User:ErgoSum88/Rant

Success 04/28/10

It feels good to be appreciated. - April 28, 2010

With forty thousand pageviews in February–March 2009 for Hours of service, and Federal Bridge Gross Weight Formula is at forty four thousand for this month (and still going), its good to know I've contributed to the public's understanding of something that is a somewhat of a mystery to most people. The comments on the Bridge Formula were especially amusing. Of course there are always those who make fun of the obscure nature of such dry facts... you know who you are. You're just jealous your article didn't make it past class C. But seriously, I just might do some more articles in the future, but for now I will leave my unfinished business to someone else. I have taken on more than I can handle right now, and without access to good free sources (or excellent costly sources) I can't really finish what I started. There just isn't enough free information for me to complete the monster that became Trucking industry in the United States. I suppose I will keep taking photos, as they seem to be the most valuable of my contributions, and are certainly the easiest way to contribute. Many locations and species of plants and animals are lacking quality photos or have none at all. Whenever I travel somewhere, or see an interesting insect or plant, I take a photo. Its easy and fun! The photos of downtown Honolulu and Plumbago auriculata are probably my favorite, although the panoramas of the Utah desert are close behind. Sometimes I even travel places just to take a photo and upload it to the appropriate article. I know, I know, its sad... but what can I say. I'm addicted.

Controversy 05/02/09

Stay away from controversial articles or: How to maintain your sanity while editing Wikipedia. - May 2, 2009

Wikipedia (WP) is good for a lot of things. If you would like to know when the lightbulb was invented, then you've come to the right place. If you need to know the color of the sky on Venus, you will find it. If you would like to know the history of the Extraterrestrial Highway in Nevada, you will find a very comprehensive, cohesive, and informative article right here on WP. If you would like to know the different sides of the abortion debate, what it means to identify as a white american, or what the current consensus is regarding global warming then you might be disappointed. Don't get me wrong, these are good articles, considering the subject matter (global warming is even a Featured Article). That these heavily edited articles resemble a coherent article at all is amazing, and a testimony to the functionality of WP. More obscure controversial topics which garner less attention are more likely to fall victim to what I like to call shrink, which is an industry term describing the loss of merchandise through theft, damage, and various other causes. Articles such as life expectancy or anti-Christian sentiment are also controversial, and garner lots of edits, but are usually not monitored as well as other articles, nor are they monitored by the more experienced editors who are good at enforcing the WP:NPOV policy. At any point in time, you may find these articles in different states of array or disarray, depending on when you read it. Whenever reading these articles, it is important to check the article history to see if the article has recently been the victim of vandalism (usually the covert kind), recent mass deletion or addition of material, or recent edit warring. These articles may have been good at some point in their history, but they usually do not stay that way for very long, and end up deteriorating through shrink. Some might say this is a good thing, because most of these deletions (or additions) are usually unsourced or WP:OR anyway. But I have seen many cases where good cited material is deleted without opposition. Reading these articles is one problem, trying to edit them is another. Getting involved with the maintenance or improvement of these articles is likely to rock the boat in more ways than one. You're going to piss someone off no matter what side you fall on, how verifiable your information is, or how NPOV your additions are. You will probably end up spending more time discussing and defending these additions than you really wanted to, wasting lots of your valuable time. If you like this sort of thing, then you've come to the right place! Go to town with your bad self. If controversy and debate make you crumple like a wet paper bag, then please do us all a favor and stay away from these subjects. We don't need your theatrics, grandstanding, soapboxing, wikidrama, wikilawyering, or emotional breakdowns. Thats all I wanted to say.

