Useless Wikipedia trivia

[Carcharoth]

A thread to match the one about crap articles.

Did you know that...

...there are 4,377 articles with "brothers" in the title and 2,378 articles with "sisters" in the title.

Discuss this example of gender imbalance in Wikipedia's coverage, remembering to account for sister cities and various articles on the Big Brother television series.

[eagle]

Does anyone have a quick way to count the number of biographies of male vs. female porn stars?

[Vigilant]

Does anyone have a quick way to count the number of biographies of male vs. female porn stars?

Pretty sure Guy Chapman is the guy to ask.

[rhindle]

Does anyone have a quick way to count the number of biographies of male vs. female porn stars?

Pretty sure Guy Chapman is the guy to ask.

As long as they have above average mammary glands.

[Ryuichi]

Does anyone have a quick way to count the number of biographies of male vs. female porn stars?

Pretty sure Guy Chapman is the guy to ask.

Suggesting that massive dicks are best tallied by a massive dick? (EC: please insert gendered genitalia of choice)

[Vigilant]

Does anyone have a quick way to count the number of biographies of male vs. female porn stars?

Pretty sure Guy Chapman is the guy to ask.

Suggesting that massive dicks are best tallied by a massive dick? (EC: please insert gendered genitalia of choice)

Takes one to know one.

[Poetlister]

Wikipedia is knee deep in trivia. How many articles are there on ghost towns with zero population?

[Eric Corbett]

Wikipedia is knee deep in trivia. How many articles are there on ghost towns with zero population?

Well, that they have zero population now doesn't necessarily make them uninteresting. Any more than the fact that Abraham Lincoln is now dead makes him uninteresting.

The interesting bit is what were they like when they were alive.

[Casliber]

Wikipedia is knee deep in trivia. How many articles are there on ghost towns with zero population?

Well, that they have zero population now doesn't necessarily make them uninteresting. Any more than the fact that Abraham Lincoln is now dead makes him uninteresting.

The interesting bit is what were they like when they were alive.

Given abandonment of settlements is unusual and usually documented, this makes most abandoned settlements notable

[Bezdomni]

City: metro pop, en.wp entry size
.
Cairo, Illinois (T-H-L): 2,188, 57K
.
Memphis, Egypt (T-H-L): 0.0, 82K
.
Cairo, Egypt (T-H-L): 20.5m, 102K
.
Memphis, Tennessee (T-H-L): 1.3m, 134K

[Eric Corbett]

Given abandonment of settlements is unusual and usually documented, this makes most abandoned settlements notable

Quite.

[Poetlister]

In that case, why are there not better articles about say Bradburn, Manitoba (T-H-L)? Or take List of ghost towns in Manitoba (T-H-L), which deserves to be listed in the crap articles thread.

[Johnny Au]

How many non–pop culture articles have links to [insert popular American animated sitcom here]?

[hack]

Does anyone have a quick way to count the number of biographies of male vs. female porn stars?

From a search on WP:PetScan (T-H-L), there are 891 articles tagged with Category:Pornographic film actors (T-H-L) or a subcategory. There are 268 actors categorised under Category:Male pornographic film actors (T-H-L) or a subcategory. 565 actors appear under Category:Pornographic film actresses (T-H-L). 58 articles are contained within the top-level category without being categorised by gender, noting that the male and female categories include transgender actors by presumed self-identification (reliable sources not necessarily provided).

[Eric Corbett]

How many non–pop culture articles have links to [insert popular American animated sitcom here]?

That's an easy one. Far too many.

[Ryuichi]

Does anyone have a quick way to count the number of biographies of male vs. female porn stars?

From a search on WP:PetScan (T-H-L), there are 891 articles tagged with Category:Pornographic film actors (T-H-L) or a subcategory. There are 268 actors categorised under Category:Male pornographic film actors (T-H-L) or a subcategory. 565 actors appear under Category:Pornographic film actresses (T-H-L). 58 articles are contained within the top-level category without being categorised by gender, noting that the male and female categories include transgender actors by presumed self-identification (reliable sources not necessarily provided).

Closing the gender gap!

[Poetlister]

Does anyone have a quick way to count the number of biographies of male vs. female porn stars?

