Wikipediocracy

I can't find a thread on this, and I keep mislaying where I saw this brilliant summary of the ridiculous state of affairs regarding infoboxes on Wikipedia, so I'm just going to park it here. Indeed, on reflection, it might not even be this particular summary I'm thinking of - anyway, somewhere out there is a hilarious description of why, if you look at enough of Wikipedia's article talk pages, or if you follow certain of the asshole 'content creators' long enough (SchroCat, Dr. Blofeld, SagaciousPhil etc), you will eventually stumble on a pathetic squabble about whether to add or remove an infobox.

As most people here will likely already know, the issue of whether infoboxes are allowed or not was officially settled by Arbcom in 2013 as 'what the fuck you asking us for?' - Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Infoboxes (T-H-L) - they found they are neither mandatory nor banned - and whether to use one is meant to be settled by article talk page discussion focused on the specific merits of use in that instance. Showing all the insight into the nature of their own project that we have come to expect, and a rather spectacular ignorance of the fact that infoboxes are, like the Manual of Style, something whose merits really only stands or falls on a 'use consistently or never' basis, for some reason the arbitrators expected this would be sage advice that the Wikipediots would heed, and such discussions wouldn't simply end up rehashing the generic arguments which had already led to the case. The summary below shows what's really happened since the case.

It's from Kraxler (T-C-L), and appeared in April 2015 in a dispute at Talk:Laurence Olivier (T-H-L)

The stated reason is that in featured articles the WP:LEDE is sufficiently expanded to contain all info that usually appears in an infobox. This makes the infobox redundant and obstructive. The above discussion, as all discussions on infoboxes, has evolved to become another fundamental debate about infoboxes in general. About half the people here, on Wikipedia, believe in infoboxes; the other half does not believe in infoboxes. The first half says that all articles need an infobox, without exception, if not, Wikipedia and the world will end, and we all will be doomed. The latter half says that infoboxes are unnecessary, unencyclopedic, ugly and evil, and must be removed from all articles to make Wikipedia a better place. No technical discussion of the merits of an infobox at a particular article can usually be had. This discussion is required under the guidelines, see WP:Infobox (T-H-L), but usually leads nowhere, there is always no consensus, so the status quo should be preserved, under the no-WP:Consensus rule. The status quo here is "no infobox", this status quo was established by a group of editors, not any single pro- or contra-infobox warrior, and was part of an FA review. Therefore, it must be respected as the status quo. The general situation is that neither pro-infoboxers nor contra-infoboxers will ever win over the other side, never. It's like Catholics and Protestants, or Jews and Muslims, they will forever say their side is right no matter what. We will have to live with that, and hope for two things: that at one or the other article a technical argument for or against an infobox is had, and that there be the smallest number of articles possible where an argument about infoboxes is started. Maybe you have wondered why some articles have infoboxes and others don't. Well, the original creator decides first whether to add one or not. Later on, some infobox-warrior comes along and chnages that, either adding or removing it. That should not be done without a discussion first. That discussion will usually end in "no consensus", and the status quo should be preserved, as mentioned above. During the discussion the losing party always accuses the creator, and/or those who side with him of WP:OWNership, as done here above. That is wrong. The ownership guideline refers to content. Infoboxes are not content proper, it is a duplication of content already included in the article. The actual info of the article will be the same, with or without infobox. Thus the infobox is a question of "format". Format is chosen by the original creator. Those who write up Wikipedia are volunteers, they don't get any money for it, and since the articles are not signed (like in academic papers), they also don't get any recognition. For that reason, out of deference to the voluntary work contributed by any original creator, we should respect their editorial format decision whether to add or not to add an infobox.

Although an accurate summary in my observations, it's not quite right - individual disputes can be won by declaring a 'consensus' after you've attracted enough like-minded people to the article and bullied, brow-beaten, and generally intimidated any opposition - you know, just like any other normal 'consensus' based discussion in an out of the way little watched area. For this reason, even the preference of the original creator can be overturned, either by brute force, or through the rather disingenuous tactic of claiming that the article was in a neglected state before a whole raft of improvements were made, which just happened to add/remove a box as part of that process. It is for this reason that these disputes are still going on - I believe I even saw Dr. Blofeld say in one that he's going to keep initiating such a 'discussion' on all actor biographies as he goes around making other improvements, with the goal of eradicating them all. Others have made similar vows to never stop until the war is won, one article at a time.

