G'day Matt,
On 7/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG guy.chapman@spamcop.net wrote:
On Sat, 15 Jul 2006 18:36:15 +0200, "Steve Bennett" stevagewp@gmail.com wrote:
Honestly, I don't really see much need for a reliable source for a joke. If we say that a joke has a premise, a genre, a punchline etc, then we give an example that meets the criteria - I don't really see the harm if we invented the joke on the spot. If a better example comes along, so much the better.
Policy means nothing here, then? We can allow OR and subjective judgments as to which jokes do or don't represent the genre?
[Guy: a wise man once said, "Fuck policy!" If we get worked up over an action that violates policy, it must be because that action is a Bad Thing on its own merits, not merely because "policy says so". Otherwise those of us who care about Wikipedia are looking at a life of enforcing bureaucratic nonsense, eventually leading to madness and an early grave.]
I don't think we require that illustrations need citations to prove they're representative, do we? We do allow subjective judgments on Wikipedia.
I'm sure I've seen diagrams filled to overflowing with references, and I'm quite heartened that someone's bothered to go to that much effort. People like to see virtue in others, so long as it doesn't mean we have to do anything ourselves ;-)
That said, academic citations would be cool - I'm sure there are academic papers on jokes.
There was that "scientific survey" a few years back that was all over the world's papers, which asked: "What is the funniest joke? How do different countries respond to humour?" The various articles I read on the subject all included examples. An AP article about that would make an excellent source for jokes, if we got to arguing over which ones were representative and which weren't.