[WikiEN-l] listcruft

[Guy Chapman aka JzG]

On Sun, 15 Jul 2007 16:41:22 +0300, "Jussi-Ville Heiskanen"
<cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:

>Not so much a case in point, but a touchstone. Do *you* think we are
>better or worse than Britannica for having "List of songs about
>masturbation". Stand up and be counted...


No, a case in point.  There is no encyclopaedic topic "songs about
masturbation" because there is nothing about masturbation which has
any logical connection with songs, and vice-versa (although I
suppose one could stretch a point and say that, for example, Whitney
Houston's "I will always love you" gives more pleasure to the
performer than anybody watching).  The connection is an arbitrary
one, and pretty much every entry in the list was also unsupported by
references, because in the end what constitutes being *about*
something, rather than simply mentioning it in the lyrics somewhere?
I am all for setting up a sister project, triviapedia or whatever,
for collecting such examples of word association gone mad, but
there's no question in my mind that a neutral, verifiable
encyclopaedia is not the place for them.

Guy (JzG)
-- 
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG