Miscellaneous Grab Bag, Articles too horrible to dedicate attention to individually Options

[EricBarbour]

Everyone else was listening to some roadside tavern version of Justin Bieber (of course in those times, each village had to have its own version of JB, and some did worse than others). But that stuff never got recorded so we were spared it. Or it got passed through the generation but thanks to the passage of time it now seems quaint and "authentic" (ugh). But now we record every single damn thing.

And most of that now gets posted to Soundcloud.
It contains millions of music recordings--mostly utter crap, and remixes of crap.
Plus millions of recorded voices of bored teenagers, making fools of themselves.

Sorta like Wikipedia with a mic, ya know?.....

[Zoloft]

This article *retch* has it all - no notability, bad sources, poorly written, riddled with errors, and offensive to an entire language.

I present: Portuguese_profanity (T-H-L-K-D).

[MookieZ]

From Terrence Malick (T-H-L-K-D):

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois[3][4][5] or Waco, Texas[6][7].

Seriously?

[Kelly Martin]

From Terrence Malick (T-H-L-K-D):

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois[3][4][5] or Waco, Texas[6][7].

Seriously?

I've been in Ottawa, and I don't see how it could be confused with Waco. They really aren't that much like another, not to mention separated by a thousand miles or so.

[Malik Shabazz]

From Terrence Malick (T-H-L-K-D):

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois[3][4][5] or Waco, Texas[6][7].

Seriously?

I've been in Ottawa, and I don't see how it could be confused with Waco. They really aren't that much like another, not to mention separated by a thousand miles or so.

That's what happens when sources don't agree. I've done it myself.

Alexander was born in 1916 in Denver, Colorado,[1][2] or in Missouri.[3]

[Kelly Martin]

From Terrence Malick (T-H-L-K-D):

Terrence Malick was born in Ottawa, Illinois[3][4][5] or Waco, Texas[6][7].

Seriously?

I've been in Ottawa, and I don't see how it could be confused with Waco. They really aren't that much like another, not to mention separated by a thousand miles or so.

That's what happens when sources don't agree. I've done it myself.

Alexander was born in 1916 in Denver, Colorado,[1][2] or in Missouri.[3]

That's horrible writing. That ought to read "Alexander's birthplace is disputed; various sources report his birthplace as either Denver, Colorado, or Missouri." A discussion as to which has the greater support would seem meritorious as well. But that would required doing more than just collating data; it would, in fact, smell rather heavily of the dreaded "original research" which we all know is prohibited at Wikipedia. That's one of the ways, in fact, that Wikipedia ensures that article quality stays low.

[melloden]

This page has had an interesting history.

[Fusion]

That's horrible writing. That ought to read "Alexander's birthplace is disputed; various sources report his birthplace as either Denver, Colorado, or Missouri."

Yet that would in itself be original research, no? Or is it synthesis? I fail to sometimes distinguish them. You cannot say that something is disputed unless you have a reliable source that says that there is a dispute. Having contradictory sources does not "prove" that.

[Mister Die]

I'll post in here since it's minor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albanian_parl..._election,_1945

Now I don't consider it a bad article (mainly because I wrote 99% of it) but it does, I feel, demonstrate a weakness on Wikipedia's part. I originally called it "Albanian Constituent Assembly election, 1945" but some guy with a 2000-page general elections book (for which he gives "thanks to Wikimedia UK, who provided me with a grant to purchase" it) decided that it had to be a "parliamentary" election because, well, that general reference book which had to provide general information on thousands of elections across Europe deemed it so. Normally one would think "hey, Albania in 1945 didn't have a parliament, ergo it couldn't possibly have had a parliamentary election," but verifiability not truth reigns and all that. Said guy had used the book in Albanian election articles before and apparently decided that it was infallible.

So naturally it's put up to a vote. I provide 5 sources (and another one in the main article), of which 2 were Albanian government-published texts given official English-language translations, 5 Western academic works on Albanian history, and 1 academic book on post-1989 Balkan history. Opposing user continues using his 2000-page general elections book as a defense. No one cares about Albania so no one except me and him* vote on the subject of changing the article's name back.

The result? "No consensus to move."



* Inasmuch as it concerned his book.

This post has been edited by Mister Die: Mon 30th January 2012, 2:37am

[Fusion]

Here is a good example of the editor who says "I'm so clever! I know better than standard references!"

Although many references say that the Julian in "Julian day" refers to Scaliger's father, Julius Scaliger, in the introduction to Book V of his Opus de Emendatione Temporum ("Work on the Emendation of Time") he states, "Iulianum vocavimus: quia ad annum Iulianum dumtaxat accomodata est", which translates more or less as "We have called it Julian merely because it is accommodated to the Julian year." This Julian refers to Julius Caesar, who introduced the Julian calendar in 46 BC.

You may think that he has disproved a widely held but misinformed idea, no? It is on the contrary, of course, more likely that Scaliger only said that it was named after Julius Caesar and in fact was deliberately honouring his father. To avoid any charge of original research, the article could be re-worded as "Scaliger claimed to have called it Julian in honour of Julius Caesar. However, many references say ..."

