[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as culturally assumed

[Steve Bennett]

On 11/26/07, David Goodman <dgoodmanny at gmail.com> wrote:
> You apparently don't  think its important that the writers of a
> contemporary computer game  know something about some particular
> important philosopher, and expect at least some of the players to
> appreciate the reference.

I'm talking about when some kid thinks it's a crazy coincidence that
the character Voltaire in their favourite computer game has the same
name as an actual historical figure. Or when some level in a computer
game is named after an actual place...omg!

> It's easy to denigrate the importance of the part of the world we're
> not interested in. It's been decades since I've seen a televised
> wrestling match, and I intend to never see one in the future, but if I
> ever do want to know about them, they'll be in WP. I never expect to

They'll be in WP, tucked away in that dirty corner I don't go into it
much. Do you really want to see links to wrestling articles from
history articles because some wrestler decided to name himself Alfred
the Great or something?

> be on the Kuala Lumpur Monorail, but I might want see a news or
> fiction reference someday to something that happened there, and want
> to know about the stations.

it just depends how significant the reference is. If one single KL
monorail station was the setting for an entire series of books that
was a cult classic in Mexico, it might be worth noting. If that
station was the first time that Joey and Sandy snogged after Sandy
broke up with Jimmy in the two-bit anime series "The KL Klub", I don't
want to hear about it.

Steve