From a search on WP:PetScan (T-H-L), there are 891 articles tagged with Category:Pornographic film actors (T-H-L) or a subcategory. There are 268 actors categorised under Category:Male pornographic film actors (T-H-L) or a subcategory. 565 actors appear under Category:Pornographic film actresses (T-H-L). 58 articles are contained within the top-level category without being categorised by gender, noting that the male and female categories include transgender actors by presumed self-identification (reliable sources not necessarily provided).

Closing the gender gap!

Presumably there are far more editors interested in female porn stars than in male ones. One wonders why.

[Giraffe Stapler]

So men who are porn performers are in "Male pornographic film actors". Since "actor" is used for either a male or female performer, it is necessary to qualify that the category only contains male actors. Women who are porn performers are in "Pornographic film actresses". Since "actress" only applies to female performers no qualification is required. This is like the worst of both worlds. It would be like having "Male flight attendants" and "Stewardesses".

[Poetlister]

So men who are porn performers are in "Male pornographic film actors". Since "actor" is used for either a male or female performer, it is necessary to qualify that the category only contains male actors. Women who are porn performers are in "Pornographic film actresses". Since "actress" only applies to female performers no qualification is required. This is like the worst of both worlds. It would be like having "Male flight attendants" and "Stewardesses".

As has been frequently noted, logic and rationality are not in abundance on Wikipedia. It would be interesting to start a discussion on Wikipedia about this area and see what people say.

[Midsize Jake]

It would be interesting to start a discussion on Wikipedia about this area and see what people say.

Just as a point of reference, here's a link to our 2015 discussion of category sexism that focused (at least initially) on male vs. female novelists. There was a fair amount of media coverage about it, even...

Back then we had Greg "TheKohser" Kohs and Scott "Hex" Martin, among others (including myself) who were interested in the possibility of phasing out WP's category system in favor of semantic tagging, which would be a more modern (and, I would argue, efficient) way of getting a specific subset of articles in a way that completely obviates any issues of sexism or other forms of discrimination. Unfortunately, it's harder to have petty and/or silly edit-wars over semantic tags in most cases than it is over category inclusion, so Wikipedians obviously don't want anything to do with it.

[Poetlister]

It would be interesting to start a discussion on Wikipedia about this area and see what people say.

Just as a point of reference, here's a link to our 2015 discussion of category sexism that focused (at least initially) on male vs. female novelists. There was a fair amount of media coverage about it, even...

Back then we had Greg "TheKohser" Kohs and Scott "Hex" Martin, among others (including myself) who were interested in the possibility of phasing out WP's category system in favor of semantic tagging, which would be a more modern (and, I would argue, efficient) way of getting a specific subset of articles in a way that completely obviates any issues of sexism or other forms of discrimination. Unfortunately, it's harder to have petty and/or silly edit-wars over semantic tags in most cases than it is over category inclusion, so Wikipedians obviously don't want anything to do with it.

One problem with semantic tagging is that you have to ensure that if there is a male/female split, there is also a not known or not applicable category. Otherwise, if you ook for male porn stars and then female porn stars, you'll miss ones where the sex is unknown or who regard themselves as neither male or female for whatever reason. (Yes, that's unlikely for porn stars, but would certainly be relevant to novelists.)

[Giraffe Stapler]

One problem with semantic tagging is that you have to ensure that if there is a male/female split, there is also a not known or not applicable category. Otherwise, if you ook for male porn stars and then female porn stars, you'll miss ones where the sex is unknown or who regard themselves as neither male or female for whatever reason. (Yes, that's unlikely for porn stars, but would certainly be relevant to novelists.)

That's not a problem with semantic tagging, it's a problem with trying to pigeonhole things. Semantic tagging would actually be better for this than categories because you wouldn't have a "male porn performer" tag, you would have a "porn performer" tag, If you wanted to find all the male porn performers, you would look for people who are tagged as porn performers and tagged as male. Of course, you may still encounter issues with sex and gender, but that's on you. If you think people only come in two flavors, you haven't been paying attention the past few decades.

[Eric Corbett]

One problem with semantic tagging is that you have to ensure that if there is a male/female split, there is also a not known or not applicable category. Otherwise, if you ook for male porn stars and then female porn stars, you'll miss ones where the sex is unknown or who regard themselves as neither male or female for whatever reason. (Yes, that's unlikely for porn stars, but would certainly be relevant to novelists.)

