Letters to the Editor
edgarde
Published Letters: 7 Editor's Choice: 3
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Lenny Bruce
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People (1960), p. 1
http://tinyurl.com/2lrb4x
What does it say about this week's strip that all the letters are about this quote?
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It's a Lenny Bruce quote
[Read the article: Opus]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://tinyurl.com/2lrb4x
Filipinos come quick; colored men are buil[t] abnormally large (“Their wangs look like a baby’s arm with an apple in its fist”); ladies with short hair are lesbians; if you want to keep your man, rub alum on your pussy.
Such bits of erotic folklore were related daily to my mother by Mrs. Janesky...
—Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People (1960), p. 1
What does it say about this week's strip that all the letters are about this?
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The quote is from Lenny Bruce
[Read the article: This Modern World ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://tinyurl.com/2lrb4x
Filipinos come quick; colored men are buil[t] abnormally large (“Their wangs look like a baby’s arm with an apple in its fist”); ladies with short hair are lesbians; if you want to keep your man, rub alum on your pussy.
Such bits of erotic folklore were related daily to my mother by Mrs. Janesky...
—Lenny Bruce, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People (1960), p. 1
What does it say about this week's strip that all the letters are about this?
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Wikipedia cannot please everyone
[Read the article: Don't press the Wikipedia delete button]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Much of what is deleted these days is seriously non-notable, including:
- articles on editors' garage bands (typically needing drummers)
- separate articles for one-shot TV show characters
- and the dreaded "X in pop culture" articles which list every time an editor has spotted the article's subject in TV, in movies, or in a video game. (This class of articles links seemingly every other article to the TV show Family Guy.)
This sort of trivia certainly belongs on internet somewhere, but Wikipedia is supposed to be an encyclopedia. A comprehensive, encyclopedic treatment of everything still doesn't justify logs of every time a cartoon character has mentioned the article topic.
And as you might imagine, quality control in the form of excluding certain content enrages many people.
Other wikis exist with different standards. For any given topic one might like to write about, Wikia.com usually already has a wiki going, and if not they'll create a new one where there is sufficient interest. Other similar providers are listed on
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wikis
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Alternative_outlets#Directory_of_alternatives
Wikipedia does not have to please everyone. Let Wikipedia can be Wikipedia.
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@Samlor
[Read the article: Don't press the Wikipedia delete button]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Creating new articles is extremely easy; the idea that some conservation threshold may be crossed "once an article is created" is arbitrary since essentially no barrier exists. The suggestion that different rules should apply "before" is moot because it presumes such rules won't be simply ignored by an editor creating new articles.
While any one editor can create new articles, deleting articles is the end result of a discussion process involving multiple editors. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:AFD
(For this discussion I'm ignoring the Speedy Deletion process for articles that cannot be salvaged, such as those composed of graffiti and patent nonsense.)
Also, whether an article is "structurally perfect" doesn't matter much. Many articles exist for long periods in "stub" condition. The expectation is that other editors will improve such articles over time. There is no deadline.
Generally things get most "high school" once someone starts flinging terms like "Inclusionist" and "Deletionist". The idea that some editors delete articles to get their snob jollies is often heard from editors defending articles which cannot be defended on their own merit.
Even if "rabid" "deletionists" were running rampant in AFD discussions, they would still need to present valid arguments for deleting articles per Wikipedia policy. AFD is not a polling process.
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Wikipedia is not free web space
[Read the article: Don't press the Wikipedia delete button]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The suggestion that every garage band is entitled to a Wikipedia article in case one becomes Bob Seger does not scale well.
As Sylvain points out, managing this much information presents a load on Wikipedia's human infrastructure (availability of administrators, policy development, software development, dispute resolution, copyright policing, vandal fighting and so forth) that saps Wikipedia's ability to perform its intended function (being an encyclopedia), no matter how unlimited the technological infrastructure may be.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that people making these principled demands will not be burdening themselves with the effort of making it all work.
Fun graphic I saw today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Size_of_English_Wikipedia_broken_down.png
The proportions shown should be considered estimates.
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Joe Biden
[Read the article: Obama Veepstakes]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]For foreign policy experience and maturity. No idea why Barack can't have someone "too old". Biden's only other perceived negatives are well-known public speaking gaffes the public will easily forgive as trivial.
Too much bad blood with Hillary at this point. The public will perceive it as a shotgun marriage, and it's hard to imagine Clinton as a supporting actor at this point.