An editor took strong exception to my request for sources for "popular culture" items in the article on the Statue of Liberty. One of these items was:
"The New York Liberty, New York's professional women's basketball team, has the Statue of Liberty as their mascot."
The editor said: "The fact that the NY Liberty b-ball team uses the SoL as its mascot does NOT need an outside citation, for Pete's sake."
I replied that if it was all that obvious it shouldn't be that hard to paste in a link from the team's website. Since I try to play fair, I proceeded to go to the team's website myself to get the link.
Well, whaddaya know.
The team's mascot is, in fact, NOT the Statue of Liberty, but a dog named Maddie, for Madison Square Garden.
According to the source, http://www.wnba.com/liberty/news/ maddie.html , Maddie is a "loveable dog... known for a unique personality among the Liberty faithful." Now, to be honest, Maddie does wear a verdigris-colored crown, but you will have to judge for yourself whether it resembles the statue's; it looks to me much less spiky, like a green version of the Burger King's crown. In any case, my opinion is Maddie is quite canine, and not at all statuesque. Statue-of-Libertyesque? Statue-of-Libertarian?
(The statue is indeed depicted in the team's _logo_, which probably is why everyone assumes that it must also be the team's _mascot._)
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
An editor took strong exception to my request for sources for "popular culture" items in the article on the Statue of Liberty. One of these items was:
"The New York Liberty, New York's professional women's basketball team, has the Statue of Liberty as their mascot."
The editor said: "The fact that the NY Liberty b-ball team uses the SoL as its mascot does NOT need an outside citation, for Pete's sake."
I replied that if it was all that obvious it shouldn't be that hard to paste in a link from the team's website. Since I try to play fair, I proceeded to go to the team's website myself to get the link.
Well, whaddaya know.
The team's mascot is, in fact, NOT the Statue of Liberty, but a dog named Maddie, for Madison Square Garden.
This urban myth was quite harmless, but the story proves a point that what people honestly believe may not always be true. Harmless comments are more quickly left unchallenged, but you can never be too safe.
Ec
On 2/25/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
An editor took strong exception to my request for sources for "popular culture" items in the article on the Statue of Liberty. One of these items was:
"The New York Liberty, New York's professional women's basketball team, has the Statue of Liberty as their mascot."
The editor said: "The fact that the NY Liberty b-ball team uses the SoL as its mascot does NOT need an outside citation, for Pete's sake."
Even if true, it's not exactly interesting either.
Steve
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
On 2/25/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
An editor took strong exception to my request for sources
for "popular
culture" items in the article on the Statue of Liberty. One
of these
items was:
"The New York Liberty, New York's professional women's basketball team, has the Statue of Liberty as their mascot."
The editor said: "The fact that the NY Liberty b-ball team uses the SoL as its mascot does NOT need an outside citation, for
Pete's sake."
Even if true, it's not exactly interesting either.
It is if mascots are your passion. Trust me - such people exist, and can give you enough information about mascots in fifteen minutes to last you the rest of your life and then some. We cannot determine what sort of people our readers might be, and assuming that they are PLU would be a grave mistake.
Pete, bog-standard representative of humanity
Along these lines, here is a potential way to sort out what should be listed where:
Imagine two articles, one of something we can all agree is a very "popular culture" thing (say, The Simpsons), the other of something which is probably of more substantive historical value (say, the Enola Gay).
If the Enola Gay appears on the Simpsons, and we feel compelled to put a link one place or another, where should it go?
My suggestion: since the Enola Gay is the reference included in the work of popular culture, the direction should be: Simpsons --> Enola Gay. Knowing that the Enola Gay was featured in a Simpons episode does not enhance your knowledge about the Enola Gay in any substantive way, but knowing that Krusty was referencing the Enola Gay when he called his airplane the "I'm-On-A-Rolla-Gay" might enhance your understanding of the Simpsons.
I've applied this with some success before, such as when people wanted to put pop-culture references to the Trinity atomic bomb test in the [[Trinity test]] article. I removed them, and instead put them into the pop-culture articles they came from (a TV show, a video game, etc.). Knowing that the Trinity test way in a video game does not really tell one anything about the Trinity test; knowing that the test in a video game was modeled after a real test might help know something about the video game.
Obviously there are places where this would be difficult to sort out and borderline cases. But I think as a general principle it might help keep some of these things in perspective, and prevent respectable articles from being clogged up with these sorts of "in pop culture" references.
FF
On 2/26/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
On 2/25/06, Daniel P. B. Smith wikipedia2006@dpbsmith.com wrote:
An editor took strong exception to my request for sources
for "popular
culture" items in the article on the Statue of Liberty. One
of these
items was:
"The New York Liberty, New York's professional women's basketball team, has the Statue of Liberty as their mascot."
The editor said: "The fact that the NY Liberty b-ball team uses the SoL as its mascot does NOT need an outside citation, for
Pete's sake."
Even if true, it's not exactly interesting either.
It is if mascots are your passion. Trust me - such people exist, and can give you enough information about mascots in fifteen minutes to last you the rest of your life and then some. We cannot determine what sort of people our readers might be, and assuming that they are PLU would be a grave mistake.
Pete, bog-standard representative of humanity
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On 2/26/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
Even if true, it's not exactly interesting either.
It is if mascots are your passion. Trust me - such people exist, and can give you enough information about mascots in fifteen minutes to last you the rest of your life and then some. We cannot determine what sort of people our readers might be, and assuming that they are PLU would be a grave mistake.
Is it interesting to the average reader of an article about the Statue of Liberty? Wouldn't the average reader go, "well, duh"? It would be like listing every team that uses a [[bear]] logo or something on the [[bear]] page.
Moral of the story: Just because it's interesting to some people doesn't mean it's interesting enough to be on every page of the encyclopaedia with a tangential connection.
Steve
From: wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces@Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
On 2/26/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
Even if true, it's not exactly interesting either.
It is if mascots are your passion. Trust me - such people
exist, and
can give you enough information about mascots in fifteen minutes to last you the rest of your life and then some. We cannot
determine what
sort of people our readers might be, and assuming that they
are PLU would be a grave mistake.
Is it interesting to the average reader of an article about the Statue of Liberty? Wouldn't the average reader go, "well, duh"? It would be like listing every team that uses a [[bear]] logo or something on the [[bear]] page.
I hadn't imagined that there'd be a good reason to put such a reference on the SoL page. Obviously we fly along different wavelengths. The place to reference a team mascot is on the *team* page.
Pete
On 2/26/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
I hadn't imagined that there'd be a good reason to put such a reference on the SoL page. Obviously we fly along different wavelengths. The place to reference a team mascot is on the *team* page.
That's often the problem with trivia - misplacement. People tend to want to migrate information to the most "important" article related.
-Matt
"Matt Brown" morven@gmail.com wrote in message news:42f90dc00602262204g280315adr4dc3ba2cfd3cd0a6@mail.gmail.com...
On 2/26/06, Peter Mackay peter.mackay@bigpond.com wrote:
I hadn't imagined that there'd be a good reason to put such a reference on the SoL page. Obviously we fly along different wavelengths. The place to reference a team mascot is on the *team* page.
That's often the problem with trivia - misplacement. People tend to want to migrate information to the most "important" article related.
And the answer to the "problem" is to migrate the information to the most appropriate article.
Unfortunately some of the sentiment expressed up-thread seems to be more of the "nuke it until it glows then shoot it in the dark" variety.
Newbies will not be nearly so bitten by a polite message saying "thank you for your information: it has been moved to a more appropriate place" than by a rude message saying "don't add trivia to articles; it makes them messy".
HTH HAND