Archetype 06/29/08

Archetype - June 29, 2008

I have suffered through the humiliation of the first deletion of an article which I actually put time and effort into improving. List of Kolkata facts, which was formerly Kolkata trivia (until I renamed it) was voted to be merged into Kolkata. Pretty pointless considering almost all the information from the list came from the main article. The list was merely a summary of interesting and notable facts regarding the city of Kolkata, which I thought was presented in line with other list articles such as List of trees and other list-type articles which are merely collections of facts regarding a subject. But I guess I was wrong, because militant deletionists came along and swept it all under the rug. As a member of WP:WPPC, sometimes I take the time to try to improve Pop Culture-related articles, because I enjoy them but they are almost always in desperate need of trimming and reliable sources. But after the deletion of the aforementioned article due to the list being "indiscriminate", I'm not sure how much more of my time I want to waste on something that is going to be deleted. Yes, I know WP is a waste of time, period, but to just have your contributions rendered irrelevant is frustrating. But I hold no grudge. Anyways, the other day I was reading Magical Negro and I was amused for a day and a half. I had never heard of this concept until then, and after noticing how common this archetype is (especially for Stephen King, whats up with that?) I began to wonder "How harmful is the Magic Negro character?" Yes the character is normally subordinate, inferior, and usually makes a grand sacrifice for the white character, but if the tables were turned I'm not sure it would bother me if white characters were portrayed in such a manner in all black films. Is it just me, or do people take race too seriously? I, for one, do not feel the least bit guilty for the slavery that existed in America. Every civilization had slaves and I dare you to find one of them who didn't de-humanize people who weren't the same color as them or even the same religion. The "magic negro" is an extension of the "noble savage" and they are both wrong, but harmless. But I digress. As if I don't waste enough time around here I have to spend time typing a bunch of crap nobody reads. The Phoenix lander finds ice on Mars? I don't think anybody was surprised to learn this, since the evidence is all over the place that liquid water was once present. Anyways, happy editing.

Good Articles 05/26/08

Good Articles - May 26, 2008

This edition of my rant is vaguely titled, but necessary due to the wide range of subject matter. Number one on my list are "well-written articles" which seem to be few and far between. Forget prose, layout, and pov issues for a moment... but why does everybody insist upon adding pixel sizing to their images? I realize the majority of people who visit WP are not logged in, and therefore cannot adjust their thumbnail sizing via preferences, but for the rest of us who are logged in... please... do us a favor and quit specifying sizes. Generally, the only photo with a specified size should be the lead photo, and it should be over 300 pixels because that is the largest setting in preferences (to which mine are set). And another thing, please stop adding five bajillion photos to articles. Ninety percent of my editing of articles lately have been rearranging, removing pixel sizes, and removing unnecessary photos from articles. Christ on a crutch, if you insist upon having every photo known to man about your subject in the article, use an image gallery. (Which for some reason seems to be [incorrectly] popularly identified as "discouraged". The truth is, articles which are composed of only an image gallery are discouraged, because that is what the Commons is for.) The sad part is, there are many people who have been here much longer than I have... who seem to have never managed to come across the Manual of Style. They either aren't reading it, or don't care to read it... yet they are submitting articles for GA and FA review which completely disregard the most basic guidelines of the MoS. Short introductions, badly formatted citations, and image issues are the biggest problems over at GA and FA review (probably more so at GA). On another note, there are plenty of articles which I think are "good" not because of stylistic concerns but because of subject matter. Frank Buckles who is the only surviving (American) veteran from World War I, although he is a cheater because he entered the war at age 16, I think we can cut him some slack on this one. Formation and evolution of the Solar System is a recently-featured article which I had the pleasure of reviewing, which is probably the most perfect article I have ever seen (then again I'm biased toward space science). Then there is Catullus 16, which until recently I had no idea even existed. I mean I knew there was ancient pornography and whatnot, but a lewd ancient poem is just hilarious. On the other end of the spectrum... if anybody can explain Clubsuit or Diamondsuit to me, please visit my talk page and do so. I've recently taken up acrylic painting but I suck at it. I'm pretty good at drawing with pencils and whatnot, but this painting thing is a whole 'nother ballgame. I vow to keep practicing and if anybody know of any good websites with tips and tricks (yes I know how to use google, but finding a good site requires knowledge of the topic) please let me know. Until next time, happy editing!

