm not interested in policing the Wik and, as you know, I'm no great fan of James Bond either. It wouldn't bother me if someone added further inaccuracies to his page, such as, "James Bond films today are exciting, highly innovative thrillers guaranteed to please and are in no way extended commercials that plunder their plot lines from previous installments." :)
Actually, it was good that they finally gave up the pretense of making sequels and just went for an all-out remake, but it's funny (to me) that after banging on about wanting something new for so long, Casino Royale was actually the most I've enjoyed a Bond film in years...
ReplyDeleteActually, Casino Royale is something new. It's a superhero origin story (cf. Unbreakable, Batman Begins) for the cinematic James Bond character.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, it could also be argued that three of the last five Bond films have had significant new elements, but a) certainly not to the extent of Casino Royale; and b) interspersed among them are the cookie-cutter by-the-numbers Bond films Tomorrow Never Dies and Die Another Day, which kind of ruin the effect; and c) if you're not a Bond fan - and there's no law that says everyone has to be - some of the variations on the standard Bond formula might not be apparent.
(I was hemming and hawing about whether to include The Living Daylights in the list of original Bond films, but had to sadly conclude that it is just a cookie-cutter Bond film, albeit the best cookie-cutter Bond film of the 1980s - and with the best 80's Bond theme not featuring vocals by Simon Le Bon.)
Anyway, as long as Shia LeBouf isn't appearing in Quantum of Solace, I'm there.
I'm similarly ecstatic about Mr LeBouf's non-appearance in Star Trek. (Which is incidentally a very frustrating title for the film - especially since there's already been Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I suppose Abrams et al are trying to imply the subtitle Star Trek: The Definitive Motion Picture For This Franchise. Well, maybe. All I know is that Syler is in it (and Shia is not), so I'm there.)
Oh, and thanks Murtoa for restoring some sanity to the world.
Sadly I can't recall the details of the recent Bond films well enough to engage in any worthwhile debate (I only recall the... vibe), but you make good points.
ReplyDeleteThe new one's called Quantum of Solace? Wow. There's a title for you. Nice one. You sure they couldn't have squeezed a reference to death or some future point in time in there somewhere?
PS: Sylar, JJ. Sylar.
Oh and Murt, I was just checking your Talk list and read this delightful bit of prose:
ReplyDeletehi murtoa,
i understand ure reasoning in removing the general facilites and all the stuff bout notability. i understand that wikipedia has these guidlines about everything ahving to be notable and stuff, but is this really necesary?
i like many people, turn to wikipedia as a priamry source of information. i dont look for notable information only, i look for helpful information regarding a wide range of subjects. this is because i know that there are ppl out there who add information and ppl who monitor to arruse that there is the most current and informative information on offer.
i understand that this is not what wikipedia was designed for, however i question, does it really mater what it was desiged for. it has become a priamry source of information. why would anyone want to sift through complcaited school wevsyts when wikipedia can offer information in a user freindly interface.
going back to my previous example, if a parent wanted to do research about a school to send their child to, tey wont wan to be wowed by notable facilites, they wont to know what the school has to ffer
i ask that you seriously consider our removal
I nearly fell off my chair. Is this guy serious? Is this guy six? He's sub-literate whatever age he is. Sub-literate or lazy. Either way, how do you argue with such a person? Why would you argue with such a person if all they're going to do is throw mud at you? Why would you engage with someone who clearly doesn't respect you or what you're trying to create?
And he wants to edit an entry concerning education! Hilarious.
All good points. Just reinforces the diversity of the Wiki community, just as diverse as the community of say... FlyBuys members. I'm becoming slightly more tolerant these days of usually younger folk with a preponderance of writing in a stream of consciousness style with no care for spelling, punctuation, grammar - anything really. Regarding the point he was trying to make, it's not unusual for newbies to regard wiki as a bottomless pit waiting to be filled with anything and everything on whatever topic you wish to choose. In his case as a former school leader - captain I believe - which is a great comment on the school in question - he was wanting (and still does want) to fill the school article with all manner of stuff. The discussion page on the school in question reveals a number of wikipedians gently attempting to bring him around. The guy keeps abandoning user names and inventing new ones but his style is a bit of a giveaway. When you end up adding the article to your watchlist just for the purpose of keeping him in check, it's a worry...
ReplyDeleteHey, have we beaten your world record for longest thread yet?
Well, he may have had some good points, but with all the bashing of my head against the desk that was going on they weren't ones I was able to pick up. His blurt taps right into one of my... pet peeves. Is there a tougher way to say "pet peeves"? "Things that give me the shits?" Hmm, yes, but less vulgar. Well, "pet peeves" will do for the moment. Anyway. Why do (seemingly) most people these days consider self-editing to be optional?! Even cursory self-editing; a quick scan over what you've just written to pick up any glaring mistakes. Or at the very least to correct the spelling mistakes the computer's helpfully underlined in red for you! OS X has a system-wide spell-checker and I assume Windows does the same? Right-click, select the correct option. Glory, how lazy can you be? Grammar might be one thing, but there's no excuse for spelling mistakes on the computer these days. Other than "I couldn't work out how to switch from the US Dictionary..." I guess, but even that's weak.
ReplyDeleteI really just don't understand how anyone could be happy posting something that's so clearly, clearly, embarrassingly bad! Does he perhaps not know and if you showed him he'd be shocked? Or does he just not care? If the two of you were face to face would he talk in such a mangled way? No! (I hope.) So why is he happy to type that way?
Yeah, I know, I know: "you knew what I meant". Argh! There's the other big one that gives me the peeves. I think I've posted on it elsewhere that most times, NO, I didn't know what you meant. Or I got so frustrated hitting all these speed humps in your text that I just stopped reading altogether.
ARGH! I need to go for a walk.
Right. Back. Where was I? Oh yes. The school captain.
"Does it really mater what it was desiged for."
Well, even if he's right, why is his idea of what it's "desiged for" more worthy than your idea? If everyone just tried to implement their own grand plans it wouldn't before long before Wikipedia and his beloved "user freindly interface" would crash and burn in an anarchic mess. And if that happened, we'd all be stuck sifting through "complcaited wevsyts" and who could handle that?! No, please, don't wow us with your notable facilities! Think of the children!
His attitude makes me sic (sic).
(Hehe. A little joke there for you.)
"i ask that you seriously consider our removal"
He needs permission? Dude, by all means, please remove yourself.
"Hey, have we beaten your world record for longest thread yet?"
Well, the bad news is that at a mere 20 comments we're nowhere close to the current comment record of 54, which fittingly enough was for the contentious post that saw your arrival on the Path!) The good news, though, is that this means we're all still in for a chance to secure the coveted comment number <deep thought> 42 </deep thought>! Keep 'em coming! Even if they're about James Bond! :)