This is a particular favourite area of study of mine, because you can almost be guaranteed the squabble will contain both lengthy examples of free-fire disrespect between 'established' editors, replete with epic levels of hypocrisy, dishonesty, and general nonsense, with not an admin in sight, not even good guy Dennis 'all about the content' Brown, but you will also often see lost and bemused newcomers or editors who never even knew there was a controversy over such things, being torn to shreds by assholes like Cassiano. I may flesh out a fuller post later.....in many ways it's the perfect microcosm of just how dysfunctional Wikipedia can be.....but for the time being, I suggest just pointing and laughing at the fact this state of affairs is just allowed to run and run, in the process displaying the hostile nature of Wikipedia to all and sundry across multiple article talk pages, without any permanent resolution in sight.....

Look into Andy Mabbett aka Pigsonthewing (T-C-L)

Whack a doodle

MMAR wrote:... assholes like Cassiano.

Who he? Some kind of infobox afficionado? Don't think you ever mentioned him before.

Jim wrote:

MMAR wrote:... assholes like Cassiano.

Who he? Some kind of infobox afficionado? Don't think you ever mentioned him before.

Oh, come on now... We can't expect Morphing User to know everything from birth, can we? Our English friend has obviously worked really, really hard to develop his two page Enemies List — these things take time and our intrepid newbie has done nothing but study since his May 3, 2015 departure from the World of Wiki. The reason he hasn't shrieked about "assholes like Cassiano" before is because he's only recently learned about him in the course of his 14-hour days reading diffs.

Remember, this is a newcomer to WP who just popped by on April 16, 2015. "I came to Wikipedia to improve the Gunther Holtorf (T-H-L) article, which was woeful," he testifies on his WP user page, written on April 25, eight days before his 17 day Wikipedia career came to an abrupt end... Please cut him some slack!

RfB

Jim wrote:

MMAR wrote:... assholes like Cassiano.

Who he? Some kind of infobox afficionado? Don't think you ever mentioned him before.

Cassianto is the prototypical example of an editor on Wikipedia who is evidently free to act as rudely as he likes, up to and including obvious personal attacks, without fear of sanction from any administrator, presumably because of his status as a 'content creator', or because of the fear of drama that blocking him would cause, or alternatively a specific fear on the part of individual admins that if they act against him, they will be subjected to an unending campaign of harassment, as seen in how he and some of his wiki-friends have been agitating against Chillum for months.

Invoking his name is a convenient short-hand for this meme, nothing more, nothing less. If you know of someone else, another highly active editor, who better fulfills this role, then by all means, give me their name, and I shall gladly use it instead. The sad truth of the matter is you don't know, because whatever it is you think you do here, you long ago stopped being concerned with the business of Wikipedia criticism, and the majority of your posts here now are just, well, noise.

Now, I know you didn't want to know any of this, I know you were just trying to continue to push your apparent belief that I have some personal grudge against Cassianto, and am somehow trying to use this forum to further that cause. And obviously there's nothing in the world that's going to stop you from pursuing this nonsense, because, well, you're you, and if you believe it, it must be true, because you're just that sort of person. But I thought I'd clarify anyway, for interested observers.

I shall close on our familiar parting theme: You don't know me. You think you do, but you don't. Maybe Zoloft can sort me out a doohicky that just posts this line whenever you reply to me.

Randy from Boise wrote:

Jim wrote:

MMAR wrote:... assholes like Cassiano.

Who he? Some kind of infobox afficionado? Don't think you ever mentioned him before.

Oh, come on now... We can't expect Morphing User to know everything from birth, can we? Our English friend has obviously worked really, really hard to develop his two page Enemies List — these things take time and our intrepid newbie has done nothing but study since his May 3, 2015 departure from the World of Wiki. The reason he hasn't shrieked about "assholes like Cassiano" before is because he's only recently learned about him in the course of his 14-hour days reading diffs.

Remember, this is a newcomer to WP who just popped by on April 16, 2015. "I came to Wikipedia to improve the Gunther Holtorf (T-H-L) article, which was woeful," he testifies on his WP user page, written on April 25, eight days before his 17 day Wikipedia career came to an abrupt end... Please cut him some slack!

RfB

Jealousy is not a good look for you Carrite. Maybe if you quit being a Wikipedian and went full time into the critic business, you'd be as good as it as I am.

Vigilant wrote:Look into Andy Mabbett aka Pigsonthewing (T-C-L)
Whack a doodle

Andy changed the color in my userbox (used only in my user space)

to something in a 64-color crayola-crayon set, apparently to enforce his vision of a guideline for color (in article space), destroying the RED verisimilitude.

Carrite reverted him twice, but gave up.

Andy's OCD is frightening, and he lacks the charm of the Trotskyists with their newspapers and 20-minute questions..

Randy from Boise wrote:

Jim wrote:

MMAR wrote:... assholes like Cassiano.

Who he? Some kind of infobox afficionado? Don't think you ever mentioned him before.

