Talk:Lighthouse and naval vessel urban legend

Strange origin date?

Does how this is done strike anyone as strange: The earliest known version of the joke appeared in a single-panel cartoon, reproduced from the London tabloid weekly The Humorist by the Canadian newspaper The Drumheller Review in 1931 If it was for citation reasons I could understand it (if the Canadian version could be cited but The Humorist not) but given that neither has a citation why mention the Canadian reproduction? It makes it sound like the reproduction was somehow the original, almost. Auto98uk (talk) 17:30, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

@Auto98uk: The cited source (once the graf was more together, making this clearer) is Snopes, which says: "Even older, a one-panel 1931 cartoon that appeared in the Canadian newspaper The Drumheller Review (but listing The Humorist of London, England, as its source) ..."

I think the idea is that no one's ever found a copy of the cited original, making the reproduction the oldest verifiable original, I guess. Daniel Case (talk) 18:05, 5 July 2019 (UTC)

Alterum exemplum...

Multiple editors have been trying to add a variation of this hoax (with this youtube video attached as the most recent source) to the Cape Finisterre Lighthouse article, since it was created almost ten years ago. Anyone know of any other lighthouse or ship articles this bogus anecdote may have also been added to? - wolf 07:23, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Wikilinks

@Daniel Case: MOS:OL says explicitly that major countries should not be wikilinked. Canada, Ireland, and Spain are major, well-known countries without anything to confuse readers. I could see linking to Eswatini because it recently changed its name, or to Tuvalu, which is very small and not well known among North Americans, but Spain? -- really? MOS:OL also says "Be conservative when linking within quotations", so linking Newfoundland within the supposed transcript (which already makes it clear that it is part of Canada) doesn't seem helpful, especially since the whole anecdote is fictional and the identity of the place is not important. Same comment about the link to the United States Fleet Forces Command -- it is clear that this is referring to the United States Navy in the Atlantic; the organizational structure of the Navy is hardly relevant here. As for rewriting "Washington State" to "the U.S. state of Washington", I don't think there's any real danger that readers would think that Washington is a state of Australia, Germany, Brazil, etc. Finally, MOS:OL says that common words understood by most readers should not be linked. For "lighthouse", the link to List of lighthouses in Newfoundland and Labrador is not helpful since (again) this is a fictional story and probably does not refer to any real lighthouse, while also violating the Easter Egg condition. For "egotism" and "cliché", this isn't useful since the article is not "particularly relevant to the context in the article" (unlike, say, articles about narcissism or literary style). Best, --Macrakis (talk) 15:08, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

I understand some of your points, but ... I would be mindful also of WP:NOTBLUE, or at least the principle behind it (more explicit in WP:POPE), when applying MOS:OL. In almost two decades of editing, I have learned the hard way not to underestimate the depth of readers' ignorance. We can't assume that readers outside North America will pick up the context clue that Newfoundland is part of Canada (Hell, we can't assume that Americans outside the Northeast will know that, unfortunately). Much as NOTBLUE makes the point that it's better to just cite something than argue about whether it's obvious enough without it, I feel it's just better to link these things than argue about whether we should.

Yes, I have enforced MOS:OL quite a bit myself. There are things we don't need to link, yes. I am not sure that all the items you point to are among them.

I would also point out that "relevance" is in the eye of the beholder. Maybe a reader would want to know about the U.S. Navy's command structure. Or what "egotism" is. And as for "cliché", well, ask a high school English teacher how intuitive that term is. Daniel Case (talk) 20:46, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

WP is not written for the illiterate or "deeply ignorant", and wikilinks are not intended to explain common placenames such as Canada and Ireland or words such as egotism, lighthouse, and cliché, except in an article discussion focused on the concepts (e.g., articles on psychology or navigational aids or literary style). The word cliché is not rare -- in fact it is more common than "toothpaste"....

The Newfoundland case is marginal, I agree.

