Dr bab

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A WikiCookie for you

Dr bab, you deserve a cookie today for your deletion of the trivia section on Peter Pan. I may recruit you to pay visits to a few other pages on my watch list that could use the same treatment. Buddhipriya 05:47, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank's for the WikiCookie! I am glad that you agree with me on the subject of annoying trivia. Just curious; Why do you wish to recruit me to clean up these pages, rather than just doing it yourself? Not that I wouldn't be willing mind you. Just point me to the pages you had in mind, and I will ruthlessly deal with all irrelevant trivia. Dr bab 06:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, yes, yes, consider yourself recruited. I missed your comment here but I have replied on my talk page. I like your suggestion about having a watch list somewhere for pages that need attention. Where is the best place? Start with Gremlin, Gnome, or Imp if you feel up to it. Regarding process, I mostly have contributed to Hinduism articles and feel pretty confident there, but on the other articles like Peter Pan I am not sure of the best approach. I liked your decisive approach and hope to learn from you regarding policies and procedures for trivia. Buddhipriya 22:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

FGC in popular culture

I'm not sure I agree that the section "FGC in popular culture" on the FGC article contains too much trivia - most of the references are rather serious in nature, and illustrate how FGC is an evocative issue that's well represented in the arts. Are there any entries in particular that you find troublesome? Ciotog 00:12, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the heading is the problem - I can't see how this information could be integrated in the rest of the article, but it would be a shame to lose it. Do you have any suggestions? Ciotog 00:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that the Trivia tag was perhaps not the best option. As you say, most of the links is of a rather serious nature. I feel, however, that this section has the potential of becoming a rather unmanageable list, since there must be thousands of popular culture references to such a serious topic. And you can bet there are non-serious references abound also, that someone sooner or later will add to this article. Perhaps a list-template is better?Dr bab 00:22, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Botzcowski

According to the Simpsons archive and TV.com, its spelled with a c. I would consider this to be the correct spelling, but I think it is spelled either way. Having it all the same is better though, so if you want to change it all to a c or k, that would be fine. Rhino131 21:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Ganesha outside Hinduism

Would you please take a look at Ganesha outside Hinduism from the point of view of the Trivia Project? Buddhipriya 22:24, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the cleanup there, and thanks also for the feedback on creation of a separate article. I really lack experience with strategy on these things. I was about to suggest the same thing to the guy on Peter Pan but stopped myself. Is there some way to answer folks who keep pushing for trivia of that sort except to "just say no"? Regarding Gremlin, yes, I have been trying to find some hard source, and was very surprised to find that the word is not listed in my 1971 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. I am not sure what that means, if anything. Buddhipriya 08:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Monoliths in Popular Culture

Zapped. Thanks for pointing that out, I missed it. :) --Coredesat 21:10, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Crede Signo F.C.

Unfortunatly the admin deleted them before I could get the copy the code from them, as since I would like the information on the web I wanted at least the code for my own wiki. Is there anyway to get it back?

User pages as attacks

A clear case like that would be deleted on sight by an admin, so tag it {{db-attack}}. If someone uses their user page as a rant page, or a MySpace substitute, then {{prod}} it. Especially if they've been inactive for a while. It's never wrong to propose deletion of a user page if it's misused! --Steve _(Stephen) ^talk 23:07, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Removal of speedy tags

I saw your comment on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Nextman stole my creps but did not get a chance to reply. I'm not sure what the situation was with having the speedy tag removed in this case. I guess that if somebody wanted to argue that it was clearly not a speedy, then they could remove it without calling it vandalism. Admins must do that all the time with articles tagged speedy delete, which they do not want to delete. In that case, it seems like there should be some discussion, such as on AfD or the article talk page. I don't know if there is a set guideline, but this seems reasonable. Usually, its the contributor of the article or some interested party pulling off the tag to avoid deletion, which is obviously a form of vandalism. Cheers! —Gaff ^ταλκ 00:41, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Marc Testart

I would concur with your actions. I believe the original author created it in good faith and asked me for help with it, but unfortunately could not provide the sources necessary to prove notability. Thank you for the notification.--Xnuala (talk)(Review) 15:48, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Professional Wrestling

I saw that you had an issue with User:SouthCalli, so I wanted to ensure that you were aware of potential spam. On the Professional Wrestling article, I reverted an addition by SouthCalli that linked the site () which I am believing is spam. I'm not sure where to go with this, what do you think? (please feel free to blank out the link to that site after you read this!!!) Hellswasteland 18:19, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

• • Ok, sounds good... I think I will add the spam to the user page. Let me know if you see anything fishy with them again LOL. Hellswasteland 19:50, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Valley of Unrest