Oh, come on now... We can't expect Morphing User to know everything from birth, can we? Our English friend has obviously worked really, really hard to develop his two page Enemies List — these things take time and our intrepid newbie has done nothing but study since his May 3, 2015 departure from the World of Wiki. The reason he hasn't shrieked about "assholes like Cassiano" before is because he's only recently learned about him in the course of his 14-hour days reading diffs.

Remember, this is a newcomer to WP who just popped by on April 16, 2015. "I came to Wikipedia to improve the Gunther Holtorf (T-H-L) article, which was woeful," he testifies on his WP user page, written on April 25, eight days before his 17 day Wikipedia career came to an abrupt end... Please cut him some slack!

RfB

(Sorry about my senile rant a while back, everyone).

I saw this in passing and thought it a bit more pointed than I care to see. But it did move me for the first time to research what MMAR's beef with Drmies actually is. First of all, but perhaps I'm not reading the Talk page history right, MMAR's editing career lasted just two days. Is that right? I see his earliest contributions 16 April and his block 17 April?

The issue seems to be that MMAR expanded the Gunther Holtorf (T-H-L) article somewhat in what I believe wikijargon calls a personal reflective manner, but it was all apparently sourced from already cited material. Drmies took exception to that and cut it all out here and here. MMAR restored the deleted material and Drmies reverted him with this and the edit comment "no. promotional, unencyclopedic chit-chat. save it for your facebook page". MMAR went nuclear in several higher dimensions at once with this sort of thing, and not unsurprisingly was blocked in short order.

So I don't know the history here. What was Drmies, the world's leading scholar on sexual perversity in Chaucerian literature, doing at Gunther Holtorf (T-H-L) and why was he so affronted by what at worst were slightly naff newbie edits? Why didn't he discuss it first with MMAR on his Talk page, or perhaps slap the reflective template thingy on the article. His actions strike me as quite aggressive and very rude.

Is Drmies an avowed Marxist by the way? Just curious.

Larkin wrote:Is Drmies an avowed Marxist by the way? Just curious.

What a very odd question. Do you think you might elaborate?

Jim wrote:

Larkin wrote:Is Drmies an avowed Marxist by the way? Just curious.

What a very odd question. Do you think you might elaborate?

The poet Larkin was a pornography gormand, apparently, according to a profile of his friend Robert Conquest. Does that make Philip Larkin a Marxist?

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Presumably Drmies is aware of phenomena described as busiiness cycles and thinks that class struggle is sometimes important. I've never heard him defend the Labour theory of value.

Larkin wrote:

Randy from Boise wrote:

Jim wrote:

MMAR wrote:... assholes like Cassiano.

Who he? Some kind of infobox afficionado? Don't think you ever mentioned him before.

Oh, come on now... We can't expect Morphing User to know everything from birth, can we? Our English friend has obviously worked really, really hard to develop his two page Enemies List — these things take time and our intrepid newbie has done nothing but study since his May 3, 2015 departure from the World of Wiki. The reason he hasn't shrieked about "assholes like Cassiano" before is because he's only recently learned about him in the course of his 14-hour days reading diffs.

Remember, this is a newcomer to WP who just popped by on April 16, 2015. "I came to Wikipedia to improve the Gunther Holtorf (T-H-L) article, which was woeful," he testifies on his WP user page, written on April 25, eight days before his 17 day Wikipedia career came to an abrupt end... Please cut him some slack!

RfB

(Sorry about my senile rant a while back, everyone).

I saw this in passing and thought it a bit more pointed than I care to see. But it did move me for the first time to research what MMAR's beef with Drmies actually is. First of all, but perhaps I'm not reading the Talk page history right, MMAR's editing career lasted just two days. Is that right? I see his earliest contributions 16 April and his block 17 April?

The issue seems to be that MMAR expanded the Gunther Holtorf (T-H-L) article somewhat in what I believe wikijargon calls a personal reflective manner, but it was all apparently sourced from already cited material. Drmies took exception to that and cut it all out here and here. MMAR restored the deleted material and Drmies reverted him with this and the edit comment "no. promotional, unencyclopedic chit-chat. save it for your facebook page". MMAR went nuclear in several higher dimensions at once with this sort of thing, and not unsurprisingly was blocked in short order.

So I don't know the history here. What was Drmies, the world's leading scholar on sexual perversity in Chaucerian literature, doing at Gunther Holtorf (T-H-L) and why was he so affronted by what at worst were slightly naff newbie edits? Why didn't he discuss it first with MMAR on his Talk page, or perhaps slap the reflective template thingy on the article. His actions strike me as quite aggressive and very rude.

Is Drmies an avowed Marxist by the way? Just curious.

As far as I can tell, a big part of his Wikipedia activity is running around hacking out big chunks of articles just like the way he did here. I can only assume I was just one of his random targets, he certainly hadn't edited that page before. I went nuclear, as you put it, not only for his general approach, but because he told some quite damaging lies about my edits, that everybody else just swallowed, apparently on just the assumption that it's Drmies, who 'doesn't lie'. I've explained it all before elsewhere, somewhere.

Jim wrote:

Larkin wrote:Is Drmies an avowed Marxist by the way? Just curious.

What a very odd question. Do you think you might elaborate?

Is he a Marxist? Does he openly acknowledge it?

Moral Hazard wrote:

Jim wrote:

Larkin wrote:Is Drmies an avowed Marxist by the way? Just curious.

What a very odd question. Do you think you might elaborate?

The poet Larkin was a pornography gormand, apparently, according to a profile of his friend Robert Conquest. Does that make Philip Larkin a Marxist?

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Presumably Drmies is aware of phenomena described as busiiness cycles and thinks that class struggle is sometimes important. I've never heard him defend the Labour theory of value.

Also testified by Kingsley Amies. Jake's Thing (T-H-L) one of K's more amusing novels I think. In it he describes that thing you see in beaver shots as "giraffe ears". Stuck with me all these 30+ years.

Is Drmies a pornography gormand then? That would do just as well. He was certainly very keen on blocking C1cada from editing on Revenge porn (T-H-L), where in fact C's edits were very even handed as he does recognize there are real issues involving freedom of speech.

I do a party piece when jollily drunk reciting Larkin's poem in verdomme Dutch

Ze naaien je op, je pa en moe ...

Family thing, sort of, but not the Larkin family as it happens. I admire [i]Aubade[/i] most.

Larkin wrote:

Moral Hazard wrote:

Jim wrote:

Larkin wrote:Is Drmies an avowed Marxist by the way? Just curious.

What a very odd question. Do you think you might elaborate?

The poet Larkin was a pornography gormand, apparently, according to a profile of his friend Robert Conquest. Does that make Philip Larkin a Marxist?

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Presumably Drmies is aware of phenomena described as busiiness cycles and thinks that class struggle is sometimes important. I've never heard him defend the Labour theory of value.

Also testified by Kingsley Amies. Jake's Thing (T-H-L) one of K's more amusing novels I think. In it he describes that thing you see in beaver shots as "giraffe ears". Stuck with me all these 30+ years.

Is Drmies a pornography gormand then? That would do just as well. He was certainly very keen on blocking C1cada from editing on Revenge porn (T-H-L), where in fact C's edits were very even handed as he does recognize there are real issues involving freedom of speech.

I do a party piece when jollily drunk reciting Larkin's poem in verdomme Dutch

Ze naaien je op, je pa en moe ...

Family thing, sort of, but not the Larkin family as it happens. I admire [i]Aubade[/i] most.

I don't remember Drmies ever discussing pornography. You wrote that he was an expert on sexual perversion and (bump) then asked whether he was a Marxist. I don't see a connection, and I gave the counter-examples of a conservative poet and a historian who told the truth about Leninism and the Soviet Union who indulged interests in pornography. Why ask about Marxism?

Moral Hazard wrote:

Larkin wrote:

Moral Hazard wrote:

Jim wrote:

Larkin wrote:Is Drmies an avowed Marxist by the way? Just curious.

What a very odd question. Do you think you might elaborate?

The poet Larkin was a pornography gormand, apparently, according to a profile of his friend Robert Conquest. Does that make Philip Larkin a Marxist?

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Presumably Drmies is aware of phenomena described as busiiness cycles and thinks that class struggle is sometimes important. I've never heard him defend the Labour theory of value.

Also testified by Kingsley Amies. Jake's Thing (T-H-L) one of K's more amusing novels I think. In it he describes that thing you see in beaver shots as "giraffe ears". Stuck with me all these 30+ years.

Is Drmies a pornography gormand then? That would do just as well. He was certainly very keen on blocking C1cada from editing on Revenge porn (T-H-L), where in fact C's edits were very even handed as he does recognize there are real issues involving freedom of speech.

I do a party piece when jollily drunk reciting Larkin's poem in verdomme Dutch

Ze naaien je op, je pa en moe ...

Family thing, sort of, but not the Larkin family as it happens. I admire [i]Aubade[/i] most.

I don't remember Drmies ever discussing pornography. You wrote that he was an expert on sexual perversion and (bump) then asked whether he was a Marxist. I don't see a connection, and I gave the counter-examples of a conservative poet and a historian who told the truth about Leninism and the Soviet Union who indulged interests in pornography. Why ask about Marxism?

Perversity. An ironic reflection on his PhD thesis. No bump. RfB is a Marxist. That's all.

I'm in agreement with MMAR here. Infoboxes is the type of thing that should be decided at the level of the Manual of Style and the current madness of deciding it on an article by article basis is just endless edit war material with no justification I can understand.