That's not a problem with semantic tagging, it's a problem with trying to pigeonhole things. Semantic tagging would actually be better for this than categories because you wouldn't have a "male porn performer" tag, you would have a "porn performer" tag, If you wanted to find all the male porn performers, you would look for people who are tagged as porn performers and tagged as male. Of course, you may still encounter issues with sex and gender, but that's on you. If you think people only come in two flavors, you haven't been paying attention the past few decades.

There seems to be some confusion in your mind about what semantic tagging actually is, as what you're describing is in no way different from using categories.

[Poetlister]

One problem with semantic tagging is that you have to ensure that if there is a male/female split, there is also a not known or not applicable category. Otherwise, if you ook for male porn stars and then female porn stars, you'll miss ones where the sex is unknown or who regard themselves as neither male or female for whatever reason. (Yes, that's unlikely for porn stars, but would certainly be relevant to novelists.)

That's not a problem with semantic tagging, it's a problem with trying to pigeonhole things. Semantic tagging would actually be better for this than categories because you wouldn't have a "male porn performer" tag, you would have a "porn performer" tag, If you wanted to find all the male porn performers, you would look for people who are tagged as porn performers and tagged as male. Of course, you may still encounter issues with sex and gender, but that's on you. If you think people only come in two flavors, you haven't been paying attention the past few decades.

Please read what I say before you criticise me for not saying something. I say very clearly that there may be people "who regard themselves as neither male or female for whatever reason".

[Midsize Jake]

There seems to be some confusion in your mind about what semantic tagging actually is, as what you're describing is in no way different from using categories.

There are categories on Wikipedia for Males and Men, but neither of them contain any articles about individual men.

In this case, you could have Category:Men contain all the biographies of male porn-movie actors, and then have a subcategory (which also already exists in the form of Category:Male pornographic film actors) which would also contain all the biographies of male porn-movie actors (currently it contains 10 articles; the female version, Category:Pornographic film actresses, currently has only one). But they don't do it that way, because then each article would need a bunch of additional "high-level" categories added to it, which leads to aesthetically-displeasing "category glut" in the article(s).

I should say that I'm explaining this for the benefit of our more casual readers, because I assume you know this already.

To some extent, the current system of categories and subcategories does allow for limited forms of drill-down, but of course the category and subcategories have to exist. So it isn't a matter of Mr. Stapler being "confused," he's simply using a less-compelling example than he could be. Where semantic tagging becomes more useful is in situations where categories don't exist; let's say you remember hearing about a film actress who also writes mystery novels, but you don't remember her name. Wikipedia doesn't have a category for "film actress mystery authors," but with semantic tagging, it's a simple matter to apply the "film actress" tag and then the "mystery author" tag to the bio in question, and voila, the person is easily found.

[Vigilant]

Is Eric ever right about anything?

[Eric Corbett]

Is Eric ever right about anything?

Are you?

[Eric Corbett]

There seems to be some confusion in your mind about what semantic tagging actually is, as what you're describing is in no way different from using categories.

There are categories on Wikipedia for Males and Men, but neither of them contain any articles about individual men.

In this case, you could have Category:Men contain all the biographies of male porn-movie actors, and then have a subcategory (which also already exists in the form of Category:Male pornographic film actors) which would also contain all the biographies of male porn-movie actors (currently it contains 10 articles; the female version, Category:Pornographic film actresses, currently has only one). But they don't do it that way, because then each article would need a bunch of additional "high-level" categories added to it, which leads to aesthetically-displeasing "category glut" in the article(s).

I should say that I'm explaining this for the benefit of our more casual readers, because I assume you know this already.

To some extent, the current system of categories and subcategories does allow for limited forms of drill-down, but of course the category and subcategories have to exist. So it isn't a matter of Mr. Stapler being "confused," he's simply using a less-compelling example than he could be. Where semantic tagging becomes more useful is in situations where categories don't exist; let's say you remember hearing about a film actress who also writes mystery novels, but you don't remember her name. Wikipedia doesn't have a category for "film actress mystery authors," but with semantic tagging, it's a simple matter to apply the "film actress" tag and then the "mystery author" tag to the bio in question, and voila, the person is easily found.

I'm not concerned at all with how Wikipedia's category system works or is used, just pointing that the term semantic web applies to the tags surrounding html elements, such as the substitution of <em> for <i>. What is a browser supposed to make of a <mystery author> tag?

[Ritchie333]

Is Eric ever right about anything?