Thanks for leaving me a note about Poems by Edgar Allan Poe. The "Helen" mentioned in the poem is in the original version, the one called "The Valley Nis." You're right, she's definitely not mentioned in the final version we know today - that should really be clarified. Feel free to change it up; that page has been a lot of work, and I'm glad to see anyone else besides me put an edit or two onto it. :) --Midnightdreary 23:47, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Good work on that edit with splitting them. I'm thinking, however, and let me know if you agree, that because both entries are so short we might as well recombine them and better explain the differences. We can even Wikisource the original "Valley Nis" version so people can make their own comparisons. Keeping them separate implies that both versions are still collected today, which isn't true (unlike, say, "A Paean" and "Lenore," which started as the same poem but are both very different now, and both are usually included in anthologies). Also, about the table of contents, I actually liked it better with it cutting into the article flow; I was hoping for a better solution but it's the best I found. At least that way it keeps the article just a tiny bit shorter. What do you think? --Midnightdreary 14:30, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for reverting the vandalism on my user page. =) -- Gogo Dodo 19:42, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Hi

You're welcome for the welcome, hehe. I don't think there's a way to actually delete the talk page, and I don't think an admin would concern themselves with it. Don't worry about it... there are plenty of new IP users who come here, and because of the IP they're dealt, have tons of warnings on their talk pages, that they themselves don't deserve. RainbowOfLight ^Talk 16:46, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Zappa request for article of the day

Hi there! Good idea! I have put up at nomination at [1]. You may want to lend a support? :-) Best regards, --HJensen, talk 14:04, 4 November 2008 (UTC)

Wikitreff i Trondheim

Hallo! Ser på brukersida di at du bor I Trondheim du også. 28. januar skal det være wikitreff på Mormors i Midtbyen, hadde vært kjkt om du ville komme. Du kan lese mer om det her. Det er også et Facebook-arrangement som man kan melde seg på om man vil. Håper vi ses, Jon Harald Søby (talk) 19:19, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Nomination of List of common misconceptions for deletion

The article List of common misconceptions is being discussed concerning whether it is suitable for inclusion as an article according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of common misconceptions (3rd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Qwyrxian (talk) 08:32, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Reagan in Casablanca

Thanks for the note. I have responded over at the article talk page. Daniel Case (talk) 17:24, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Current

Over at List of common misconceptions, shall we define "current misconception" as "believed by anyone who is currently alive"? This includes oooold people, who might believe, say, the masturbation myth. Thought a little side-channel pre-chat would avoid a shitstorm. There might be material for List of lies told to children. --Lexein (talk) 06:52, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

I see your point, but I'm not entirely sure how to best approach this. I seriously doubt that even oooooooold people actually believe the masturbation myths. What's a myth vs. a misconception anyways? Should we include as misconceptions the existence of faboulous beasts?

Otherwise, I think "current"="still held by someone alive" is a good definition, or at least a good starting point for a defninition. How significant a population would have to be "still alive" for example...?

I kinda like the List of lies told to children idea, as it can include some items that are not really misconceptions but that are still frequently added to LOCM. And there are several books covering this, with titles like "lies your mom told you" etc., which probably would be sufficient to establish the noteability of the subject.

It would still be a bitch to maintain though, and there would be several cases of overlap between the two lists.

Dr bab (talk) 12:17, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Well, to continue to purloin a phrase, "Wikipedia is a harsh mistress, demanding much, granting little." LOCM is a bitch to maintain, and the most challenging article I've ever defended and improved. And even after all the criteria work, things still pop up that fill me with dread, like "current". I at first simply took it to mean "not ancient", and leaned on "common" to sort of imply current. Now that logic is slightly suspect. Luckily, the masturbation myth failed other criteria, so I can retire to the procrasturbatorium for a while, and put off thinking about "current". --Lexein (talk) 13:18, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Late to the party here, but I see Lexein's point. However, the criteria is that the misconception be both common and current. If the definition is anyone currently alive then that would admit misconceptions held by as few as one person, which would hardly qualify as common. If the criteria was rephrased as "believed by a substantial number of people currently alive" I'd go along with that. Of course, we'd still need to find a reliable source supporting it, and 50 year-old sources can't be relied upon for information on beliefs of those currently alive. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 16:09, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Well *cough* yes, it would have to harmonize with "common" if added to the 4 criteria. What's eating me now is I'm wondering about relaxing the "current" restriction a bit, since there are some interesting olde-tyme misconceptions. Further, as 2013 is here, I'd rather not be forced to delete a 1993 misconception solely due to its two-decade age, or a 1973 item either. --Lexein (talk) 19:19, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

My opinion is that the article should be a list of incorrect things that people currently believe and spread. If a misconception is sufficiently corrected to the point where few people still believe and repeat it then it should drop off the list. In an ideal world, we'd be able to remove items for this reason on a regular basis; unfortunately correcting widely held misinformation doesn't happen that quickly.

By this standard, an item from the 70s wouldn't make the list unless it can be shown that many people still believe and actively spread it and that would require a source more recent than the 70s. I'd give sources from the 90s a pass; my judgment is that this is sufficiently recent to count as current. If pressed for a hard dividing line, I might say 25 years but I'd prefer not to have a sharp dividing line or to automatically age-out items on a certain date.

