[WikiEN-l] listcruft

[K P]

On 7/17/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/15/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> There is an immense amount of illogic in the above paragraph. Are you
> claiming that songs about masturbation don't exist?
>
> Or that it's impossible to tell what "Turning Japanese" and "Blister
> in the Sun" are talking about?
>
> C'mon.
>

Actually, I've avoided thinking about the lyrics of Blister in the Sun
for many years now, because it's so obvious (it's stated), and I
wanted to enjoy the light pop melody without thinking about the
lyrics.

This post needed a spoiler warning in the subject line.

KP