Zironic wrote:I'm in agreement with MMAR here. Infoboxes is the type of thing that should be decided at the level of the Manual of Style and the current madness of deciding it on an article by article basis is just endless edit war material with no justification I can understand.

Yes, thank god the MoS people are so sane and sedate.

Vigilant wrote: Yes, thank god the MoS people are so sane and sedate.

I don't actually know anything about the people involved with the MoS, all I know is that it's really weird to make major layout decisions on a per-article basis.

Zironic wrote:

Vigilant wrote: Yes, thank god the MoS people are so sane and sedate.

I don't actually know anything about the people involved with the MoS, all I know is that it's really weird to make major layout decisions on a per-article basis.

This is true and you would think that the people who congregate at a page entitled "Manual of Style" would be the efficient grey people of the organization, engineers, who look for the most appropriate and organizationally correct MoS and then implement it once so you didn't have to change everything all the time.

Sadly, no.

Moral Hazard wrote:

Vigilant wrote:Look into Andy Mabbett aka Pigsonthewing (T-C-L)
Whack a doodle

Andy changed the color in my userbox (used only in my user space)

Retired,
Extremely
Dangerous

to something in a 64-color crayola-crayon set, apparently to enforce his vision of a guideline for color (in article space), destroying the RED verisimilitude.

Carrite reverted him twice, but gave up.

Update:
A few days after I posted this, salt of the earth (who has not lost her saltiness...) Yngvadottir (T-C-L) kindly restored the RED's red. Thanks, Yngvadottir! I'm tickled pink.


Yngvadottir noted that my infobox's blue lettering is an artefact of the links to the movies, RED and Taken. These links make the box self-documenting, as computer programs should strive to be, eliminating the problem of The Devil's Advocate (T-C-L) (or somebody else) having inserted disagreeable documentation against my intention and without my control, in my userspace.

Writers of encyclopaedias hate info boxes because they are so BASIC. Readers of encyclopaedias love them for the same reason. WP knows that readers should come first but its writers work for free and it doesn’t want to piss them off. Truly, who really goes to WP for volume? Sensible people go there only for basic facts that can’t easily be misrepresented i.e. they want the stuff that gets boxed. So I say keep the boxes and take the wind away from the windmills. I would break a lance on them if I could but some of those windmills beat me up and threw me out some years ago (thank God).

Ross McPherson wrote:Writers of encyclopaedias hate info boxes because they are so BASIC. Readers of encyclopaedias love them for the same reason. WP knows that readers should come first but its writers work for free and it doesn’t want to piss them off. Truly, who really goes to WP for volume? Sensible people go there only for basic facts that can’t easily be misrepresented i.e. they want the stuff that gets boxed. So I say keep the boxes and take the wind away from the windmills. I would break a lance on them if I could but some of those windmills beat me up and threw me out some years ago (thank God).

That's a good analysis.

One of the problems with vanity publishers (who MMAR described as "asshole content creators") is that they want users to read their crappy articles, and try to force them to do so by removing summary boxes.

I've started two articles on Wikipedia and fully accept that few people will ever read my shit. All articles should have summary boxes.

Singora wrote:That's a good analysis.

One of the problems ... is that they want users to read their crappy articles, and try to force them to do so by removing summary boxes.

I've started two articles on Wikipedia and fully accept that few people will ever read my shit. All articles should have summary boxes.

That's not a bad analysis by you as to the reason for the conflict, either: "No, you may not idly browse, you must read my deathless prose, the sweat of my brow."

Jim wrote:

Singora wrote:That's a good analysis.

One of the problems ... is that they want users to read their crappy articles, and try to force them to do so by removing summary boxes.

I've started two articles on Wikipedia and fully accept that few people will ever read my shit. All articles should have summary boxes.

That's not a bad analysis by you as to the reason for the conflict, either: "No, you may not idly browse, you must read my deathless prose, the sweat of my brow."

Possibly the sweat originated lower down.

Ross McPherson wrote:Writers of encyclopaedias hate info boxes because they are so BASIC. Readers of encyclopaedias love them for the same reason. WP knows that readers should come first but its writers work for free and it doesn’t want to piss them off. Truly, who really goes to WP for volume? Sensible people go there only for basic facts that can’t easily be misrepresented i.e. they want the stuff that gets boxed. So I say keep the boxes and take the wind away from the windmills. I would break a lance on them if I could but some of those windmills beat me up and threw me out some years ago (thank God).

I admit it that I love infoboxes but I also read articles.

But I find it extremely frustrating that for musicians, you have to read through voluminous paragraphs about their recording history with this label or that recording company to just find out the basics of their personal life which are often buried in areas devoted to their career. I remember when I first started regularly editing, I asked on an article talk page whether a certain musician had a family and some outraged editor said, "Who cares! It has nothing to do with their music." Some people react as if just acknowledging that a person is married and has kids (or has neither) is tabloid journalism when those facts might have a big influence on their artistry.

