Talk:Smack-Off

I moved this discussion material from the main page here, as it is now appropriate to this page Doctorindy 21:56, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

New Jim Rome "Smack-Off" Article

I wrote the Smack-Off Article. Feel free to check it out. I suppose that a minimal mention of it can be made, as long a link to it is made from the original article. --Saxonjf 02:52, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

• Aside from some minor grammatical errors, great job-informative yet concise. If/when the Jungle article gets pared down, this article will definitely get linked. Willbyr 06:16, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I think we should go ahead and take out the Smack Off "History" from the regular page and put it all on the new Smack Off Page instead. The main page should reduce down to just a sentence about the S.O., and then link to the new page. Doctorindy 17:51, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Another thing, not to be a stickler, but a consensus should be made how to spell/write it. Is it Smack Off? Smack-Off? Smackoff? Italics? No italics? Quotes? No Quotes? A standard way to write it needs to be agreed on. I took a quick look at the official site, and I think they have it written "Smack-Off" (with the hyphen)
      • I've always written it Smack-Off. Whatever the official site says is probably what should be used. I also agree with moving the Smack-Off History from this article, keeping the intro paragraph and putting a direct link to the Smack-Off Article with it. Willbyr 19:28, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
        • I wrote more on the new page's discussion, but I want to mention it here too....perhaps we should move all of the Smack-Off History to the new page, and at most, list only the year/winner on this main page (no details), but I'm still leaning towards just an intro only. (We could make a simple table). I copied the content here onto the Smack-Off discussion page to preserve it for now. Doctorindy 14:26, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Any ideas on the table?, Here's a stab at it. Doctorindy 14:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

No.	Date	Winner
I	1995	J.T. the Brick
II	1996	Jeffrey E. DiTolla, "Esquire"
III	1997	Doc Mike DiTolla
IV	1998	Steve Carbone
V	1999	Sean the Cablinasian in Houston
VI	2000	Doc Mike DiTolla
VII	2001	Silk in Huntington Beach
VIII	April 19, 2002	Jeff in Richmond
IX	June 21, 2003	Sean the Cablinasian in Denver
X	April 16, 2004	"Iafrate" Ken Chasen in Los Angeles
XI	May 6, 2005	Sean the Cablinasian in Denver

• Nicely done, Doctorindy. I vote that this replace the History in this article. A link to the Smack-Off article should also be put in this article, but whether to put it with the description or in a list at the bottom of the page along with the other Rome-related articles, I dunno. Willbyr 15:05, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I'm thinking of doing the same thing with the "Tour Stops" section, and I think that we should also create a new "Tour Stops" page...same deal, small intro on the main page, all the rest of the info on the new page Doctorindy 17:28, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
    • OK, I organized the Tour Stop info into table format rather than list format...I think it's cleaner. This way it can be easily migrated into a possible future "Tour Stops" page. Sadly, there are still a lot of holes in the tour stop info though. There has to be someplace/somebody who can fill in the gaps of info. Doctorindy 17:48, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
• I checked some other similiar pages that had sub-pages, and I saw both ways to link to them...one being a link in the text, with a second down at the bottom under "See Also." So I added that...any thoughts? Postive? Negative? Just wanted to get the ball rolling, that's all, thanks. Doctorindy 20:24, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
  • I like the table format for the Tour Stops, but I would change the first column to "Tour Stop #" and just have the number in the fields, with (unknown) for the ones that we don't know the #s for...having "Tour Stop" in all the fields of that column seems redundant. I'm not a member of Stucknut but it seems that there would be the best place to find information on the Tour Stops. As far as the links go, I'm torn on that, as I like both methods. Willbyr 20:55, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I tried tweaking it a little, the first column was too wide with the heading "Tour Stop #," and it looked dumb when it tried to have the header stacked, so since it's already under the tour stops header, I'm not sure it needs another title. I also noticed that the Smackoff 2005 page is spelled without the hyphen...I'm not sure how to fix that (or how to make a 'redirect'), so I just fixed the link for now Doctorindy 22:15, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
      • Saxonjf and Zpb52 have fixed that article so the title is "Smack-Off 2005." Willbyr 18:47, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Saxon, I made a number of minor grammatical corrections. Very nice write-up. Are you going to include J.T. the Brick's quote about Rome and Greg in Vegas's crack about Bruce Edwards in this article? Willbyr 19:44, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

Willbyr, thank you for the kind words. I had not thought to include the Brick's quote, since it did not directly relate to the Smack-Off. I had thought to include the quote, but decided to hold out. If you include it, I won't argue. Of course, grammar improvements are quite necessary. --Saxonjf 00:10, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

• Looking back on the quote, it really doesn't fit with the Smack-Off article but would probably be a good inclusion with the article on J.T...and since it's not included in that article, I'll put it in.