What's in a name? 05/12/08

What's in a name? Would a rose by any other name smell just as sweet? - May 12, 2008

Leave it up to Wikipedia editors to nitpick an insignificant detail to death. Consider yourself lucky if you haven't been involved in a lame edit war. Anybody who has been here for any length of time has seen it. Arguments over the use of the word "in" versus "of". Long-winded debates over whether road articles should be named "State Highway XX" versus "Highway XX (State)"............... oh wait, that one is still raging! It seems the successful Featured Article nomination of Interstate 70 in Utah has opened up a can of worms we weren't prepared to deal with. The FA administrators have said Interstate 70 in Utah needs a bolded title so it can look like every other article on Wikipedia. According to guidelines "The article's subject should be mentioned at the earliest natural point in the prose in the first sentence, and should appear in boldface." But wait... it also says "If the topic of an article has no commonly accepted name, and the title is simply descriptive [...] the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text; if it does happen to appear, it should not be boldface." This is the extent of our dilemma. WTF are we going to do? One side says "Duhhh! Clearly the title should appear in bold!", the other side says, "Are you fucking retarded? This title is obviously descriptive!" That pretty much sums up the discussion over at WikiProject U.S. Roads. Personally, I think it's obvious that the title is descriptive as anything with the words "in" or "of" in the title is clearly describing something. An article named "Plumbers" is clearly an article about plumbers. An article named "Plumbers in Utah" is clearly not an article which describes the typical plumber.... hence it is descriptive. People in Utah don't call it "I-70 in Utah" they call it "I-70". Leave it up to Wikipedia editors to nitpick over something so lame. If we spent half as much time arguing over what to name things, how to arrange articles, and other irrelevant details we might actually accomplish something. I understand the need for consistency and the desire to establish standards, but this is ridiculous. Its this kind of crap that makes you feel ashamed to be an organism capable of communication. In all seriousness, I just wish we could agree on something. Or even agree to disagree and just compose articles based on whoever feels like doing whatever at whenever.... cuz this shit is laaaame!

Verifiable vs. Truth 04/20/08

Verifiable vs. Truth and the Controversial Black Hole - April 20, 2008

Ok ok, I get it. Wikipedia's goal isn't purveying the truth, but rather verifiable information. What I don't get is, there are plenty of "verifiable facts" which are completely false! Betsy Ross did not sew the first American flag. The Age of the Earth is a matter of highly contentious debate between religious and scientific factions. Point being, just because something is verifiable does not mean it is true, and vice versa. Yet another reason I (almost) refuse to get involved with controversial topics. It's simply not worth my time or energy to sit here and argue with people over what should or should not be included in Criticism of Christianity or Incest. Those articles are like a black hole of effort and information... constantly edited and nitpicked to death and sometimes to the point of being unreadable! As soon as "consensus" is reached about something, a few months pass and a fresh batch of do-gooders are ready to fuck the whole thing up all over again. Its damn near impossible to keep watch over these articles without sacrificing your life and your sanity in the process. I recently discovered a video game article (RapeLay), which is about a game where the point is to rape a mother and her two daughters. Granted, not something everyone wants to play. But certain people seem to think a game about rape is worse than any of the thousands of other violent games which depict murder (think Grand Theft Auto). Not to belittle rape, but I fail to see how fucking someone against their will is worse than outright murder. Personally, I wouldn't participate in either of the two... but video games are fantasy, which is why so many of us accept violence in movies and games. But our puritanical American values tell us a goddamn boob is a thousand times worse than, lets say... sawing a person in half with a chainsaw. Yeah, ok. They're both just as bad... but if you accept one you should accept the other. Plenty of men and women have fantasies about being raped, but I highly doubt anyone fantasizes about being murdered. But anyway, Wikipedia is not censored and I smelled a rat. The RapeLay page was practically empty, save for a short description and one lonely mention of the game's controversial nature. Cited, by the way, from a news article about games which depict rape. The most outrageous part was, this article was skeptical that games depicting rape even existed! There was no mention of this particular game, yet the statement was "Games such as this have been cited as reasons to control video game content." But I digress, the page was lacking. I checked the talk page and edit history... and sure enough, there it was. One person felt this game didn't deserve an article, and proceeded to take the article hostage, removing all the information from the page claiming it to be ORIGINAL RESEARCH! To make a long story short, I thought something wasn't right. Its a freaking game, all you have to do is play the game and see that it is indeed, a game about rape. Why would you need someone else to confirm it? Turns out, Wikipedia policy states plot elements about works of fiction don't need citations! Which is obvious when you think about it. As long as you aren't making any sort of original interpretations regarding the plot, the work itself serves as the source. Therefore, I want to thank you, unnamed do-gooder. You have made me realize an obvious fact which will now come in handy. So now every time someone cries out OR! OR! when they see "trivia" about tv shows and movies, I can reply with BULLSHIT! BULLSHIT!

