[snippages]
the original poster was adding off-the-cuff pizza
places that, at
least as far as was indicated in the article, had no particular
significance except possibly to the poster.
RickK
"John C. Penta" <pentaj2(a)UofS.edu> wrote:
I think the whole idea of 'encyclopedic'-ness is becoming a barrier
to Wikipedia.
I have to agree with Erik; include these places. For those who know
the Jersey Shore, imagine an article on the area _without_ including
something on the Stone Pony. I live here...Not including the Stone
Pony would leave a gaping hole. Not including the Hilltop Steakhouse
in a similar article on Boston would be similar.
Yeah, you'd get all the facts, but you'd miss a lot of the character.
I plead guilty to personal inconsistency on this. ("I am large, I
contain multitudes...") I thought RickK was right about the inclusion
of Sally's Apizza and Pepe's Pizza. On the other hand, some time ago
Angela slapped me _very, very_ gently on the wrist for mentioning by
name all two of the lodging options available in Lancaster, Wisconsin
(population 4070); the specific sentence was "Lancaster accommodations
include the Best Western Welcome Inn (608-723-4162) and the lovely
Maple-Harris Bed and Breakfast 608-723-4717, 888-216-0888." Well, the
Best Western is fine, but the Maple-Harris _is_ lovely. (Anyway, we
settled for replacing the sentence with external links to the lodging
sections of the City of Lancaster website)
Clearly, certain kinds of articles, particularly those about towns and
universities (and university towns!) tend to acquire a certain
"community" flavor. Obviously this is because the people most likely
to contribute are present/former residents/students, who have an
emotional attachment to the place. Equally obviously, the mention of
specific commercial establishments is apt to be perceived as
"advertising" by outsiders, whereas in many cases the motivation for
placement is just affection for the establishment. I certainly do not
have any business connection with Maple-Harris, for example.
Of course, the problem is that merely mentioning an establishment may
be evocative of local color to people that know the town, but doesn't
do much for outsiders. It's true that I'm not a proper judge of
whether Sally's Apizza is "encyclopedic" or not. But unfortunately
it's equally true that mentioning it in an article on New Haven
doesn't do a thing to convey anything about New Haven to me.
So... what we probably have here in the New Haven article is people
from New Haven writing things about New Haven that are mostly to be
appreciated by people _from_ New Haven. Which is probably why this
sort of thing is faintly annoying to outsiders.
(By the way, for the record, the current article on Boston does _not_
mention the Hilltop Steakhouse. Nor Jake Wirth's, nor the Union Oyster
House, nor Durgin-Park, nor the much-missed Jack and Marion's in
Brookline, home of the Empire State Skyscraper Sandwich... Ah, Jack
and Marion's... What care I about lunch counters and pizza joints in
New Haven, Jack and Marion's was a cultural icon of the first water.
Say, get this--their menu, well, see, it had these red stars next to
certain items and when you tried to figure out what it meant and
looked at the bottom of the menu, it said "Red star indicates good
profit item for Jack and Marion's--please order!" Yes, indeed, Jack
and Marion's is surely worthy of an entire Wikipedia article of its
own, perhaps two... but I digress. Or do I?)
I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, but clearly Wikipedia is
no more (and no less) like a print encyclopedia than email is like
traditional ink-on-dead-tree-USPS "snail mail."
I'm beginning to wonder whether we should recognize a division between
"high encyclopedic" (as in Diderot, Britannica, etc.) and "low
encyclopedic" (as in "Encyclopedia of Beer," "Ohio State Football
Encyclopedia," "The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction").
Certainly there seem to be things which are not "encyclopedic" but
which are nevertheless "wikipedic."
That's a well written analysis of the situation. Trivia, rather than
the "high encyclopedic", is what attracts people. Why Napoleon is
always pictured with his hand inside his jacket can inspire more
curiousity than all his battlefield victories put together. That The
Guinness Book of Records should be a consistent best seller is a fact
that should tell us something. Most of us are not likely to ever visit
New Haven (I did pass a Sunday afternoon there 20 years ago, so I've
exceeded my quota) We're even less likely to visit the mentioned
pizzerias. The image of students lined up outside the pizzeria in this
McLuhanistic hot medium evokes an image that's as strong as anything
that Proust might ever have written. My own experience with the
Bhagirath Palace hotel in Delhi, India would be as unflattering as the
desciption by V. S. Naipaul, but mentioning it should not be read as an
advertisement.
The guardians of the high encyclopedic need to get a life. The function
of the high encyclopedic is merely to inform and instruct. The low
encyclopedic has the honorable task of dilighting and inspiring.
Ec