Preserving the Original History Section from the main show page

I think we need to decide what to do with the original "History" section, so I'm am copying it here for safe keeping. Since we're making a year-by-year history on this new page, perhaps we should just list year/winner only on the main page, at the most, and use this one for deeper details. Doctorindy 14:23, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

History

• 1995 -- The winner of the inaugural Smack-Off is J.T. the Brick, who parlayed his Smack-Off victory into his own sports talk radio show. Rome invites J.T. (and all previous Smack-Off winners) to call during each year's event, but has otherwise cut off all contact with him and resents J.T.'s success. Partly to blame was the fact that J.T. was originally on a competing station in Los Angeles. Currently, they work for the same company (Premiere Radio Networks, owner and licensee of Fox Sports Radio) and are on in different dayparts on the same stations in many media markets, but the animosity continues. J.T. was quoted in Alan Eisenstock's book entitled Sports Talk as saying, "Jim Rome has done everything for me, but Jim Rome has done nothing for me." J.T., in recent years, has not returned the invitation to call the Smack-Off. Jason Stewart (aka J-Stew, now the call screener of Rome's show), then known as "Jason from Fullerton," also got on with an especially bad take before getting run.

• 1996 -- Jeffrey E. DiTolla, "Esquire" is the winner of the second Smack-Off.

• 1997 -- Doc Mike DiTolla wins his first Smack-Off, marking back-to-back victories for the Brothers DiTolla.

• 1998 -- In one of the more classic Smack-Offs, Steve Carbone wins with his famous "I am not a clone!" call. Many of Steve's detractors like to claim that the fix was in on this Smack-Off, because at the time Carbone was the call screener (known as "Phoneslap") for The Jim Rome Show (having previously been the successful caller "Stevie from LMU"). Carbone went on to host his own sports-talk radio show, before being dismissed for making some very inappropriate comments on a website. This was also the first Smack-Off to feature a professional athlete in the field, quarterback Jim Harbaugh, who unfortunately provided a very boring call.

• 1999 -- Sean the Cablinasian in Houston wins his first Smack-Off.

• 2000 -- Doc Mike DiTolla becomes the first two-time winner of the Smack-Off.

• 2001 -- One of the original callers to the Jungle, Silk in Huntington Beach (who is portrayed by Rome and many callers to be a bum who lives in a cardboard box on the beach and collects cans in a shopping cart), wins the Smack-Off after being the unfair target of criticism from many callers throughout the year.

• April 19, 2002 -- One of the most polarizing callers, Jeff in Richmond, wins the Smack-Off, to the outrage of many "Clones" and the joy of few. The e-mail server at the show reportedly crashed afterwards.

• June 21, 2003 -- Sean the Cablinasian (now in Denver) becomes the second caller to win two Smack-Offs. This Smack-Off also featured perhaps the most infamous line in Jungle history:

8-time Smack-Off invitee and noted amputation fancier Greg in Vegas, who finished second to Sean the Cablinasian, ended his call with a tasteless reference to pro golfer Tom Watson's caddy, Bruce Edwards. Greg closed by saying that perhaps Watson could have won the previous U.S. Open had Edwards not "incurred a one-stroke penalty", referring to the ALS that would kill Edwards a year later.

• April 16, 2004 -- "Iafrate" Ken Chasen in Los Angeles, who had finished second in four previous Smack-Offs, wins his first, his call capped off by a song, Whitey's Dad (a parody of the song Michael's Dad by John Niems), in which Iafrate sings about Brian Albers (nicknamed "Whitey") who was Rome's show engineer and board operator.

• May 6, 2005 -- Sean the Cablinasian becomes the first three-time winner at Smack-Off 2005. Defending champion "Iafrate" Ken Chasen finishes second for the fifth time. Terrence from Sierra Madre, considered to be the best caller never to have won the Smack-Off, places third.