One of our shy residents asked for examples of music influenced by personal relationships, but seems to have had second thoughts, and deleted his question. Nonetheless, my answer remains:


The best example would be The Beautiful South (T-H-L)'s Paul Heaton (T-H-L), who wrote a song about all the money made from songs inspired by the tears of ex girlfriends.

"Song For Whoever"

I love you from the bottom of my pencil case
I love you in the songs I write and sing
Love you because you put me in my rightful place
And I love the PRS cheques that you bring

Cheap, never cheap
I'll sing you songs till you're asleep
When you've gone upstairs I'll creep
And write it all down
Down, down, down...

Oh Shirley, oh Deborah, oh Julie, oh Jane
I wrote so many songs about you
I forget your name (I forget your name)
Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue,
Deborah, Annabel, too (I forget your name)
Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue,
Deborah, Annabel, too (I forget your name)

I love you from the bottom of my pencil case
I love the way you never ask me why
I love to write about each wrinkle on your face
And I love you till my fountain pen runs dry

Deep so deep,
The number one I hope to reap
Depends upon the tears you weep,
So cry, lovey cry
Cry, cry, cry

Oh Cathy, oh Alison, oh Phillipa, oh Sue
You made me so much money,
I wrote this song for you (I wrote this song for you)
Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue,
Deborah, Annabel, too (I wrote this song for you)
Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue,
Deborah, Annabel, too (I wrote this song for you)

Oh Cathy, oh Alison, oh Phillipa, oh Sue
You made me so much money,
I wrote this song for you (I wrote this song for you)
Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue,
Deborah, Annabel, too (I wrote this song for you)
Jennifer, Alison, Phillipa, Sue,
Deborah, Annabel, too (I wrote this song for you)

For you, for you... I wrote this song for you

So let me talk about Mary, a sad story,
I turned her grief into glory
So let me talk about Mary, a sad story,
I turned her grief into glory
Late at night, by the typewriter light
She ripped his ribbon to shreds
Late at night, by the typewriter light
She ripped his ribbon to shreds

So let me talk about Mary, a sad story,
I turned her grief into glory
So let me talk about Mary, a sad story,
I turned her grief into glory
Late at night, by the typewriter light
She ripped his ribbon to shreds
Late at night, by the typewriter light
She ripped his ribbon to shreds

So let me talk about Mary, a sad, sad, sad story,
I turned her grief into glory
So let me talk about Mary, a sad story,
I turned her grief into glory
Late at night, by the typewriter light
She ripped his ribbon to shreds
Late at night, by the typewriter light
She ripped his ribbon to shreds

I wrote this song for you

It was not his most successful feminist anthem.

Robert Fripp recorded several poems written by his then girlfriend (RIP), who was killed in the Locherbie bombing. Daryl Hall provided the vocals on the original (and on the recording on his own Sacred Songs; Fripp's album was delayed by the evil record-company, who thought it would hurt Hall's career, and it may have been among the tracks that had other singers, because of said evil record-company.

Singora wrote:All articles should have summary boxes.

OK, if you're so clever. Write me a "summary box" for the random article Dinting Viaduct (T-H-L).

Peryglus wrote:

Singora wrote:All articles should have summary boxes.

OK, if you're so clever. Write me a "summary box" for the random article Dinting Viaduct (T-H-L).

That doesn't sound particularly difficult. What am I missing here? Is there a difference between an "infobox" and a "summary box"?

thekohser wrote:

Peryglus wrote:

Singora wrote:All articles should have summary boxes.

OK, if you're so clever. Write me a "summary box" for the random article Dinting Viaduct (T-H-L).

That doesn't sound particularly difficult. What am I missing here? Is there a difference between an "infobox" and a "summary box"?

No.

Singora wrote:All articles should have summary boxes.

Very many articles are rather pointless stubs, so a summary box would be useless.

Ross McPherson wrote:Writers of encyclopaedias hate info boxes because they are so BASIC. Readers of encyclopaedias love them for the same reason. WP knows that readers should come first but its writers work for free and it doesn’t want to piss them off. Truly, who really goes to WP for volume? Sensible people go there only for basic facts that can’t easily be misrepresented i.e. they want the stuff that gets boxed. So I say keep the boxes and take the wind away from the windmills. I would break a lance on them if I could but some of those windmills beat me up and threw me out some years ago (thank God).

Actually I consider myself a writer of encyclopaedias and I prefer to have the infobox on the article. I think the nonsense of do or don't have one is just a couple people causing drama for the sake of it because, in the grand scheme of things, who cares! But, IMO, we should be doing things for the benefit of the readers and as you state, and I agree with wholeheartedly, they help the reader by summarizing the article.