Dr. Cruftlove 04/10/08

Dr. Cruftlove or: How I learned to stop worrying and love The Cruft - April 10, 2008

I have only been an official editor here at Wikipedia for little over two months now, but I've been coming here for years to look at articles. But it has recently come to my attention that certain people have a massive hatred for what they call "fancruft" or "trivia." The most hated of all are listcruft, triviacruft, and fancruft about tv shows (particularly Aqua Teen Hunger Force) and video games (List of Mario series enemies). I smell hypocrisy when articles such as Master Shake are deleted but Tommy Vercetti is perfectly OK. It has been decreed that Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, yet in the same breath they say that Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. They talk and talk about how highbrow this place is supposed to be, and how important our work is, and how this is a legitimate encyclopedia. Well guess what? Its not. Legitimate encyclopedias do not have articles about Britney Spears, Tila Tequila, Bart Simpson, Toplessness, Cleveland steamer, Donkey punch, Stupidity, or any of the thousands of other retarded topics we cover here. Yeah, I've heard it a million times, "Why don't you read WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS? Just because there is other crap out there doesn't mean we should keep this crap." My question is, what the fuck is the harm in it? If someone wants to spend half his life designing articles about every single last Pokemon on the face of the Earth, then why rain on his parade? Most of these articles are not even deleted, just redirected into a bigger article... with the argument being "Well its taking up too much space, we don't need this crap." Meanwhile, the page isn't really gone, if you look up the page history its all still right there... you've just redirected it to another page and left out all the "cruft" that you felt was unnecessary. You haven't actually reduced anything, and in reality you've actually added more crap to the system than you removed. By the time these merges and deletions are discussed, archived, reverted, discussed again, archived again, ad infinitum you end up with bloated page histories of articles that were once 20kb in size which are now just a simple redirect to the parent article with two sentences about the subject. By the time its all said and done, you haven't actually saved anything. All you've done is wasted the time of the person who created the fancruft, wasted your own time for worrying about such "trivial" things, and wasted server space by arguing about it. What I don't get, is if this stuff is so trivial, then how the fuck do they find this shit? Do they spend all day looking for stuff to delete? If Pokemon are so goddamned non-notable then why the fuck do so many people spend their time making these articles? If we don't need articles about every TV show episode, then why are people looking at this stuff? Obviously, people come here precisely because this is not a normal encyclopedia. People come here to look up instances of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in popular culture. People want to see articles about every single episode of their favorite show... if they didn't want to see them, they wouldn't make them. I understand information must be verifiable, notable, reliable, blah blah ad nauseum. But people don't come here to read boring, rehashed dusty old pages taken from the Encyclopædia Britannica... they come here to read the "cruft" that most of you seem so hell-bent on getting rid of. By no means am I advocating the inclusion of inaccurate or unnecessary material. I understand that a lot of bullshit is added to articles that doesn't need to be there, and if someone didn't keep it in check some articles would be so large as to be unreadable (see United States). What I see going on here, is a lot of people who get their rocks off by pissing all over other people's snowmen (speaking of snowmen, that article seems ripe for deletion). I see people who take pleasure in deleting information they don't agree with, find offensive, or simply don't know enough about. I realize there are other wikis out there, dedicated specifically to this cruft Wikipedia tries so desperately to eliminate. Wikipedia tries to act like they're better than those other wikis, because we have standards, procedures, bureaucracy blah blah ad verecundiam. It is precisely this kind of snobbery and elitism that makes me want to give up on this place.