I don't see how Greg in Vegas could have placed second in 2003 if Iafrate had placed second in the four consecutive [i]Smack-Off[/i]s prior to [i]Smack-Off X[/i], either Iafrate finished second in 2003 or Greg in Vegas did? Which one? --Saxonjf 04:01, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Merge with individual yearly Smack-Off articles?

Smack-Off 1998 and Smack-Off 2000 are currently tagged with suggestions to merge into this article. I personally think each of the individual articles, including Smack-Off 1997, Smack-Off 2004, Smack-Off 2005 and Smack-Off 2006, should also be merged. Like Malber, I think these constitute original research and are not sufficiently encyclopedic. -- Scientizzle 21:11, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Merging with Smack-Off 2005?

I header was put up at the top of the Smack-Off 2005 article "suggesting" a merger between that article and this one: I am against merging. I wrote both articles myself, and intend to write seperate articles for other Smack-Offs. With another Smack-Off presumably coming up this spring, and previous Smack-Offs in the past, my plan is to link those [i]Smack-Off[/i]s to the original Smack-Off article. The article, Smack-Off is a general overview and rundown of all the [i]Smack-Off[/i], the Smack-Off 2005 is a more specific article on the event Smack-Off 2005.

• I agree; also, one of the problems with merging the documents is that a length and formatting issue would inevitably pop up, in much the same way as the problems with the Jungle page. Ixnay on the erge-may. Incidentally, have you thought about putting those articles at the Wikicities site I created? Willbyr 23:33, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
  • I have seen it once. My time is so limited that I have to do my moderator work at Stucknut, watch my beloved articles here on Wikipedia, and then check the news. How about you give me some specific suggestions, and perhaps I can do one on Saturday?
  • Well, the main reason for creating the Rome Wikicity was to try to get around the problems of format and length for the articles that we seem to keep running into here at Wikipedia...I know you had specifically wanted a Rome wiki and it seemed the easiest route to take to getting just that. I had hoped that people would start using the Wikicity site as the primary Rome site so the articles here could be left as they are and the Jungle page could be trimmed down enough to have the rewrite tag removed, but so far you're the only person that's acknowledged its existence. Wherever you want to write up the articles about the other Smack-Offs is fine with me, but if you do them here then I'll them over to the Wikicity site if you don't beat me to it. Willbyr 04:17, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Merge Smack-Off 1998

I've put the merge template up for the 1998 article. These individual articles are very redundant. Size would be less of an issue if there wasn't a blow-by-blow recounting of each episode. I suggest that the articles be merged and summarized. -- Malber (talk · contribs) 20:23, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll put the merge template on the newly-created Smack-Off 2000. These don't really need individual articles. -- Scientizzle 20:30, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

• I am solidly against merging the Smack-Off articles. Although each has sort of a standard layout, which could possibly be condensed, the recountings of the highlights of the calls is helpful for newer Clones like myself (yes, I have accepted the gloss) who have not heard previous Smack-Offs and want to know what the fuss is all about, as well as for people with little to no exposure to anything related to Rome who maybe don't know what a Smack-Off is like. Willbyr (talk · contribs)

The problem is that it's original research and not very encyclopedic. -- Malber (talk · contribs) 20:47, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

• Much of this information is available in audio form. The Entire seiries of Smack-Offs 1998 and 2005 can be researched independently at Stucknut.com. It is free to listen to and determine the facts of the events. Under your arguments, the contents of any movie or television series are "original research." The Smack-Offs are original events which occur on an annual basis with provable happenings. I have cited the original sources, which can be researched by anyone. The fact that no one else has chronicled them before would mean that literally thousands of articles would have to be taken down. Each Smack-Off is listened to by literally millions of people, and the articles concerning them help new listeners to the show have a better understanding of what the show means.
  • I concur with Saxonjf's argument. To add to his argument, any article about a currently-broadcast radio program, such as The Jim Rome Show, Mancow's Morning Madhouse, or The Bob and Tom Show, would also count as "original research" under the argument proposed by Malber and Scientizzle. Calling the documentation of these shows, their history, and their content "original research" stretches the policy beyond its intent, IMO. Willbyr (talk · contribs)