Kumioko wrote:But, IMO, we should be doing things for the benefit of the readers

Every editor who is seriously there to build an encyclopaedia will obviously have that attitude. However, as we all know, there are a few editors who have their own agendas.

Poetlister wrote:

Kumioko wrote:But, IMO, we should be doing things for the benefit of the readers

Every editor who is seriously there to build an encyclopaedia will obviously have that attitude. However, as we all know, there are a few editors who have their own agendas.

More than a few IMO.

MMAR wrote: All articles should have summary boxes.

All summary boxes should have infoboxes.

@ Singora & Kumioko

Don't get me wrong - I also wrote some lengthy articles. In fact I bought $1 000 worth of scholarly books just before I got thrown out, fully intending to use them at WP. I saw WP as a great way for the self-taught like me to set essays for themselves, and I think most of its contributors are like that. Real experts have got better things to do with their expertise than mess about in that environment. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I think WP is more trouble than it is worth from any rational perspective.

My recipe for fixing that place is quite simple: structuring articles according to levels of complexity and accuracy, with the simplest level (i.e. the info box) rated as high probability of accuracy; the next level, a deeper summary (basically the lede) has a good probability of accuracy - and so on, down to the most complex levels, rated as a highly uncertain level of accuracy. This way there is nothing to fight over really. The POV pushers all operate at the most complex, least accurate level, and if they want to fight for that honour - excellent.
Meanwhile the admins and Wiki-gnomes can focus on the easier levels, where it is easy to verify facts, rather than getting caught up in the wars that bedevil WP. If they want to do a really good job fixing WP, they can use some of their ill-gotten millions to hire experts to patrol the most complex layers of key articles.

But proposals like this are too much like common sense to get off the ground there, or some such proposal would have got off the ground long ago. Meanwhile Singora continue wasting your time at WP. It should help you develop a better sense of life's priorities once you get out of there. Kumioko, congratulations on getting busted for life. Don't go back.

Ross McPherson wrote: My recipe for fixing that place is quite simple: structuring articles according to levels of complexity and accuracy, with the simplest level (i.e. the info box) rated as high probability of accuracy; the next level, a deeper summary (basically the lede) has a good probability of accuracy - and so on, down to the most complex levels, rated as a highly uncertain level of accuracy. This way there is nothing to fight over really. The POV pushers all operate at the most complex, least accurate level, and if they want to fight for that honour - excellent.

In my experience, the area that the PoV pushers fight the hardest is the article lede.

Zironic wrote:

Ross McPherson wrote: My recipe for fixing that place is quite simple: structuring articles according to levels of complexity and accuracy, with the simplest level (i.e. the info box) rated as high probability of accuracy; the next level, a deeper summary (basically the lede) has a good probability of accuracy - and so on, down to the most complex levels, rated as a highly uncertain level of accuracy. This way there is nothing to fight over really. The POV pushers all operate at the most complex, least accurate level, and if they want to fight for that honour - excellent.

In my experience, the area that the PoV pushers fight the hardest is the article lede.

If they are fighting over it, it shouldn't be in the lede. Of course some will fight over anything, but the facts should be easy to verify that high up in the article.

Ross McPherson wrote:

Zironic wrote:

Ross McPherson wrote: My recipe for fixing that place is quite simple: structuring articles according to levels of complexity and accuracy, with the simplest level (i.e. the info box) rated as high probability of accuracy; the next level, a deeper summary (basically the lede) has a good probability of accuracy - and so on, down to the most complex levels, rated as a highly uncertain level of accuracy. This way there is nothing to fight over really. The POV pushers all operate at the most complex, least accurate level, and if they want to fight for that honour - excellent.

In my experience, the area that the PoV pushers fight the hardest is the article lede.

If they are fighting over it, it shouldn't be in the lede. Of course some will fight over anything, but the facts should be easy to verify that high up in the article.

Firstly, the lede will be the most-read bit, hence the most important one for POV pushers. Secondly, it's not necessarily the accuracy of the facts, but the weight given to them. To give a (hopefully non-controversial) example, the lede for Clint Eastwood (T-H-L) might or might not mention his time as mayor of some small town. A resident of the town might want that to be the first thing in the lede.

Poetlister wrote:

Ross McPherson wrote:

Zironic wrote:

Ross McPherson wrote: My recipe for fixing that place is quite simple: structuring articles according to levels of complexity and accuracy, with the simplest level (i.e. the info box) rated as high probability of accuracy; the next level, a deeper summary (basically the lede) has a good probability of accuracy - and so on, down to the most complex levels, rated as a highly uncertain level of accuracy. This way there is nothing to fight over really. The POV pushers all operate at the most complex, least accurate level, and if they want to fight for that honour - excellent.