I believe his opinion that Sandstein can sometimes be a bit over-eager to block someone has merit.

[C&B]

Sandstein Est Nutwad

[Giraffe Stapler]

Please read what I say before you criticise me for not saying something. I say very clearly that there may be people "who regard themselves as neither male or female for whatever reason".

I am deeply sorry that I have upset you. Please read my statement as "If one thinks that people only come in two flavors, one hasn't been paying attention etc". My apologies if you thought it was directed at you personally. I hope we are still friends.

[Giraffe Stapler]

One problem with semantic tagging is that you have to ensure that if there is a male/female split, there is also a not known or not applicable category. Otherwise, if you ook for male porn stars and then female porn stars, you'll miss ones where the sex is unknown or who regard themselves as neither male or female for whatever reason. (Yes, that's unlikely for porn stars, but would certainly be relevant to novelists.)

That's not a problem with semantic tagging, it's a problem with trying to pigeonhole things. Semantic tagging would actually be better for this than categories because you wouldn't have a "male porn performer" tag, you would have a "porn performer" tag, If you wanted to find all the male porn performers, you would look for people who are tagged as porn performers and tagged as male. Of course, you may still encounter issues with sex and gender, but that's on you. If you think people only come in two flavors, you haven't been paying attention the past few decades.

There seems to be some confusion in your mind about what semantic tagging actually is, as what you're describing is in no way different from using categories.

I was clumsy in my description but I thought it was sufficient for a very quick example. On one level categories and semantic tagging aren't different - they are both putting things into boxes. It's about defining the boxes and the relationships between boxes that makes the difference.

Poetlister starts from the premise that "One problem with semantic tagging is that you have to ensure that if there is a male/female split". This is simply not the case and I have no idea where he gets that idea. If you were using semantic tagging you should be able to easily find out which sexes or genders were represented in your population of porn performers (assuming you wanted to do a breakdown by sex and/or gender).

[Poetlister]

Sandstein Est Nutwad

I think it sounds better in correct German: Er ist ein Verrückter.

[Eric Corbett]

I was clumsy in my description but I thought it was sufficient for a very quick example. On one level categories and semantic tagging aren't different - they are both putting things into boxes. It's about defining the boxes and the relationships between boxes that makes the difference.

Poetlister starts from the premise that "One problem with semantic tagging is that you have to ensure that if there is a male/female split". This is simply not the case and I have no idea where he gets that idea. If you were using semantic tagging you should be able to easily find out which sexes or genders were represented in your population of porn performers (assuming you wanted to do a breakdown by sex and/or gender).

I'm still not following you. The semantic tags would be in the body of the HTML, for the benefit of the browser so to speak, so how does that help anything?

[C&B]

Sandstein Est Nutwad

I think it sounds better in correct German: Er ist ein Verrückter.

tasty translation?!

[Giraffe Stapler]

I'm still not following you. The semantic tags would be in the body of the HTML, for the benefit of the browser so to speak, so how does that help anything?

We are talking about slightly different things. You are talking about the "semantic web". I am talking about something like Freebase, Wikidata, or whatever drives Google's knowledge panel. Feel free to tell me how confused I am.

[Eric Corbett]

I'm still not following you. The semantic tags would be in the body of the HTML, for the benefit of the browser so to speak, so how does that help anything?

We are talking about slightly different things. You are talking about the "semantic web". I am talking about something like Freebase, Wikidata, or whatever drives Google's knowledge panel. Feel free to tell me how confused I am.

You used the phrase "semantic tagging", so what is it that you're proposing is tagged?

[Midsize Jake]

You used the phrase "semantic tagging", so what is it that you're proposing is tagged?

Ah, I think I see the problem here. You're going by the specific definition of the term as it applies to HTML encoding only, and we're all using the more general definition. It's confusing because there are lots of documents out there like this one from the W3 Consortium that use both the specific and general definitions almost interchangeably.

Anyway, you're correct in that with a properly implemented semantic-tagging scheme, there would indeed be HTML tags in the page to identify what the page content refers to, but in a more general sense from the reader's perspective, the whole system would work a lot like online shopping does now, where you choose the type of kitchen appliance, then the manufacturer, then the finish, then the price range, and so on until you find the perfect toaster or blender or whatever. We're talking mostly about the interface elements required to make all this work, and you're talking about the encoding scheme required to make it all work, right? Simple misunderstanding.

