Looking for something mindless to watch as I worked tonight, I pulled a random animated series DVD off the shelf at the library. ("American Dad". It appears to be "just like Family Guy, but with war-on-terrorism jokes". If you like one you'll like the other, and if one annoys you ditto, but I digress.)
I watched a couple of episodes, got a vague idea what was going on (and ironed my shirts). Then I sat down, paid a bit more attention, and watched one without getting distracted.
And the test.
I then read our (characteristically exhaustive) article on that episode, and came away knowing about twice as much about what had happened in it as I had by actually watching the damn thing.
I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative sign, but it struck me as an amusing experiment!
In particular the articles on "Characters in [whatever]" or "List of murders in [some series]" have always seemed to be enormously helpful in keeping things straight. The more obscure the minor characters, the more we need an encyclopedia.
On 12/4/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
Looking for something mindless to watch as I worked tonight, I pulled a random animated series DVD off the shelf at the library. ("American Dad". It appears to be "just like Family Guy, but with war-on-terrorism jokes". If you like one you'll like the other, and if one annoys you ditto, but I digress.)
I watched a couple of episodes, got a vague idea what was going on (and ironed my shirts). Then I sat down, paid a bit more attention, and watched one without getting distracted.
And the test.
I then read our (characteristically exhaustive) article on that episode, and came away knowing about twice as much about what had happened in it as I had by actually watching the damn thing.
I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative sign, but it struck me as an amusing experiment!
--
- Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
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On 12/5/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
In particular the articles on "Characters in [whatever]" or "List of murders in [some series]" have always seemed to be enormously helpful in keeping things straight. The more obscure the minor characters, the more we need an encyclopedia.
There's definitely a line somewhere. There's "having an encyclopaedia article about" and then there's "exhaustively documenting". There was an article recently with several huge paragraphs documenting, in minute details, everything that had gone in a single episode of a Big Brother episode. Who had said what to whom, how they responded, why the first person was upset, then how they played with whatever by themselves singing whatever...
And of course there is the problem of "in universe" styles - the difference between "Joe appeared only sporadically throughout the second series, chiefly as a comic device to..." and "Joe is seldom seen, as he is working in his laboratory, but whenever he turns up he is sure to crack a great gag..." Vomit, vomit.
Steve
ah--Plot summaries. As I see it, the problem is not so much that they are detailed, but that they are detailed to the point of incoherence. It helps when it is a summary, when it shows the main lines of the action and the key relationships. When it recounts every exchange in the episode, you might as well rent the DVD and watch it. It will take less time than trying to untangle the summary.The key word I've learned to anticipate is "meanwhile".
Of course bad writing is not limited to plots, but it sticks out there so clearly. that's why I like outlines, and list format. it's easier to do that naively and still be comprehensible, than to try for long paragraphs without thinking how a paragraph should be organized.
On 12/4/07, Steve Bennett stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/5/07, David Goodman dgoodmanny@gmail.com wrote:
In particular the articles on "Characters in [whatever]" or "List of murders in [some series]" have always seemed to be enormously helpful in keeping things straight. The more obscure the minor characters, the more we need an encyclopedia.
There's definitely a line somewhere. There's "having an encyclopaedia article about" and then there's "exhaustively documenting". There was an article recently with several huge paragraphs documenting, in minute details, everything that had gone in a single episode of a Big Brother episode. Who had said what to whom, how they responded, why the first person was upset, then how they played with whatever by themselves singing whatever...
And of course there is the problem of "in universe" styles - the difference between "Joe appeared only sporadically throughout the second series, chiefly as a comic device to..." and "Joe is seldom seen, as he is working in his laboratory, but whenever he turns up he is sure to crack a great gag..." Vomit, vomit.
Steve
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On 12/4/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative sign, but it struck me as an amusing experiment!
You loaded the article and found exactly the information you were looking for, without having to dig six months into the edit history (as I've needed to do, on certain occasions where a once-informative article had been chopped and screwed beyond recognition). How could yours be a negative sign?
—C.W.
On Dec 5, 2007 9:34 AM, Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/4/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative sign, but it struck me as an amusing experiment!
You loaded the article and found exactly the information you were looking for, without having to dig six months into the edit history (as I've needed to do, on certain occasions where a once-informative article had been chopped and screwed beyond recognition). How could yours be a negative sign?
—C.W.
Because we're writing an encyclopaedia people want to read, rather than an encyclopaedia we want people to want to read. ;)
Cheers WilyD
Charlotte Webb schreef:
On 12/4/07, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure if this is a positive or negative sign, but it struck me as an amusing experiment!
You loaded the article and found exactly the information you were looking for, without having to dig six months into the edit history (as I've needed to do, on certain occasions where a once-informative article had been chopped and screwed beyond recognition). How could yours be a negative sign?
Apparently, the Wikipedia article contained more information than he got from a superficial look at the original source. If I assume correctly that the programme in question does not have large amounts of secondary sources, that would mean that most of the extra content of our article comes from original research. That's bad.
Eugene
P.S. No, I don't agree with that, but I think it's a common view, for example among one side of the WebComics war.