In my experience, the area that the PoV pushers fight the hardest is the article lede.

If they are fighting over it, it shouldn't be in the lede. Of course some will fight over anything, but the facts should be easy to verify that high up in the article.

Firstly, the lede will be the most-read bit, hence the most important one for POV pushers. Secondly, it's not necessarily the accuracy of the facts, but the weight given to them. To give a (hopefully non-controversial) example, the lede for Clint Eastwood (T-H-L) might or might not mention his time as mayor of some small town. A resident of the town might want that to be the first thing in the lede.

I never fought anyone over the lede of an article. My main fight was trying to get rid of superfluous stubs that reflected the obsessive interests of POV types. After that, it was the body of the articles where I had problems. With your Clint Eastwood example, I think it is obvious to everyone that his mayorial pastime shouldn't open the article. It probably doesn't even belong in the lede but if it gets fought over there it should get demoted.

Articles should be like the universe. The top, visible structure is orderly. The lowest level is quantum foam, where very odd things happen, often against the laws of physics, such as the creation of matter. Structured that way, WP would become a good heuristic model of how things like 'knowledge' and 'certainty' actually develop.

Anyway, it is all academic to me now since I am no longer there nor wish to be. But thanks for helping me flex my atrophying WP reflexes just a bit. It is like a frostbitten toe.

Ross McPherson wrote:With your Clint Eastwood example, I think it is obvious to everyone that his mayorial pastime shouldn't open the article. It probably doesn't even belong in the lede but if it gets fought over there it should get demoted.

Articles should be like the universe. The top, visible structure is orderly. The lowest level is quantum foam, where very odd things happen, often against the laws of physics, such as the creation of matter. Structured that way, WP would become a good heuristic model of how things like 'knowledge' and 'certainty' actually develop.

I haven't checked whether there has been that discussion about Clint Eastwood; it was just an indication of the sort of things that might happen. Alas, what we might think is obvious to everyone might not be so obvious to a POV pusher. Amd "should be" is a key phrase;

“If, of all words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are, 'It might have been,'
More sad are these we daily see:
'It is, but hadn't ought to be.”

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/730628- ... he-saddest

Kumioko wrote:

Ross McPherson wrote:Writers of encyclopaedias hate info boxes because they are so BASIC. Readers of encyclopaedias love them for the same reason. WP knows that readers should come first but its writers work for free and it doesn’t want to piss them off. Truly, who really goes to WP for volume? Sensible people go there only for basic facts that can’t easily be misrepresented i.e. they want the stuff that gets boxed. So I say keep the boxes and take the wind away from the windmills. I would break a lance on them if I could but some of those windmills beat me up and threw me out some years ago (thank God).

Actually I consider myself a writer of encyclopaedias and I prefer to have the infobox on the article. I think the nonsense of do or don't have one is just a couple people causing drama for the sake of it because, in the grand scheme of things, who cares! But, IMO, we should be doing things for the benefit of the readers and as you state, and I agree with wholeheartedly, they help the reader by summarizing the article.

Actually, I like infoboxes because they make the article look more attractive. Presentation is often underrated, especially by academic types (and I mean nothing pejorative about that label). Otherwise, I don't think they're necessary.

Aside from Infoboxes the bigger problem IMO is the over templating of articles in general. It seems like everything is a template. We have templates for templates that generate template templates. Its completely insane and unnecessary. Adding to that we now have the over luaizing of templates. Lua is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but we do not need to convert every template to Lua.

Kumioko wrote:Aside from Infoboxes the bigger problem IMO is the over templating of articles in general. It seems like everything is a template. We have templates for templates that generate template templates. Its completely insane and unnecessary. Adding to that we now have the over luaizing of templates. Lua is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but we do not need to convert every template to Lua.

Stay away from LISP (T-H-L) or von Neumann's set-theoretic model of the natural numbers (Natural_number#von_Neumann_construction (T-H-L)).


The decomposition of difficult tasks into components is important, as is the ability to synthesize larger systems from components.

Moral Hazard wrote:

Kumioko wrote:Aside from Infoboxes the bigger problem IMO is the over templating of articles in general. It seems like everything is a template. We have templates for templates that generate template templates. Its completely insane and unnecessary. Adding to that we now have the over luaizing of templates. Lua is a good thing, don't get me wrong, but we do not need to convert every template to Lua.

Stay away from LISP (T-H-L) or von Neumann's set-theoretic model of the natural numbers (Natural_number#von_Neumann_construction (T-H-L)).


The decomposition of difficult tasks into components is important, as is the ability to synthesize larger systems from components.

Yeah Lisp is a nightmare I hear. The folks who are good at that programming language are rare...but well paid.