[MookieZ]

from Roseanna Vitro (T-H-L-K-D), this may be my favorite sentence of all time:

Vitro has never avoided politics, and in 2011, she released an album of Randy Newman jazz arrangements.[5]

[Mister Die]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Epir...iberation_Front

72% of the sources of this article come from a single book. Normally that wouldn't be too bad except said source says about Albanians, among other things, the following: "In marked contrast to the Albanian, the Northern Epirote was devoted to learning and the cultivation of those virutes collectively termed civilization." (p. 52) "It is not my intention to heap scorn upon the Albanians because they have had the misfortune to enter the Twentieth Century little more advanced than they left the First, but it it s a fact that must be recognized. It explains much about them and the quality of leaders they have produced—as well as the misery to which their rule has reduced Northern Epirus." (p. 7) He also claims that Albanians were basically too savage to want to have an alphabet, among other wonderful and totally not racist claims.

But hey, the author can be a racist but at least the information isn't wrong, right?

Except the only source that the organization was anything more than a very minor element in the whole history of Albania's war against fascist occupation (one will look in vain to find it in literally any other history book about Albania) is... the author of said racist book. And he provides no sources. And no academic work actually cites said book.

On the talk page we see a bit of the worst sort of things Wikipedia can cause: User A notes that the article is making claims completely different from those of every other source on Albanian history (including greatly exaggerating the influence of the organization and the "battles" it supposedly engaged in), User B who originally inserted said information into the article denounces A, User A points out unreliability and inconsistencies of accounts of book cited by User B, User B searches Google and Google Books in a desperate attempt to kinda-sorta provide meager support for the book he swears by. User A points out irrelevancy of those "sources" but eventually gives up because of obstinate stand of User B. User B enjoys confidence in keeping an article in a state in which it details events that never happened.

[Fusion]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Epir...iberation_Front
But hey, the author can be a racist but at least the information isn't wrong, right?

These things happen in Albania. It is a strange country where many have huge chips all over their shoulders, sometimes for good reasons. Is this book published by a reputable publisher or is it self-published? And might User B have some connection with its author?

[Mister Die]

It was published, as far as I can see, by a small Greek-American publishing company. The author himself (I actually brought the book just because I wanted a different take on North Epirus, which was a bad idea because it's a really lame book) is not an academic and his two main qualifications seem to be that he himself is Greek and that he contributed articles on things to the Long Island Star-Journal. The dust jacket also proudly states that he fought in the Korean War.

So no, not really.

User B is Greek. Author of the book is Greek. User B has a history of trying to put forward all sorts of North Epirus claims on various Albanian articles. He's joined occasionally by another Greek nationalist.

[Mister Die]

The Trotskyism article is very obviously written by his adherents. Where else would one find something like this:

This was the position, contrary to that of "Classical Marxism" which by that time had been further illuminated by active life, shared by Trotsky and Lenin and the Bolsheviks until 1924 when Joseph Stalin, who along with Kamenev in February 1917 had taken the Menshevik position of first the bourgeois revolution, only to be confronted by Lenin and his famous April Thesis on Lenin's return to Russia, after the death of Lenin and seeking to consolidate his growing bureaucratic control of the Bolshevik Party began to put forward the slogan of "Socialism in one country".

The article on "Stalinism" sucks as well, but at least it doesn't look like his adherents wrote it. It seems quite difficult to build these articles up towards good quality using the Wikipedian way.

This post has been edited by Mister Die: Fri 24th February 2012, 11:22am

[Mister Die]

A Brazilian guy I know pointed out that the Pedro II of Brazil article, which is a featured article, has a definite traditionalist and monarchist slant.

I don't study Brazilian history, but I find it hard to reconcile the following:

Although there was no desire for a change in the form of government among most Brazilians, the Emperor was overthrown in a sudden coup d'état that had almost no support outside a clique of military leaders who desired a form of republic headed by a dictator...

The reign of Pedro II thus came to an unusual end—he was overthrown while highly regarded by the people and at the pinnacle of his popularity...

With, say, this from Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia:

A coalition of the urban middle class, coffee planters, and the military increasingly disparaged the monarchy and its ties to the traditional landed class. They advocated the creation of a modern republic that would support the new coffee and industrial capitalism, finding additional allies in the church. Discontent became widespread, and the military, representing this diverse opposition, overturned the empire.

This post has been edited by Mister Die: Wed 29th February 2012, 12:16am

[Mister Die]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.H._Carr

As encyclopedic as a magazine or perhaps critical journal article. Complete with photos coupled with "descriptions" such as "The Face of the Future?" and "The Price of Progress?" Not to mention "The American historian Richard Pipes. In 1993 Pipes was to write that Carr's History of Soviet Russia was no different from Holocaust denial."

It looks big and scholarly at first, but underneath it all is basically one continuous "eff you, Mr. Subject" vibe. It really doesn't look very encyclopedic at all.

This post has been edited by Mister Die: Tue 27th March 2012, 4:07am

[EricBarbour]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.H._Carr

Did it already. That, FYI, is one of the longest biographies on Wikipedia, and is the work of one obsessed crank.

[Mister Die]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.H._Carr

Did it already.

Where?

And yeah, it's long and lame. I think the sheer size of an article plays a significant role in people being reluctant to edit it.