Linking "lighthouse" to lighthouse would just be a dictionary link here (which is against policy), but linking it to a list of lighthouses in Newfoundland is a "submarine" link, and pointless to boot, since the lighthouse in question is fictional.

Finally, both in your edit comment and in your comment above, you say that "not all" of the items I mention qualify for MOS:OL, so it would be more constructive to remove those we agree are inappropriate than to blanket revert. --Macrakis (talk) 09:05, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

I see you have gone ahead and reverted. I still had quarrels with some of your choices, but when you use language like "illiterate or 'deeply ignorant'", you send a huge message that anyone wanting to discuss this with you had better not have anything better to do with their time for a while (and I get the feeling this may come as a surprise to you, but I did).

You own this. I won't be reverting back, but if another editor, unregistered or not, should restore any one of those links, I won't be standing in their way, either. I will just notify you ASAP because I just know you'll drop everything else you're doing to come back and restore your edit. Daniel Case (talk) 03:51, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

First of all, I did not "revert", unlike you. You yourself had said in an edit comment that "not all of these should have been delinked" and in the discussion above "I am not sure that all the items you point to are among them", which implies that some of them should have been delinked. Since you didn't specify which ones, and didn't edit the article for two weeks after you made that comment, I tried to delink what seemed to me the most egregious cases, and asked that you not "blanket revert if you disagree with particular cases", inviting you to revert the specific cases you disagreed on.

Secondly, I offered rationales for the various cases and you didn't contradict them, except with the general statement that it's hard to "underestimate the depth of readers' ignorance". My phrase "deeply ignorant" (which was in quotes) was replying directly to your characterization of our users, and not me "sending a huge message".

More specifically:

• Our policy MOS:OL explicitly mentions major countries (which Canada, Spain, and Ireland presumbly are) as not needing links.
• I found the word "exegesis" gratuitously abstruse, so I changed it to the simpler and clearer "interpretation", making a Wiktionary link unnecessary.
• I left in the link to [[List of lighthouses in Newfoundland and Labrador|lighthouse]], although it seems to me a pretty flagrant violation of MOS:EGG and pointless to boot, since the lighthouse in question is fictional.
• As I mentioned above (with a source), "cliché" is not a rare or obscure word. Where do you wikt:draw the line? --Macrakis (talk) 16:38, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

PS The essays WP:POPE and WP:NOTBLUE are individual points of view which are disputed on their Talk pages and directly contradict WP:OL in many places. After being up for over 15 years, they have not been incorporated into WP style and policy. --Macrakis (talk) 12:12, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

I would commend your attention to WP:STICK at this point.

And I would leave it at that, but just to note that we have essays because our policies by design leave some things to interpretation. WP:NOTBLUE exists because we also have the opposite point of view in WP:BLUE. Nor is it the only instance where this sort of dynamic tension exists—in fact, in the current context, you should take into account WP:BTW, on the very same MOS page as OL (and remember ArbCom downgraded the MOS from policy to guideline a few years back to cut down on instances where people were using it as sticks to beat other editors with because they were more interested in lording it over others than building an encyclopedia).

OL itself actually says: "What generally should not be linked" (emphasis mine). It also says, further down: "[T]ry to be conscious of your own demographic biases – what is well known in your age group, line of work, or country may be less known in others."

I would further note that a) most of the calls to delete NOTBLUE predate 2016; to me that suggests the community has grown more comfortable with it over time, and b) despite those calls, no one ever actually went to the minimal trouble of opening an MfD (Also, if you deleted NOTBLUE, wouldn't you have to delete BLUE as well?) As for WP:POPE, no one on the talk page has called for the page to be deleted, and it seems to me in fact that the points raised in threads there actually tend to prove my point. Daniel Case (talk) 19:53, 16 November 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps I am misunderstanding WP essays. I've never considered MfD for essays, because I've always thought of them as a place where various (possibly conflicting) viewpoints could be discussed ... without necessarily reflecting a consensus or even a widespread position. --Macrakis (talk) 20:44, 17 November 2023 (UTC)