Agree that there are interesting old-time misconceptions, and perhaps there should be a place on wikipedia for a list of them, but as this is supposed to be a list of currently held misconceptions we should only include misconceptions that are sourced as being currently held. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 20:44, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

I was the one who pushed for (really, just imposed!) "current" as a way of limiting scope in at least the temporal dimension, because at the time of the 2011 AfD much was being made of the putative and greatly feared limitless growth of the article. "Current" was my wedge to provide a kind of limit that might now be better expressed or imposed by some other sort of limit.

Encyclopedic notability doesn't fade with time, even though apparent present cultural relevance can. One purpose of this article is "see how quaint these misconceptions are and what we know now": insects in amber. A strong example is Kruschev's We will bury you mistranslation, from the 1950's. It's historically very important as one of dozens of might-have-been provocations for global thermonuclear war, when interpreted as a death threat, as it was by the red-baiting newspapers at the time. But cooler heads prevailed, because world leaders listened to their translation teams, not the press, so we can all sit around and chuckle over tea at how close our commie-hating 'rents came to being vaporized. --Lexein (talk) 22:59, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Some comments:

I see that old misconceptions may have encyclopedic valule. But is a misconception "common" if it is not "current"?

Probably a lot of the most unrelevant old misconceptions will be kept off the page by the criteria 1 & 3 that we now have (that the topic must have it's own article and that the misconception is mentioned there).

I was going to write that I disagree with your "purpose of the article", but I see now that you have written one purpose. In my view, a more important purpose is to debunk myths and inform people about misconceptions that they actually have. For the article to serve that purpose it is important to limit the number of borderline/obscure/ancient items to an absolute minimum. No-one will bother reading down to the relevant entries that might actually correct them on a misconception or two if they first encounter a ton of misconceptions about general relativity, 1940's US suburbia etc.

All in all, at present I see two issues with the article that should be worked out: 1-the issue of current vs. non-current and how to differentiate. 2-The issue of single-country, single-field, etc. I.e. what "populations" are ok in which to define something as "common"? Breaching this on the talk page, as we have already tried, may lead to an environment in which it is difficult to produce anything substantial. In my (real-life) experience, it is often better to sacrifice a bit of democracy and actually get something done. Get a few people to draft a suggestion and then invite comments to the product from the larger community rather than try to have the whole group work on the draft. Would the two of you be interested in such a project, or do you feel it breaches WP guidelines or ethics?

Dr bab (talk) 07:41, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

I see that you take the article's purpose a bit more seriously than I do; to me, in addition to its serious purpose, it's one of the encyclopedia's rare opportunities to express the lighter side of the mutability of knowledge, and how it can be misunderstood for eons, and by generations, by the omission of a key word, or for lack of a vowel (I jest).
It's hard for us to know how far people read, or which parts they read. I'd love to somehow get those metrics (devs could with a bit of AJAX sense when each item is shown on screen, and for how long). That could help us decide whether to separate the article into Science Misconceptions, Historical Misconceptions, etc.
Common/current vs Common/long-lived vs Common/former: I see your point about not maintaining former misconceptions which are now broadly understood correctly, but that's another thorny question. City folk might "get it" now about some misconception, while rural areas still hold on to it as heritage, "even though everybody knows it's wrong" (though I might be veering into mythology here). Some very good sociology and anthropology texts which discuss misconceptions might help establish some of the edges we seek. How about important vs. trivial? If sources provide clear delineations of importance, that can provide our source-based criteria. Example: CPR+defibrillation does not save most people on whom it is tried (it saves <10%). This is current, and important now, but may be obsolete in 20 years, when CPR+D best practice changes. I'd still like to keep the 2012 misconception in the article, even in 2032 when it's no longer a misconception. Food for thought.
We got the four criteria rammed through by a few zealous protectors of the article, including myself, in spite of laggy, reluctant input from skeptics about its value. So what you suggest is not horribly radical, but remember that the 4 criteria got through under duress, during an AfD. We don't seem to have that crisis at the moment, and so, no cover fire, so to speak. --Lexein (talk) 22:51, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Dr bab,

I like your suggestion that we tweak the criteria off-line, away from the distractions of the talk page where every discussion seems to be disrupted by another existential debate about deleting the article. I'm interested, but I'm not sure when I might have time to devote to it. I don't think we're facing any kind of crisis, so it may be awhile. I'd certainly make constructive comments on any draft proposal but I doubt I'll draft anything myself anytime soon.

Agree that the article is strongest when marginal borderline/obscure/ancient are minimized. I also think the article is approaching or past its optimal length, so some selectivity is in order for what we add/keep. That said, I don't think the article is actually bloated to the point where we have to do something drastic, and it could probably grow by another 50% without noticeably downgrading its quality. I went through the entire article a day or so ago, trimming entries that needed pruning, and overall I think it's pretty good.Mr. Swordfish (talk) 19:52, 25 January 2013 (UTC)

RfC on Glass is a liquid misconception

(Note: I'm listing this on the talk pages of all editors active at Talk:List of common misconceptions for the last two weeks).

I started an RfC on the "glass is a liquid" issue that caused the edit war leading to protection status. Your comments would be appreciated, so that we can build a consensus and avoid further edit warring. siafu (talk) 20:51, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

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