[WikiEN-l] Twitterpedia will win

[Ray Saintonge]

Carcharoth wrote:
> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 7:10 PM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>   
>> Carcharoth wrote:
>>     
>>> On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:48 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>       
>>>> "The Peloponnesian War, which lasted from 431-404BC, was an Ancient
>>>> Greek military war, fought by Athens and its empire against the
>>>> Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta."
>>>>         
>>> Flabby wording with lots of redundancy
>>>> That's 167 characters. Think we could get a 140 character requirement
>>>> added to [[Wikipedia:Lead section]]
>>> "The Peloponnesian War (431-404BC): Athens and its empire fought the
>>> Peloponnesian League, led by Sparta."
>>>
>>> The phrasing "Ancient Greek military war" is horrible in so many ways.
>>>
>>> Better still, have poetic summaries of Wikipedia articles:
>>>
>>> "In days of yore,
>>> in Ancient Greece
>>> on the wine-dark sea
>>> and over the olive-clad hills
>>> Athenian hoplites did battle
>>> with Spartan warriors
>>> over the islands of the Peloponnese"
>>>
>>> After Wikipedia Art, we have Wikipedia Poetry?
>>> Using Wikipedia articles as the inspiration for poems?
>>>       
>> This brings us full circle to pre-literate times when the great epics
>> were passed on by rote.  Putting them in verse facilitated
>> memorization.
>>     
> Ah. Oral tradition:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_tradition
>
> Indeed full circle, as you say.
>   
>> It also facilitated official misunderstandings of
>> Biblical proportions. Twitter and the short attention span of those who
>> favour it turn historical insight into inanity.  Linking the "wine-dark
>> sea" to the later Peloponnesian Wars already separates us from its
>> association with the death of Patroclus in the Iliad.
>>     
> Predictably, there is a book with this title:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wine-Dark_Sea
>
> Thankfully we have an article on epithets in Homer:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epithets_in_Homer
>
> Which has fascinating linguistic details.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling
>
> Discusses the "the wine-dark sea" as a standard phrase used in oral
> story-telling.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_poetry
>
> "Epithet: Heavy use of repetition or stock phrases: e.g., Homer's
> "rosy-fingered dawn" and "wine-dark sea.""
>
> But looking at the other search results gives a flavour for how poetic
> phrases and epithets can be used in a language:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over_the_Wine_Dark_Sea
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Aickman
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Sciascia
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Scott_(historian)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatos_Tarifa
>
> Those are five examples of stories and books using the phrase in their title.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Alec_Rose
>
> "Wine-Dark Sea" for solo viola (1988), 3 minutes.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wettest_Stories_Ever_Told
>
> Some obscure Simpsons reference: "The Whine-Bar Sea".
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_mean_(philosophy)
>
> References include another book with this phrase in the title.
>
> I saved the best (or worse) until last:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion
>
> Buried deep in a footnote is this flight of poetic prose:
>
> "...there has almost certainly never been even one p-d
> electron-catalyzed fusion (eCF) in all the vast wine-dark seas
> covering about three-quarters of the face of the Earth during all the
> long eons that water has existed here..."
>
> Sadly, that isn't quoted, so it probably not suitable for an
> encyclopedia. Or it is quoted and should be cited.
>
>   
An interesting review.  The book that led me to look into this was 
Thomas Cahill's "Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea", a book in his excellent 
"Hinges of History" series.  A helpful report is at 
http://www.indepthinfo.com/articles/wine-dark-sea.shtml .  His 
attribution of the English rendering to Andrew Lang in turn led me to 
http://pages.towson.edu/colson/default_files/wine.htm.

Epithets may indeed be important to the development of epics, but those 
epithets are sterile when the cultural allusions are lost.

Ec