Death of Smack-Off articles

Thought I'd post the link to the AfD for the individual Smack-Off articles for reference. The Wikilinks to the individual contents will need to be edited out of this article. Willbyr (talk | contribs) 19:53, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

• I haven't been following the ins and outs of these articles lately, but I'm not exactly sure what all the fuss is about. This series of articles pales in comparision to some other programs, such as The Simpsons (which has rediculously countless sub articles, yet that remains untouched and ever growing). Leave the Rome articles to people who care about Rome. The "encyclopedic" requirement has become a tool in which many use to unjustly delete articles, being entirely subjective. Doctorindy 14:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

• It's a stupid power play by the professorial-types, who complain about not being accept by the real university pinheads, but then turn around and beome them in determining what's "encyclopedic" without even knowing how important what they're deleting is. I am done with writing articles, and I probably won't edit much, due to the arrogance and ignorance of the powers that be. --The Saxon 02:41, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

• The time period for the AfD is just about up, and if one or both of you could make a statement opposing the AfD, that might cement the article sticking around. Also, I'm in the process of a massive re-write of the article, to try to clean it up a bit and make it a little more organized and less POV.

Something that might help is to submit one of the Smack-Offs that's saved in the Takebox at Stucknut as a reference. Willbyr (talk | contribs) 03:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

What is SmackOff?

I've never heard of SmackOff before, but I just read the whole article and I still have no idea what it is. In other words, the article stinks at explaining SmackOff to those who aren't already familiar with it. --204.99.19.150 (talk) 01:03, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Hyperbole aside, this is a valid point. Hopefully, I've addressed it; feel free to rewrite if necessary. Willbyr (talk | contribs) 19:16, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Unprotection?

Can this article and talk page be unprotected now so that unregistered users can edit and make comments? We can quickly restore protection if necessary. --TS 20:14, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

The reason I semi-protected it was because Rome's listeners were using the article to promote themselves for a Smack-Off and to diss competitors in that Smack-Off. Rome was reading the edits on the air, and it was only going to get worse. After protecting the article, some of it bled into the talk page, so I semi-blocked the talk page. Kingturtle (talk) 00:11, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

You may remember that there was a similar media-related spate of vandalism after Stephen Colbert encouraged his viewers to sneak weird statements into Wikipedia. I guess the only way to see if the novelty has worn off is to unprotect and watch closely. How about trying just the talk page first to see what happens? --TS 02:40, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Worth a shot. I'll unprotect the talk page. Kingturtle (talk) 11:49, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Smack Off/Hack Off 2010

This year in addition to the Smack Off, there will be a "play in" called the Hack Off. Several infamous callers that have "flamed" are being invited to call in and the best will be picked to participate in the Smack Off. The Hack Off will take place April 16, and the Smack Off will take place April 23. Can someone please add this to the main article. Raiderbarry (talk) 02:22, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Vinnie Mac in Des Moines won the Hack Off and is invited to the 2010 Smack Off. 68.109.169.62 (talk) 18:26, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Ssgtom21, 23 April 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} 2010 winner is Vic in NoCal, not Mike in Indy.

Ssgtom21 (talk) 18:55, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. -- /MWOAP|Notify Me\ 21:08, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Pending changes

This article is one of a number selected for the early stage of the trial of the Wikipedia:Pending Changes system on the English language Wikipedia. All the articles listed at Wikipedia:Pending changes/Queue are being considered for level 1 pending changes protection.

The following request appears on that page:

Comments on the suitability of theis page for "Pending changes" would be appreciated.

Please update the Queue page as appropriate.

Note that I am not involved in this project any much more than any other editor, just posting these notes since it is quite a big change, potentially

Regards, Rich Farmbrough, 00:04, 17 June 2010 (UTC).

please provide reliable, legitimate sources

This article is turning into a well-written fan page. But it is developing a great deal of original research, which is not acceptable for Wikipedia. Please start adding sources to this work. The sources need to be legitimate and reliable, i.e. from books, news articles, journal articles; not from fan sites or radio show excerpts. Kingturtle = (talk) 15:45, 16 October 2010 (UTC)

Hack-Off as a separate article?

At some point, should we make a separate article for the Hack-Off? --JoBrLa (talk) 04:46, 7 June 2013 (UTC)