[Eric Corbett]

You used the phrase "semantic tagging", so what is it that you're proposing is tagged?

Ah, I think I see the problem here. You're going by the specific definition of the term as it applies to HTML encoding only, and we're all using the more general definition. It's confusing because there are lots of documents out there like this one from the W3 Consortium that use both the specific and general definitions almost interchangeably.

Anyway, you're correct in that with a properly implemented semantic-tagging scheme, there would indeed be HTML tags in the page to identify what the page content refers to, but in a more general sense from the reader's perspective, the whole system would work a lot like online shopping does now, where you choose the type of kitchen appliance, then the manufacturer, then the finish, then the price range, and so on until you find the perfect toaster or blender or whatever. We're talking mostly about the interface elements required to make all this work, and you're talking about the encoding scheme required to make it all work, right? Simple misunderstanding.

That's kind of what I'm saying. The semantic web is about tagging within html documents, which obviously doesn't address the issue of searching for "male pornstars", or "fictional authors". To take your example of the price range of a kitchen appliance, for instance, the pages describing each appliance could indeed have a semantic tag of <price>, but where would the semantics of "range of prices" be implemented? Currently that would be in a PHP script or similar, which would interrogate a database of products, or categories of product. So the semantics of "range of prices" needs to be somewhere else to be any different from what we've been doing for donkey's years.

[Eric Corbett]

Is Eric ever right about anything?

I believe his opinion that Sandstein can sometimes be a bit over-eager to block someone has merit.

Well, my belief is that Sandstein is always over-eager to block, and even gets some sexual gratification from exerting his undoubted power.

[Beeblebrox]

When i was on arbcom I thought of Sandstein as our junkyard dog. Helpful to have around, good at chasing off the riffraff, but don't get your hand near his mouth if you want to keep it.

[Randy from Boise]

Is Eric ever right about anything?

I believe his opinion that Sandstein can sometimes be a bit over-eager to block someone has merit.

Well, my belief is that Sandstein is always over-eager to block, and even gets some sexual gratification from exerting his undoubted power.

See, Eric, you and I agree on stuff sometimes...

RfB

[Midsize Jake]

That's kind of what I'm saying. The semantic web is about tagging within html documents, which obviously doesn't address the issue of searching for "male pornstars", or "fictional authors". To take your example of the price range of a kitchen appliance, for instance, the pages describing each appliance could indeed have a semantic tag of <price>, but where would the semantics of "range of prices" be implemented? Currently that would be in a PHP script or similar, which would interrogate a database of products, or categories of product. So the semantics of "range of prices" needs to be somewhere else to be any different from what we've been doing for donkey's years.

I believe we're still talking about two different aspects of the same thing. On Wikipedia there are separate articles for Semantic web (T-H-L) and Semantic wiki (T-H-L), and they're technically separate concepts, but both use semantic tagging; both represent attempts to impose structure on a fundamentally unstructured corpus of data. (And they're both included in the inevitable template.) The word "tagging" refers to multiple things that are related here - the individual tags, the act of applying the tags to the pages/articles, and the "ontology" (or definitional hierarchy) of the system, and the overall general concept, among others.
As for price ranges, that's just a matter of interface design/coding, so it was actually a bad example (sorry).

[Eric Corbett]

Interesting that you choose to support your argument with just about one of the weakest articles I've ever seen on the subject of semantic webs; what the hell has a "semantic wiki" got to do with anything?

There is absolutely nothing new here that hasn't been done for donkey's years by the use of categories in one form or another; misrepresenting it as "semantic tagging" is simply ludicrous. You may perhaps one day be able to construct a useful ontology by making use of semantic tags, but that assumes a stable system of tags and some kind of bot able to harvest those tags, construct that ontology, and store it somewhere accessible.

[Vigilant]

Interesting that you choose to support your argument with just about one of the weakest articles I've ever seen on the subject of semantic webs; what the hell has a "semantic wiki" got to do with anything?

There is absolutely nothing new here that hasn't been done for donkey's years by the use of categories in one form or another; misrepresenting it as "semantic tagging" is simply ludicrous. You may perhaps one day be able to construct a useful ontology by making use of semantic tags, but that assumes a stable system of tags and some kind of bot able to harvest those tags, construct that ontology, and store it somewhere accessible.

It's entirely clear you have no experience working with big data or modern data storage.